The Ad Hoc Committee on the Jewish Poor reported today that David Billings III, chairman of the New York City Council Against Poverty, agreed to a request from the Ad Hoc group that he place before the CAP executive committee a public statement of apology and regret for some remarks he made on radio station WNYC which were denounced by Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic. The meeting was the first between the ad hoc group and the CAP and its chairman.
The request was made by Jewish organizations comprising the Ad Hoc Committee at a meeting yesterday with Billings and members of the executive committee. The Jewish representatives told Billings that the Jewish community regarded Billings’ remarks as a slur against Jews. He made the remarks Feb. 29 on an interview program on the city-operated radio station saying, among other things that foes of the bitterly-contested low-income housing project in Forest Hills were “an influential group religiously,” many of whom “control the school system” and “the mass media.”
The Jewish representatives asked that the public statement be coupled with an expression from the CAP that it did not and will not condone slurs against any group as a matter of official policy. Billings said he had already issued statements to make clear that he did not intend any expression of anti-Semitism in his WNYC remarks. Sanford Solender, executive vice-president of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, who served as principal spokesman for the Ad Hoc Committee, urged Billings to make a further statement specifically in response to the request from the Ad Hoc Committee.
BROADER DEFINITION OF JEWISH POOR
On the issue of Sabbath elections for poverty agency boards, Solender said that the Jewish community believed such elections were a disfranchisement of many Jews and therefore unconstitutional. He pledged the cooperation of the seven Jewish groups in urging both public and private employers to cooperate so that there would be the fullest turnout possible for week-day elections.
Solender expressed the “growing concern” of the Ad Hoc Committee that the criteria used originally to set up the city’s 26 poverty areas acted to exclude whole pockets of Jewish poor. He asked for adoption of broader criteria to insure that the Jewish poor of New York City would be serviced, represented and funded. He offered cooperation of the Jewish groups in pressuring the federal government for more funds for the city’s poverty program, noting that serious problems had been posed by limited federal funding.
Solender said that the Center for Urban Studies of the New School had been commissioned by the Federation to make a study of that problem and make recommendations. He said the results of that study would be made available to the CAP when completed. In addition to the Federation, the Jewish organizations in the Ad Hoc Committee are: American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, American Jewish Congress, New York Board of Rabbis, Jewish Community Relations Council, and Jewish Labor Committee.
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