THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM 'The Congo Mess' Dear Sirs: The views you expressed in your recent editorial on "The Congo Mess" have been amply confirmed by recent developments. It seems a shocking matter...
...The Sentinel prints all letters, although long ones are shortened...
...Nothing ever happens in Carmel," Mr...
...A New 'Left' Dear Sirs: We want to inform your readers about a critical new development in the American political scene—the emergence of an organization of students and young people who are seriously committed to building a new American left...
...in American politics today...
...I suggest that a person write his local paper periodically and send substantially the same letter to the editor of the Sentinel...
...Mayer has suggested that I write you bringing up to date the status of anti-miscegenation legislation in the various states...
...While we loudly proclaimed our devotion, to democracy and the United Nations, we wasted roughly two billion dollars helping France in her futile attempt to hold those people in subjection...
...Milton Mayer's article does harm to liberals because it strikes where even the most convinced may feel hesitant and unsure: their private lives, or those of their children...
...My dictionary tells me that at one time "sorry" meant "grieved for evil done or caused" but now "sorry" expresses a polite regret for some trifling error or mischance...
...He says it's hell on all concerned, and he selects examples to prove the point...
...Awner's article for free distribution...
...Not one of the things so reliably predicted for us, or so vividly repeated by Milton Mayer, ever came to pass...
...M. MacDonald Los Angeles, California...
...We are not brave, nor martyrs, nor missionaries...
...My fiancee and I had heard them all in the months before our own marriage...
...It seems a shocking matter to me that we are now associated in the Congo with Moise Tshombe and his white mercenaries, whose ranks include Cuban exiles and South Africans...
...Richard Beehler North Hollywood, California Letters Needed Dear Sirs: Across the nation right-wing propaganda pours into the letters-to-the-editor sections...
...political arena with interest...
...No crosses carried...
...What kind of liberalism is this...
...Only when America's conscience returns to the former meaning of "sorry" will we break out of the "Negro" jails or "white" jails, in which Mayer's Negro friend said we now find ourselves imprisoned...
...Has anyone asked the black South African, who has the best income of any African on the continent, whether he believes a boycott would be in his best interests...
...They wanted to know, what will happen...
...Charles W. Cobb, Jr...
...Their plan aims at creating interracial movements in key Northern and border-state communities around such issues as jobs, housing, and schools...
...Or let us qualify and ask about well-educated, liberal, Northern interracial couples, just to avoid the more extreme hazards...
...Worse still, there were their parents, less in love and more afraid...
...Sorry— we're full up.' 'Sorry—it's reserved.' 'Sorry— it's been rented.' That's all there is to it...
...I figured then that we could forgive a little overdone indignation in a good cause...
...Oregon repealed its anti-miscegenation law in 1951, Montana in 1953, North Dakota in 1955, Colorado in 1957, South Dakota in 1957, California in 1959, Idaho in 1959, Nevada in 1959, Arizona in 1962, Nebraska in 1963, and Utah in 1963...
...I became progressively more depressed with the biased press which appeared to report only the "party line" on affairs such as Cuba and China with at least as much conformity as I would expect to find in the controlled news within a Communist country...
...The strength of liberalism lies in its complete rejection of conformity...
...All this has arrayed us against most of black Africa...
...Such a boycott will probably tighten existing policies, as any strong government tends to become stronger in a crisis...
...It has therefore been rewarding to find that there is one news source which appears to be unbiased (to the right, left, or center) and which covers, in a critical manner, U. S. political events which can still influence, to a great degree, the future of people living even as far distant as my country...
...We have loaned or given such dictators large sums of money with which they have armed and equipped powerful armies the only purpose of which has been to keep their own people in subjection...
...Their strategy, like the strategy of the South-em civil rights movement, is to have students and young people serve as catalysts of protest in these communities...
...I did wonder whether Mayer had actually met any interracial couples...
...All of us will surely benefit from their effort...
...Few Senators can match this record...
...The result is that only nineteen states still have such laws and they are all Southern or Border states except for Indiana and Wyoming...
...By what standard of comparison does he arrive at this conclusion...
...Millions of them depend upon the economy of the country for a living, and harm to the South African economy can only jeopardize millions of livelihoods, black and white...
...Liberalism is not a dogma nor an ideology, but rather a thoughtful and pragmatic way of looking at problems and suggesting possible solutions—within a general framework of progress...
...Indeed they may, and I think it only fair to warn them...
...But while many "old timers" remained skeptical, a group of students has been working against the odds to try to help achieve this revival...
