Mobilizing a Progressive Majority

...You can be sure they are not workers themselves, struggling to make ends meet on $7-8,000 a year...

...obviously there is much wrong with white liberals...

...Action, not mere words, is required to correct inequities where they exist...

...But we also learned how to fight this problem...

...Labor is not the black man's enemy, and to keep insisting otherwise is to help the conservative elements with an interest in weakening their relationship...

...Thus we can play a role in shaping the future, but we can do so only if we turn from the past and base our judgments on the conditions that are unfolding...

...It would seem self-evident, though, that if one wants to quicken the pace of reform, one should not take an approach that will strengthen the enemies of change...

...This kind of political activity strengthened the coalition and was an important factor in the gop setback...

...Negroes by themselves, of course, do not constitute such a force...

...Separatism, for example, is simply a black version of Jim Crow, and we know the history of oppression that is associated with this kind of segregation...

...It has scored a major breakthrough by increasing minority participation in the building trades, and has the full backing of the afl-cio leadership...

...When labor says we must build more homes, it is seeking to create a society- where the black brother need not be enraged because he does not have a home and the white need not fear for the home he has...

...There is no other way to change America, there is no better way to change America...

...We had Wallace, and we are left with Nixon...

...Although powerful emotions and discontents still trouble us, there are signs that the siege of protest and passion this country has been living through is giving way to fatigue and reevaluation...

...The working class was supposed to be moving to the Republicans on "the social issue," and President Nixon played this one for all he thought it was worth...

...This is not to suggest that where there is discrimination in the labor movement it should not be vigorously opposed and rooted out...

...So there has been consistent opposition to the separatists...

...while there are nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America struggling to develop...

...Haven't we had enough martyrs...

...In the process we should be wary of what is fashionable, for it is not likely to be relevant, as the saying goes, for very long...

...If the problem were simply racism, we could proceed merely by calling each other names, psychoanalyzing each other, beating our breasts, and moralizing...

...Character is not predetermined...

...said a decade ago that remains equally relevant today: Negroes are overwhelmingly a working people...

...Remember, though, that they are the ones who cannot get scholarships for their children because they earn too much, yet do not earn enough to afford the tuition...

...Then came the advocates of violent revolution...

...The views held by these people, many of whom consider themselves liberals, are not only wrong, but threaten serious harm to the coalition upon which we all depend for social progress...

...In their wake, and in the wake of the violence of the past six years, there has been nothing more than a trail of martyrs, gutted buildings and political reaotion...

...Affection may bring individuals together, but common interest is the stuff of social movements and it is what binds the Negro-labor alliance...

...If the 1970 elections are a model for the future, it will be possible to rebuild the coalition and reverse the country's political direction...

...But today this opposition is getting stronger...

...For unless we get rid of black rage and white fear simultaneously, we shall not get rid of either...

...Newspaper reports about their being divided notwithstanding, the civil rights and labor movements combined to block the appointments of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, too...

...Some are dead, others are in jail, and the rest are scattered all over the world?people without countries or constituencies...

...That is important for us to realize in our coalition, because obviously there is much wrong with the trade union movement...

...What this will lead to is not entirely clear, for the character of the new period remains to be determined by the actions of those involved in social and political movements...

...The 1970s, I predict, will mark the Negro's full-scale entrance into American politics--to change the society and to control his own destiny...

...Just as it was appropriate to get millions of people into the trade union movement in the '30s, and just as it was appropriate in 1963 to get hundreds of thousands of people to Washington to march for racial justice, today it is appropriate to get millions upon millions of people to march into voting booths and cast ballots for those who will carry out the kind of programs we need...

...We must address ourselves to them no less than to blacks in the ghetto...

...while the stability of international relations is in constant flux...

...Ernie Green's rapidly expanding Joint Apprenticeship Program is an example of such action...

...we should emphasize what unites us...

...Working men, blue-collar as well as blacks, must be brought together in support of a mutually beneficial platform if we are to have any social progress--or register any political gains at the polls in '72...

...obviously wherever we look we can find fault...

...In this regard, I think one of the brightest developments throughout the lean years of the late '60s was a strengthening of the bonds between the civil rights and labor movements...

...It was important, I felt, to adopt a strategy that could deal in a comprehensive way with the causes of domestic tension, and I urged a turn to politics...

...We saw what happened in 1968 when the two groups were divided...

...Bayard Rustin, a frequent contributor, is Executive Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute...

...We meet him at the beginning of every year and also at the beginning of an historical period...

