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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1971

bankrupt." And then, the report concludes, "...those who, privately or publicly, wield the power that governs America, did not signify that they were willing to take the drastic action necessary to make American cities livable again."

Well, I guess they wouldn't! Because, as the report documents, those power figures don't live in the city - they use and profit from the city.

To whom, then, falls the mantle of responsibility to take those "drastic steps necessary to make...cities livable again" if those now in power will not? Well, of course, to you, to me, the other black, brown, poor white and elderly, and concerned Americans who are trapped by white racism and economic prejudice in these cities!

That is why in this exhibition relating to economic concerns, the Reverend Jackson understood that political power to take the needed "drastic steps" must be considered for implementation. It is nationtime!

The black and brown Americans, the poor white, the elderly, the oppressed know what time it is historically. They are not fooled. They could have written the follow-up reports in the warped bodies and retarded minds of their little boys and girls, the rat-infested houses they live in, their inability to get health care, the lack of recreation facilities, their joblessness, the trapped, dehumanizing, degrading experience of being a second-class citizen. They know, better than the sociologists and economists, that only a real revolution, necessarily a non-violent revolution, but nonetheless a revolution within and a revolution without can change their plight. It must be a political revolution led by those most affected.

American is standing at a crossroad. But so also does Black political leadership which now much become real or retreat to the old islands of petition and protest. Such a return would be unthinkable. It would bring the Kerner Commission forecast of 1980 to 1972. It would doom millions of black Americans to an irretrievable physical and social bankruptcy. And it would do more than anything else to make non-violent revolution impossible and lead inevitably to violence and genocide.

This, then, is the reason for the call to a Black political strategy for 1972 to "change" those now in power to those who will take the "drastic action" necessary to bring participation and sharing to the millions of oppressed black Americans. This may mean the actual running of a Black person for president of the United States, a

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