by Renata Adler
One of the reasons for the complete disintegration of the New Politics was the convention’s persistent debasement of language. The word “revolution,” for example, was used for every nuance of dissent. There were the electoral revolutionaries, who meant to change American foreign policy simply by voting the present Administration out. And there were the moral revolutionaries, like Dr. Martin Luther King, who sought to bring about certain kinds of social change by the pressure of non-violent civil disobedience. Closer to violence were the therapeutic-activity revolutionaries, former members of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), FSM (the Free Speech Movement), and Vietnam Summer, who seemed to find in ceaseless local organizing—around any issue or tactic demonstrably certain of failure—a kind of personal release, which effective social action might deny them; and the aesthetic-analogy revolutionaries, who discussed riots as though they were folk songs or pieces of local theater, subject to appraisal in literary terms (“authentic,” “beautiful”). There were the historical, after-them-us syllogist revolutionaries, who applauded all riots as pre-revolutionary, an incitement to right-wing repression, which would, in turn, inevitably—presumably as it did in prewar Germany—bring on popular revolution and lasting peace; and the amphetamine revolutionaries, who seem to regard uncontrollable, permanent upheaval, on the model of the Red Guard, as both a prescription for restoring personal vitality and the most vigorous expression of participatory democracy at work. Finally, there were some local criminals, who, despite the determination of the “radicalized” to view them as revolutionaries, pursued their isolated acts of mugging in the elevators and vandalism in the halls, and who, as a closing touch, stole three hundred dollars from the only people present who had defied a genuinely oppressive power structure at great risk and in the name of genuine new politics—the delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
It was obvious that the only way all these “revolutionaries” could find common ground—the only way Steve Newman, of the (Maoist) Progressive Labor Party, could agree in any detail with, say, Dr. Benjamin Spock, of the baby book—was by jettisoning meaning from vocabulary. Within a short time, such a phrase as “bringing down the system” was used equally for the program of a citizen who sought to speed along by legal means the natural evolution of his country—which, he would readily concede, was already the noblest social experiment, on the largest scale, in history—and for the program of an arsonist committed to the country’s literal destruction. When words are used so cheaply, experience becomes surreal; acts are unhinged from consequences and all sense of personal responsibility is lost. At the Palmer House, the word “genocide” began to be tossed about as though it could apply to acts of simple rudeness, and eventually speaker after speaker—from Arthur Waskow, of Washington’s Institute for Policy Studies, in plenary session, to the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Chaplain of Yale University, at table—could argue that a list of thirteen proposals submitted, along with an ultimatum, to the convention by what was called the Black Caucus should be endorsed without modification of any kind, regardless of the substance of the individual proposals, in a spirit of interracial unity. That this implied a paternalistic white racism that would startle a South African plantation owner seemed not to enter the minds of these speakers—or of the convention at large, which endorsed the list and delegated to the Black Caucus all authority for amending the proposals in the future.
The list ranged from an accusation that blacks had been systematically excluded from “the decision-making process” of the convention (one of the convention’s two chairmen, Julian Bond, the Georgia assemblyman, was black, as were its keynote speaker, Dr. Martin Luther King, nine of the twenty-five members of its Steering Committee, and six of the twenty-four members of its executive board; moreover, no actual “decision-making” had taken place before the adoption of the thirteen Black Caucus proposals), through a condemnation of “the imperialistic Zionist war” (the Black Caucus itself subsequently reversed this condemnation, so the convention found itself in the position of having both endorsed a proposal and pre-endorsed, carte blanche, so to speak, its reversal), to demands for the formation of “white civilizing committees” to deal with “the beast-like character” of “all white communities . . . as exemplified by George Lincoln Rockwells and Lyndon Baines Johnsons,” for “immediate reparation for the historic physical, sexual, mental, and economic exploitation of black people,” and for support of all resolutions passed by the Black Power Conference in Newark. No white person could in good faith endorse the substance of all the proposals. Certainly many of the white people at the convention knew the statement about decision-making to be false, and many did not know what the resolutions of the Newark Black Power Conference were, since no official list was ever issued and it is not certain that any was ever drawn up.