...Awner, of the lengths to which growers will go to avoid hiring available local workers, but also there have been reports of new efforts soon to be made when Congress convenes to reinstate the statutory authorization of the entry of braceros...
...No crosses burned...
...Floyd D. Johnson Merritt Island, Florida Mayer on Miscegenation Dear Sirs: In advertising reprints of Milton Mayer's "The Issue is Miscegenation," you state that "someone you know may want to read" this...
...For instance, on the front cover of the issue I have just received is the following quote: "Bobby Kennedy is the most vicious evil...
...As we all know, most organizations on the left are in a constant struggle for funds, but for a new organization composed of students, the struggle is extremely acute...
...nor do we feel ourselves to be pioneers except in one thing: that we have discovered almost by accident that the most famous barrier of all, the one so celebrated by Milton Mayer, is largely illusion...
...Terse, factual letters are needed...
...But in the years since then, I have been dismayed to discover several instances of young people who wanted very much to read Mayer's article because they felt in urgent need of guidance from a well-informed and trustworthy liberal source...
...Not only have there been numerous examples, such as those cited by Mr...
...Now, admittedly, Mayer did not explicitly offer them advice...
...The group is Students for a Democratic Society, an organization which is about to celebrate its second anniversary by inaugurating a major new program...
...Sorry" is the mirror word...
...I wish our military advisers and the State Department would take heed of what he wrote...
...An opinion letter against the Birch Society merely prompts a deluge of contrary opinion...
...John E. Jardine Bellevue, Washington Mirror for America Dear Sirs: Milton Mayer's article, "Short Cool Summer," held up a mirror for America to see the racial prejudice issue at close range for those who always look at it objectively...
...Does that make it right...
...The National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, and other concerned organizations, must be prepared to ensure that the intent of Congress to end the discredited bracero program is not circumvented...
...D. Ivan Fritts Ontario, Oregon...
...Boycotting a country's trade is a little like cutting off someone's air supply because you don't agree with his politics...
...Soon after the end of World War II the people of that section of Southeast Asia known as Indo-China and ruled by France as a colonial empire made known to the world their determination to drive the white man out of their country at any cost...
...Well, what really happens to interracial couples...
...All of us must be eternally on guard on every level of public activity to expose and combat their doctrines of hate and reaction...
...Awner is exactly right when he alerts the friends of migrant workers to the strong possibility that the Federal government's bracero agreement with Mexico will not terminate at the end of 1964...
...They are living at or below subsistence levels...
...W. H. Ferry Pasadena, California A. J. Muste New York, New York I. F. Stone Washington, D.C...
...What right do we have to condemn the Communist nations as aggressors when we have engaged in aggression in South Vietnam continually since we helped to organize the United Nations with the proclaimed hope that it could prevent such aggression and promote world peace...
...They need you to join them with moral, intellectual, and financial support...
...The Birch Society uses this newspaper to full advantage...
...The country is booming economically and the black will stand to gain from this boom...
...Mayer's article is a standard expose job...
...Paul Perry Harmon-on-Hudson, New York Anti-Miscegenation Dear Sirs: Regarding Milton Mayer's "The Issue Is Miscegenation," Mr...
...A. H. Kirton Claudelands Railway Station New Zealand Lens on Vietnam I thought the article on Vietnam by Sidney Lens (November Progressive) was most enlightening and the best I have ever read on that tragic war...
...Those of us who subscribe to The Progressive are fortunate that we can count on being kept informed on developments so that we will know where and when to strike back...
...When Mayer's article first appeared, I didn't bother to write to you objecting, even though I knew then that all my own experience in an interracial marriage, and all the other instances that had come to my attention, were utterly unlike Mayer's descriptions...
...Peter T. Elson Jenkintown, Pennsylvania The Far Right Dear Sin: It is quite apparent from my reading that the extremists of the far right do not accept the outcome of the last election...
...Once again The Progressive has produced a fine and timely article...
...These young people are working at the most difficult task of stimulating protest and action in some of our country's most deprived and depressed areas...
...The term "liberal" does not exist in a vacuum...
...Clarke, Hubert Humphrey is a liberal in the truest sense of the world...
...Charter...
...These were young people who had become romantically involved across the race line, and were tentatively thinking about marrying...
...If this exciting effort fails, it will not be for lack of talent, energy, or sawy, but for lack of funds to implement their program...
...Just why we went ahead despite all the erroneous good advice I can't quite tell— but at least we didn't have this dreadful article to deter us...
...When France gave up the effort and moved out, we moved into the small section known as South Vietnam in a unilateral war that violates all principles of justice, democracy, and the rules of the U.N...
