The Scene at ZIP Code 20013

THE CAPITAL

In an elm-lined meadow between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the 15-acre "Resurrection City" slowly began to take shape last week. As thousands of poor Negroes, Indians, Mexican Americans and a few Appalachian whites wound toward the capital in eight separate caravans from as far off as Seattle, Boston and Edwards, Miss., volunteer carpenters hammered together more than 200 tent-shaped, 10-ft. by 20-ft. plywood-and-plastic shelters to house them.

The enterprise could not be under rated as an imaginative appeal to the nation's conscience, but it was clearly headed for trouble. An air of bedlam hung over the encampment. There were too few shelters. Sewage lines were uncompleted. Only two shower units were available to the nearly 1,000 people on hand at week's end. But the camp site had its amenities too. There were power lines, portable latrines and phone booths. A big blue-topped tent was pitched to serve as a mess hall. Mobile clinics were scheduled to wheel up to dispense medical, dental and psychiatric care. Resurrection City even boasted the ultimate insignia of identity: a ZIP code number (20013).

As headquarters of the Poor People's Campaign--the last project launched by the late Martin Luther King Jr--the shantytown is designed to prod Congress into taking action on behalf of the nearly 30 million poor Americans. To ensure that Congress gets the message, the poor will stage a series of demonstrations climaxed by a Memorial Day march that is expected to draw more than 150,000 participants. What worries official Washington--as well as the tourists who are staying away in droves--is that the "demos" may get out of hand, turning Resurrection City into Insurrection City.

Ugly Episode. With only one-third of the planned 600 shelters completed by week's end, cash, lumber--and occasionally, enthusiasm--were practically depleted. National Coordinator Bernard Lafayette said the campaign had funds only "for the next few days," appealed for $3,000,000 to keep it going. When others angrily pounced on Lafayette for making it sound as if the campaign were being mismanaged, he trimmed his estimate of cash needs to $84,000 and confessed: "I just goofed."

He was not alone, Though it will take $90,000 to feed the tent town's planned population of 3,000 for a month, barely a third of that sum has been raised--despite sizable contributions from such chains as A. & P., Safeway and Giant Food, as well as promises of 850 loaves of bread a day from the baking industry and 1,500 half-pints of milk from local dairies. Discouraged by the turmoil, an abnormal cold snap and a driving rain that turned much of the camp site into a bog, more than 50 of the initial 500 settlers asked to be sent back South.

The converging caravans were having their troubles too. Because of campsite construction delays, 2,225 prospective squatters were sent to "holding centers" outside the capital until the shelters are ready. The 850-member Northeast Caravan had to put up in nearby Greenbelt, Md., while the Midwest Caravan--400 of whose 1,000 members were suffering from fatigue or stomach troubles--was forced to lay over for two days in Pittsburgh. The Marks, Miss., Mule Train, already several days behind schedule, was delayed further when a dawn prowler cut a corral fence and turned its 30 mules loose. In Oakland's Civic Auditorium, a fundraising meeting in behalf of the San Francisco Caravan fell so far short of its goal that the tough young Black Panthers who had been acting as ushers blocked the exits until "more of the green" was collected.

Though there was a fistfight among marchers in Trenton, N.J., and a bomb threat as the Western Caravan passed through El Paso, Texas, there was relatively little violence overall. The ugliest episode occurred in Detroit, when eleven mounted police waded into a group of marchers, slightly injuring five and bowling over Father James Groppi, leader of Milwaukee's open-housing demonstrations.

Marching Mothers. The Poor People's Campaign began formally on Mother's Day when King's widow, traveling part of the way in a chauffeured Cadillac, led 5,000 participants, many of them welfare mothers, in a twelve-block march through Washington's slums. "Our Congress passes laws which subsidize corporations, farms, oil companies, airlines and houses for suburbia," said Coretta King at Cardozo High School stadium. "But when it turns to the poor, it suddenly becomes concerned about balancing the budget."

Next day, King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, skewed some nails into a stake to dedicate Resurrection City. With each clang of the hammer, a cry of "Freedom!" rang out from a crowd of 200 Negroes from Marks, Miss., and Memphis. "We will be here a long, long time," proclaimed Abernathy. "This march will not last for a day or two days or even a week. We will be here until the Congress and the Government decide they are going to do something about the plight of poor people by doing away with poverty, unemployment and underemployment."

Though on several occasions Abernathy has threatened to "turn this country upside down," last week he sounded markedly more temperate. At one point he warned marchers: "If you expect violence go somewhere else." Nevertheless, there was a deep concern that others in the drive might prove less scrupulous. Lower-level campaign officials have threatened to stage "a lie-in on one of Washington's major streets," and "a walk-around inside one of the big department stores," to cut off bridges and block federal office buildings. But any effort to disrupt Washington would almost certainly prove counterproductive. "Violence," said Illinois' Republican Senator Charles Percy, "would irreparably set back a just cause."

Abernathy, who maintains that "my job is to tell the politicians what saith the Lord," had an opportunity to do so when 72 friendly Congressmen, including seven Senators, invited him up to Capitol Hill. In a 90-minute meeting, he promised to discourage civil disobedience--except "as a last resort." In turn, the Congressmen promised to set up what Michigan's Democratic Senator Philip Hart called a "bipartisan, biracial" committee of 15 to 17 members to confer weekly with Abernathy and his lieutenants.

Last Chance. In spelling out precisely what saith the Lord about antipoverty programs, Abernathy has been understandably vague. He vows that the poor will "plague the pharaohs of this nation with plague after plague until they agree to give us meaningful jobs and a guaranteed annual income." All the same, he is well aware that with Congress considering a $6 billion budget cut, such ambitious demands are not likely to be met. He and his lieutenants would probably be happy to settle for far more limited steps--notably, a reversal by Congress of the 1967 freeze on the Aid for Dependent Children program, enactment of a provision to create 450,000 jobs for the unemployed in the coming year, and funding of President Johnson's three-year program to employ 500,000 of the jobless in private industry. "If there is no response," Abernathy said last week, "we shall not have failed. Congress and America will have failed."

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