From the moment the ultimatum was accepted, the convention became a charade. To disregard substance in favor of a spirit of unity was to justify McCarthy’s empty lists of names on account of the spirit of patriotism in which he waved them about. But the real white-racist presumption lay in thinking that a specious endorsement of inane proposals was an act of support for blacks—or, for that matter, in thinking that most blacks could endorse the resolutions either. From the beginning of the convention, the “radicalized” whites had resolutely refused to deal with any competent or intelligent blacks—any rational blacks, as it turned out—as authentic blacks. Non-failed non-whites were simply regarded as sell-outs to the system, and ignored. The effect of this was to produce what can only be described as a new, young, guerrilla-talking Uncle Tom, to transact nitty-gritty politics with his radical white counterpart. The assembled revolutionaries (whose voting strength was determined on the basis of the number of “activists” they cared to claim at home) selected such blacks, on the model of H. Rap Brown, to speak for the romantic, rioting, “authentic” children of the ghetto (for “the ten thousand activists in Newark,” as John F. Maher, Jr., of the Cambridge Vietnam Summer, put it, in a meeting, “who were willing to die to change their way of life”), for the Black Caucus, for all the other blacks at the convention, and for the nameless, faceless, personalityless black monolith that the American Black has now—in the white-radical racist imagination—become.
The tragedy is, of course, that no one speaks for the young rioters, since no leader has emerged from them yet; and Rap Brown seems merely to tag along rhetorically after them. The Black Caucus, which never consisted of more than fifty delegates, sometimes spoke for the majority of the black delegates to the convention and sometimes did not. Its composition changed often. It occasionally broke into groups or disbanded, and entry to it was often denied to some blacks by goons at the door. By choosing to empower the Black Caucus to speak for the entire convention, the convention simultaneously abdicated in its favor and denied it respect. A radicalism whose one worthy aim had been “to give people more of a voice in the decisions that affect their lives” relinquished its own voice at once, and celebrated the birth of the New Politics by voting itself totalitarian.
Two days of pre-convention sessions—called, in the prospectus, “the pre-convention”—had started off quite differently, as a gentle convocation of kooks. The main factions of plotters and counter-plotters, traditional at New Left reunions, had not yet arrived to present their strategies. (The Socialist Workers Party, together with other Trotskyists, favored the establishment of a third party; in default of a permanent party, they were willing to settle for a temporary national ticket, with their own candidates for President and Vice-President. The “non-electoral local organizers”—like the SDS and Vietnam Summer people who believe in organizing rent strikes, cooperatives, and demonstrations, rather than in the vote—came mainly for the purpose of blocking any national ticket and getting some money. The W. E. B. Du Bois Clubs and the Communist Party would have liked a national ticket, but in order to preserve unity and avoid alienating the non-electoral bloc they were willing to settle for local organizin
g and the option for a national ticket later on. Their position corresponded closely with the one taken by Mrs. Donna Allen, of the Women Strike for Peace. The California delegation—which was also known as the New Politics group, because its position corresponded most closely with the original position of the National Conference—favored leaving each state free to have a national ticket if it wanted one, and possibly maintaining the Conference as a nationwide hookup for the various national tickets of the states. The likely candidates for President and Vice-President in California were, respectively, Simon Casady—co-chairman of the convention, and a former head of the California Democratic Council, deposed for his opposition to the war in Vietnam—and Robert Scheer, managing editor of Ramparts and a former candidate for Representative from California. In default of local options for locally chosen candidates, the California group was willing to settle for a national ticket chosen by the convention. Democratic Councilman Theodore Weiss, of Manhattan, together with other Democrats, favored working through the regular parties for candidates opposed to the war in Vietnam. In default of that, they were willing to settle for a national King-Spock ticket. A Chicagoan named Arthur Rubin was running for President himself; his platform consisted of an explanation of “the generally misunderstood film Blow-Up” and a map of the universe “available in a variety of versions.” A group called the Student Mobilization Committee came to recruit demonstrators to immobilize the Pentagon on October 21st. And some young people came only to look for jobs with established radical organizations.)