...We have never been able to develop much in the way of a capitalist class...

...Not the false power of empty slogans and loaded guns, but the real power that comes with holding public office, having jobs, sending one's children to schools that educate, living in decent homes and safe communities, being full and equal citizens in the country where we and our parents and their parents were born--in America...

...Those heading it do not engage in the fashionable practice of making sweeping moral judgments, and do not advocate confrontations with white workers...

...Thinking Aloud MOBILIZING A PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY BY BAYARD RUSTIN Portraits of the ancient Roman god Janus show a creature with back-to-back faces, one looking to the past, the other to the future...

...Where are they now...

...Richard Austin, Secretary of State in Michigan...

...I use the term politics here in the broad democratic sense of mobilizing a majority that has power, durability and a commitment to social change...

...This being the case, it is not surprising that they dismiss out of hand the one organization the worker can turn to for assistance in coping with his problems--his union...

...While this is well-known, it is worth repeating because some people have short memories...

...That brings me back, more or less, to where I started from: The only independent institution in this country with the mechanism for eliminating black rage and white fear at the same time is the trade union movement...

...It was almost enough to defeat the conservatives...

...These have always been the goals of the overwhelming majority...

...It is the way we can build a just society, not on the ruins of the present society, but out of the aspirations of a majority of the people--the poor people, the working people, the common people, black and white, who together can and should determine the destiny of this nation...

...We need government action, and for that we need politics...

...Toward what end are these futile gestures of anger and despair...

...We need program, politics and power...

...If I read the mood in the black community correctly, the answer is: "Yes, we have had enough of violence and extremism...

...Now, in addition to full employment, the Administration must be pressed to meet the needs of the cities and the rural slums...

...But the problem runs much deeper...

...But even then I thought the civil rights movement had to go beyond protest...

...We cannot withdraw into a neoisolaticnist shell...

...We have no use for guerrilla tactics imported from Algeria and ideologies imported from China, North Korea, and even Stalin's Russia...

...The Joint Apprenticeship Program has received little recognition from labor's critics...

...Anyone who feels himself to be oppressed, or empathizes with others who are oppressed, shares this need...

...And I think the key to accomplishing this is having as much compassion for the blue-collar worker as we have for the people in the ghetto...

...Without allies we can accomplish nothing of significance...

...One obstacle was the rise of black nationalism and the growing tendency on the part of Negroes to advocate and engage in violence...

...I have in mind how labor in the last elections backed candidates because they supported progressive domestic policies, not on the basis of their Vietnam position...

...There are those who would deny this, who say the trade union movement is the enemy of the Negro's struggle for equality...

...It is the most democratic form of expression I know of, and the most powerful means of achieving social change...

...They appear to be better off, and they are...

...obviously there is much wrong with black people in the United States...

...the tide is turning in its favor...

...Foreign policy, to be sure, cannot be neglected...

...They do not understand and show no signs of wanting to understand the difficulties a worker must face on as well as off the job...

...Clearly, a reassessment is necessary if we are to know how to proceed...

...It is rooted in our social institutions, and its solution requires a broad, well-planned, massively financed social program...

...They may have two cars, but these are probably not paid for and the second car, far from being a luxury, more likely enables the wife to hold a job...

...Much of what was "new" in the last decade is now frayed by the passage of time and by too many encounters with hard realities...

...When labor calls for full employment, it is talking about blacks who are without jobs and whites who want to protect the ones they have...

...Under certain conditions it can be a useful tactic for eliminating specific injustices, as the carefully conceived, effectively executed protests against Jim Crow demonstrated during the late '50s and early '60s...

...Alliances are not based on mutual affection, as some people might think...

...Haven't we had enough aimless violence...

...When labor speaks of free medical care, it is saying we need it for blacks who do not have it and whites who are concerned that they will have to pay for giving it to them...

...I do not mean to imply that this is a new feeling among Negroes...

...Nevertheless, I think the essential idea has proved out...

...It underlined, too, the error many liberals made in 1968 when they sat out the election because of Vietnam and, in so doing, helped elect Richard Nixon...

...If anything, they have disoriented many people and, I suspect, contributed to the growth of the Right...

...I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of this alliance to the black struggle...

...It is tragic and shocking, but alas inevitable, that the head of the Congress on Racial Equality turned to some of the most reactionary Southern governors to enlist support for a separatist school proposal...

...And the most powerful social institution in the country that can be enlisted for this purpose, with which Negroes must ally, is the American trade union movement...

...Their children have not died in Vietnam...

