NEW RADICALISM
49
Committee and feel separate from it. When I decided to move out
of Clinton Hill, the original project area, and into the Central Ward
area, it felt like I was tearing out all kinds of anchors that kept
me secure. My other feeling was semi-panic about things that I'd
worked on collapsing, an unrealized lack of confidence in other
people. Getting over these feelings took time. We're
all
more or less
conditioned to
be
at the "center of things" and around familiar
people; this is reinforced when, as strangers in a ghetto, isolated from
much of the established order, we develop all kinds of stakes in our
basic community, the project. One of the strains of organizing, there–
fore, is that
it
propels you to move out of situations you've created,
on towards strange new people and problems. The drain is serious.
NINE O'CLOCK:
Dropped by meeting of United Freedom Ticket,
an independent "party" of Negroes and whites running for state,
county and city offices. Background: it began two years ago when
the Essex County Democratic machine split with one of its Negro
Assemblymen, George Richardson. He then organized the "New
Frontier Democrats" with no support except from a few old friends,
and ran an all Negro-Puerto-Rican ticket for state and county seats.
The machine and others dismissed him as a crank, but
his
10,000
votes were enough to allow several Republicans to defeat Democrats.
Since then, he's compromised several issues, but remained the leader
of the anti-machine civil rights forces in the city. This year he's
widened his coalition to include liberal and radical whites. He's
getting increased support from some Negro clergy, a little support
from white religious and neighborhood leaders (some of whom think
NCUP is far too extreme). He's getting no support, however, from
the AFL-CIO or liberal whites who make up the county power
structure of the Democratic party.
His political strength lies mostly in the vague but broad popu–
larity he has in the Negro community, and in his talent for keeping
a lot of bickering people together. His political program is loose,
emphasizing Negro rights, rent control, opposition to urban renewal,
a grass roots emphasis for the poverty program and a police review
system. His campaign raises many issues; among them:
(1)
Leaders.
We've felt that fixed leaders are a danger because
they tend to monopolize knowledge, contacts and decisions; they can
reduce a movement to a body of dependent followers; they are shaped
