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Freedomways Second Quarter 1972

defeat, now the tyrant of Taiwan with billions of our assistance; Peron of Argentina in 1946; Syngman Rhee in South Korea in 1950; Batista in Cuba in 1952; and fresh from the Riviera, the playboy Diem in Vietnam in 1954. In each and every instance we fortified the forces of fascist repression in these unhappy lands. 

We were also adept, through the CIA, at overthrowing governments friendly to their people; Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, because he dared to nationalize his country's oil; Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 because he wanted to give land back to his people thereby endangering the swollen profits of United Fruit Company which extorted eight million stems of bananas a year from that country; and Premier Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, butchered because he refused to orbit within the American sphere. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations supported seven military coups which overthrew constitutional governments in Latin America: El Salvador, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Honduras.
 
Finally, we shall never forgive the massive support that a racist American government, and rapacious American corporations, have extended to white barbarians who reign in the Union of South Africa, Angola, Rhodesia, and Mozambique. 

You may be sure that the $436,000,000 our government just gave Portugal, in violation of the United Nations' embargo will be fully used against our brothers in the guerilla movement in Mozambique and Angola. No self-respecting Afro-American can, without a sense of profound betrayal, offer one iota of further support to any political party which does not condemn American foreign policy with abhorrence, and pledge to end our savage repression of the struggling peoples of the Third World. 

This convention signals the end of hip pocket politics. We ain't in nobody's hip pocket no more! We are through with any political party and, many of us, with any political system which is not irrevocably committed to our first principles, pursued in tenacious action: the liberation of Black people at home and the end of exploitation abroad.
 
We say to the two American political parties: this is their last chance. They have had too many already. These are not idle threats. Only senile fools would think them so. The choice is theirs. To ignore our demands is to will the consequences. Those of us already disenchanted with the political system could conceivably turn to fearsome tactics, shattering the quiet routine of daily life.
Those of us still committed to a political solution may then cross the

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History Will Be Our Judge Hatcher

Rubicon and form a third party political movement. I, for one, am willing to give the two major political parties one more chance in the year 1972. But if they fail us, a not unlikely prospect, we must then seriously probe the possibility of a third party movement in this country. We have broken out of the two-party mold before. Free Soil Party...Virginia Readjusters...Greenbackers and Populists...Blacks tried them all. This time the rupture may be permanent. 

In our search for political impact we have held political conventions before. This is not the first time Blacks have assembled to chart their political future. In the years 1855, 1871, 1872, national Black political conventions met in New York, Columbia, South Carolina, and New Orleans. 

We have even formed all-black parties. The great Frederick Douglass, despairing of justice from the Republican party, chaired the New York State Suffrage Association, a state-wide Black political party, which emerged in 1855. Pennsylvania Blacks also disgusted with the regular Republicans, broke away in 1883 and formed the Colored Independent Party. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party electrified the nation with its appearance at the 1964 Democratic national convention. Although the machinations of Johnson and Humphrey prevented the Freedom Democrats from unseating the regular Mississippi delegation, their demands sounded the death knell for future lily-white convention delegations. The all-Black Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama, born in the travail of the 1960's southern freedom movement, raised the consciousness of poor Black people by involving them politically. 

Yes, we've looked beyond Republican and Democrat in our search for a political home. And many of our greatest leaders, sick of the trickery of the established political parties, have actively participated in those third party movements. W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Benjamin Davis, Charlotta Bass, Charles Howard, Bill Patterson, and our own valiant sister, Angela, all looked outside the established parties to achieve their aspirations for their people. 

If they leave us no choice-and we form a third political movement, we shall take with us Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Orientals, a wonderful kaleidoscope of colors.

And that is not all. We shall also take with us the best of with America. We shall take with us many white youth nauseated by the corrupt values rotting the innards of this society; many a white intellectual, revolted by the mendacity of the ruling ideology; many of the white poor, who have nothing to lose but poverty which binds

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