i~ r -

~ ON C1TY POLITKS 1950-1975

Harriet Kathan and Stanley Scott, Editors

Evelio Grillo Thomas L. McLaren re : D. G. Gibson Margaret S. Gordon George A. Pettitt Joel Rubenzahl T. J. Kent, Jr. ~lona Hancock Donald R. Hopkins Ed Kallgren Pat and Fred Cody Joseph P Lyford Wallace J . S. Johnson

INSTITUTE OF GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES University of , Berkeley ima Development of Black Political Organization in Berkeley Since 1960

DONALD R. HOPKINS Donald R. Hopkins has lived in Berkeley since 1960. A native of Kansas, he received a B.A. from the University of Kansas, an M.A, in poli- tical science from Yale, a 7.D. from Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley, and an L.L.M. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha honorary societies. He has served as Assistant Dean of Students and Assistant to the Executive Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1969-197Q he was a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, New York City. Since 1971 he has been District Ad- ministrator for the Han. Ronald V. Dellums, 8th Congressional District, California. INTRODUCTION

I approached this assignment with some trepidation, because i am aware that a discussion of Black political activity, even in an arena as small as Berkeley, gets one involved in a discussion of historical perspectives, attitudes, sociological currents, educational and economic developments and philosophies that far transcend the immediate subject matter . The constant challenge is to narrow one's focus, despite the realization that whatever developments there were in Black political organization during the 60's in the City of Berkeley did not occur in a vacuum, but rather were profoundly influenced by political currents within the Black community, nationally and internationally . it is interesting in this regard that my own involvement in Berkeley politics began as a studious noninvolvement in politics. 1 came to Berkeley to enter the University of California in the fall of 19b0. On February 1, 1960, four Black students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College had entered an F. W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina and demanded to be served, thus ushering in the era of $lack militancy that was to reach a watershed with Stokeley Carmichael's demand for . These led to the most pro- found changes in the relationships between Blacks and whites in this country to occur in the centuries of their existence here. It is within this context that I be- came "political."

THE AFRO-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION AND BLACK STUDENT : A TIME FOR IDEOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT AND A PRELUDE TO POLITICAL ACTION

In September of 1960, a group of about 14 Blacks, all students at the University of California, met on the patio of the new student union at Berkeley to discuss our role in the historic events that began in Greensboro. This meeting was attended by a number of Blacks who are still prominent in different areas of public life in Berkeley and the Bay Area: Donald Warden, Henry Ramsey, Otho Green, Peter, Aubrey, and Gerald Labrie, Maurice Dawson and Kenneth Simmons, to name a few. Henry Ramsey took the initiative of chartering an official organization on the Berkeley campus under the rubric of the Afro-

107 American Historical Association . (The group rarely flew under this banner, so its name is mostly commemorative .) For some two years thereafter, we met, mostly in my Shattuck Avenue apartment, spending long hours in discussing the polit- ical, social and economic ramifications of being Black in America. By 1963, this organization and its branches at Skate University and Merritt College had touched the lives of hundreds of Black students in the Bay Area, and I think it fair to say that few lives that were touched by it were unchanged as a result. Our discussion group was to become known simply as the Afro-American Association . If there was one idea that wed us all together, it was that we were not Negroes, but rather were American Blacks of African descent . Through our explorations we sought to come to an intellectual understanding of what this meant within the context of American life, and to come to a further under- standing of what this meant in terms of our own political direction as future leaders of our people. Just as the sit-ins and related civil rights demonstrations were to confront the institutionalized aspects of American racism, our discussion groups and attendant political activity were to address the ideological aspects of racism-a role we felt more suited to northern Blacks who, after all, faced racism in a much more disguised and subtle form. In June 1966, at the time members of the Afro-American Association in the Bay Area were emerging from colleges and professional schools, Stokeley Carmichael popularized the slogan "Black Power." Attendant to this call was the plea that whites should leave the , and begin organizing in their own community. In the fall of 1966, in Dwinelle Hall on the University of California campus, Larry Gurley, a graduate student at Berkeley, convened a most remark- able group of Black and white community leaders for the purpose of institution alizing Carmichael's call for separate white and Black caucuses to address the problems of racism. It resulted in a large one-day convocation at the Hall of Flowers in San Francisco, wherein white participants developed an elaborate strategy for dealing with white racism in the white community. A parallel strategy was to develop the same kind of caucus within the Black community. The Black Conference, as it was called, was held on January 28 and 29, 1967, in San Francisco, and was sponsored by, among others, Otho Green, , Ernest Howard, Will Ussery {then the National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Fquality), and myself. According to contemporaneous news reports:

