Letters

...His office is no less than a log cabin...

...To that point, the only way a new party builds credibility with anyone is by winning elections...

...Patrick Lacefield Staten Island, New York Marty Jezer's article presented a much-needed and compelling look at the two-and-a-half-year-old Citizens' Party...

...Also, we may not have access to the board rooms of national labor, minority, and women's organizations, but several of our candidates have been local labor leaders, have been endorsed by local NOW chapters (and one recently received support from the national NOW PAC) and have been supported by local minority groups, with one candidate receiving the active endorsement of Julian Bond...

...I also agree with Lacefield about the difficulty, if not the futility, of a national effort, especially in 1984...

...What plagued the New Left was not "indifference" or, even worse in Jezer's view, antipathy toward the electoral process...

...None has seen fit to point out that the Israelis resettled their refugees permanently, while the Arabs have refused to do so with theirs...

...Bruce Chudacoff Appleton, Wisconsin Your mailbox is no doubt filled with irate letters from Jewish readers...

...The public perception remains an accurate one: As a galvanizing force, the campaign failed...

...But such a local strategy does not preclude, as Jezer intimates, running national-level campaigns...

...The Arabs uniformly refused to do so...

...For Jezer, what happened in Chicago in 1968 was another unfortunate episode "which confirmed the New Left's estrangement from the Democrats...

...A Palestinian state was established in the Middle East by the Arabs...

...Here in Burlington, Vermont, the Citizens' Party controls four seats on the board of aldermen...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...Both good Democrats...

...We get a real folk hero developed here, yet Gaillard is quick to reveal Campbell's Yale Divinity School credentials...

...Throw the law out the window...

...Never have the dozens of DSA chapters on campuses and in communities across the country been so active in grass-roots organizing...

...I only wish I'd had the guts to think so honestly years ago...

...A Congressional campaign can attract them in the short term, much as our 1980 Presidential race did, and then the value of local campaigns can be shown for future efforts...

...All of this is laudable...

...It is time to start putting pressure on the Arab governments to negotiate...

...We are still much in need of grass-roots strength...

...It's precisely because the Democrats co-opt the Left's agenda (and usually destroy its substance), as Joseph Moore states, that we need an independent third party...

...As for Moore's rhetoric about the merits of direct versus representative democracy, this is a philosophical debate that can't be addressed in a brief response...

...Is Jordan ready to negotiate...

...it never worked anyway...

...Where third parties and independent efforts are a result of serious constituency- and coalition-building, DSA can have no argument with the Citizens' Party...

...Though he undeniably favors the latter, the former clouds several of his perceptions of the Citizens' Party's initial efforts at building a new political party...

...Are blacks, KKKers, and Progressive readers actually fooled by Gaillard's Campbell...

...The legislative gains of the 1960s were won not in the polling places but at the occupied lunch counters and in front of the burning ROTC buildings...

...Campbell's metaphysical profundity oozes the same authenticity as that of his affected bad grammar and the feigned modesty of his East Fork Baptist certificate of ordination pasted askew over his Yale diploma...

...Sure, it put the party on the map, but in small print...

...For example, our Congressional campaign in Minneapolis last fall helped lay the groundwork for the next round of city council races...

...Is Syria...

...Perhaps it is also time to suggest that the Arabs would be well advised to revise their own ways of doing things, and to emulate some of the good things that do take place in the state of Israel...

...Where are they now...

...None of your writers has compared the living conditions of Arabs in Israel and on the West Bank to those of Arabs in the camps maintained by the United Nations and run by the PLO...

...Yes, we would have liked to receive more votes on election day, but the critical thing was whether or not the campaign would establish an organization that would survive the election and grow afterwards...

...No one seems, for that matter, to compare their acts to those of the Christians in Lebanon...

...After Israel captured the West Bank, it again offered to negotiate...

...Nowhere do your writers compare the number of Arabs who voluntarily left Israel in the war of independence and in the 1967 war to the number of Jewish refugees who were forced to leave Arab countries by persecution since independence...

...It seems to me that every time the Movement really began to challenge an entrenched power structure, another politician or electoral will-o-the-wisp would pop up to lead the Movement astray...

...RickLaRue National Director Citizens' Party Washington, D. C. According to Marty Jezer, the chronic problem of the New Left is that it has failed to develop in the direction of electoral politics...

...So, while we don't now have (and can't reasonably expect) "support from the Left" nationally, we are building that support locally...

...The hideous totalitarianism of Chile and Poland are not exclusively alien to the aspirations of the human spirit...

...As one who went through the 1960s and the 1970s, I find such a position simply amazing...

...The 5 per cent goal—the benchmark figure for obtaining public financing for the next Presidential campaign—provided such a target, and in fact was not chosen until two months after the Commoner/Harris ticket was nominated and the campaign under way...

...Similarly, Jezer says we ran the campaign with the "expectation of winning 5 per cent of the popular vote...

