Correspondents' Correspondence

...On the far side of the city line lie Cicero and Berwyn, two exclusively white suburbs populated by working-class and lower-middle-class sorts with fairly strong ethnic ties...

...Interviews with violent revolutionaries from organizations such as the Front for the Liberation of Quebec and Al Fatah are combined with an anti-Americanism which even a good number of its supporters regard as grossly primitive...

...Martin Luther King Jr...

...There will still be Soviet bloc alliances, armies and police, of course...

...The list came out on schedule, and no doubt the lady pulled the appropriate levers...

...Although owned by lo, the powerful trade union federation, the tabloid has virtually complete editorial independence...

...A more genuine problem is inflation...

...The Social Democratic intellectual and youth wings have been increasingly dominated during the past few years by proponents of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao...

...the fact is, however, that his election was a result of the vagaries of districting and the continuing strength of Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine...

...In the past, this fear has been translated into attacks on civil rights leaders and votes for George Wallace and conservative Republicans...

...In 1965, these two suburbs were placed in Illinois' reconstituted 6th congressional district, along with the 24th and 29th wards of the city of Chicago...

...While half of the district's 140,000 voters live in the suburbs, registration figures conceal the real balance of political power, for the 24th and 29th wards are perhaps the quintessential examples of machine politics...

...One of the paper's leading lights is Jan Myrdal, the 42-year-old son of Gunnar and Alva (who has said that "my parents are dead as far I'm concerned"), and the country's leading Maoist intellectual...

...Serve the people 365 days a year and the votes take care of themselves," members of the Daley organization like to say...

...Zabrosky carried the suburbs easily, but Collins ran up such an astronomical margin in the city wards that victory was assured...

...George Collins, for example, worked his way up in the 24th in the traditional manner--serving as a door-bell ringer on election days, a precinct captain, and an alder-manic aide, all the while holding city or county patronage positions...

...Now the German threat will be gone...

...It was most assuredly service and loyalty that got him the nomination rather than race...

...But as the January 1 opening of this country's new single-chamber Parliament draws near, it is becoming apparent that he will have to cope with more mundane, and possibly even more difficult, tasks...

...The conservative Moderate Coalition party hardly ever votes with the Social Democrats...

...Now they find themselves represented in the halls of Congress by a black man...

...Zabrosky's campaign focused primarily on the suburbs...

...Cicero and Berwyn, in short, are classic cases of white backlash...

...What will happen to this structure...

...The liberals clearly count on its withering away--not immediately, but in the next few years...

...Neither candidate made an open issue of race, though the Gop campaign workers probably gained votes among the few whites in the city wards by noting Collins' color...

...Opening to the West Warsaw--Among the most interested observers of the talks that led to this month's signing of a Polish-West German treaty were the liberal Communists of Eastern Europe...

...Having managed to save up enough money to flee Chicago, these people are frustrated and frightened by what appears to be blacks in hot pursuit, for the westward expansion of Chicago's burgeoning black population has reached a point very near the Cicero border...

...This loose alliance--whose members include the nationalists of Rumania, the Dubcekites of Czechoslovakia, and the intellectuals in Poland and other bloc countries--has been very much on the defensive since 1968...

...A total price stop has now been instituted that from all appearances will continue at least through April of next year...

...Their voters select the straight Democratic ticket as if it were commanded in the Bible...

...Trade unionists complain that the tabloid's coverage of them is worse than the reporting by the "bourgeois press...

...The Gop nominee was Alex J. Zabrosky, a 47-year-old salesman from Berwyn whose only previous political experience came five years ago in an unsuccessful aldermanic bid...

...The same is true of a nearby district with an almost equal racial mix where a white loyalist got the nod...

...But the successfully concluded negotiations here have given them some cause for hope...

...She and thousands like her in the 24th and 29th knew that their job, or their cousin's or their brother-in-law's, depended on it...

...indeed, for much of the fall his campaigning was confined to days off he had saved up by not taking a vacation from his job last summer...

