First Published: The Organizer, Vol. 6, No. 5, May 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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“364 days out of the year we’re out on the streets struggling and then on that one day we’re asked to go to the polling place and vote for the same people we’ve been struggling against.” The speaker was John Brickhouse of the Pennsylvania Consumer Party. Brickhouse pinpointed the dilemma that brought some 300 delegates from 32 states to the founding convention of the Citizen’s Party in Cleveland, Ohio. The delegates came to Cleveland with high hopes that the Citizen’s Party will emerge in this election year as a clearcut alternative to the two monopoly dominated parties and their likely standard bearers Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
Unfortunately, the deliberations and decisions taken at the three day convention do not support such optimism. This is in spite of the positive achievements recorded by the hard work of the delegates. The platform that emerged from Cleveland, which still must be edited by the National Committee and approved by a membership referendum, goes well beyond the politics of the two parties. In a wide ranging series of planks it advances far-reaching reforms to democratize the economy, reorder social priorities and check the drift toward war. It stands as a call to arms against corporate power.
Nevertheless, the actions of the convention seriously compromised the prospects for the Party to become a rallying point for all those who are prepared to take the path of independent political action. While the convention revealed any number of political weaknesses, both in the Party program and its conception of how to build a broad based independent party, the inability to deal with the question of racism stands out as its Achille’s Heel, prompting a Black walkout and split at the moment of its birth.
The Citizen’s Party was initiated a year ago by a diverse group of activists and intellectuals including environmentalist Barry Commoner, Ed Sadlowski of the Steelworkers Fightback, Lucius Walker, Black director of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organizations, Richard Barnett of the Institute for Policy Studies, author Studs Terkel, consumer advocate Robert Chlopak, legal activist Marilyn Clement, and Hilda Mason of the DC Statehood Party, to name but a few. Commoner, in his book The Poverty of Power, puts forward the unifying theme that in less than a year has brought together 3,000 activists under the Citizen’s Party banner. “The capitalist economic system which has loudly proclaimed itself the best means of assuring a rising standard of living for the people of the United States, can now survive, if at all, only by reducing that standard. The powerful have confessed the poverty of their power.”
While united in seeing monopoly power and domination as the fundamental obstacle to the democratic aspirations of the US people, the fledgling Party was, and is, deeply divided over how to build the struggle against monopoly. In the months preceding the Cleveland Convention, two perspectives emerged. One, associated with Commoner, stressed unity around the common anti-corporate theme, de-emphasizing the particular demands of labor minorities and women as potentially divisive. In the tradition of populism, the Commoner forces glossed over the contradictions among the different anti-monopoly forces in favor of the lowest common denominator of anti-corporate politics. In addition the Commoner wing argued for a focus on a national presidential campaign as the key priority for the Party. Practically, this means that the Party’s limited resources would be expended in an arduous campaign to set on the ballot.
In contrast, a tendency grouped around Lucius Walker, Marilyn Clement and later Arthur Kinoy, argued that the Party’s principle focus had to be on the movements of labor, the oppressed nationalities and women. They argued that in order to bring about a genuine People’s coalition the demands of these sectors had to be accorded prominence. This tendency also emphasized the importance of developing local bases of support and extra-electoral forms of activity as a means toward this end. In varying degrees the national Presidential campaign with its requirement of intensive ballot access work was seen as undercutting the development of base-building activity.
That the dominant Commoner forces in the Citizen’s Party have failed to understand this is evident in a number of ways. The Party’s brochure, issued well before the Cleveland Convention, treats the struggle for racial and national equality with a “benign neglect” worthy of the rival two parties. Except for a mention of the fact that “minorities, women and others are last hired, first fired” and a phrase committing the Party to “the protection of civil and human rights here and abroad” there is no discussion of the struggle against racism.
Unfortunately, the Cleveland Convention did not allow for a full airing and debate of these differences. The bulk of the convention was taken up with often obscure debate over an endless series of constitutional and procedural questions. The only substantive political discussion occurred in platform workshops and caucuses. Questions of basic direction and strategy went largely unaddressed. Nevertheless the divisions between the two wings smoldered beneath the surface and erupted on the final day of the convention.