the purpose, according to Otho Green, was "to discuss and evaluate the present situation of blacks in America. . . ."Topics to be examined, according to Dellums, chairman of the program committee, included Negro political participation; the "" and its "possible detriment" to Negroes; ghetto housing and education ; and Negro em- ployment problems. . . ."The time had come for a group of black people to think unthinkable thoughts about the recognized drift toward the right in California and the nation," Ussery said, "and the relationship of this drift to the survival of the black community in America."

These meetings--the several years of meetings of the Afro-American Asso- ciation, and the historic Hall of Flowers and California Black Caucus meetings, were harbingers of the most significant developments in Black politics to occur for a decade.

THE GREEN-MILLER RACE: AN ATTEMPTTO FILLTHE ORGANIZATION VACUUM IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY

In 1966, Otho Green ran for the 17th Assembly District seat vacated by Byron Rumford, Sr., who had chosen to run for the state Senate. Otho had nurtured his political ideas in the Afro-American Association . In the campaign, which was to be joined and won by then Berkeley School Board President John J. Miller, Green was to introduce for the first time the element of what might be called "Black " into local political debate. I only knew John Miller casually. I respected the fact that when 1 was a law student at Boalt Hall he was kind enough to stop long enough to discuss the law with me--something I found very rare among Black practitioners of that time. While I was in law school, John had taken me on a tour of Tom Berkley's law firm, with which he was associated and had introduced me to Tom Berkley thus beginning an association that I was to greatly cherish later on . It was not difficult for me to choose sides in the Green-Miller race, for Otho had been a very close personal friend, and as a result of our five years of camaraderie in the Afro-American Association and the streets of San Francisco, I knew intimately his views and political ideology. On the other hand, it was clear to me that John Miller was heir apparent to the establishment's mantle in the 17th Assembly District race, and thus I viewed his politics as an extension of "Negro" politics, a politics of which the Afro-American Association had prop- erly taught me to be contemptuous. As a result of my having met and become a friend of Tom Berkley, I was given the opportunity to write a weekly column in the Berkeley Post, the news- paper he owned and published. The column was entitled, appropriately, the "Hopkins Report, " and I used it as a forum to think out loud, in a style that often mimicked James Reston, on political and social currants in the Bay Area and the nation. Of course in the context of the i9b6 elections, I was to use the column as much as possible within the boundaries of reasonable subtlety, to pro- mote the Otho Green candidacy . There was a particular column that for a time I honestly regretted writing. I will quote from it here in order to put the ideological developments within the Black community at the time, as I saw them, in perspective:

In the 17th Assembly race, Otho Green repre- sents an effective people's candidate . Though he has the virtue of color, he has a good deal more in terms of training and experience in politics and poverty. Ha is comfortable among his people. He attends their churches, walks along their streets, and knows scores by their first namos due to a life- time of association in the community. He repre- sents that unique brand of Negro college graduate who has successfully bridged white and black culture, who speaks the language of business and the academy as deftly as he speaks the language of the ghetto. In a way, he symbolizes the hope for the Negro in America, for only when our kids can rise from the ghetto and return to love and serve rather than exploit and spite it, will there be hope for us in this country . But they must do all four : rise, return, love and serve. What happens in a district like the 17th is that the poor people who vote will generally fail to vote their interest, and a combination of the old style middle class Negro and liberal Caucasian will vote in a candidate who doesn't serve the crucial interests of the poor. He is usually a Negro pro- fessional who has "made it", i.e., he is educated, articulate, lives in the hills and admits to strangers that he is Negro. He's your Dawson, your Diggs, your Hawkins, your Rumford . White people like him, but their appreciation is bred more of inno- cence than of malice against the poor blacks who recognize these people as white boys with black skins who contribute to their sense of frustration, alienation, and despair ; who by maintaining only the most begrudging and tenuous communication with the poor, contribute to your Harlems and your Watts. The question is whether at this time we can afford the luxury of such a candidacy . One needn't be a prophet of despair to say to middle class people of every hue that they'd better wake up and look behind the candidate with an eye to the genuineness of his identification with the black community. The tooth of the dragon has been sown by centuries of prejudice, and in a few short years a legion of angry blacks will rise in the midst of this society and rend it asunder, unless we admit them to our political lives and allow their candidates to shout and redress their grievances. We should forget the platforms, for they are in- terchangeable words. The crucial issue is the man and his identity. The voting and non-voting poor will inevitably make this distinction, and what they decide will eventually become important to us. In this event we should have the good sense to join them .'"

