New York City’s arch-liberal mayor John Lindsay, newly elected in November 1966, capitulated to Wiley’s every demand. An appeaser by nature, Lindsay sought to calm racial tensions by taking “walking tours” through Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and other troubled areas of the city. This made for good photo-ops but failed to mollify Wiley’s cadres and the masses that they mobilized, who wanted cash. On one occasion, black militants laid siege to City Hall, bearing signs saying “No Money, No Peace.” “The violence of the [welfare rights] movement was frightening,” Lindsay budget aid Charles Morris would later recall.
Lindsay answered these provocations with ever-more-generous programs of appeasement in the form of welfare dollars. New York’s welfare rolls had been growing by 12% per year already, before Lindsay took office. The rate jumped to 50% annually in 1966. During Lindsay’s first term of office, welfare spending in New York City more than doubled, from $400 million to $1 billion annually. Outlays for the poor consumed 28% of the city’s budget by 1970. “By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city’s private economy,” Sol Stern wrote in the City Journal.
As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.
invite response
https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/organizations/clowardpiven-strategy-cps/
Consider that the late 1960s were all time highs for wages relative to cost of living, and for unemployment.
In today's economy, we still are barely within striking distance of the late 60s highs.
Yet that's when Libbies did as much as they could to sign everybody up for welfare.
Here's a Leftist Organization fighting for the right of immigrants to take full advantage without contribution or limits, to break the Welfare System:
https://legalaidnyc.org/news/public-charge-immigration-rule-national-injunction/