The role of the movements of the oppressed nationalities and the question of racism have a special significance in this debate. It is these movements, particularly the Black Liberation Movement, that have been in the forefront of the struggle for independent political action. Over the last year, for example, the broadest based independent campaigns, like Mel King’s and Lucien Blackwell’s bids for mayor in Boston and Philadelphia, have emerged out of the Black movement. At the same time, it is the strength of white racist ideology that has denied these efforts the broadest support and prevented the coming together of a genuinely united coalition of all progressive forces.
The brochure makes clear that the Citizen’s Party is a Peace Party, and a party that will assert the economic interests of the broad masses of working people against those of the corporations. As to whether it is also the Party of freedom and equality for Women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans we are left to guess. There is no mention of affirmative action, desegregation, Klan violence and the racial inequality in the distribution of the nation’s wealth and resources.
The Party’s draft platform submitted to the Cleveland Convention indicates that the politics of the Party’s brochure is not some isolated lapse. The demands of the oppressed nationalities are neatly compartmentalized in a section on Black Americans and another on Native Americans. There are no sections on Puerto Ricans, Chicanos or Asian-Americans. By way of contrast there are whole sections on burning questions like sports and recreation. The section on public lands management is twice the length of the section on Black Americans. Moreover, the programmatic content of the Black Americans section is severely limited. The thinness and generality of this section is in stark contrast to the lengthy section on energy which is chock full of very specific demands and proposals. It is sufficiently vague so that most two party politicians would have no great difficulty in endorsing it.
For example, it identifies “a fair share...of wealth and power for Black Americans” as a “goal” to be “pursued”. It calls for support for “policies and practices” that prohibit discrimination and promote desegregation in education and housing, without ever specifying what policies and practices (i.e. busing or voluntary desegregation) serve these ends. It waffles on affirmative action by supporting it at “all levels of government” while remaining silent on the question of the private sector. Indeed there are dozens of liberals in the Democratic Party who take more advanced and forthright positions than these. Even Jimmy Carter’s position on the Bakke case is better than the Citizen’s Party’s silence.
Finally, other sections of the platform which have a special significance to national minorities are virtually devoid of anti-racist content. For example, in reading the section on Law & Justice one would never know that Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately victimized by the criminal justice system and that racism pervades the enforcement of the law. There is no mention of the problem of police abuse and brutality, an urgent concern of the nationally oppressed communities, no mention of racist practices in arrests, jury selection, and sentencing. No mention of the racism of the prison system. The same blindspot is evident throughout the platform.
The section on Black Americans was much improved by the actions of the delegates, particularly by the contribution of the third world caucus. Indeed the platform overall - in relation to labor, foreign policy and other areas, was strengthened by the caucus and amendment process. Nevertheless, the original draft stands as an indication of the political vision of the dominant forces in the Citizen’s Party entering the Cleveland Convention.
Given these political weaknesses it was not surprising that the delegates assembled in Cleveland were overwhelmingly white. When pressed by the media about the composition of the convention, Commoner pointed to the Party’s affirmative action rules specifying that each delegation have at least 20% minority representation as an “unprecedented” example of commitment to equal representation. However, the Democratic Party during the McGovern years probably did better than the Citizen’s Party in meeting affirmative action guidelines. Commoner admitted that many delegations did not meet the 20% figure but were seated nevertheless.
Moreover, given that the largest delegations were from urban areas like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Detroit, the 20% figure does not even reflect the racial composition of the areas in which the Party is concentrated. That some of these delegations could not even make this minimal objective underlines the problem.
The whole way in which these affirmative action guidelines were talked about at the convention smacks of tokenism. Rather than face squarely that the Party’s composition reflected the failure to programatically address the question of racism and focus organizing efforts on drawing in national minority forces, the Party leadership for the most part reduced the problem to one of insuring a respectable number of national minority representatives through the organizational measure of affirmative action rules.