The Green-Miller race was remarkable, from my perspective, in that it was necessary for the Green campaign to begin from point zero to develop a political organization that could effectively challenge the entrenched Rumford organization . I viewed the Rumford organization net so much as an organization, outside of D. G. Gibson and his political associates, but more as a concatenation of historical relationships, organizational involvements and tacit assumptions of political support. These nebulous relationships, however, had proved sufficient to elect Wilmant Sweeney to the city council and Byron Rumford, Sr., to the

* In response to a query, the writer added:

The argument was much clearer at the time it was made . At that time, the four characteristics usually went hand in hand : educated, articulate, living in the hills (and most importantly) admitting to strangers (only) that one is Negro. Times have changed that, and even Dawson, Hawkins and Rumford would publicly and privately speak proudly of being, if not Negro, Black. By the same token, C would argue, perhaps because i live in the hills, that moving to the hills is not a away from one's ethnicity, as I would argue it often was two decades ago. Otho lives in the Oakland hills, DeIlums lives with me (in the hills) . Needless to say when I wrote the article, all of us, except 3ohn, lived in the flatlands. state Assembly. To challenge this organization from the outside would require effective grassroots political organizing, and the development of a new set of relationships, primarily with whites who were attuned to the new ethnic currents coming out of the . They were thus prepared to make halting steps toward a radically new kind of association with Blacks. It should be noted that even at this time the Black community was no monolith ; Green received an early endorsement and support from Wilmont Sweeney, whose name was the key "establishment" name in his repertoire. Tom Berkley, if only by looking the other way, allowed Edith Austin and me to make effective use of his newspaper to abet the Green campaign.

THE COMMITTEE OF 101 : THE ABORTIVE, AD HOC, BLACK NOMINATING CAUCUS

An historically significant aspect of the Green-Miller race to the Black community was the effort to establish a screening process that would eliminate multiple Black candidacies, and thereby assure that some Black would continue to represent the 17th Assembly District. As I reported in my Berkeley Post column :

In tire 17th Assembly District, a Negro candidate backed by a substantial majority of the com- munity's substantial Negro leaders and spokesmen, complemented 6y an effusion of grassroots Negro support, can only with difficulty lose the district to a white candidate. Four Negro candidates, run- ning in a single primary against an attractive white candidate who can rally the support of a substan- tial number of the substantial white liberal spokesmen and liberals, will sa completely split the Negro community of the district, which though less than a majority represents the grava- men of support for Negro candidates, that none has better than a remote chance of winning, and the white candidate wins as though by default. For the purpose of this analysis these are all the facts we need at hand, for these are the facts that moti- vated the attempt by some respected, established and influential Negro leaders of the district to attempt a "committee of 101 ." The committee of 101 was a colossal failure. The candidates met at the Church by the Side of the Road, and my recollection is that Rev. A . J. Jackson, its pastor, presided at the meeting. My report in the Post noted the failure in these terms :

It should be quickly added that three-fourths of the "committee of 101" also finked--th t is, they didn't show. Indeed, rumors were about that another political organization, composed of many of the same people as the "101 ", and presumably sharing the same interests, had chosen to have its own meeting at the same time at another place. Seeing this, a local barrister who was the voice if not the power behind that meeting's throne, opined that the endorsement of this "rump" group of twenty-six could conceivably do the candidates more harm than good, and would, or might, reflect negatively on the committee's orga- nizers. This authoritative comment left the chair considerably ruffled and shorn of customary respect for parliamentary procedure and/or demo- cratic method. He immediately closed the floor to debate and ALL comment, and with a decision of rare unilaterality, and a chorus of "Nearer My God to Thee" or some such raucous incantation, aban- doned the ship--crew, cargo, all.