...Ultimately, race was everything and it was nothing...

...Other parts of the agreement will reinforce this general theme of nonaggression, already stressed in the August Bonn-Moscow treaty...

...The hope, however, is that criticism, literature, even new political ideas will have more of a chance to flourish in the new atmosphere.--Donald R. Shanor Palme's Problems Stockholm --Prime Minister Olof Palme would no doubt like to spend the next three years devising novel, visionary programs for the continuing transformation of Swedish society...

...The Warsaw Pact, the whole formation of blocs, the too-powerful army and police structures," the diplomat continued, "all these were created to meet the German threat...

...The Swedish people are hardly ready for anything vaguely resembling Maoism...

...The government committed a serious tactical blunder in introducing partial price controls (on foodstuffs) during the election campaign...

...Perhaps the most urgent dilemma facing Palme, though, is the worsening situation within his own party...

...if they did so, many of their supporters would surely desert them in the subsequent elections...

...There is no hard-and-fast rule in Swedish politics that the so-called "'bourgeois" opposition (the Center, Liberal, and Moderate Coalition parties) need automatically vote against the ruling party, and it is likely that proposals which may strike the Communists as too "Right-wing" will prove perfectly acceptable to two of the three opposition groups...

...A Socialist-Liberal government that signs nonaggression agreements and accepts the status quo is hard to fit into the old propaganda molds...

...Collins, who fills a House seat left vacant since August 1969 by the death of Daniel J. Ronan, takes office as the Representative of some 500,000 people, about equally divided between whites and blacks...

...As an established Social Democratic organ, Aftonbladet has played a crucial role in the legitimization of Maoist ideas among inexperienced party youth...

...In mid-October the two men shared a platform at Malcolm X Community College--which, despite the name, is part of the Chicago State College system--end surprised observers by agreeing on many issues...

...The fact that the survival of Palme's Social Democratic minority government will be technically dependent upon the small parliamentary delegation of the Communist party, although widely noted in the press, is the least of his worries...

...Chicago alderman George W. Collins, the first black to be elected from the racially mixed 6th congressional district, easily defeated his Republican opponent on November 3 by a three-to-two margin--despite a lackluster record as an alderman, a mediocre campaign effort and minimal charisma...

...While the Prime Minister and his experts are busy trying to tackle inflation, many party youths are preoccupied with books like The Albanian Challenge and Black Panther, White Pig Spearheading the departure from the Social Democrats' traditional anti-Communist reformism is the mass-circulation Aftonbladet...

...The Social Democrats also face a tough round of central wage negotiations in 1971...

...His nomination was hardly contested...

...Both endorsed a guaranteed income, for example...

...Meanwhile, Finance Minister Gunnar Strang, a party right-winger with a reputation for telling unpopular truths, has publicly stated that Sweden is living "beyond its means...

...Much of the structure that is so oppressive to new ideas in the Communist movement is based on the threat from the West, above all from the West Germans," a liberal Eastern European diplomat observed over vodka and beer at a reception for Scheel...

...One Chicago woman told a reporter before the election: "The Democrats always put out a circular with all the candidates' names just before the election...

...For both these reasons, the alleged "key role" of the Communist party is considerably less authentic than it seems...

...The agreement devised by West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel and his Polish counterpart, Stefan Jedrychowski, includes a firm pledge from Bonn that it now regards the post-World War II boundaries as inviolable...

...The nature of the organization being what it is, Collins did not wage a vigorous public campaign, leaving much of the task of swaying voters to the precinct workers...

...Palme has to decide whether he can afford to let his party's internal situation continue to deteriorate, or whether he should dramatically step in and give the young people a few basic lessons on the differences between democracy and dictatorship...

...That's when I'll see who I'll vote for...

...It supports the government at election time, but otherwise offers its 450,000 readers a daily diet of crime, sex, and the wonders of life in Cuba, China and North Vietnam...

...But this was one of the rare times in the campaign that substantive policy questions were discussed...

