TOM KAHN
social investment are the ultimate in government responsibility. How
tragic that, at precisely the moment when the Negro community has
developed a strong economic consciousness--witness A. Philip Randolph's
Freedom Budget for All Americans-there
is a Republican upsurge to
which some liberals and radicals lend themselves.
(Not e :
In case further
documentation is required for a theme which the reader may find tire–
some, note that Columbia's Seymour Melman, aided by Robert Scheer,
whose "Community for a New Politics" played such an inglorious role in
the California disaster, has mounted a small campaign against the Free–
dom Budget because it makes no independent judgment regarding defense
expenditures in the next ten years.
If
the poor would have the support of
Messrs. Melman and Scheer, they must first support these gentlemen's
foreign policy line.)
You ask, "What, in general, do you think is likely to happen in
America." My answers to your other questions can be summarized in this
reply.
I do not know what is likely to happen, but I have a pretty good
idea of what had better happen if this country is going to resolve any of
the crises that prompt this discussion. The prerequisite for positive change
is the reconstruction of the liberal coalition that has suffered internal and
external damage in this election. This is also the prerequisite for the
building of a genuine democratic radical movement-without the kooks,
for their price is too high. Negroes, the poor, the slum-trapped, and other
truly hurt people in America cannot afford them. They need the Free–
dom Budget and a broad movement to get it, the kind of movement rep–
resented by the 1963 March on Washington. The possibilities are there.
It
is my guess that the political situation will be different in 1968. I
can bring nothing new to the many speculations as to the consequences of
the war's continuing until then. But it seems probable that in 1968 Lyn–
don Johnson will wish to retain the Presidency and that, if the Ninetieth
Congress lives up to our dismal expectations, he will go to the American
people with a message something like this: "In 1966 you made a mistake
and saddled yourselves with a do-nothing Congress. I know that you
don't like this war any more than I do. But the Republicans are taking
the cost of it out of your hides. Let us renew the task we began four years
ago. Let us get America moving again- war or no war! "
If
the war ends before then, so much the better for Johnson, and
the rest of us. The point is: 1968 will be a new watershed in American
politics. The restoration and strengthening of the liberal- Iabor- civil-rights
coalition, of the Democratic Left, will
be
decisive.
