The Other New Left

...At times it seems defined merely by specific projects...

...Volunteers, mostly local students recruited by project leaders, went door-to-door, eventually hitting every residence in target areas, to give their double message: the importance of politics for poor people and the importance of using their political power to re-elect Wolff...

...Incidents like the recent Mc-Namara demonstration at Harvard show that many student radicals do not want to ask the crucial question, "What effect will my actions have on my cause...

...But the first test of the coalition's effectiveness came shortly after its formation...

...out of over 170,000 votes cast, Wolff won by a total of 837, meaning that the Y-CAP-YPSL effort had won the election for Wolff...

...Politically "sophisticated" students were paired with newcomers to the political wars in the hope of educating the neophytes as well as the poor people with whom they spoke...

...Steven Kelman, a frequent contributor to this and other magazines, is now a Harvard freshman...

...Youth Council, an amalgam of liberal student groups ranging from the SDS to the Young Democrats to the YMCA...

...This was simply a 1966 re-run of the old guns versus butter debate...

...But while both the Gerald Fords and SDS like the dichotomy, Y-CAP started with the premise that both guns and butter are economically possible...

...The bill, which had been bottled up in the State Legislature, was called The Patterson-Laverne Act and affected about 100,000 employes...

...The organization has no fulltime organizers...

...Volunteers discovered that people usually did not slam doors in their faces, and that many were not registered simply because no one had ever talked to them about it before...

...Opposition is generally strong and total...

...Elements in the coalition that oppose, say, the AFL-CIO'S position on Vietnam are free, of course, to continue working against the war...

...During the last year, though, the coalitionists have begun to organize and they already have some impressive successes to their credit-including a decisive role in helping a liberal freshman Democrat retain a Congressional seat that would have otherwise reverted to a Conservative Republican...

...While in practice, almost everyone (except the dogmatic and the Maoists) is willing to work with or support liberal partisans of the war when other issues are at stake -thus implicitly accepting the guns and butter argument-they are unwilling to support the theory that we should work together on butter, even if we have differing views about guns...

...The coalitionists did not give up...

...Until recently, SDS succeeded in containing the trend...

...The question is: Will they be able to accomplish anything further...

...His district, embracing the North Shore of Nassau County, on Long Island, had traditionally elected conservative Republicans, the most recent being Steven B. Derounian, who had held the post for 12 years and was favored to regain it...

...The other factor Y-CAP may be ignoring is the profound polarization that the Vietnam war is causing among students...

...Volunteers returned a week after their first forays to find that residents were wearing Wolff buttons, and that many who had not been talked to directly knew about the project through friends...

...Y-CAP leaders then turned their attention to 1966 election contests that might be influenced by the poverty issue...

...and "Thou Shalt Not Steal from Sloane House Workers", and the strikers were becoming discouraged...

...Just because we have a more advanced position on the war than organized labor," Kemble declares, "it doesn't mean that we can or should tell them that we don't want their support on the Freedom Budget...

...When 160 of Sloane House's 260 workers signed an organizing petition for Local 6 of the AFL-CIO'S Hotel, Motel, and Club Employes Union, Sloane refused any form of recognition...

...On March 28, 300 people-students from Y-CAP and members of New York City Central Labor Council, who had decided to come in when they learned students were going to help -joined Sloane strikers in a two-hour picket line and rally...

...At its 1966 convention a group known as the "Texas anarchists" became the dominant force within SDS-impelling less alienated, more constructive young radicals to look elsewhere...

...occasionally it acts like a front for YPSL...

...The group then shifted to legislative lobbying, another political activity disdained by SDS...

...in this case on building a movement against the war), Y-CAP may be plying a political strategy among radicals who prefer impotent posturing...

...The Youth Committee Against Poverty-whose acronym, Y-CAP, is similar to the adult C-CAP, the Citizens' Crusade Against Poverty-began as an ad hoc effort to oppose Republican demands that poverty and other social expenditures be cut to pay for the war in Vietnam...

...Thus, in contrast to the paltering debate among many Leftists over whether or not to have a "non-exclusionist" policy for the handful of American pro-Communists, Y-CAP'S non-exclusionism toward domestic radicals who favor the war affects a significant force for progressive action...

