>> you're watching c-span, your unfiltered view of government. c-span was created by america's cable television companies in 1979. today, we are brought to you by these television companies who provide television to viewers as a public service. ♪ journal" continues. host: joining us is robert woodson, the founder and president of the woodson center and is here to talk to us about his book, “lessons from the least of these: the woodson principles." so, your title, explain. guest: i have been concerned about the fight on poverty for the past decades and i have been writing about it and working on behalf of low income people, and i was upset that over the last 50 years that we have had the war on poverty, we have spent about $20 trillion in programs in the aid to poor where 70% of

the money does not go to the poor, but professional experts that parachute into low income communities solutions, and when we fail we do not enter -- examine the intervention, instead we assume that it is underfunded. so, i have been working at the woodson center for the past 40 years with the real experts, at reducing poverty. and those are the groups that are indigenous to the community. low income leaders that have the trust and confidence of people there. they are the real experts, so the woodson center has been working with indigenous grassroots leaders and some of the most drug infested, crime-ridden neighborhoods. and they have generated some very innovative approaches that have effectively addressed some of the poverty -- problems of poverty and violence, and despair. but their accomplishments are

unrecognized, and underutilized. what i have done over the past four years -- 40 years, i have walked with these groups and individuals, and so what i did in my book was chronicle what are the valuable lessons i have learned from these real anti-poverty experts, and i have distilled these lessons, into 10 principles that will help guide people to understand how to find these grassroots healing agents. how to assist them in a way that does not injure them with a helping hand. host: so, before we get to your principles, why are these other programs failing? guest: it is like the equivalent of a transplant. if you go into your physician's office and have a heart murmur,

he does not recommend a transplant. but he does is try to recommend remedies that are least intrusive. let us take some rest. what we do when it comes to addressing poverty, we have people at our universities and think tanks that design remedies for the poor and they asked which problems are fundable, which -- not which are solvable. that is why they have imposed a program to aid the poor that have in fact injured them with a helping hand. and so, our approach is to find out what is working. but, the very fact that we have spent $20 trillion in the past 50 years in programs to aid the poor, and we are told that poverty has not really declined very much in the last 50 years, so obviously what we are doing has not worked. we have documented not only the

failure, but the disintegration of some of these, particularly the black community. what we are witnessing with the 70% out of wedlock births, and of violence, that is not something that has been associated with the black community. this is not as some would have you believe a legacy of slavery and jim crow. that is just patently untrue. and we have documented that. host: what is it attributed to? guest: thomas soul talked about the largest drop of poverty a curate in the black community in 1940, 80 5%. it was reduced to 25% in 1960. and, that is because of the self-help and efforts undertaken by the people in those communities.

what we have done is documented that the first 500 years after slavery, lack of americans a cheat -- black americans achieve great strides in reducing poverty, the out of wedlock births were under 10%. when we were denied access to hotels we bit -- built her own colleges. but all of that changed in the 1960's. in fact, 19381940 during the depression, black americans had the highest marriage rate of any group in society. elderly people could walk in those communities without fear of being assaulted by their grandchildren. the incarceration rate was only 20% from the turn-of-the-century up until the 1960's. so what happened in the 60's, i chronicle the trials of joseph, is that the welfare system, two

sociologists at the columbia school of social work, their goal -- they were socialists and their goal was to emphasize the contradictions of capitalism by encouraging low income people, particularly blacks to flood the welfare system. but they could not have done it alone with their policy track. but the war on parvati started at that time in the office of a quill opportunity opened talked -- offices and actively recruited blacks because there was a stigma about being on welfare, so they had to overcome the stigma. so they were supported by the women's movement in the black power movement because they said that if they can just separate work from income, it means that the man will be redundant and you will see out of wedlock births, crime, and school

dropouts, all of the dire predictions that they forecast would occur by increasing welfare happened. in fact, within four years of the early 70's, millions of blacks flooded into the welfare system in major cities like chicago, philadelphia, washington, d.c., and new york. they came into the welfare sister in -- system in a time on the unemployment rate was under 4%. so, what they predicted came true when the black power movement and others said that the nuclear family is zero centric and racist, and that welfare should not be seen as social insurance, but should be interpreted as reparations. one welfare department attempted to require women to dictate

