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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 44, 1 November 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Boston, the scene of so many stirring events in the First American Revolution, provided us with some more stirring events in our campaign for a third American Revolution, tn three days of meetings in Boston, Cambridge and Lynn last week, we had large, interested audiences and some of the largest and liveliest discussion periods that I’ve had any place on this tour. The Massachusetts folks are discussers from way back.
The discussion at Harvard University was ended by the grounds policeman, who threatened to turn off the lights. Before that, questioners and discussers of all shades of political belief had taken the floor. Sponsored by Harvard Students for Dobbs and Carlson, 85 students had crowded into the meeting room and another 50 had been turned away.
Most important is the fact that the meeting resulted in the formation of a permanent Socialist Workers Party Study Club on the Harvard campus.
Although the reactionaries in charge of the New Jersey Weather Bureau turned on a cold driving rain last Sunday, we had a fine turnout at the Newark election rally. Of course, our courageous veteran, James Kutcher was there. A fighter like Kutcher who faces up to all of the attacks of red-bating Government officials is not one to be defeated by rain!
It was another cold, rainy day on Monday when I went up to New Britain to speak at an NAACP-sponsored Forum. Some 55 people turned out to hear Republican, Democratic, Progressive, Socialist and Socialist Workers Party spokesmen. As is usually the case in such forums, little attention was paid to the Republican and Democratic speakers although they were Negro professional men of some standing and ability.
The alert audience at this forum knew that the Republicans and Democrats Were parties of American capitalism and turned to the Progressive, SP and SWP spokesmen for answers to the problems of war, poverty and Jim Crow.
Like his mentor, Norman Thomas, the SP speaker made a red-baiting attack on the Progressive Party although he said some very true things about Wallace’s failure to fight Jim Crow when he was in Washington. I gave the SWP position – that Wallace cannot wage an effective fight against war or Jim Crow because he is a capitalist politician; that the Communist Party betrays the workers by supporting Wallace; that Norman Thomas is a fake socialist, who is now lining up with the State Department; that we stand for an all-out struggle against the whole capitalist system.
After I returned to my seat, Mrs. Paul Robeson, the Progressive Party spokesman, leaned over to say “Good for you!” and asked for some of our campaign literature.
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