Within hours after registration, on the Tuesday evening before Labor Day, other delegates, less firmly committed politically, were roaming the corridors of the Palmer House—a huge, ornate, labyrinthine hotel, with a basement arcade, a sub-basement arcade, gusty, arctic air-conditioning, and small, transient-looking rooms. The obvious intention of these delegates in coming early was to have truly sweeping reforms to offer for consideration when the convention began. Non-political guests at the hotel that Tuesday seemed to view the delegates with tolerant smiles, pointing them out in the lobby as “the student convention.” (On Wednesday, the hotel closed the swimming pool “for repairs.” By Thursday, the convention was being described bitterly as “those draft-card burners.” Saturday morning, the lady clerks at the newsstand were worriedly insisting that The New York Times had not yet arrived: “I told you we shouldn’t have opened early, Bea. Here’s one of them just won’t go away.” But by Sunday—the day before the convention ended—things were fairly normal: players in a local bridge tournament regained their concentration, and Sandra Max and David Wasserman, two apparently apolitical Chicagoans, were married without incident in the Red Lacquer Ballroom, where a White Radical Caucus had met the night before.)
Wednesday morning, after a welcoming speech by Co-Chairman Simon Casady, a kindly, bewildered-looking gray-haired man, the pre-convention delegates split into committees: one for Resolutions, one for Perspectives, and one for Structures. The Black Caucus, which has been a tradition of radical conventions since the early days of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), was already in separate session. SNCC itself (sometimes referred to as the Non-Student Violent Disintegrating Committee) is now—except as a source of publicity measured in column inches detrimental to the cause of civil rights—to all intents and purposes, defunct. Somehow, it never quite recovered from the federal government’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the white radicals’ defection to the more fashionable causes of campus free speech and Vietnam protest. The Black Caucus, however, remains, as though to preserve in memory the idealistic, soul-searching band that SNCC once was.
The Structures Committee met on the third floor, in Private Dining Room 8—a tiny, dimly lit imitation-Romanesque chapel, featuring cloudy chandeliers, a false hearth, false timbers decorating the ceiling, old branching wall lamps, folding chairs, and a medieval bestiary, with false heraldic devices, painted on its walls. The committee spent the two days before the convention discussing whether it ought to present to the conference a proposal that the New Politics disband altogether and leave its delegates to their local organizing. (Many delegates, it turned out, had come to the convention committed to its dissolution.) The Perspectives Committee, which met in the Red Lacquer Ballroom, on the fourth floor, spent the pre-convention days deciding whether to propose to the convention that it endorse a permanent third party, that it choose a third-party ticket only for 1968, that it endorse no ticket or party or nationwide hookup of tickets, that it disband for non-electoral local organizing, or that it endorse a platform set up by a Subcommittee on Perspectives, which concerned Mexican-American relations, the Dominican intervention, the Greek regime, strip-mining in Appalachia, the inequities of the income tax, and a number of other issues over which there was considerable indignation.
