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board, Justine Pulier, who just lost her husband, by the way, Shad Pulier, invited me down to the office of the Field Foundation to share with me an idea they had.

I'll put it very briefly. Les felt that the Field Foundation could make more of an impact in the use of its funds by concentrating on the particular problems of a project, rather than distributing grants over a large number of projects. And he said that what they were concerned with was the urban problem, and I think he used the term “urban decay, “but with particular emphasis on the ghettoes. And he had read YOUTH IN THE GHETTO. I don't know whether he had read DARK GHETTO or not. But the concept of a sense of powerlessness, you know, lack of any control over their own destiny of the underclassed, which I developed in DARK GHETTO, apparently made some kind of impact upon him. And he and Justine wanted to explore with me whether I would be willing to accept the invitation to develop, organize and operate a new type of agency that would in effect seek to use the skills, the perspective, the methods, and I presume also the style of the social scientist, in seeking to affect social policy on behalf of the powerless groups in our cities.

Well, a more rational person would have said, “Hurray,” you know,” I want to do it, yeah, I'll jump at it.”

I spent my first two meetings with Justine and Les trying to convince them of the hopelessness of this. The fact that it's an exceelent idea, on paper, but I'd just come through HARYOU. I don't think I mentioned Social Dynamics Research Center.