NEW
RADICALISM
37
clusion, that most of those 500,000 eligible voters were so turned
off by the whole proposition, and so skeptical of the probable results
of that council, that they never bothered to vote? Does he know any–
thing about voting percentages in those areas of Philadelphia? Were
they the same areas that rioted last summer?
Does
rioting indicate
anything about growing class cleavages? Does Harrington know that
both candidates and voters in that election had to be
certified
as poor,
and
is
he capable of concluding that the process of certification may
well have alienated a few of those potential 500,000 voters? Does
Harrington know how much community work and publicity preceded
that election? (The Newark Community Union Project's experience
with Newark's Poverty Program showed that no organizing work
was done in the neighborhood selected as Poverty Area Three-most
people had never heard of the Poverty Program, had no idea they were
in an eligible area, could attend board meetings, vote as members,
select their officers, and help [in theory] to write their own programs.)
4. The ignorance and inexperience that Harrington exposes
when he cites the percentage of voters in that poverty election I take
as symbolic of the ignorance of coalitionists generally about the results
of
all
federal and local welfare programs on the poor they are intended
to benefit. They know little (though they should) about how all wel–
fare programs backfire and damage; either they become sources for
patronage or forces which manipulate the poor in response to bureau–
cratic imperatives. The coalitionists advocate new programs, more
investments; "the new radicals" work to change the local balance of
power, to get control of some of those programs "run for the poor and
by the poor" and run them locally and democratically. It
is
indis–
putable that little real politics has come out of the work of "the new
radicals"; it is also true that little design for a different political
future, or a new radical movement, has yet emerged. There are pos–
sibilities which have been discussed at length (particularly in
Studies
on the Left,
a journal both Tom Hayden and I work for), and many
"new radicals" are committed to the search for and deVelopment of
a new radical movement and a political party which that movement
builds. Many established radicals may find that perspective, and
those possibilities, faulty, hopeless. They may then counsel "intransi–
gent despair," a position Stephen Rousseas takes which I think
is
real,
and honorable. But what are the rest of your contributors doing?
5. The crux of my argument with Rustin concerns his vision