There was, in my opinion, an important legacy left by the Otho Green campaign. The whites and Blacks who worked together in this campaign genuinely enjoyed this new relationship . The whites knew that we, for the most part, were Black nationalists who sided with and Stokeley Carmichael more than we did with Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young in political debate. Yet it was as though they, like the whites who participated in planning Gurley's Hall of Flowers meeting, were prepared to accommodate themselves to the emerging Black ideology, and were determined that the fact of Blacks charting an inde- pendent ideological direction would not stand in the way of the development of an alternative to the Rumford/Berkeley Democratic Caucus alliance. Much of this was due to the fact that Otho Green's charisma attracted a number of whites to the campaign who found our kind of grassroots political activity attractive. Much also was attributable to the fact that Otho's friends and supporters included such people as Ernest Howard, Ron Dellums, Will Ussery and other young Blacks who were well educated, articulate and politically pro- gressive. Dellums even then had begun talking to leaders of the anti-war move- ment at the University of California, Berkeley, and was one of the persons within the Green campaign who urged him to come out against the war. We lost the campaign by only some 700 votes, and it is clear in retrospect that had we been able to clearly differentiate the campaign from the Miller campaign, thus tapping the resources of the Community for New Politics activists who were in the Bob Scheer campaign, Green might have been victorious.

THE BAY AREA QVDEPENDENT DEMOCRATS: THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT ORGANIZED PROGRE55IVE COALITION

Shortly after Otho Green's defeat, the Iocal Democrats who had worked in that effort and who saw it as a new and distinct Democratic political move- ment vowed to continue as a political club. The new vehicle was to become the Bay Area Independent Democrats {RAID), and I--primarily because Otho had not wished to play the key leadership role--was elected chairman. If recollection serves, Blacks were never a majority in BAID's member- ship. Nonetheless, BAID was significant because it represented the first effort, to my knowledge, of politically active, nationalistically oriented (as opposed to Negro-non-ideological) Blacks to come together with whites in a joint political effort. For the mast part, the whites in this group were not political radicals by any stretch of the imagination. Most, such as Dottie Demorest, Jackie Wollenberg, June Batterman, Jack Latona, Chuck Wollenberg, Cynthia Crossman and Robert Brauer were attracted, I believe, by the opportunity to work with the younger, emerging Black leadership and to operate independently of the Berkeley Democratic Caucus. Because BAID included the active participation of Blacks who were radical in their racial politics, and because the whites were organizing outside the Berkeley Democratic Caucus which was dominated by supporters of Congressman Jeffery Cohelan, it represented a significant new political alliance. Most of the activities of BAID were routine for Democratic clubs, and in- cluded meetings where local political leaders such as Nick Petris and Byron Rumford were invited to speak. We also became involved in protests against the abortive efforts of some Assembly Republicans to repeal the Rumford Fair Housing Act (an effort that was launched in early 1967, shortly after Ronald Reagan's inauguration), and efforts by the Reagan administration to close down the federal Office of Economic Opportunity multi-service centers in Oakland. When Ron Dellums ran far the Berkeley City Council in 1968, BAID offered him early support and an endorsement, and financed a South Berkeley campaign headquarters on his behalf. It was in BAID that I first became aware of the difficulty of maintaining a Black white coalition effort. One of my most frustrating experiences was being unable to convey to the white members of the organization a sense of extreme indignation over the treatment of Adam Clayton Powell by the House of Representatives. Every resolution the Blacks in the organization proposed to protest Powell's ouster was turned down by the majority white membership. 1 remained convinced that coalition was a necessity, but that over the long haul, it would not be possible with a moderate white component.

