TURMOIL IN SHANTYTOWN

"WE will not abandon this place," cried the Rev. Ralph Abernathy in Resurrection City, the 15-acre Washington campground staked out by the Poor People's Campaign. But at least one-third of an estimated 3,000 residents pulled out of it as more than two inches of rain fell during one 30-hour period, blanketing the once-grassy meadow with a six-inch impasto of mud. Abernathy himself spent his nights elsewhere until a band of Negro militants invaded his hotel. Though they were turned back by staff members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Abernathy, chagrined, moved into the camp. But he plainly felt put upon. "I'm supposed to dream dreams and come up with ideas," he said. "This you can't always do down here."

Abernathy and his lieutenants in the S.C.L.C. were not notably successful at maintaining order down there either, and the result was a week marked by chaotic confrontations and often puerile demonstrations. One group of 150 poor people marched into the cafeteria of the Agriculture Department, piled their trays high with food, then refused to pay the $292.66 tab. "We're going to balance it off against what the Agriculture Department owes us for all the lunch programs that we didn't get," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Next day Abernathy hurried over to the department to pay the bill, and soon thereafter Jackson was replaced as "manager" of Resurrection City by veteran S.C.L.C. Organizer Hosea Williams.

White Ghettos. Another group marched on the Supreme Court, whose decisions have done much in the past decade and a half to secure the rights of all minorities. Their aim: to protest a decision upholding the convictions of 24 Indians for violating fishing regulations in the state of Washington. Led by George Crow Flies High, a Hidatsa chief from North Dakota in buckskin jacket and pants and full-feathered headdress, the group ignored a statute banning demonstrations outside the court. Indian women let out war whoops. Others cried: "Earl Warren, you better come out now." Demonstrators defiantly sprawled over imposing marble statues, splashed in fountains, hauled down an American flag and smashed five windows at the side of the building, though leaders of the march absurdly blamed the press and "the CIA" for the breakage. Still another group of 500 demonstrators marched into the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to budge until HEW Secretary Wilbur Cohen came out of his office to see them.

The campaign was also plagued by internal dissent. Resurrection City, heavily black, sprouted some white ghettos, including one populated by Appalachian mountain folk and another by hippies who dubbed their enclave "Diggerville" and festooned their shelters with gaily colored cloth and psychedelic banners. There was an angry flare-up over the black monopoly on policymaking. "Black militants have taken over, and nobody else gets a chance to talk," protested Reies Lopez Tijerina, leader of a group of 200 Mexican-Americans quartered at the private Hawthorne School about a mile from the shantytown. He complained that brown, red and white Americans were being bossed around by the Negroes and shouted down at meetings. "They are pushed down by black marshals, pushed out and humiliated." Abernathy finally made a pilgrimage to Hawthorne and promised Tijerina a larger voice for nonblack groups.

Blue-Sky Manifesto. The week was not, however, a total loss. In New York, Organizer Bayard Rustin skillfully set about mobilizing marchers and money for the massive June 19th demonstration that is intended to highlight the demands of the poor; to ensure order, Rustin is arranging for nearly 1,500 black New York City policemen (known as "the Guardians") and firemen ("the Vulcans") to serve as marshals in Washington on the big day. On Capitol Hill, Abernathy and 20 sympathetic Congressmen agreed to set up six subcommittees that will seek legislation to aid the poverty-stricken. Among the measures that they will push: President Johnson's program to build 6,000,000 homes for low-income families over the next decade, which last week was approved by the Senate; an Administration proposal to help industry create 500,000 jobs for the hard-core unemployed; food programs for 256 counties designated as emergency hunger areas; and repeal of a freeze in the number of recipients under the Aid for Dependent Children program.

The goals are relatively modest, but they are also attainable. That is more than can be said for the blue-sky, 59-page manifesto of demands that Abernathy drew up at the start of the campaign.

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