The Committee on Resolutions, which met in the Wabash Parlor, on the third floor, was by far the most thorough and animated. Under the dual chairmanship of Steven Jonas, a bearded young man from New York’s Medical Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and Bertram Garskof, a bearded psychology professor from Michigan State University (and a member of the convention’s Steering Committee), the Committee on Resolutions immediately split into four subcommittees to revise the American political and social system from top to bottom. The four subcommittees all met in the same room, but each sent a courier to each of the others every fifteen minutes, to make sure there was no duplication of effort. By Wednesday noon, Resolutions had abolished the capitalist system. By evening, it had revised policy in detail, solved the problems of the cities, deplored alimony, and endorsed sexual freedom for citizens under twenty-one. (“We’ll pick up votes on that when the youth reaches voting age,” someone said approvingly. Jonas, normally the kindest of chairmen, looked reproachful. “I was hoping we were above winning votes,” he said. “I hoped we were working on principles.”) By Thursday morning, it had legalized marijuana, pronounced heroin medically harmless, established more humane old-age homes, and resolved that “if police agencies would do their jobs, organized crime can be smashed.” (Garskof proposed that all white police be removed at once from black communities. “But there are understanding white cops,” someone protested. “Then let them work in Scarsdale,” Garskof replied.)
By Thursday afternoon, so many resolutions had been passed that the committee established a subcommittee to improve the literary style of all its previous resolutions. Then, perhaps dissatisfied because there was so little left to do, Garskof deplored the lack of black representation on the Steering Committee. Since he was on the Steering Committee himself and should have known better, it was odd that he should make such a complaint, but his beard—even in the context of new radicalism—was an eccentric one, running straight, dense, and furry back along the underside of his chin, never touching his jaws at all, and it is not unlikely that he was just trying to liven things up a little. Two resolutions were immediately passed: one expressing grief over the separatism of the Black Caucus, and the other deploring the lack of black representation on the Steering Committee. Martin Peretz, an instructor in government at Harvard and a member of the convention’s executive board, objected. “You are trying to railroad chaos through this convention,” he said, and he deplored the committee’s “militant ignorance.” (Later, Peretz said to Todd Gitlin, of Chicago’s JOIN Community Union, that he resented the implication that the Steering Committee had been “coopted.” “Don’t let’s get up tight about cooptation,” Gitlin replied.)
In any case, more than half the Committee on Resolutions ultimately walked out, to form a Whites in Support of the Black Caucus Caucus, and what turned out to be the major preoccupation of the convention—attitudes toward the Black Caucus—was established. From then on, there was so much talk of caucuses of one sort or another—the White Radical Caucus, the White Revolutionary Caucus, the Radical Alternatives Caucus, the Poor People’s Caucus, the Women Strike for Peace Caucus, the Mobilization Caucus, the Labor Caucus, the California
Caucus, the Anti-King-Spock Caucus—that delegates seemed to be not so much discussing a New Politics as croaking mating calls to one another from adjoining lily pads. On Thursday evening, the Black Caucus itself consisted mainly of local Chicago teen-agers and Black Nationalists, who ordered (and charged to the convention) a lavish meal, and who advocated withdrawing from the New Politics Convention altogether, to join a Black People’s Convention to be held on the other side of town. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, however, briefly entered the group with what he called “some of our folk,” and persuaded the others to remain—for a while, at least—with the still nominally integrated New Politics Convention.
Thursday night, in Chicago’s Coliseum, a large, ugly stone fortification on the South Side, the full convention met for the first time. Julian Bond, the convention’s co-chairman, was introduced by the moderator, Ossie Davis, as “a black terror in tennis shoes.” He spoke briefly and then left the Coliseum, and he took no further part in the convention. Dick Gregory delivered one of his less effective monologues, in an apparent attempt to unite the convention by offering an apologia for its more extreme elements (“Every Jew in America over thirty years old knows another Jew that hates niggers. Well, it’s even, baby”). He remained with the convention another day and then left to march for open housing in Milwaukee. And Dr. King delivered his keynote speech, a long and, for him, rather flat peroration, in a tired voice. As he spoke, some local black teen-agers shouted threats and insults at him from the back of the room. Black members of the audience tried to quiet them down, but within moments a few self-styled members of SNCC were charging through the crowd whispering “Make way for Rap Brown.” (This never failed to produce an awed “Where? Where?” from whatever white radicals were nearby.)