The New Politics Box

...One of the delegates was gotten up like a Chicago Tribune cartoon of a factory hand—in battered hat, filthy work clothes and hands yellow with dirt...

...This is perhaps the one true chord that the New Left has struck from the beginning: so many of us are indeed powerless—either to end the war in Vietnam, which continues to escalate beyond human control or comprehension, or to ease the tension and violence in our cities, which a Congress dominated by rural and Southern elements seems only to exacerbate...

...The black caucus, however, remained in segregation, drawing up a list of terms...

...And maybe castration was the first step...

...She was wildly applauded...

...For him such an achievement—far beyond the resources of the NCNP—would be a disaster, because peace in Vietnam might destroy what he thinks of as his "power-base...

...Luckily more moderate elements were able to keep the convention from falling utterly into the hands of an organized minority...

...Their most extravagant claim (among many lower figures) was 25,000 in groups throughout the country...

...The high point of the convention came when the black caucus finally presented a 13 point ultimatum to be accepted or rejected without amend ment...

...I objected to the white delegates castrating themselves before the blacks, but maybe I was wrong...

...Probably most of them knew that the Arab countries (former slavers, who do not consider themselves black, despite anyone's rhetoric) had vowed to "exterminate" the people of Israel...

...Like the unsigned comic books in the hallways moronically designed to show the similarity between Negro and Viet Gong, the white capitulation was an insult to Negro intelligence...

...Rural groups, like the Mississippi Co-ops, may prove more durable than city groups, but there is a tendency for all groups to disintegrate when significant political change cannot be obtained by purely local action...

...is in the Democratic party...

...Man, do you look jive...

...I as a radical have never supported anything I didn't believe in, but thou sands of people are here to do just that," said Martin Peretz, an NCNP board member who resigned after the convention...

...Are you a dictator...

...Beneath the spectacle of abasement, a shadow of condescension lurked...

...McKissick also announced that the U.S...

...Some of those who came were hopeful and open...

...Judging by an early vote, just over half the convention believed that national politics were impossible, that the only way to be "radical" is to attack the national sickness King alluded to "at its roots...

...Hausa in Nigeria...

...the ones you think damned are really saved—as if we could exempt ourselves from the complex world of men and politics by clutching at the straw of demonology...

...but the evidence is otherwise, even among the have-nots...

...we've radicalized a whole lot of people...

...Its consistent concern was itself and its own purity...

...They applauded joyfully at every reference to violence—as when Dick Gregory at the Coliseum rally said, "You know damn well Patrick Henry not talkin about freedom, he talkin about doin that thing...

...Not this group anyway...

...No one can control the young people...

...You see," he said, "we got together...

...At the convention, a permissive registration system allowed practically any group on the Left to register and receive votes weighted on its own estimate of active membership...

...The black man was ready, he said, to "rise up and fight for his independence," as the colonists had in 1776—one of the convention's most cherished analogies, which was repeated about as often as Rusk repeats that compromise in Vietnam would be like compromise in Munich...

...The political answers to the war, to racial discrimination, to our sometimes vicious foreign policy, surely involve the application of more democracy, not less—perhaps more than American politics-as-usual is ready to provide...

...still another called for "white civilizing committees" to be "established immediately in all white communities to civilize and humanize the savage and beastlike character that runs rampant throughout America...

...Since some delegates had left, there were 23,000 votes represented on the floor, while the black caucus had been assigned 28,000— enough to control the convention with a single vote-card...

...You see, a lot of young people came here wanting to be radicals but really liberals...

...In the middle of his speech Forman declared himself chairman and passed a series of resolutions,,, including a condemnation of a future American military intervention in behalf of the government of South Africa...

...and it was sad for them to see the convention get its wish...

...Like McKissick before him, James Forman of SNCC was escorted to the platform by a flying wedge of bodyguards...

...they declaimed, while the black caucus sat in stony silence...

...In California we had 62 Negro elected officials —and only 3 came from all-black districts," mourned a California Negro delegate...

...It then seemed the convention might nominate a third ticket after all, for the Dubois people had a few representatives inside the black caucus who wanted to pull American Negroes into exactly a "Henry-Wallace-type" campaign...

...You're out of order...

...The convention centered around "the black caucus," which pulled in most of the Negroes (including a Japanese girl whose badge identified her by the single word "black"), excluded whites, and remained in private session for most of the convention...

...The few delegates who wanted to debate the points were subject to organized booing...

...It is almost as though the New Politics people had turned Rusk inside out, saying, the ones you think saved are really damned...

...In some ways the conventioneers were treating their Negro members as if they were emblems of savage goodness too crude to bear the scratch of criticism...

