SPECIAL FEATURE UNSETTLING THE GEOGRAPHY OF OAKLAND’S WAR ON POVERTY Mexican American Political Organizations and the Decoupling of Poverty and Blackness 1 Juan C. Herrera Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley Abstract Historical studies of the War on Poverty have overwhelmingly focused on its consequences in African American communities. Many studies have grappled with how War on Poverty innovations co-opted a thriving African American social movement. This paper explores the impact of War on Poverty programs on the development of a political cadre of Mexican American grassroots leaders in Oakland, California. It investigates how coordinated 1960s protests by Mexican American organizations reveal Oakland’s changing racial0ethnic conditions and shifting trends in the state’s relationship to the urban poor. It demonstrates how a national shift to place-based solutions to poverty devolved the “problem of poverty” from the national to the local level and empowered a new set of actors—community-based organizations—in the fight against poverty. This essay argues that the devolution of federal responsibility for welfare provided the political and institutional opening for the rise of powerful Mexican American organizations whose goal was the recognition of a “Mexican American community” meriting government intervention. This essay also demonstrates how Mexican American organizations mobilized in relation to African American social movements and to geographies of poverty that were deemed exclusively Black. Keywords: Mexican Americans, Social Movements, Community-Based Organiza- tions, Devolution, Poverty INTRODUCTION On April 15 1966, Oakland’s Mexican American Unity Council held a press confer- ence to announce a six-point list of demands from city hall. The manifesto boldly called on the newly elected Republican mayor, John R. Reading, to appoint a Mex- ican American to the city council. The Oakland Tribune ~1966! reported that the group also sought the hiring of an expert who could “train the city council and other civic leaders” to better recognize the problems of the Spanish-speaking 2 community Du Bois Review, 9:2 (2012) 375–393. © 2012 W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 1742-058X012 $15.00 doi:10.10170S1742058X12000197 375