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FREEDOMWAYS   SECOND QUARTER 1972

big city real estate interests, Klu Kluxers and the Texas gas and oil interests. The present crisis in American society today in this election year places in bold relief the question of the future of the Democratic Party as a viable political instrument for dealing with the acute problems we face.

The National Black Political Convention, which met in Gary in March has put that question on the agenda of our time. Experience has shown, however, that viable new political parties are not brought into being by proclamation or resolution. The coalition of progressive political forces, which are presently within the Democratic Party, together with progressive independent voters, can very well become the new second party in America, as a viable alternative to the Republican Party.

The Congressional Black Caucus representing leadership with an organized constituency is in a position to make a valuable contribution towards this independent realignment within the Democratic Party by restructuring itself to become a working team of congressional Black and Latin representatives. The Spanish-speaking Congressmen, elected from such areas as Los Angeles and the South Bronx in New York, represent a multi-national voting constituency of Latins and Blacks, just as Barbara Jordan, who will be the first black woman elected to Congress from the South, represents a similar constituency in the Houston, Texas, area.

A multi-national leadership team at the Congressional level can set an example for our respective communities to overcome the calculated divide-and-rule policy which conservatives and reactionaries in both parties have been promoting among Afro-Americans, Chicanos (Mexican-Americans) and Puerto Ricans. There is abundant evidence that the various anti-poverty programs, while certainly not dealing with poverty in any basic way, have nevertheless been used quite effectively as primary instruments in this divide-and-rule technique at the local level. The net effect of encouraging tension and squabbles among us over the crumbs of the "anti-poverty" program has been political impotence and an inability to basically change our common condition.

A multi-national regroupment of the kind described, which extends its base to include women and the new generation voters, on and off the causes, would have a continent wide voting constituency. It would also have the capacity to organize the kind of mass action that really counts provided mainly by the black and Spanish-speaking workers in those basic industries where their numbers are significant.

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THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM   O'DELL

Given such a regroupment, whose power pivots around its working-class component, the old line center-conservative alliance, which has dominated the Democratic Party since the end of the New Deal, in its decline would become the third party. The new Democratic Party could carry with is a majority constituency that can take the country to a new stage of the Second Reconstruction. That, in my judgment, is the People's Agenda for '72 and after.


FREEDOMWAYS announces with pleasure the addition of Edmund W. Gordon to its Board of Contributing Editors.

Dr. Gordon, a well-known educator, is a member of the faculty of Teachers College, Columbia University.  

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