Difficulties: 1967-1969

1967, 1968 and 1969 were very difficult years in the Black community. They were marked by the exceedingly heavy ideological thrusts engendered by the militancy of the , the Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis clashes with the University of California, and the strident strike of Third World students at Berkeley and San Francisco State. All of these events had a special import to the Black community of Berkeley and involved the Black leadership of the Bay Area in some of the most ticklish of ethnic, social and political issues. They came at the same tune the radical left escalated the anti-war movement that brought its own clashes with the traditional "power-structure ." The Black community, as I perceive it, had prior to those years been relatively ideology free . That is, when the effort was basically a survival effort--to integrate schools, open public accommodations, open employment--it was possible to develop strategies without significant ideological debate. The difference be- tween the NAACP and the Urban League was merely one of strategy, not ideology . The Panthers, Cleaver and Davis were basically ideology: they appealed to the mind of Black people and spoke to the need for a comprehensive world view, often embodying divisive solutions (, , urban guerilla warfare, internationalism) that were quite alien to the civil rights type of activities that had gone before .

A Separate Course

More than ever, it was necessary for Blacks to chart a quasi-independent political course, for there were subtleties in each of these issues that had an impact on the Black community that the white community, including the radical left, could not feel. What kind of Black, for example, could best articulate the domestic and international issues; of these issues, which should be given highest priority, and to what end? If the police reaction to the Peoples Park incident was a threat to whites, to what extent was it a greater threat to the fragile security of the Black community, and if the threat was indeed greater, what should this dictate in terms ofstrategy? Were white radicals helping to inspire police policies

that would result in the brutalization of the Black communities where individ- uals lived who, in the words of Don Davis, could not "afford the luxury of shav- ing their beards and moving back to New York"? If the war brutalized Southeast Asians, did it not also provide jobs (butter) for the harried ghetto worker, the unemployed who depended upon defense-related industries for sustenance? Could Blacks and liberals and radicals forge a platform or program that recon- ciled these serious differences? The thought here is that Peoples Park was a threat to whites because of its symbolic meaning in teens of suppression of their rights of protest, of due process (by the University in not--arguably--consulting them as to what they wanted done with the land), and of excessive use of police power. The threat to Blacks was in some of these terms but perhaps more profoundly in terms of the general civic disorder and unrest, the public malaise created--regardless of who was right or wrong on the substantive issues. The infusion ofhundreds of outside policemen was at the same time a symbol and a real world aggravation of this concern felt by Blacks, and I suspect the white left and hippies took the bad public relations fallout ih the Black community.

HNIC : THE AD HOC SLACK CAUCUS

The emerging Black consciousness of the mid-1960's resulted in the pro- liferation of Slack caucuses throughout the country in almost every political, social or economic enterprise where Blacks and whites were ostensibly to work together. In Berkeley, this need to meet and confer separate and apart for the purpose of developing a Black agenda was felt most strongly in the youthful emerging middle class groups of Blacks, whose numbers included a liberal sprinkling of lawyers, doctors, city planners, real estate brokers, teachers, and other professionals . Under the leadership of Wilmont Sweeney representing the political community, and Harriet Woods, representing the school com- munity, this organization took the form of a group called HNIC, which met regularly for a time on Friday evenings to discuss broad issues of concern to the Black community. These meetings provided an extraordinary opportunity for young Blacks who would be politically active in Berkeley to get to know one another on a personal and social level, and established a lasting basis for com- munication that proved very valuable in later years. It was HMC which developed the impetus for the first Dellums city council candidacy . Without changing its meeting place {we usually met, iron-

*Writer's note: HNIC means "Head Niggers in Charge." It is obviously an in- group joke to so name one's organization . That's what we were, so that's what we called omsetves-a way around our self-consciousness, I suppose. ically enough, in Wihnant Sweeney's living room), this group constituted itself a de facto nominating caucus from which would emerge the Black candidate who would be part of the liberal slate in the 1967 council race. In keeping with earlier campaigns, there apparently existed the tacit assumption that a Black chosen by the Black community would be added to a slate developed by the Berkeley Democratic Caucus . Dellums, who had rat regularly met with the group, was invited to attend and be interviewed, along with several others, as a prospective candidate. While the others were all certain that they wanted the "nomination" of this body, only Dellums was uncertain. He had made plans to enter Brandeis University to work toward a doctorate in social welfare, and he was not sure that politics would be congenial as a life's work.