claire -- declare paternity as a condition for deceiving -- for receiving welfare, the aclu sued for privacy rights that prohibited questions like this from being asked. as a consequence, you saw an explosion of the out of wedlock births from 85% two parent households in the 60's to now where today it is 70% out of wedlock births and all of the accompanying pathologies that follow that. crime, violence, and school dropout rates are rampant in america and it is tied directly to the policies of the 60's. it is not related at all to a legacy of slavery and jim crow. host: are you saying it was a conspiracy? guest: no. i do not think it was a conspiracy. i think some of these people were well intended, and that is

what makes it so difficult to challenge, because i think it was dietrich barn half that -- barnoff said that one of the most difficult things to challenge is folly, it is more difficult than malice. malice you can challenge with violence. when somebody thinks that you are -- that they are doing you a favor, they might be well-intentioned, but what they are doing is ill advised, and that is what makes it difficult. i do not believe it was a conspiracy. i think people, and some cases believed that they were being helpful, but, unfortunately you have people were look -- working in institutions that are causing good people to do bad things on behalf of the people they are supposed to be helping. host: i am going to invite viewers to join in. if you are a democrat, 202-748-8000.

republicans, 202-748-8001. independents, 202-748-8002. text us with your thoughts and questions at 202-748-8003. remember to include your first name, city, and state. you are a conservative and your principles are that you write about competence -- confidence, integrity, transparency, resilience, innovation, inspiration, agency, access, and grace. how does this differ from liberal progressives? guest: i do not define what i do as conservative. i consider my political views radical pragmatist. host: define that. guest: all of us when we are in the public square, we should meet the demand whether or not you -- your proposal has the consequence of improving the

quality of life of the people you say -- you say you intended to help. and so, what i have chronicled in this book of these principles are based upon solutions that have been successfully designed, and implemented by the people in the community. my book is full of solutions, that is what the woodson center markets in. i will take you into a neighborhood in washington, d.c., a public housing developments that i worked with in the 80's called tender wood parkside. they were 600 units that were drug infested and crime-ridden, but a mother there, abandoned by a husband to divorce at age 22 with five children sent all five kids to college. and then, she helped other residents to organize and drive the drug dealers out, and as a consequence of this self-help

efforts they sent 600 kids to college from one public housing development. it almost eliminated teen pregnancy, and it became a model for self-help and self-determination and the woodson center worked closely with ms. gray and that became a national model. and so, those are the kinds of principles that i write about and that the woodson center supports around the country. host: let us get to calls. michael and grand rapids -- in grand rapids, michigan. democratic caller. caller: hello. you are, i am sorry to say, you do not speak for black folks really. you are speaking to white folks and creating a negative image of black folks, continuously saying that they are crime riveted criminals, -- crime ridden

criminals and no fathers in the family. if you look at it through this period of time, divorce is up for all people, not just black people. white folks and white men are leaving their white children also. and this claim of lack men being so -- black men being so incompetent is insulting. you are not speaking for african-americans, you are speaking to white folks who want to buy your propaganda. host: let us get a response. guest: my record is clear. what we have done, 23 years ago, typical of what the woodson center does there is a neighborhood called benning terrace 53 gang murders in a five straight -- square block area in two years. the police were afraid to go in there. what i did in working with a group of grassroots leaders

called the alliance of concerned men, i helped train them to do intervention and they had the confidence. they went into that community and found the warring factions and put 16 of these young men to my office downtown in separate vans with bullet-proof vest on and we negotiated a truce. as a consequence i worked closely with them to take these young men who were predators and turn them into ambassadors of peace. as a consequence of just changing these 18 young men, they became -- they began to rebuild the community that they terrorized. as a consequence, they created jobs. the community went from 53 murders in a five square block area till one in two years. these young man -- men, some of

them lived with my family. we took them in, and then we took the principles of that dramatic change that these young men became mentors and character coaches and set up football games. we took the principles we learned there and applied it to the milwaukee public schools. we took them to dallas texas, and baltimore, maryland. our track record is solving problems working directly with men and women in communities. our record is clear as to our successful efforts to go in and rebuild communities from the inside out. but in order to rebuild you have to properly diagnose the problem. someone once said that we must have fact-based truths, otherwise lies become normal. host: do you get money from the

