New Left in Disarray

...It was at this point that the conference's 3,600 delegates and rep preventatives started loosening their principles m an effort to accommodate the militants Did whites have an obligation to seek out blacks7 To show good faith, should blacks be given voting power in excess of their real strength at the convention (3-1 white...

...The anti- and pro-Keg-Spock groups were unable to resolve their differences As the vote approached on Saturday night, each camp confidently predicted the nun would endorse its position Three resolutions were placed before the conference...

...One attempt to alter the demands was made by Robert Schemer of Ramparts magazine He wanted to reword the sections on imperialistic Zionism and "civilizing white committees," but was ignored Arthur Waskom...

...During four hours of talk, not one word was said about the substance of the demands Dr Benjamin Spock, reflecting the dominant mood, declared "It would deeply trouble my conscience, but I'll accept the Caucus' demands" Most controversial were the following "(1) regrouping all committees, giving 50 per cent representation to black people "(5) Condemn the imperialistic Zionist war, this condemnation does not imply anti-Semitism "(10) Make immediate reparation for the historic, physical, sexual, mental and economic exploitation of black people "(11) suggest that white civilizing committees be established immediately in all white communities to civilize and humanize the savage and beast-like character that runs rampant throughout America...

...The humiliation was far tromp complete At Saturday evening's crucial session to decide whether or not to endorse a third ticket next year, the Black Caucus still did not show—evan though its demands had been accepted When indignant delegates demanded to know why, a Carlos Russell of New York, who claimed to be the Caucus chairman, emerged to say "The 'method' of participation will be determined tomorrow ". Sunday morning the method became clear The militants decided the "paper tiger" (as they called the nun) was ready for moir?¦ hanky-pink They demanded that...

...Voting power equal to that of the entire convention The irony of the black corruption of the nun is that the militants kept deriding white liberals and Jewish money, yet the conference organizers had raised some $6 000 to feed, house and transport scores of black people to the convention...

...Warfield never had to report back Late Friday night the steering committee received the Caucus' 13 demands The conference was given an ultimatum to accept them, m toot, by 1 p m Saturday, or else the blacks would walk out Workshops on organizing in politics discussions of issues, etc , were cancelled Saturday morning to make way for an emergency session It was immediately apparent that the disgruntled delegates were ready to abandon reality and democratic procedure to obtain a bi-racial consensus—wwithout questioning the sacrifice or what was to be gained...

...Initially, two-thirds of the Black Caucus opposed the militants' demands and voted not to bolt the conference Then the minority...

...Robert Warfield of Rochester, New York, was chosen to head a group to "contact" the Black Caucus (it was never clear why some blacks attended the conference sitting with their respective state delegations, and others did not...

...forcing several state delegations to move, that the afternoon's activities be cancelled in favor of a Black Liberation panel starring sync secretary James Foreman, and that 50 per cent representation on convention committees be re-interpreted to mean 50 per cent of the convention votes...

...And McKissick had suggested Friday afternoon that the press has a racist tendency to think all black people act and talk alike, yet here was the exclusions Black Caucus requiring separate status Drained by the Black Caucus, the sponsoring nun never was able to pursue its original objective acceptance of a Keg-Spock ticket for 1968 Support for Dr King dissipated after his opening-night speech He not only failed to fire emotions, but the black militants and white radicals wrote him off as pass?¦ Stoughton Lynd and Ronnie Davis of sods stated m a position paper that they "unequivocally refuse to condemn the ghetto rebellion" and hence could not back Dr King who had joined the moderate civil rights leadership in condemning riots and those who incite or provoke them...

...To avoid splitting the convention, a pre-midnight caucus was held in a further attempt to iron out a compromise between sods and the Californians Malcolm Bornstein of Berkeley proposed backing the resolution on local organizing, if sods would agree to an amendment approving Presidential (not national) tickets in those states where groups want to run their own candidates independent of the nun??s financial resources The caucus was attended by over 200 people, but by then most delegates had become so wary of what they termed student manipulation that titer initially refused the compromise and went ahead with a runoff between organizing and a national ticket The organism resolution won by two votes when the chagrined third-party forces shifted their support to the students because the Californians refused to deal with them It was Schemer (who turned out to be the conference's pragmatist) who dispelled the myth that a "deal" was in the offing and persuaded the delegates to legitimize the Bornstein amendment...

...Mrs...

...others worked on the resolutions Still, nobody would recognize that the militants intended to obstruct and control the meeting On the contrary, the steering committee allowed them to form a Black Caucus??financed by the nun but operating as an autonomous unit within the conference "We're treating them like spoiled children," complained Ed Gottlieb of the War Resisters League...

...That the conference lasted the scheduled five days surprised many Rumors of delegations and individuals walking out were constant, disillusionment was great, and the sure-realistic atmosphere created by the Black Caucus robbed delegates of the chance for genus me dialogue Although in the end the usual gestures of unity were made, people like nun??s executive director, William Pepper, admitted the movement was badly split...

...The first, favored by Waskom and the radical students, called for local political action—oorganizing the ghettos and working class communities, and opposing the war The second, supported by the New York and California delegations, proposed an independent national ticket, with candidates to be selected by a national nominating convention next year The final resolution urged the creation of a third national party, which of course would also support the idea of an independent Presidential candidate in '68 This proposal was backed by the Trotskyites, labor and itinerant student groups Under a chaotic voting system, scaled according to the individual organizational strength of the 200-odd participating groups, a resolution needed a clear voting majority to win—ootherwise a run-off between the two top resolutions would be necessary The third-party idea ran a poor third, but it siphoned off enough votes to deny the national ticket a clear-cut majority...