Issue Orientation

I was Assistant Dean of Students at the University of California, Berkeley, at that time, and though I worked for "the Administration," I had been highly vocal in my anti-war sentiments. On more than one occasion, I had been attacked by third-echelon post-Free Speech Movement student leaders who questioned my integrity: How could one be "pro-Black Power, anti-war, and work for this white racist organization?" Perhaps it was because l had taken such a beating for my stand against the war, being suspect by students and colleagues alike, that I was insistent that whoever emerged from this Black caucus would be issue- oriented at least to the extent of being anti-war. Tt had become my personal con- viction that Bob Scheer had made a proper analysis of the domestic and inter- national difficulties the country faced, and I was convinced that the healthy political future of Blacks in America would necessitate some alliance that would merge the concerns, direction and ideological thrust of a Stokeley Carmichael, a Martin Luther King, and a Bob Scheer. "Third echelon" (mentioned above} refers to the fact that after 1965 most of the original Free Speech Movement leaders had left school and had gone on to other things. A second and third wave of leadership came an. Often they tried harder, and having less talent and leadership ability, made quite a mess of things by striking out blindly at friend and foe alike. l felt I had a better relationship with the first wave of FSM leadership particularly Aptheker, Savio, Jack Goldberg, Susan Stein, Rossberg, etc., than many of those who followed, who were more suspicious of me for less substantive reasons. The students I refer to here were the radical white students who were against the war and who could not believe anybody who worked for the admini- stration could be against the war, though I was, and had said so publicly many times and had had my integrity called into question on the point. My colleagues were, so far as I could determine their opinions, for the most part in favor of the United States administration's conduct of the war, or were reluctant to express an opinion about it.

Candidates and Slate Discipline

It was our good fortune in HNIC to have met same other young people who could share our concerns, and who were willing to act as sort of a private caucus within the total caucus to see that a nominee emerged who would share some semblance of our politics. It is not to this day clear whether many other persons in the room realized that as each person was interviewed, very stringent questions were asked that centered around the Vietnamese issue. One gentleman, who by age and service should have been entitled to high consideration for the en- dorsement, was made to look absolutely foolish before the group as he hemmed and hawed and stumbled while trying to field questions about the international politics ofthe country, for which he was thoroughly unprepared. Dellums respon- ded very comfortably and forthrightly in the face of the sally of difficult poli- tical questions, while others were not prepared, literally, to handle them effect- ively. When the question was called, Dellums won very easily, and in my esti- mation, an important new direction in Berkeley politics, and particularly Black participation in that politics, had been charted. I recall that Kenneth G. Goode, later a University of California Assistant Chancellor, and Harry Overstreet, an architect who unsuccessfully challenged Berkeley's slate discipline in the 1973 election, were part of the cabal that pushed this otherwise liberal Black caucus in the direction of radicalism. While they have been on different sides of various political campaigns many times since, we have maintained close personal friendships, and, I believe, enjoy a genuine mutual respect. The 1971 election had demonstrated that the best chance fox the left candidates to win was by forming a slate. The liberals and Republicans learned from this, so in 1973 they formed a slate also . This I call "slate discipline"- choose your most electable candidates within your ideological community, then use all the persuasion that can be mustered to keep out other candidates from that community. 1973 was to be the election year in which that configuration emerged in its starkest form ; Harry's campaign "tested" this theory and failed badly, in large part far that reason. POST-1966 POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CURRENTS IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY

Beginning in 1967, Stokeley Carmichael led the major ideological move- ment within the Black community. Persons who had been oblivious of or hostile to Don Warden, Henry Ramsey, Otho Green and others in the Berkeley-based Afro-American Association, and who in the early 1960's had ignored the en- treaties ofMalcolm X, found themselves decidedly under the spell of the eloquent oratory of Carmichael. I recall that when I served as chairman of the Bay Area Independent Democrats, when difficult questions arose that went to the heart of Black/white relations, such as happened when Powell was ousted from the House of Representatives, there was a conscious effort to accommodate the lack of sensitivity of the liberals in order to maintain a sufficient degree of cohesive- ness to allow the group to work together in the future for agreed-upon slates of candidates. By 1968, such statesmanly compromise was less possible; the ideo- logical exigencies alone pointed toward a merger with white radicals. New issues dictated new political forms, and a different political forum.

