We Called It a War

We Called It a War: Lessons Learned from the Fight to End Poverty is a first-hand account of Sargent Shriver's leadership of the War on Poverty, which he undertook under President Lyndon Johnson between 1964 and 1968. The memoir offers a rare inside view of how programs like Head Start, Community Action, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA, now AmeriCorps VISTA), Job Corps, Legal Services, Neighborhood Health Centers, Foster Grandparents, Upward Bound, and Work-Study were conceived and implemented-and how Shriver's collaborative, community-based approach can be applied to tackling poverty in America today. The book gives the reader intimate insights into the opportunities and challenges of translating President Johnson's audacious pledge to end poverty into a working set of social programs that continue to uplift and empower communities across the United States today. In leading the anti-poverty effort, Shriver was tasked with drafting the requisite legislation, ushering it through a skeptical Congress, creating the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), and recruiting the talented anti-poverty warriors who would take the OEO from concept to implementation. Shriver's words reveal a public administrator skilled at creating major social policy; a global citizen driven by his spiritual faith and commitment to social justice; a principled pragmatist who successfully executed grand ideas; a social entrepreneur whose skeptical approach to bureaucracy enabled him to liberate the creative energies of the diverse individuals who collaborated with him; and a politician who earned the trust and respect of his adversaries. Shriver's words remind us that to achieve equal opportunity and justice for all, we must again create an environment that nurtures bold ideas and empowers decisive, community-based action.