Judith Heumann

The East Coast protesters had been against the idea of going to Califano’s home: it broke certain conventions for how people practiced civil protest. But we had voted to go anyway. I was too angry to worry about protocol. Califano’s power rested in his ability to ignore us. The only way we were going to change anything was if we became impossible to ignore.

They held us up at reception and wouldn’t let us in until we each swore that we would not start a sit-in in the White House. I couldn’t hide the hint of a smile I felt curling across my face.

The Sunday morning after our candlelight vigil in front of Califano’s house, we picketed the front of President Carter’s church, First Baptist.

He and Mrs. Carter saw us as they were going into the service, but afterward, he slipped out the back.

A reporter picked up on it. “Inside, President Carter taught his Bible class before hearing a sermon in which the pastor said, ‘We can’t dwell in comfort with poverty all around us.’”

In our next press release we wrote that we remained “stymied by the administration’s new backdoor policy.”