...Prices have risen almost 7 per cent in the last year, fueled by large wage increases for low-paid workers in the labor-intensive marginal industries that were part of the trade union "increased equality" program...

...By the same token, the Democrats made a point of reminding blacks of Collins' Negritude...

...he had little money...

...They are willing to give up the territories, first, because there is no way short of nuclear war that they can be retrieved, and second, because Bonn hopes to gain trade and diplomatic contacts in exchange...

...Should they attain any real power, it will mean the end of Social Democratic rule...

...Across the city line, many others pulled the Republican lever in hopes of defeating a man who epitomized what they saw as a threat to their property and way of life...

...For his years of faithful service, Alderman Collins was rewarded by the organization this spring with the congressional nomination...

...The ward organizations, once led by Jews, have kept apace of the racial shifts by promoting loyal blacks...

...He joined the City Council in 1964 when the incumbent alderman was murdered in the ward's Democratic headquarters in a gangland-style slaying that remains unsolved...

...Not only are these measures arousing antagonism, but the economizing imposed by the need to keep the budget balanced has made the implementation of costly new welfare programs difficult...

...The Germans are thus writing off prewar territories of the size of Ohio or Ireland, a move that has understandably met with some resistance at home...

...Collins stayed mainly in the city...

...Over the past 20 years the population of the 24th and 29th wards has changed from white to black, but support for the Democratic organization has been as unwavering as Mayor Daley's smile on St...

...Furthermore, the Communists have promised never to "contribute to the fall of a labor government...

...At this point he is not only the best but possibly the one person in Sweden who could save the situation.--Steven Kelman Collins' Daley Bread Cicero--Five years ago the residents of this town were throwing rocks at Dr...

...This succeeded in making inflation, on which the opposition had previously failed to capitalize politically, the major partisan issue and very nearly defeated the Social Democrats in Palme's first campaign as Prime Minister...

...When Myrdal wrote a stinging attack against lo last February, Aftonbladet refused to print any replies, declaring that it considered Myrdal "unassailable in principle...

...It would be nice to attribute his victory to Cicero's progress in racial understanding, or even to an emerging black political power...

...Nevertheless, Collins did make a few appearances at coffee hours in suburban homes, and Zabrosky did visit black areas (where he met a"tremendous response," he says...

...But the Chicago city line cuts through the district with all the impact of a restrictive covenant, keeping blacks on one side and whites on the other...

...The change is already noticeable in the Polish Party press, although Neues Deutschland in East Berlin sticks to the old line...

...Collins' opponent was no ball of fire either...

...That may well have been all they knew about the congressional race...

...Or they knew that the precinct captain would be around with a little favor after the election...

...The liberals reason that a more moderate propaganda tone toward West Germany will sooner or later be followed by a more moderate policy, and that this in turn will have repercussions on the domestic scene...

...Patrick's Day...

...To counteract this he has introduced new taxes on liquor and gasoline, plus a 1 per cent payroll tax on business firms...

...Since this process has been going on for several years now, some of the first products of the Left-wing fashion are beginning to enter the government and move up in the party hierarchy...

...These young people joined the party with nonviolent, democratic instincts-- and display none of the "revolution for the hell of it" psychosis of the New Left--but extremist trends, encouraged by Aftonbladet, have radically shaped their budding political consciousnesses...

...Their batallions of precinct workers make sure that the gratitude of the voters is made manifest on election day.--Harvey D. Shapiro...

...Most of them are quite reasonable in private conversation, and the Prime Minister continues to command their respect...

...All of this is important to the liberal Communists of Eastern Europe, because it is almost certain to bring about a basic change in the image of West Germany projected by their regimes...

...The 24th ward is so regular that its long-time Congressman, Thomas J. O'Brien, won the 1964 primary by a four-to-one margin even though his death was announced on the morning of the election...

...The 24th stayed regular under Collins, turning in 15,684 votes for the Democratic congressional candidate in 1968, compared to only 359 votes for the Republican...