...For me and many others, it was a deep lesson in the true nature of American bourgeois democracy...

...For God's sake, let's try something else," says Campbell...

...They started a war...

...getting its candidates elected to office...

...With their economic might, the Japanese should become formidable competitors in the international military hardware trade...

...Without the legislative and judicial victories that direct action inspires, we'd be back at square one...

...however, you seem to find it necessary to condemn every act that Israel takes...

...Not coming close to that goal may have disillusioned some supporters, but choosing it made our presence in the race more credible and emphasized our long-term strategy—building for future elections...

...The focus on national coalition-building is by no means crowding out local, state, and regional organizing...

...Yet the party does not see this as an end in itself—as the embryonic form of a future society—but rather as a means to another end...

...Jezer also speaks of the need to develop credibility with "the mass of American people," and comments elsewhere that "the party is still attracting little attention— much less support—from the Left...

...DSA has not, as Jezer maintains, "isolated itself from the activist-oriented Left...

...It is important to note that the PLO established its ammunition storage facilities, command headquarters, and other facilities in churches, schools, and homes...

...the most important thing is that it is pursuing in earnest those things that are within its control...

...Why give prime space (and lots of it) to Frye Gaillard...

...Until recently, it has been clear that Israel has desired peace and has been willing and anxious to sit down and negotiate with any Arab government that is willing to do so...

...Some had already fallen prey to the Ban-the-Bomb movement's insistence on direct action...

...The real forms of freedom are those which are personal, direct, and unmedi-ated by permanent elected officialdom...

...Peace will come only when everyone is willing to negotiate and compromise...

...Whether or not the party succeeds depends on many factors, quite a number of which are out of its control...

...This requires, as Jezer points out, an electoral strategy focused on state and local elections...

...The Citizens' Party had its precursors in Bobby Seale's Peace and Freedom Party and Zolton Ferency's Human Rights Party, among others...

...As Rousseau pointed out long ago, even the most representative democracy is an alienation...

...Perhaps it is time to consider retaining Begin while replacing Khalid, Hussein, Hassan, and Arafat...

...That, in itself, is an indication of its progress...

...Still, a couple of misperceptions Jezer has about DSA should be corrected...

...For what solace it may give the editors, I thought Noam Chomsky's "America and Israel" (December issue) was accurate and insightful—what I never learned in religious school but others around the world (as much as we hate to admit it) seem to know...

...Joel Katz Higashiyamatoshi, Japan The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...To posit a national third-party strategy in this Presidential (not parliamentary), winner-take-all (not proportional) system, however, seems unrealistic...

...Today, the same battles that were won in the streets are being lost there—by default...

...It is conceivable that running candidates for local office might serve to enhance the self-consciousness of the citizenry: There is no one answer...

...Are any of them willing to state specifically that they recognize the right of Israel to exist...

...Israel attempted to start negotiations with Arab countries to establish peace in the Middle East before the 1967 war...

...And there is a relationship between successful direct action (the lunch-counter sit-ins, for example) and legislative gains (anti-discrimination laws...

...There is common ground for understanding and joint work between the two groups in certain areas...

...Over 200 DSA members, most of them community activists in their own right, hold public office in a couple of dozen states...

...Overall, Jezer's article was accurate, but it lacked a clearer distinction between national, short-term political expectations and a long-term political strategy which finds national expression through the extent of local activity...

...Those in Israel and on the West Bank are far better off...

...First things first...

...the local situation should determine how they run...

...In what direction will this contradiction be resolved when there is real power on the line and not just the possibility of winning an election or two...

...The election of Democratic Representative Ron Dellums—whom Jezer considers supporting—came as a byproduct of the revolutionary struggle in California...

...A more significant phenomenon is the directly democratic town meeting, which gained prominence in the Vermont vote for a nuclear freeze...

...His description of the 1980 Presidential campaign as "disastrous" and a "debacle" is misleading...

...A Jewish state was also established...

...It was not, as Jezer contends, the refusal of the 1964 Democratic convention to seat Mississippi's Freedom delegation that soured radicals on electoral methods...

...I am tired of this...

...The Arabs uniformly refused to negotiate...

...The greater the right-wing defeat, the greater the opportunity for the political dialogue to move leftward...

...Perhaps it is time that The Progressive finds someone to write about this side of the picture for a change...

...Other civil rights activists were too simplistic and shortsighted...

...It is Israel...

...Indeed, it doesn't much matter whether progressives run on the local level as Democrats or Citizens' Party candidates...

...Yet, apparently, it was not a lesson learned, for only a few years later the cycle of false hopes and false promises was repeated...

...He advocates scuttling The Progressive's hard-hitting political analysis and, indeed, our entire legal and political system to replace it with ethereal revelation and theocracy...

...Is Saudi Arabia...

...it would get little in return...

...However, there may be a bright side to all this: If they try hard, the Japanese, too, can waste investment capital, syphon off their best talents, create simultaneous unemployment and inflation—do all the things, in other words, that we have done in overfeeding a bloated war machine...