...Such an effort could succeed, but it will be difficult-especially if the super-purist fanaticism of other radical groups alienates students from all radical politics...

...Several clergymen who participated, led by Reverend William Van Meter of the Protestant Council of New York and Reverend John Gill of the Holyrood Project for Community Service, formed a 30-man Clergymen's Committee for Justice at the Sloane House...

...In a letter to Kemble, Local 6 referred to the Patterson-Laverne Act as "the bill the Youth Committee helped to get signed.' The union's magazine featured pictures of students marching along with unionists, and lauded the "zest, dedication and boundless energy" which they brought "to our cause...

...the SDS style simply was more appealing to youth disposed to radical politics...

...In the past this other New Left -faced with being perpetual fighters of losing battles in SDS-has usually retreated to the protective wing of adult liberal and Left organizations, while SDS has continued recruiting students...

...Shortly after passage, Harry Van Arsdale, head of the New York Central Labor Council, announced an organizing drive among the newly covered workers...

...Since it was summer, a period when youth organizations usually fall into disarray (and with a World Youth Congress taking most United States Youth Council leaders to Tokyo), Kemble's YPSL initiated the next Y-CAP project: helping the campaign of freshman Democrat-Liberal Lester Wolff, who had won office in the Johnson landslide by under 5,000 votes out of some 200,000 cast...

...At the beginning of March employes at the YMCA'S William Sloane House, a 35-year-old nonprofit, charitable institution, went on strike...

...Indeed SDS, with its bitter abstentionist position toward conventional political activity, has for several years been remarkably successful in mobilizing student radicals...

...Most observers agree that the Sloane House strike was about to peter out before Y-CAP came on the scene...

...It agreed to rehire those fired and let them join a union...

...Not only did many of those contacted agree to register, they also offered to take additional literature for their friends...

...A strange reversal of the traditional, "Well, I agree with you in theory, but not in practice" takes place...

...Despite these victories, the future of Y-CAP is problematical...

...For many of the students involved, it was their first experience with labor activism...

...There's enough money floating around in the form of excess profits and high incomes to finance both, if we decided we wanted to...

...Wolff's record was particularly strong on civil rights and poverty, and the Y-CAP leadership, realizing that the race would be close, reasoned that a big turnout by poor people and Negroes in the district (there were an estimated 5000 eligible to vote) could swing the election, YPSL played an important role in planning the project, which was to be led by a YPSL member, but Y-CAP cooperated and became official sponsor...

...On election day, the Y-CAP calculation was proved exactly right...

...The International Ladies Garment Workers, United Auto Workers, and Union of Federated Teachers gave financial backing to the effort, officially billed as "voter registration and education in ghetto areas...

...Seventy-five of them staged a sit-in in the main lobby, were arrested and promptly fired...

...The Congressman, meanwhile, has agreed to hold community meetings in the areas covered to find out more about their needs, and in other ways has become even more responsive to the problems of the poor as a result of the campaign...

...So when the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) started calling themselves the New Left-and were lucky enough to have the expression adopted by journalists-they had a recruiting point among students right there...

...The assumption was the key to coalition, since most people in the labor movement favor the war as well as more butter...

...A personal friend and youth ally of Robert Kennedy, Fallon was formerly President of the U.S...

...The student-labor picket line was reported in the press...

...It is the reflection of a mood among student radicals -a deep feeling that it is impossible to change the system, so let's just disassociate ourselves from it...

...The first two weeks of their picketing was completely ignored by the press despite catchy-sounding posters like "What's Christian About $44 a week...

...But the more fundamental problem facing the coalitionist New Left is whether their brand of radicalism is tuned to the current wave length of politically minded students...

...Y-CAP has planned a major national campaign in behalf of the Freedom Budget that has the approval of most elements in the AFL-CIO, all major civil rights groups and many religious organizations...

...The project began in Great Neck where 25 students were mobilized, spread to Port Washington where the Student Action Movement enlisted 25 more students, and then to Glen Cove where the students worked with adult civil rights leaders...

...But the atmosphere of anger and frustration brought on by the Vietnam war and confusion in the civil rights movement has enabled the extreme elements to repress the coalitionists...

...at others it appears to be a subdivision of the United States Youth Council...

...A United States Youth Council officer who lived in the district was a leading participant...