...and the rest of us are blue-eyed Steve Canyons, justified in the use of napalm, torture and saturation bombing because whatever party we are defending is ipso facto a bastion of "freedom...

...A rambling and contradictory resolution was passed, calling for two future committees: one to coordinate community organizing and another to convene a convention for a national ticket...

...A white cat with a black power button...

...But even its legitimate communitarian impulses are tainted by the would-be organizer who values an ideology of primitive purity above the material gains that poor people want and need immediately...

...Later I learned that the young man was an Ivy League graduate and the son of a wealthy rancher...

...NCNP's plea to be taken over reflected its belief in "participatory democracy," wherein a political movement is put at the service of its "grassroots" membership...

...Some of its members found themselves threatened and stifled simply because they wanted to work with the whites...

...Jesus Christ, man, we can't have any fun...

...Some delegates were extremely disturbed at what they described as a violation of democratic procedures, but one speaker after another from the Dubois Clubs got up to denounce "formal democracy" as a "tool of fascism...

...It's perfectly all right with me...

...Furthermore, all these movements are linked with the Negro slum riots under the rubric of "black peoples the world over throwing off their imperialist masters...

...Speaker after speaker said the issue was the "spirit" of the 13 points, not mere "comma-splitting...

...asked a boy who wanted to organize...

...We're going to liberate you whether you like it or not!' Wild applause...

...Fifteen minutes after McKissick left, an announcement was made withdrawing the invitation and urging delegates to call back anyone already on his way...

...The black caucus was warned, and agreed to a compromise...

...He was ruled out of order by the chair...

...When the motion passed by more than 2 to 1, the Dubois people led the audience into that staccato clapping so often heard in conventions of the thirties and forties...

...It existed mostly as a letterhead of vaguely radical people of populist sentiment who found it difficult to work within traditional political groups or even to offer legislative proposals...

...I don't know where they let King out, but having refused in advance to run for President, he never showed up at the Palmer House...

...They want to drag everyone with them into the apocalypse...

...If only one delegate could have stood up and asked for the Black Power position on Ibo vs...

...Reform Democrat Ted Weiss of New York was booed for suggesting that "the place to attack L.B.J...

...Forman laughed...

...No one corrected him...

...another supported all "national peoples' liberation wars," including the one waged by the Viet Cong...

...Is it a mark of respect to disagree with a man, but refrain from argument...

...McKissick spoke "only as an observer," stating that "from now on black people in America must have their own platform rather than being a plank in someone else's...

...Now whites can organize whites and blacks can organize blacks...

...The great issue of the next day was whether the black caucus would be allowed to vote 50 per cent of the convention's votes—as a bloc...

...Sound familiar...

...And they got radicalized at this convention...

...You can break up this conference if you want to...

...The ticket was to be put on the ballot only in those states where "organizers" would support it...

...The next day the convention adjourned without once having discussed a substantive issue...

...A woman rose with a point of order: "I'm sorry, lady," Forman sneered...

...An enforcer shook a wooden stick...

...Is the convention willing to trust the black man...

...One point condemned "the imperialistic Zionist war...

...Most of the people at the convention seemed positively happy at the ghetto violence which has resulted in the death of many Negroes, and acted gloriously vindicated by the triggerhappy response of guardsmen and police...

...Beause you want to control us...

...someone shouted...

...One of the least endearing things about Dean Rusk is the black-andwhiteness of his world view...

...No one can speak for the Negro," one of them said later...

...The cardinal point in this new dogma is that the ghetto riots are basically political in character and herald the inevitability of revolution in this country...

...At a time when black people are dying in the streets of Newark," said Clark Kissinger of SDS, "white people aren't even willing to give up their jobs...

...It's the new democracy," said Scheer ironically...

...begged a headline in the New Politics News, the convention bulletin of the National Conference for a New Politics, which convened in Chicago on August 30 to create some sort of "organization and action"—possibly a third ticket in the '68 elections—to end the condition wherein "we, the American people, are powerless...

...As Forman spoke he was flanked by two "enforcers...

...is about to start a program of "genocide" against its resident Negro population—and already has concentration camps prepared...

...Robert Scheer, recently returned from a pleasant visit to Cairo, said he could accept all the other points but wanted to offer an amendment on Israel which would simply call for withdrawal of Israeli troops...

...How can I organize white people by telling them they're savages and I've come to civilize them...

...Forman went on to denounce "the liberal-labor coalition" that he imagined had convened the NCNP...

...Eventually the black caucus voted 3 to 1 to participate in the convention, whereupon the separatists among them set up a "Black People's Convention" on the South Side...

...They glared with loathing at a white man nearby...

...The next morning the black caucus occupied a special roped-off section— as in a Southern movie house, only this one was front and center...