...According to Americans for Democratic Action, Humphrey has consistently, since 1948, scored ninety per cent or better on its liberal vote index...
...But he did offer a description which for them might seem like prediction...
...nor are our lives "bittersweet...
...No, Mr...
...Indeed they can be said to be redoubling their efforts to capture control of strategic areas of our national life...
...and Mrs...
...In the last ten years we have lived ordinary lives—but very happy ones —in various parts of the United States, including California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, and New York...
...We are waging a war we can never win and that has cost us millions, the lives of many of our best young men, and the lives of thousands of Vietnamese...
...In all Latin America the great problem is the poverty and ignorance of the people, yet time after time we have recognized dictatorships there with the clear knowledge that they were serving only a small special privilege class at the expense of the impoverished many...
...Grave Error Dear Sirs: I would like to add a little to what Dr...
...It is a war that threatens at any time to escalate into a world holocaust...
...And the United States is a better country for having him as its Vice President...
...Once we set down a list of all the general and specific consequences that were predicted for us and our then-unborn children...
...All of these were advocated by Hubert Humphrey years before President Kennedy or President Johnson sponsored them...
...Clarke had some definite ideas as to the correct stand on various issues and anyone who disagrees with him is thereby suspect...
...Needless to say, copies of this reprint and other literature would be available to your readers on request...
...Most of us have been hoping to see a revival of the radical spirit in America—that spirit which, in the past, vigorously attacked entrenched interests, eagerly sought to organize at the grass roots, and offered a vision of a new society in opposition to the corrupting status quo...
...With the present condition of the United States as a base, programs such as medical care for the aged, civil rights, Federal aid to education, urban renewal, and the nuclear test ban treaty must be considered progressive and liberal solutions to some pressing problems...
...Will President Johnson lead the nation in an honorable withdrawal from Vietnam at the first opportunity and turn that problem over to the United Nations or to a coalition native government...
...Arlington, Virginia South Africa Boycott Dear Sirs: The Afro-Asian and Communist blocs in the United Nations are pressuring for an economic boycott of South Africa...
...How does the "phony liberal" charge jibe with Humphrey's Senate voting record...
...Carlton Brehmer said, in the People's Forum of your November issue, about Fact magazine...
...Their hope is to see the emergence of grasroots political organization in many parts of the country, capable of developing a program and a constituency independent of local political machines and the national Establishment...
...I would like to see one case where boycott has changed a government's policies...
...Won't you write to them now (Room 302, 119 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y., 10003), put yourself on their mailing list, and send along whatever size check you can manage...
...He says that miscegenation is what is most deeply feared and most severely persecuted both North and South...
...Samuel Whitman Long Beach, California Humphrey as a Liberal Dear Sirs: You recently published a letter from H. R. Clarke of Rochester, New York, who referred to Hubert Humphrey as a "phony liberal...
...A paper which badly needs letters of factual criticism of the right wing is the Orlando Sentinel, Orlando, Florida (circulation over 118,000...
...Readers of The Progressive in Indiana and Wyoming might be interested in approaching their legislators to urge them to effectuate repeal in 1965...
...Mayer wrote, "if Carmel can help it...
...Fay Bennett Executive Secretary National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor 112 East 19th Street New York, New York New Zealand Tribute Dear Sirs: It has been a pleasure to receive The Progressive and learn that there is one American magazine which appears to give an objective coverage of United States and overseas events...
...Its meaning is derived with reference to the political and economic structure of a country...
...As part of our educational campaign toward understanding of this issue, we plan to reproduce Mr...
...Perhaps the other African leaders who are urging boycott are a bit jealous of this island of prosperity on a large, and unfortunately, impoverished continent...
...Apparently, Mr...
...Mayer's implied predictions for an interracial couple were dismally familiar to me...
...Will we never learn...
...Barbara Hansen Rochester, New York Bracero Article Reprint Dear Sirs: We congratulate you on "New Hope for Braceros" by Max Awner...
...Charles Curran Tempe, Arizona Mandate for Peace Dear Sirs: Now that Lyndon B. Johnson has a mandate to lead and direct the nation for at least four years it seems to many of us that America, under that leadership, should implement some of our vaunted devotion to democracy and world peace with relation to a foreign policy that has gone far afield from the principles of democracy and world peace...
...Fifteen letters a day is common, and once there were over sixty...
...During my three years as a foreign student, I observed the U.S...
...Your magazine, I believe, made a grave error in running Fact's advertisement...
...This magazine presents, in my opinion, extremely biased, radical, and uninformative articles...
...It was fearful, and by and large it was quite wrong...
Vol. 29 • January 1965 • No. 1