These issues came to a head in the struggle over the composition of the national leadership and committee , the body that would translate the general mandate and platform of the convention into an actual political campaign. Commoner put out the word that he would not accept the presidential nomination if Walker, Kinoy and Clement, the leaders of the opposition, were seated on the national committee. Later in a “unity” gesture Commoner offered to support Clement if Kinoy and Walker withdrew.
Given that Walker, in particular, was the leading voice in seeking to get the Party from the beginning to take up the struggle against racism in a serious fashion, Commoner’s effort to ice him from the Party leadership has a definite political significance. Commoner’s commitment to affirmative action does not extend to those Blacks who aggressively fight for a more than rhetorical bow in the direction of Black Liberation and the fight against white supremacy. The Commoner forces factionalized with a vengence against Walker and his allies.
Walker’s interventions from the convention floor were characterized as “disruptive” while dozens of silly parliamentary haggles introduced by whites were tolerated as a part of the democratic process. The rumour was spread that Walker and Kinoy were out to “wreck” the Party, a particularly vicious slap at Walker who has been part of the Citizen’s Party effort from its inception. In fact as events were to show, it was the racist factionalism of the Commoner forces that ripped asunder the Party’s tenuous unity.
Commoner and LaDonna Harris, Native American activist and wife of former populist Democratic Senator Fred Harris from Oklahoma, were nominated for President and Vice President without serious opposition. While the opposition tendency included those who had serious doubts about the viability of a Presidential campaign as the Party’s initial focus, this was regarded by all as a settled question by the time of the convention. There were also no objections to Commoner as the Party standard bearer. Harris was regarded as above the factions and thus an acceptable consensus V.P. candidate.
The election of the co-chairs of the Party on the final day of the convention produced the first real contest between the two wings. The result was a stand-off in which Marjorie Allen, a leader of the New York delegation supported by the Commoner forces and Denise Carty-Bennia, co-chair of the National Conference of Black Lawyers backed by the opposition were both elected. Carty-Bennia headed a field of four candidates in a close race in which only a few votes separated the top from the bottom.
The co-chair race would seem to have promised a rough parity between the factions on the national committee.
Instead, the Commoner faction flexed its muscle and succeeded in ousting both Lou Walker and Arthur Kinoy from the leadership. On top of this, only one Black, Moses Harris, Director of Black Economic Survival, was elected to the 17 member National Committee. This result was seen by the bulk of the Black delegates as a racist slap in the face. Carty-Bennia resigned as Co-Chair, Harris refused membership on the National Committee and the bulk of the Black delegates walked out of the convention.
Other issues are posed by the creation of the Citizen’s Party and the debate between the different forces within it. But they pale in significance next to the question that split the Party at the moment of its birth. The Citizen’s Party is for the moment hopelessly compromised in the eyes of the Black movement, and only a protracted process of self-criticism and reappraisal can hope to resurrect it. Commoner and those around him give little indication that they understand this.
To think that a serious and progressive independent party can emerge and be built without the full confidence and active participation of the Black people’s movement is a profound mistake. The question of Black/white unity and the struggle against racism is at the heart of building independent political action. This is true historically as in the case of the Populist movement which was fatally flawed by white chauvinism. And it is no less true of latter day populists like Cleveland’s Dennis Kucinich.
The forces grouped around the Citizen’s Party represent an important sector of the small but growing forces for independent political action. Their commitment to building a real alternative to the monopoly parties is serious. For all its weaknesses the platform adopted in Cleveland and the strong anti-monopoly stand taken by Commoner as a candidate clearly represent a political break with the Democrat’s brand of corporate liberalism. Yet owing to white chauvinism, the Party appears slated for an early demise, if it is not already dead in the cradle.
Independent forces need to seriously debate the key tactical questions around how to build an independent People’s Party. Most centrally, how do we bring about a mass breakaway from the Democratic Party where the bulk of organized progressive forces still lead a compromised existence? But we cannot focus on these questions as long as there is not clarity on the most fundamental level. The bedrock of political unity for an independent effort must include a grasp of the centrality of the struggle against racism. Without this we cannot even begin to build a popular challenge to Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.