...New Left in Disarray By Jeffrey L. Hades Chicago The vision of the National Conference for New Politics (nun) joining the forces of adolescent rebellion and adult outrage against the Vietnam war now hangs in despair, a victim of intractable elements and unbridled Black Power Last week's Chicago meeting quickly lost sight of its intended purpose uniting to oppose Lyndon Johnson in 1968 Instead, the student Left's innocence was shattered, Martin Luther King was forgotten, the chance to establish a rapport with black people was lost, the conference organizers were traumatized into disbelief, and hundreds of delegates from ad hoc peace groups went home dismayed, their confidence in the movement shaken Forging a multi-issue "meta-coalition" between student groups and various anti-war, poor white, civil rights, radical labor, and reform California organizations represented a shaky proposition from the start What little hope of success it had was soon destroyed by the nihilistic impulses of a so-called Black Caucus that included leaders of sync, core, the black nationalists and black militants "They can't en-Jeffrey L Hades, a young freelance writer, is a new contributor...

...half the conference s front seats be roped off for the Black Caucus...

...headed by Doug Andrew and Larry Laundry of Chicago act and Robert Lucas of core—ccajoled most Caucus members into accepting their position, and in effect took control They did not appear at the conference on Friday, September 1, the first full day of sessions, or attempt to communicate the Caucus' grievances to the nun They simply set up a counter-meeting, called the Black Peoples' Convention, which Floyd McKissick addressed on Friday night According to Di Carlton Goblet, a black physician from San Francisco, they met at a white Methodist church after the militants failed to secure a black church...

...Indeed, sods and other university groups believe radicalization means transforming society itself The teal power, they contend lies within corporations, media, universities and the military In addition, they claim elections are manipulative and tied to existing value systems Voting then in sods' lexicon, is a passive act that gives one a choice between options provided by others —the height of powerlessness sods peters to concentrate on local or gaining in urban ghettos and universities, on advancing counter-communal institutions, on alerting consumers and students to the "system," and on radicalizing the poor While sods insists that it cannot work within the system, Californians argue that elections are the organizing tool for creating alternatives to consensus politics and challenging basic American assumptions David Clooney of Berkeley's New Action Politics, believes the Presidency is the focus of American politics Providing a third choice, he says, widens the limits of national debate and threatens the existing order...

...Students will have to move beyond romanticism in the future, many observers felt, if they are to articulate the political demands of their generation, understand the mistakes of their innocence, and recognize that political power suggests the necessity of broad-based support And peace groups must realize they are politically impoverished if they think they can accommodate the rage of black militants instead of confronting them in mutual respect...

...vision victory," said Marty Perutz, a conference official and Harvard faculty member, "so they want to drag New Politics down with them Actually, the nun appears to have been caught in the web of its own rhetoric For core director Floyd McKissick had long maintained that "black people are not m a position to coalesce with anyone at this time, we must develop ourselves " The organizers, naive and beguiled by the mystique of Black Power, ignored the warnings and kept thinking they could persuade the blacks to work with them...

...Conference co-chairman Simon Cassidy remained alone on the podium as Foreman and a dozen "black guards" took over (Julian Bond, the other co-chairman, left after the opening night address by Martin Luther King ) The usual swarm of nun people, sods kids and Cali-formants disappeared SDS??S Gary Weismann and Paul Booth, Sidney Lens, Schemer, Perutz, Waskom and others quietly walked out Photographers were harangued, protests from white delegates were ignored, and parliamentary procedure was disemboweled in favor of "African consensus Foreman—who had no status at the convention—iinsisted upon unanimous support for a boycott of 1968 General Motors cars, a sync statement on apartheid in South Africa, and a telegram to the United Nations protesting the alleged detention of Guineans in another African country The ornate, pretentious ballroom of the Palmer House was an ugly place to be m as Foreman, smarting from the boos and catcalls, lost his temper A woman delegate shouted "Is this a dictatorship...

...In attempting to appease the Black Caucus, everything such groups as Students for a Democratic Society (sods) believe in was compromised or contradicted Participatory democracy turned into anarchy, opposition to the "system" manifested itself as manipulation, romanticism became didacticism, and emotions turned cold to ethics Even before the conference started, black militants alleged that they were being excluded from pre-conference decision-making and barred from participating in drafting resolutions "The honky is putting us in the same old bag," a Chicago nationalist said, although a third of the 25-member convention steering committee was black and...

...We owe them an endorsement," intoned Herman Cole, a pastor and peace candidate for the Buffalo, New York, City Council "People won't look at the wording after we leave here," said Ed Greer of the Durham, New Hampshire, Vietnam Summer Committee And Dr Bait-ram Gasket of Ann Arbor, a convention official, contended, "To create revolution anything goes ". The opposition was mute, the vote to accept overwhelming Most of the California delegation, and parts of the New York and Massachusetts bodies, voted Nay New York sane and Women's Strike for Peace abstained "It's clearly blackmail," one woman moaned Malcolm Bornstein of the Berkeley Committee for New Politics added "We're being asked to flagellate our white consciences...

...These questions dominated the debate, and finally a black, Mrs...

...the nun??s resident intellectual, offered a scheme to accept the Black Caucus' demands as just one document within a bicameral structure1...

...He responded, "Yes, I'm the dictator " That evening the convention humbly reduced its power by half giving the blacks—who numbered less than a third of the delegates...

...The basic difficulty in welding the movement together for a national ticket, though, was underlined by the inability to conference tacticians to unite sods and the California delegation (consisting of liberal reform clubs, anti-war groups and Mexican-Americans) From the start, the Californians showed good faith attempting to conciliate their differences with the students, but sods did not respond The first day Davis questioned the validity of coalescing with a middle-class movement temporarily politicized by the war and sods theoretician Clark Kissinger added that "nothing is less relevant to real decision-making than the electoral process...