government to do what you do? guest: i have, but i do not now. the housing authority, there in the local governments, a man by the name of david gilmore was instrumental in hiring these young man that i told you about what -- as maintenance crews to remove graffiti and plant grass. that was their first job. as a consequence, the government supplied money to do that, the local government. also, when we exported it to milwaukee, wisconsin we started with private dollars in one school that had gangs running the schools, but as a consequence of recruiting a small group of young men who were from the community that had the trust of the kids, we put them in the schools, and they became a part of the school staff. and they called interventions. the kids would bring their differences to them and as a

consequence, crime went down, baylor university studied three of our schools and compared them to the schools that did not have them and found that dropout rates were down, suspensions were down, graduation rates were up. we did climate surveys and parents and teachers, and kids felt safe. it was so successful. it went eventually to 20 -- 14 schools, and i think it is in 12 now. that program has been in existence for 20 years. so, we are solutionists. again, and we have 2500 grassroots leaders of all racial groups who are part of our network of people, so our record is very clear. host: randy, williamsburg,

virginia. a republican. caller: yes, good morning, and thank you for your efforts. i too have started a small business on spalding -- solving problems for those children that are left behind and do not feel stable in their homes or communities. and that all came from a personal injury when i volunteered at a hospital and saw how unhealthy many children were. what i did was i built a custom 50 foot trailer and put 30 stationary bikes that kids -- for kids as young as four years old. i have traveled through 1300 schools and on the most challenged blocks in newport news or richmond, i have found cooperation amongst the business of the corner owners. and i show up and displace them with a 75 foot rig that is there

for their children and the family as a whole, mom, dad, cousins, and whoever to come into the rig on their block and enjoy music, exercise, videos, and have fun with concerned people, that is success. i have never had one child of any race blowback at me and have a negative experience in my program. and i cannot, for the -- school superintendents, county administrators, police chiefs and the like. when i show up with the rig for a community event, i am along with the investigation rv's and other police assets that are only there when the -- when it is real hot, when there is a murder or something else. these children are far too

familiar with that. we need on-site programming that can travel from school to the neighborhood and back again, and operates outstanding programming right where the children are. host: mr. woodson? guest: you are right. we have got to get beyond race. everything has to be seen through a prism of race, but what you describe is what the center does. we support a group called the voices of black mothers united. they are a group of 2500 mothers who have lost children to urban violence. and they are coming together to support community-based interventions, but also to challenge those who want to defund the police. they are supportive of the police. they want to see reform, but they want to see increase. they represent 82% of black americans who are against defunding the police.

60% of black people do not believe that racial discrimination is their biggest barrier to self-advancement. but, what we think we need to do is emphasize and come up with solutions, and that is what the woodson center is going through, various programs that we need to stop allowing the civil rights legacy to be converted, and to take this message to young blacks that somehow you live in a nation that hates you, that contrives to disadvantage you. people are motivated to change and improve themselves when you show them victories that are possible. the biggest untold story about america is how blacks under segregation achieved against the

odds. and when whites were at their worst, blacks were at their best. but we do at the woodson center through our 1776 efforts is to chronicle what we achieved in the past, and what were the values that underpinned those successes, and how we can borrow from what we have done successfully in the past to apply it to the present. and, we have other examples of groups around the country who have taken those old values and applied them to a new vision and are creating new opportunities today. that is where we ought to be spending our time and energy instead of saying to black america, white america owes you reparations and therefore you need to sit and wait for them to liberate you. nobody should do more for anybody than they are willing to do for themselves. that is the message that we are

trying to communicate. host: i am going to go to john in herndon, virginia. an independent. caller: thank you for taking my call and god bless c-span. just a question for mr. woodson. i was curious to hear your thoughts about how significant of a role you think that the media has played in race relations, because what i have seen it seems to have been on the decline since the training -- 20th century. guest: the media has been complicit in convincing lack america that you are a victim. that it is amazing that when in the course of a year when a white police officer kills an unarmed black it is all over the media, it is treated as if it is a chronic situation, and at the

same time they underreport or fail to report that hemorrhage that is going on in 34 cities. homicides are up 20% all over. it is the highest rate. and yet the media plays into this defunding -- i will give you an example. in philadelphia you heard about these two black men and the way the story read is that the starbucks manager asked them to leave and since they did not they were arrested. well, "the washington post" had a three page spread on it and what they failed to report was that the manager called the police. the police asked these two gentlemen to leave at least three times, but they refused, and they therefore were arrested for failure to obey the police officers, with the reporter left that part out. instead, characterized it as a racial incident.