...It requires a different political constellation—one which won't be changed by all the subjective will in the world of a few leftists running up a flag and expecting everyone to salute...

...John Bailey Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin Party Politics Marty Jezer was his usual insightful self in his article on the Democratic Socialists of America and the Citizens' Party (October issue...

...His criticisms of Senatorial and Congressional races for Citizens' Party candidates are on target ("hopeless" but attractive for raising the "big issues" and avoiding the "mundane" and "detail-ridden" local issues), but he apparently overlooks the fact that many progressives have not yet come to appreciate local politics...

...The 1984 election will be the referendum on Reaganomics and right-wing rule, and anything the Left would have to offer as an alternative vision would surely be ignored...

...Can't The Progressive find one person with a knowledge of history to write objectively on the situation in the Middle East...

...protagonist, but devoid of Vonnegut's scrutinizing sarcasm...

...Joseph Moore South Burlington, Vermont The author replies: The recent election results, amounting to a tentative renunciation of Reaganomics, offer little for the Left to celebrate...

...As a member of the Citizens' Party, I am disappointed that Rick LaRue, our national director, feels it necessary to defend the achievements of the Commoner/Harris campaign...

...Rather, we are an important part of activist struggles, whether in Austin or Boise, Brooklyn or Santa Cruz, on such issues as the nuclear freeze, occupational safety and health, and energy work, and for hundreds of grassroots political candidates— mostly left Democrats but not excluding independent and nonpartisan races...

...Unfortunately, here in the center of the party's pride and joy there is very little mass movement, and hardly anyone comes to city council meetings...

...The Citizens' Party is organized from the bottom up, claims to be based on participatory democracy, and thus far has avoided LETTERS to the Editor a politics of charisma or personality...

...This silly romanticism of a contrived all-in-one decadent fast-lane ascetic saint is reminiscent of a Kurt Vonne-gut Jr...

...I agree with Patrick Lacefield on the possibilities for local, grass-roots cooperation between DSA and Citizens' Party activists...

...And where great numbers of people are active and marching, say, in the antinuclear movement, Democratic politicians and born-again freeze advocates of the Missile Gap generation hang around like slobbering vultures...

...The writers demand land and justice for the Palestinian refugees but ignore the Jews...

...Donald B. Smeltzer San Jose, California Preacher to the Damned Frye Gaillard ("Preacher to the Damned," December issue) is quite descriptive in his characterization of his "Baptist-bred drinking buddy": Will (not William, not even Bill) Campbell is a "funny looking, hard-living preacher" in a "floppy Amish hat...

...Most of his comments were on the money, but several need clarification...

...And we are in these struggles as explicit democratic socialists...

...There is no town meeting in Burlington...

...The party's future is unknown, but it does have a future...

...No one seems to compare the actions of the Israel defense forces in Lebanon to the actions of the PLO in Lebanon...

...we needed something tangible to present to the voters, given the context of a Presidential campaign we weren't going to come close to winning...

...We ought to accept that and move on...

...It is known as Jordan...

...Running for 5 per cent was not an "expectation" but a tactical goal...

...While he went on to say that the campaign's "one achievement" was to involve "a core group of experienced activists in chapters around the country," he minimized that achievement and made it appear secondary, when in fact it was the primary purpose of the campaign...

...We are even treated to the detail of Will's "discreetly" executed burp on his "lumpy brown couch...

...I doubt it...

...Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will move toward the center, so it would be a shame if DSA were to expend its energy on supporting Ted Kennedy...

...And a year earlier, Malcolm X had denounced the complicity of certain black leaders who had allowed the angry grass-roots groundswell for a March on Washington to be turned into a love-fest for the Kennedy brothers and their New Frontier...

...I believe the answer is to evangelize the country in the name of Jesus Christ...

...Then, perhaps, it will be possible for us to recapture some of the world markets we have lost to Japan...

...Marty Jezer Montreal, Quebec Israel and Palestine Perhaps I am too sensitive to the articles published in The Progressive concerning Israel and the Palestinian situation...

...Toting guitar, Bible, and whiskey and "singing country songs and telling bawdy tales," he takes an "unpretentious," "meandering" swing through the "dingy green" country...

...Our main effort should be directed at local and state races, leaving the Democrats to deal with Reagan but giving our vote to whoever runs on the Democratic ticket...

...Gaillard attributes Campbell's depth of insight to his "brutal intuition...

...The real problem of the decade was that countless thousands did not fully trust their anti-electoral instincts...

...The extent of local party activity since 1980 which Jezer praises (fifty-eight campaigns in fourteen states in 1981, 111 campaigns in twenty states in 1982) shows that the Presidential campaign was indeed a success, since that activity would not have happened were it not for the 1980 bid...

...Though not mutually exclusive, we must develop credibility with our most likely constituency—the Left— before making significant headway with the general public...