by Lee Malis
In the 1970s there were hundreds of thousands of young homeless people living on the streets and around the countryside. There was a big “back to the country” movement, the Vietnam War was over and there was a bit of a mess in the US. Jimmy Carter was elected president in the hopes that he could bring us back together. His message was one of brotherhood and unity, equal rights for women and the disenfranchised, amnesty for the conscientious objectors. Amongst his many reforms was free education for the poor and homeless.
Around this same time, I was traveling around in my 59 Dodge pick-up truck. It had been pretty faithful. It had an old flathead 6 motor I’d taken out of a forklift, back in California. I drove it across the country, hung out in Key West for the winter of ‘78 and it finally died around NW 10th St. and University Avenue in Gainesville.
I had $5 when I left Key West and nothing by the time I got to Gainesville. I was living in the back of my truck with a seized motor. I had been living on the streets and mountains since I was 13 years old, so this was nothing out of the ordinary. I had been taken away from my family and made a ward of the court at the age of 13 and had escaped three different jails before I turned 15. My last grade completed in school was the 7th grade.
Not too long after I arrived in Gainesville, I heard about the program initiated by President Carter to get people off the streets and into schools. The requirements were pretty simple: pass the High School Proficiency exam, and poverty.
That helping hand got me off the streets and into Santa Fe Community College, where I got my AA degree. From there I got a second degree from the University of Florida and graduated from the School of Journalism.
In my opinion, President Carter was one of the last presidents of the people, for the people, and by the people.
After I graduated I went on to cover civil wars and revolutions in Chile, under Pinochet, genocide of the Mayans in Guatemala, corruption in Peru, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia wars, Poland, Lithuania, and the breakup of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Lithuania. I worked for Time Magazine, Newsweek, US News and World Report, as well as Der Spiegel, Stern, almost all the English Sunday magazines and many more. I also paid back my student loans.
His programs changed so many lives! Think of his work at Camp David, locking himself away from the world with the leaders of Egypt and Israel working every day for weeks for a peace treaty. It is still in place today. Refusing to go to war in Iran. His policies were not popular with the Right and they brought about Ronald Reagan and the messes Reagan created in Central America. Sadly doing the right thing is not always the popular thing. When will we ever learn?
I remember in Davos, Switzerland, I was taking pictures for the World Economic Forum (WEF), an organization of the owners of the world and corporate wannabes, (the wannabes want to be the owners of the world). At one of the forums some wannabe was talking about the failure of Jimmy Carter’s program of getting the poor off the streets and into schools. I explained to him he was totally full of shit and it felt to me that I had definitely succeeded due to that program.
The right wing, the super wealthy and their ilk would have us believe that Carter was a failure, because he wasn’t reelected. I feel he wasn’t reelected because he didn’t play the game like the rest of the power hungry devourers of the planet. The right wing and the owners of the world are much better at getting their way than working people. The billionaires’ motives are not to make the world a better place, but to make themselves more powerful and tighten their control on the planet for their own gain. Carter’s motives were a bit more evident, with his continued work until he was 100 years old, of working to help people around the world have a home, to have clean drinking water, to protect our environment here in the USA and in the world.
I am proud/grateful to say, I was a product of one of Jimmy Carter’s many successful initiatives … Thank you Jimmy Carter!