Spanish speaking peoples in Utah, oral histories: book 13, numbers 135 through 146

Page 134

INTERVIEH: Garcia Page 16 t e Kennedy's who started the Great Society and the Great War on Poverty; we had already started ours . As I would kiddingly tell John F . Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, 'Well, we beat you fifteen years to the punch .' So then a lot has been said on the War on Poverty . I was a member appointed to the National Advisory Council of the Office of Economic Opportunity, which is an advisory council on the War on Poverty under President Johnson, and I became a close friend of Sargent Shriver at that time, and talked to a lot people . We got Mexican- Americans placed on top positions, including Vicente Jimenez who became Inspector General of this group . Then of course later, we had other people ••. many people working on the War on Poverty . What happened, Well, in the first place, some of our state and local, and certainly state and national leaders, became involved in the War on Poverty and of course we lost their services. We lost the services of the American G. I. Forum because the government , starting with the Kennedy administration, took a lot of top leaders and placed in them in important positions. And then, although the American G. I. Forum was geared and trained in local organizational work and local action, the War on Poverty was able to enlarge the participation of many people who vrould have not participated with us because they