There have been a few diaries addressing the narrative of Hillary Clinton’s life and accomplishments and I offer this one as an installment on her early career in federal government positions.
Political junkie, chain smoking, bowl puffing, college student in the early '70's, I watched every moment of the Watergate hearings from an overstuffed chair in the student lounge at Rutgers College. I was a female, scholarship, science student, only recently were female’s allowed since 1766, a woman in a sea of guys, glued to the TV. I noticed Hillary then on TV serving the Watergate Hearing committee members and vaguely recognized her face, perhaps from theJune 1969, issue of LIFE, in an article titled, simply, “The Class of ’69.
Her speech was, perhaps not surprisingly, less strident and confrontational than those of the other student speakers quoted in the issue; as early as 1969, Hillary was showing signs of that phenomenal ability to modulate her message — without diluting or compromising it — that helps explain so much of her success in public life. The other student speakers featured in that June 1969 issue included Yale’s William Thompson; Justin Simon at Brandeis; Mills College’s Stephanie Mills, now an author and fellow at the Post Carbon Institute; and Brown University’sIra Magaziner — a high-profile student activist who went on to become a business strategist and, coincidentally (or not), a senior adviser in the Clinton White House. Today, Magaziner works for the Clinton Foundation.
Ira Magaziner and Hillary are still associates.
So, in 1977 when President Carter named Hillary Rodham (as she was known then) to be the Chair of the Legal Services Corporation, I remembered who she was and I'm sure I pumped my fist or something like that. I didn't know her husband, Bill, but Hillary was already in Washington serving a pretty smart Democratic President.
I was more than an admirer of the Legal Services Corporation.
The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a publicly funded, 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress. It seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. The LSC was created in 1974 with bipartisan congressional sponsorship and the support of the Nixon administration, and is funded through the congressional appropriations process. LSC has a board of eleven directors, appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate, that set LSC policy. By law the board is bipartisan; no more than six can come from the same party.[1] LSC has a president and other officers who implement those policies and oversee the corporation's operations.[2] For 2013, LSC had a budget of $350,129,760 to allow the federal government to provide civil legal aid.[3]
Access to the courts is foundational for Democracy.
It was the 70s, brutality by police upon African Americans, student demonstrators, long haired men, and crowds at gay bars was de rugeur in ways most people today can’t imagine. I was a science student, NJ Democratic Party worker, a poll worker, a socialist, a feminist and gay activist in organizations in NJ, NYC, and DC. I recall thinking that no matter how bad the President or Congress acted, Nixon resigned, pressure works, and the Supreme Court would probably, ultimately set things right. I was young...
Hillary Rodham was on the board of the US Legal Services Corporation and I remember being wowed at the novelty of a woman getting such a position. Being in the one of the first female classes at a historic male college, Senator Clinton's example inspired me. In the Carter era:
In December 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Hillary Rodham to the board of directors of the LSC.[8] Rodham, an attorney with Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas and the wife of Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton, had a background in children's law and policy and had worked in providing legal services for the poor while at Yale Law School. She had also done 1976 campaign coordination work for Carter in Indiana.[9] In mid-1978, the Carter administration nominated the thirty-year-old Rodham to became chair of the board, the first woman to do so.[4] The position entailed her traveling monthly from Arkansas to Washington, D.C. for two-day meetings.[4]
So, back in 1977, Senator Clinton was already in a federal office focused on social justice, protecting the rights of the poor and fighting for the rights of disadvantaged citizens. Like Obama would be later, she was significantly influenced by Saul Alinsky, the archetype community organizer who wrote in his Rules for Radicals, his strategy in organizing:
"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.."[2]
Senator Clinton wrote her Wellesley thesis on Saul Alinky's philosophy called "There Is Only The Fight". She had Saul Alinsky himself edit her paper! It exposes the philosophical origins of a person who learned from Alinsky that to help the “have-nots” you must work within the system to first get power. But she rejected Alinsky's community model as not ideally suited to her style and personality; she sought to work within the system to change the fundamentals of the laws rather than work in the streets. Makes sense for a woman not the “type to bake cookies” and go to PTA meetings.
During Rodham's Senate confirmation hearings, she subscribed to the philosophy that LSC should seek to reform laws and regulations that it viewed as "unresponsive to the needs of the poor."[10] Rodham was successful in getting increases in Congressional funding for LSC, stressing its usual role in providing low-income people with attorneys to assist them in commonplace legal issues and framed its funding as being neither a liberal nor a conservative cause.[11] By her third year on the LSC board, Rodham had gotten the LSC budget tripled.[12] Opposition to LSC during this time came from both Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner, who favored a "judicare" approach of compensating private lawyers for work done for the poor,[12] and Conservative Caucus head Howard Phillips, who objected to LSC representing gays.[12]
Senator Clinton began a career of building cross party bridges. Hillary developed alliances and most importantly authentic working relationships with Republicans like James Sensenbrenner (cough) back then and now understandably outranks the Congressman. This sacrifice - and believe me, working within an alien system with men like Sensenbrenner is a grave sacrifice that requires a clear mission fueled by the fruits given to others - this sacrifice may seem “administrivial” but by achieving those funds, more community based lawyers could work and more was done. Not in the spotlight but very much in the arc of progress.
LSC funding was at its highest-ever mark, in inflation adjusted dollars, in fiscal 1980,[13] with a budget of $303 million.[14] Some 6,200 poverty lawyers filed suits using its funds on behalf of 1.5 million eligible poor clients;[15] the lawyers almost won 80 percent of their cases, which mostly involved divorces, evictions, repossessions, and interrupted payments from federal agencies.[15] For fiscal 1981 it was budgeted at $321 million.[16]