...The assumption among organizers is that many Americans would prefer small autonomous communities to participation in the American mainstream...

...The whites would take anything dished out to them if only the men dishing it were black...

...Speaking in a "country" accent elaborately studded with profanity, he warned one of the convention's workshops that if they fell into the hands of "big money," they would be "used" to "bait the Democratic party" into a "liberal peace platform...

...The black people are organizing at last...

...Not once during the conference did a speaker challenge the concept that the black man is fighting a universal war with the white—as though blacks or whites could not have reason enough to fight among themselves...

...The tragedy is that this comes at a time when Americans are interested in issues of war and peace, civil rights, social justice...

...The plea was also justified by the fact that, until the convention, NCNP had no definite structure, membership, or program...

...The body then voted not to let Scheer speak...

...He had no faith in a "HenryWallacetype" campaign...

...But now we can't talk to them...

...Revolutions are always made by a minority...

...Although the panel was titled "Strategy for '68," most of those who spoke denounced electoral activity as immoral...

...Finally a black woman got to her feet...

...While he wasn't denying that blacks needed sympathetic whites, he felt that their movements would have to remain separate...

...Eventually they would be willing to form a national movement, but not "from the top"—that is, around issues, elections and interest groups...

...You people are the same as The System...

...As represented by ex-students from SDS, they wanted to organize neighborhoods to "take over" their own housing, schools, stores and decision-making processes...

...No one knew the composition of the black caucus or how many Negroes it really represented, but it was generally treated as the authentic voice of black rebellion...

...the outside world intruded only by references to a ritualized fantasy of The System vs...

...He scored the Democratic party and the labor movement for failing to support the black man's cause—and surely he was not without reason...

...A sepulchral young man in skullcap and shades, rings and bracelets, gestured at the audience with a crooked hand...

...These people can't envision success...

...Hoping to clear the matter up, I asked one of Waskow's friends what it means to be "radicalized...

...By this definition a radical is a castrated liberal...

...As far as its impact on the American people is concerned, the convention was like one of those boxes from which an arm appears to shut the box off...

...Probably they knew too that Israel is far closer both to socialism and democracy than the various Arab dictatorships...

...The Liberation Movement...

...Meanwhile the rest of the convention was listening to a panel which included Floyd McKissick of CORE, who invited them all to come to the Black People's Convention...

...The militant figure-heads do not go into the ghettos during a riot...

...Later they blocked the center exit, letting only blacks through and forcing white brothers to a side door...

...That night there were two Negro teen-agers riding the elevators...

...But despite the revolutionary rhetoric, it was apparent that their local organizing attempts had failed to attract a significant number of the poor...

...Others sat on the stage or stood in front of it, arms crossed, glaring stonily at the audience...

...They merely applauded...

...I can't forget a beautiful college girl who batted her eyes and smiled sweetly as if she were telling me a sorority secret: "This is the best thing that could be happening...

...He was very happy...

...Unfortunately the New Politics conventioneers all too often invoked the mirror image of Rusk's catechism: all guerrilla fighters, to them, are engaged in "wars of national liberation," whether they are fighting, say, in Angola (which is indeed tyrannical) or Venezuela (which is fairly democratic...

...King spoke sadly and solemnly, ignoring the ruckus from the rear of the hall, where 50 young "brothers" with closed, knowing faces were jeering King and jiving for Black Power...

...Don't take that too seriously—no, wait a minute, I need not apologize...

...Late that night I saw Arthur Waskow, one of NCNP's original leaders...

...Yes, Im a dictator...

...Historians will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the commitment to make justice a reality for all men...

...While the blacks were caucusing, the convention took time out to hear Martin Luther King's keynote speech at the Coliseum, in which he defined "the sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from the very beginning—the sickness of racism...

...Most of the delegates laughed and applauded...

...This must have fit the demonology, for the convention accepted the statement without question or even curiosity...

...More applause...

...It was taken over all right—by a dogma as simple-minded as the State Department's and by a group of manipulators who have no more interest in democracy than General Ky or Ho Chi Minh...

...probably the true figure is less than half that many...

...To him, all revolutionaries are "Communist aggressors," however just their cause...

...They have an almost pictorial image of a grass-roots movement taking hold of the American organism "from below...

...It is obvious enough that "corn munity organizing" cannot address itself to problems which require national or regional legislation—such as jobs, housing and education...

...Individuals, too, could register as delegates of their own congressional districts...

...In their terms, he who engages in pressure-group politics or elections will be "co-opted" by "liberal democratic money...

...To be free of hangups," he replied...

...Hence a National Conference for a New Politics, which was, in this sense, a perfectly honorable idea...

...Dig...

...The 13 points were voted on as a bloc and endorsed S to 1. Why did the convention do this...