...There are some people, especially many young people, who do not understand the vital role of politics...

...Having always been a protester, I have always felt the need to protest against injustices not only in our society but throughout the world...

...The god of gates, he has come down to us in our literature as a symbol of the termination of one segment of time and the commencement of another...

...To be very honest, I did not forsee all the obstacles that have complicated its achievement...

...Ask anyone who had anything to do with the legislative battles in Congress and he will tell you that none of the major civil rights acts could have been passed without labor's support...

...These are the things that are hurting workers, that are hurting blacks, and that resulted in the coalition frustrating Nixon's strategy...

...But it would be self-defeating at this time to let differences over foreign policy become the overriding issue in our coalition...

...And make no mistake about it: This is militant political involvement...

...The unions, meanwhile, kept drumming home the economic issues--unemployment, inflation, high interest rates...

...We are now at the beginning of such a period...

...Yet if there is one thing I have learned, it is that protest alone is inadequate...

...Negroes can initiate change and provoke a reaction, as they have on several occasions with great effectiveness, but the decisive factor will be the direction of the majority...

...a minority does not have the strength to carry through a basic reform of our social and economic system...

...It renders impossible the building of a political movement capable of directing its attention to the most basic task of all--the redistribution of wealth...

...Look at the 1970 election...

...I am fully aware of the causes of these tendencies: the terrible frustrations, the deep and bitter resentments, the dramatic quest for identity...

...and three Democratic Congressmen--Ronald Dellums in Oakland, California, George Collins in Chicago, and Parren Mitchell in Baltimore...

...action that will strengthen the bonds between Negroes and the unions...

...Much has happened since I first set forth this strategy...

...Blue-collar people work hard and long for what they have, and they are fearful...

...We are workers, and as workers we have the same needs as our white counterparts--full employment, decent wages, job security, pensions, a safe workplace, quality public education, livable cities...

...We have lived through a decade in which race was the focal point of our domestic politics, and we have entered a decade in which the spotlight is shifting to economic justice...

...In fact, it is the one means of doing what must be done to bring about justice in America...

...It is militant to go out and mobilize the black community so that it can have an impact on the electoral process...

...But the only result of endless faultfinding is that you end up in a comer with the few people who are as good and pure as you are...

...And throughout recent years, when voices arose to repudiate these goals and to deny the possibility of ever gaining equality in America, the largest and most representative organization in the Negro community, the naacp, firmly adhered to a program of democratic social reform...

...Indeed, the existence of exploitation, prejudice, inequality and, most basically, man's inhumanity to man can drive someone who believes in justice into a frenzy of outrage...

...it refused to compromise its faith in integration and nonviolence...

...The separatists have failed, and now a new period is at hand...

...The New Left, the New Politics and the new modes of activity by young Negroes have not produced, to say the least, a millenium...

...Instead, they base their approach on a fundamental political principle: that social change cannot come about through conflict between the have-nots and the have-littles: that, in fact, such a conflict would benefit not the poor but the rich and the reactionary...

...they are the ones who do not receive medical assistance, yet suffer virtual bankruptcy when plagued by long illness...

...It is also worth repeating something Martin Luther King Jr...

...Not while the crisis in the Middle East threatens the survival of one of the bravest democracies in the world...

...The political objective of the black struggle must, therefore, be the creation of a progressive majority in the form of a coalition...

...Usually they are the same people who blame the workingman for inflation, the conservative backlash and war...

...These men know the folly of separatism, and they are part of an expanding trend in the black comunity toward electoral political action...

...while the Vietnam war continues...

...The A. Philip Randolph Institute voter registration groups, organized in cities across the country by Norman Hill, represent the kind of political involvement we will be seeing more and more of in the years ahead...

...Yet as I have already noted, we cannot do this alone...

...Usually they live sheltered lives in sheltered, affluent communities, far from the cutting edge of social change...

...The entire trade union movement, the afl-cio and its affiliates and the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, undertook a massive educational program that appealed to workers not to sacrifice their economic self-interest to the "law and order" demagoguery of the Right...

...In other words, we share with white workers a common interest in labor's program...

...Who else is in such total agreement with his basic philosophy...

...Negroes made greater gains than in any campaign since Reconstruction, with some of the most important victories scored in majority white areas: Wilson Riles, Superintendent of Education in California...

...they are the ones--not the rich and not the very poor--who have been hit hardest by President Nixon's tax policy...

...In 1970, the trade union movement launched another tremendous political effort...

...It is not militant to talk about killing pigs, though that may tingle the spines of some New Leftists...