ABSTRACT
When President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded John F. Kennedy's program into the War on Poverty, he likewise hoped not to mire generations in dependency but to free them from it. Money deployed an arsenal of supposedly innovative weapons, including Community Action Agencies requiring "maximum feasible participation"—a policy requiring that the poor themselves should be involved as much as possible in the planning and execution of poverty programs. Social policy elites and the media jumped onto the bandwagon, predicting that the war would finally overcome the structural poverty imposed by the existing economic order. In many cases, policy-makers and program administrators distributed funds directly to former Civil Rights Movement organizers and other community activists, which were then funneled to incompetent organizations unable to deliver quality programs. Lyndon Johnson and his top aides were almost unconsciously melding the tactics and strategies of civil rights activists with sweeping government policy.
