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~Atlanta Carry ctij ~e:rs .-"as~~uagt~u I Of Freeze 'I A bi-~acial group of four Atla,1tc1 morhe rs who will be e ffected by the "welfare freeze" are going to Washington Tl urs. ~ay to per~onally tell their stories to Se nator Tal ma dge , Sena to r · Russell, Congressman Thompson, and Congressman Blakburn. The mother·s will tell their retpresentatives what t_he welare cut·back will do to their families. The trip is being sponsored by diet. The Commission c·aus on the conthe Atlanta · Community Rela tions · Commission. · "The four mothers are gn·s.s to r epeal . the welfare frer.ze represenLatives of Lhose who are before it goes into effect July l,." · trying to help themselves," stated saicl Welch . .L Nat Welch, CRC 's executive direc.,. tor who will accompany them. The "welfare freeze". on Aid Lo l"a milies with Dr,penclent Children will go into effect July l unless repealed by Congress. . "The maximum $154 monthly gt·ant ·for a fa mily is barely enough to afford sus tenance. Any r ecluction in payments would bring about untold hanlships that stagger the imagination," sn ld Welch. These h ardships could cause fu r th<'r breaking up of families, more school dropouts, malnutrition and the .·ubsequen t' showing down of 1 men t~;1 processes. Remed ial or r ehabilitative programs, which arc not always successful, are more costly than programs of prevention in the opinion of the Commission . · "The Atlan ta CommuniLy R,,lations Comm ission 1s concernecl thaL our na tiou is spending billions ctn sending a 111an to the moon and twn-thircls of the n ational buclget to pay for past, present and fu ture wars yet unless repealed, the welfan~ freeze will reduce by up Lo 4.0 per cent payments to 35,000 n111t hers and 1H ,000 C"hildren in Gear. gia· m·ost of whom do not now have enough money for an adequate 1 II -4 ~l DoCe Ui~gie El1ld '

Four Atlanta motl1ers living on welfare visited the office of Georgia lawmakers in Washing- , ton Thmsday to plead for elimi- 1 nation of the "freeze" on we!- 1 fare money schedu:led t9 take ·e ffect on July 1. Sobbing, one mother told Sen. "Herman E. Talmadge, "I'm going to !have to give up because I ca n'-t survive." · Mrs. Wanna Mitchell told the senator, "I worked and I tried to take care of my. _kids," but said the loss of her welfare money would leave her family without enough money to live. The welfare freeze as ap- . proved by Congress would lock the level _o f federal payments to slate programs at their cur·r ent level, a move that G,io;-~ia officials · says would cause as much as ,a 40 per cent r eduction in payments hy June 1970. The freeze was set to take effecl las t year, but was later delayed unlil July 1. In an effort to marshal support for elim ination of th e freeze, the Atlanta Community Relations Commission arranged -for the four mothers to go to Washington to describe t he ir plight to the legislators. 11he four also visited the of· fices of R epresentatives F letcher Tnompson, Ben Blackburn, W. S. Stuckey Jr. and Phil Landrum. Talmadge told the women tbat he had voted last year to delay the freeze and is Inclined to do so again. Two of the women told him they had been abandoned by their husbands, · and -. the senator said, "We have to implement federa l laws" to outlaw abandonment. I l / _,

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. THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, Fl'iclay, March 21, 1969 .... I �