United left presidential Ticket

["Soldoll@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <soldoll]

My wife and I were members of the Peace and Freedom Party steering committee
in Los Angeles.  We came from Michigan and were accustomed to  formal rules
of organization.  The UAW in its most raucous days proceeded with elections
of  bargaining committees and board members.. It was perfectly all right to
have elected bargaining committees and executive boards but in union crisis
the organization turned to the election of the most militant to run a
strike. Union members wanted the most militant elected to a strike committee
free of all past  inner union politics

Our first impressions of the steering committee of The Peace and Freedom was
of SDS graduates imposing consensus politics before any decision could be
reached. We were self appointed.  The steering committee was composed of a
disparate political group many who emerged from the CP milieu and three
Cochranites.  There were no other recognizable political  tendencies.

The party rose an the backs of the college students who in a burst of
activity in the State of California overcame the restrictive laws to put the
party on the ballot by getting 600.000 signatures of registered voters in
the span of one month.  This was a phenomenal achievement.  The petitioners
were motivated by the two words in the party name; Peace and Freedom.

About this time the Black Panther Party burst on the scene with dramatic
street theater tactics  invading the capitol with rifles.  This disoriented
the Peace and Freedom Party leadership which became sycophantic followers of
the Black Panthers.  Among the leaders capitulating to  Black Nationalism
was Mike Bartell, a former compatriot of ours in the Socialist Union of
America.  We wanted an independent Marxist position to recognize that the
mass of supporters of the P and F Party had not bought into the program of
the Black Panther Party.  We thought we could keep the issues that divided
us separate and unite were they coincided.

On several occasions I have tried to write to this list critical of Marxists
becoming the tail of Black nationalists like Malcolm X and Sharpston.  We
are internationalists first, last and always.  We must be critical of Black
Nationalists who do not recognize that the enemy is capitalism and not the
other races of our society.

I know of the invested baggage members of this list have in defending their
past positions  and hope that the discussion is free from the usual
repetition of old positions.  Of all of the participants on the list there
have been few, if any, with the actual experience of working in the mass
movement.  They err in thinking that the Black Panthers represented a mass
movement, nor was Malcolm X . In the broad stream of analysis. They were
fringe players.  In 1968 the broad inchoate mass was represented by the
student opposition to the war and we should have merged totally with this
movement for the immediate purpose of bringing the war to a conclusion.