War on Poverty helped out Mainers

I appreciated Alan Caron’s July 17 response (“To solve America’s race problems, open your eyes”) to M.D. Harmon’s July 15 column (“Don’t worry about the summer of 2016”). But several of Harmon’s factual statements and innuendos still need addressing.

Harmon’s description of Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey as “the bland leading the bland” was unconscionable. It was Humphrey who took a leadership role in getting the Civil Rights Act passed.

And Harmon’s description of the War on Poverty as “utterly wrongheaded” is simply not supported by the facts.

In early 1968, I was the acting executive director of the Southern Kennebec Valley Community Action Program. At that time we were bringing surplus food into the state of Maine so that low-income seniors and families would not be forced to choose between heating and eating during the winter. This was food that farmers would otherwise have plowed under or not have produced at all.

Low-income citizens were actively involved in volunteering in the program to make it work. It was democracy working effectively at the grass roots. I can’t imagine anything more right-headed than that.

Dick Cook

Limerick

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