...Thus Ramparts editor and sometime Congressional candidate Robert Sheer greatly impressed a sympathetic Harvard audience with his rationale for the "liberals-are-the-main-enemy" position-until it became clear he was advocating refusal to support Brown against Reagan in California...

...Workers in such institutions are not covered by minimum wage, unemployment compensation or other national labor legislation, and have no right to organize...

...The SDS-style existential protest, in contrast to the more sophisticated political protest and activity of the coalitionists, has dominated student radicalism, and it would be naive to view this as a turn of perversity...

...Among the endorsers were representatives of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, the New York State Young Democrats, the Methodist Student Movement, the Collegiate Council for the United Nations, the B'nai B'rith Young Adults, the League for Industrial Democracy, the NAACP Youth and College Division, the National Student Association, the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO, and even some coalitionist-inclined leaders of SDS who subsequently lost influence in the group...

...This has given rise to an increasing number of young people who might be called the other New Left, and who support the coalitionist strategy identified with men like Bayard Rustin and Michael Harrington...

...The reaction of those approached proved extremely gratifying...

...Kemble, former head of the now-defunct New York at-large chapter of SDS (which broke with the national group on the issue of coalition politics and party realignment) is currently a Youth Activities Representative of the Center for War/Peace Studies (formerly Turn Toward Peace...

...At this point Kemble called Local 6 and volunteered "assistance" from Y-CAP...

...In contrast to contentions of SDS-oriented radicals that coalition means political sellout and watering down of principle, Y-CAP'S Sloane effort saw many liberals being activated and even radicalized...

...But Sloane refused to recognize Local 6 as a bargaining agent until a union election could be held-and there was no established procedure for holding a shop election because the workers were not covered by the Wagner Act...

...Only a few days later Sloane settled with the workers...

...The brainchild of two young New York City activists, Joe Fallon and Penn Kemble, Y-CAP was conceived as an umbrella organization in which the coalitionist can work with Young Democrats, religious youth groups, young trade unionists, and civil rights activists...

...Drafted by Harrington and revised by the signatories, it specifically supported A. Philip Randolph's $185 billion Freedom Budget to eliminate poverty and slums "within a specific, targeted period of time and to provide full employment for whites and Negroes...

...Rejecting the SDS stance because they believe it can only lead to impotent frustration, the dissidents oppose such notions as "the main enemy is liberalism" or labor has "sold out...

...The attempt to provide an organizational base for the other New Left began in December 1965 with the revival, under clear coalitionist direction, of the dormant Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), the Socialist Party youth group...

...And before the project began participants attended special training sessions...

...None the less, if it does nothing else, Y-CAP has already shown a number of skeptical adults, among them people in the labor movement and liberal Congressmen like Wolff, that youth activism-and, indeed, radicalism-need not be accompanied by "kooky politics...

...Several bus loads of workers and clergymen went up to Albany shortly after the victory to urge passage of a bill that would allow workers in "charitable institutions" to organize...

...Over the last Labor Day weekend, Kemble was elected YPSL National Chairman...

...It was finally shoved out of committee, passed by the Legislature, and signed by Governor Rockefeller on June 21...

...Next, and perhaps more significant was the formation last January of the Youth Committee Against Poverty (Y-CAP...

...For SDS was itself seriously divided over the question of whether young radicals ought to seek a militant coalition of labor, the Negroes and the poor, or whether the radical movement should try alone to shock American society into progressive change...

...The organization's current mood, however, which goes beyond abstention and protest to unreserved hostility toward the larger progressive forces in American society, is engendering a dissident trend on the New Left...

...Whatever your opinion on the War in Vietnam-and I for one am strongly against it and will continue working to persuade people to be against it-there is no reason that the poor should pay for it," Michael Harrington told a founding meeting of 50 Y-CAP student leaders huddled in a conference room in the Peace Information Center on New York's Lower East Side...

...Above all, Y-CAP has made no determined attempt to bring members of the youth organizations which endorsed the original purposes of the organization into its activities...

...The only possible answer to Y-CAP'S problem may be to bring new students into politics, including the broad range of inactive liberals, as well as those radicals dissatisfied with the go-it-alone approach...

...The statement that came out of this meeting was surprising both for its radicalism and its impressive list of supporters...