Donald Trump has accomplished many things -- sleazy, backwards things that are dismantling much of the functioning U.S. framework for a just and equal society. A new, seemingly small but vital casualty of the Trumpublican assault really ticks me off, because for me, this time, it's personal.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Sunday that, in a surprise move, the Trump administration has ordered the closing of the national rural Job Corps program that helps train and educate poverty-stricken teens and young adults. From the article:
> The Department of Labor announced a plan to transfer 16 of the 25 [Job Corps] centers from the USDA to the U.S. Department of Labor, where they will likely be put under private management. The remaining nine — including Blackwell — will be closed.
Some background on the program later on. For now, know that TrumpCo is messing with Job Corps centers across rural America that have succeeded in teaching poor kids skills and giving them tools and hope. Oh, yeah, privatization will work better. Fat chance.
The Wisconsin case is close to my heart. When I was teen growing up in northern Wisconsin during the early 1960s, the federal government established a Job Corps camp in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest near Blackwell, a Forest County town of a few hundred. Blackwell was 55 miles north of Antigo, my hometown. I wasn't poor, and I only learned of the program because I worked after school at a local clothing store. Every year, new Job Corps recruits, many of them African Americans from Milwaukee, Racine and other urban areas of the state, would be bused to Antigo to use a clothing voucher they received upon mustering in at Blackwell. They would stroll around our haberdashery, picking out shirts and jackets and pants their families could not afford to supply.
Except for a few black serviceman who worked at a nearby U.S. Air Force base, plus some native Americans and Hispanic migrant workers, Antigo was back then largely a caucasian community. Thanks to Job Corps, my youthful awareness of racism -- up until then informed mainly by images of distant civil rights marches on TV -- quickly increased.
The wife of the clothing store's owner hailed from Texas. She ordered we employees not to let any of our black Job Corps customers use the store's bathroom. I nevertheless escorted one poor, very desperate shopper to the bathroom. After that, she angrily ordered me to scrub the toilet, sink, walls and ceiling with bleach. I never got over her obvious hatred for those hopeful black teen shoppers. White Job Corps recruits were, after all, perfectly welcome to use our john. The Blackwell camp has for the succeeding 55 years succeeded in helping many jobless, homeless, and impoverished young Americans get a foothold. It's one of 25 Civilian Conservation Centers operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in rural areas, often forests. Blackwell puts young people to work, while providing them meals and shelter and free vocational training. Thousands of recruits ages 16 to 24 come away with experience in trades ranging from carpentry to office administration. The Journal Sentinel found that the this one camp In the past six years placed nearly 800 students into jobs.
However, that impressive track record is now being up-ended, because in Trumpworld, if it ain't broken, break it. In late May, the Trump administration essentially ended the rural job corps program.
Arguably, a reason Trump and no doubt some Republican lawmakers don't like Job Corps is a.) the program's success and b.) its association with President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" initiative. The Job Corps was created under President John F. Kennedy and was already performing admirably when LBJ looked for quick results for his wider anti-poverty program and folded Job Corps into the mix. From Wikipedia's history of Job Corps:
> In 1962, the youth unemployment rate was twice the non-youth employment rate and the purpose of the initiative was to create a program whereby youth members of the program could spend half of their time improving national parks and forests and the other half ... improving their basic education skills ... . The Job Corps Task Force initially recommended that Job Corps programs be limited to Federal National Parks, National Forests, and other Federal Lands.
> By the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the Job Corps' operational plans, costs, and budgets had been well developed, including coordination with the U. S. Forest Service and the U. S. Park Service... . Initiating legislation and budgetary authorizations were drafted by the Kennedy Administration and introduced in both houses of Congress.
> When President Johnson and his planning staff decided on the War on Poverty, most of the proposed programs would take more than a year to even start. However the Job Corps idea was well along in the planning stage and could be deployed rapidly, so the Labor Department Job Corps Task Force was appointed to the Task force for the War on Poverty, and the Job Corps was slated to be the initial operational program.
The program was first led by Sargent Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family and Peace Corps director, whom LBJ named the first director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Shriver modeled the program on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, a highly successful program that helped lift American out of the Great Depression.
This move by Trump is not just sad, it's criminal. In a few years, perhaps, the Trump-transformed Job Corps program will begin to evidence the flaws introduced by its new, thoughtless model. And perhaps by then as well, the country will be in the throes of another of its regularly scheduled recessions.
The need for restoring a CCC-style Job Corps will become evident, and if there is anyone but a Republican in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, that's exactly what will happen. Because nothing succeeds like success