ABSTRACT
Between 1964 and the present, the West Side Organization (WSO) evolved into a vigorous enterprise. WSO has more work than it can possibly do. The demands that the community of poor black people in Chicago has made on staff members for help in finding employment, for representation to the welfare authorities, and for education and information daily overload the interactional circuits linking paid and volunteer participants in the web of WSO organization. The WSO approach to unemployment has not missed the point, for it recognizes unemployment as a way of life that results from oppression. Unemployment was the point of departure in WSO's activities. The education pogram has been hurt most by WSO's lack of adequate funding. It is well to keep the middle-class perceptual screen in mind when evaluating WSO and in describing its structure. The biweekly newspaper of WSO is a tabloid–like the New York Daily News or the Chicago Sun-Times–of eight to sixteen pages.