From BAID to the Black Caucus and a Pioneering View

The Bay Area Independent Democrats was allowed to slowly wither away, and in 1969 a Black Caucus emerged as a much more "political" vehicle in the ideological sense, than the earlier version had been. Its membership included Matt Crawford, Maudelle Shirek, and Jce Brooks, who were much more aggressive ideologically and able to speak on a plane with leaders of the white left. I was out of the state during part of this period, and can to some extent, only speak second hand of its activities. My conversations with its leaders and my know- ledge of them, lead me to the conclusion that this was the first group of political Blacks who had genuinely "left" philosophies, which philosophies were strongly intertwined with . The Berkeley $lack Caucus thus pioneered in at least three respects : (1) It thought and acted solely in organizational terms. It sought to concern itself with the development of political machinery for providing money and votes for candidates, through precinct organization, beyond the endorsement . (2) Its members tended to be ideologs of the left persuasion, a Black counterpart of the white left that, unlike the rest of the Black community, could be depended upon to actively support positions that were supported by the white left . These included specifically, an end to the war in Vietnam and other international im- perialistic advcnturism, support of the Community Control of Police Initiative, the PG & E referendum, the Ocean View Committee (organized to fight the de- struction of city blocks of residences on the site proposed by the Berkeley Re- development Agency for the Berkeley Industrial Park), etc. (3} It was prepared to work at achieving a working relation with the white radical community, and shared that community's suspicion of the conservatives and moderate liberals. The Black Caucus had came into existence to support city council can- didates in the 1969 campaign. As with the committee of 101 in the 1966 assembly race and the HNIC Caucus in the 1967 city council race, the effort was to agree upon Black candidates who would be consensus candidates of the Black community. Because of Dellums' presence on the council and the many events that led to the further polarization of Democrats between liberals and radicals, there developed a close working relationship with members of the latter community, such as Nancy and Charles Sellers, Lani Hancock, and many others. With such persons as Sweeney, Widener, and Alan Wilson vying for the "consen- sus" label--and undoubtedly because of the difficulty of attempting to support a slate of Blacks that were spread over a fairly vast ideological expanse--the caucus felt that this effort was unsuccessful although Sweeney and Widener did succeed. The caucus felt it was not enough to elect moderate Blacks, and resolved there- after only to support Blacks who shared their political perspective.

A Stance to the Left

The response of the caucus to this experience was to re-group, and to make certain that in subsequent elections it made the strongest possible thrust for Black political and ideological unity. There was a strong desire to make the caucus' political position ideologically to the left of any existing political group within the Berkeley Black community. The Berkeley Coalition was devel- oping independently of the caucus, but because of shared political goals, ideo- logies and strategies, there remained the expectation that in future elections the two organizations would work closely together. The first opportunity was in 1970, when Dellums challenged Cohelan. Both groups worked very hard in this campaign, and at its conclusion were near the peak of their electoral strength. The caucus at the time had some 40 to 50 active members, and were capable of mobilizing many more workers within its Black precincts. Dellums' reaction to the caucus' emergence was to desire to strengthen and encourage their efforts. They were Black, they were left, they understood the need for a coalition effort with white political activists, and were prepared to work for this. The Black Caucus was able to obtain from Dellums an agreement to endorse their candidates for the spring 1971 elections. The understanding was that these candidates would work together with candidates of the April Coalition to form a unified radical slate. I would also aver that the radical Black Caucus members were the frst to think seriously within the Black community about political organization per se. A review of Black participation in Berkeley politics would show that traditionally, $lacks depended upon white-led political organi- zations to obtain their few electoral victories. One of the first statements I recall about Berkeley Black politics was that, within the Black community, political organization was discouraged because it might result in the erection of machine- ry and the emergence of political leadership that might later threaten the Black office holder. While I do not know from personal experience that this is true, it is significant that I do not know that it is untrue . I do know, as T. J. Kent has stated, that the convenience of the marriage between the Black flatlanders and the white liberals was that the Liberals had the clubs and precinct organization, and the Blacks had the votes.

SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON TEIE I959 BLACK CAUCUS

It has long been my hypothesis, in Berkeley and elsewhere, that in a political context where only a token {say, one or two of nine) Black candidate was to be elected, this easily could be accomplished without significant political organization within the Black community. Blacks could easily, through their community leadership, forge an alliance with the white liberals, get the liberals to sell the Blacks to the white community, and take the vote of the Black com- munity for granted, as Blacks were over-eager to vote for one of their own. This did not require the Black to go to the Black community with any serious dis- cussion of the profound issues that he stood for, nor did it force the Black poli- tician to develop a consistent political ideology that made sense in terms of what was best for the Black community as a matter of principle or priority. Moreover, it did not require the Black politician to think seriously in terms of political organization .

A Political Leadership Group

In a very real sense, the Berkeley Black Caucus represented a political leadership group, and this in much the same sense as the early Afro-American Association had been an ideological leadership group. These groups are distin guishable from traditional Black organizations in the very self-consciousness of the appointed role. The NAACP or the Urban League are Black organizations de- signed to further the political and economic goals of the Black community. However, one does not get a sense in their deliberations that they are assuming an ideological or political position that is different from that of the masses of Black people . Rather, one senses a mission to implement goals that are commonly perceived by most all Blacks. What happened during the decade of the 60's is that many $lacks found themselves harbouring attitudes and philosophies very much at variance with those commonly held by the rank and file Black. The Afro-American Association members at the University of Californa, Berkeley, in the early 60's looked upon the campus chapter of the NAACP as an anachronism . When Blacks in other parts of the country were going to Mississippi to integrate restaurants, Blacks at the University and significant numbers at San Francisco State were talking about economic development within the Black community. While traditional Blacks in Berkeley were laying plans for the total integration of Berkeley schools, Blacks at the University were beginning to talk about the need for community control of the schools--or giving Blacks in their communities the control that whites had over the schools in the white communities.

Emergence of Blacks as Professionals

At the same time that these ideological currents were developing, another significant change was taking place in Berkeley and across the country. Blacks and other racial minorities were benefitting from Educational Opportunity pro grams, which for the first time in the history of the country, began to educate and graduate Blacks in substantial numbers. The Educational Opportunity pro- grams affected not only the undergraduate schools, but the professional schools as well, and for the first time, large numbers of Blacks were being trained to be lawyers and other professionals . 1 recall that in my graduating class at Boalt Hall in 1965, there were only two Blacks . My recollection is that of a full- time enrollment of 869 students, only 3 were Black, one being Warren Widener, now the Berkeley Mayor. By 1970, there were as many as 90 Blacks studying at Boalt Hall. The significance to Black politics of these changes lies in the infusion into the Black community of large numbers of persons who were prepared to think beyond the terms of mere personal survival, and who were therefore in a position to think in terms of developing the machinery for manipulating the political instruments of the larger society as opposed to the ghetto. There were a few older Blacks who had been involved in earlier left or community politics, like Matt Crawford, Maudelle Shirek and Mable Howard, who were in a position to provide leadership and stability to the political efforts of the newcomers, but increasingly, the numbers were coming from the universities. These new- comers realized that whereas if Blacks were campaigning only in Black areas, they could rely on visits to churches and a few mass meetings to guarantee a successful outcome ; when taking on the metropolis, it was necessary to spend considerable time learning the mechanics of precinct operation, fund raising, letter writing, advertising, and all the more sophisticated aspects of political organizing. What is equally important, they realized that their candidates would need to develop an appeal and program that spoke to the interests of the total population, and that could be carried through a political alliance with like- minded members of the white, brawn, and Asian communities .

Ideological Schism in the Black Community

Perhaps the most fundamental split presently existing in the Black com- munity revolves around the political manifestation of these developments. Many Blacks still do not understand why the Black Caucus in its leadership role would speak so vehemently against the war and against American imperialism . They do not understand the alliance with the white left, who frequently are lumped in the category of "white hippies." They fail to perceive need far political alliance with white women, and do not understand the necessity of reconciling any differences between white women and Black men in the development of affir- mative action policies. They are most reluctant to understand the importance of conservation and the environment to Blacks, who living in the ghetto, breathe some of the worst air. Such issues as consumerism, the fight of the United Farm Workers, the plight of the American GIs doing dead time in foreign countries, and the plight of the American Indian on the reservation and off, are still quite alien to most Black voters, and to many political Blacks who were bred on the traditional politics of the Black ghetto. In Berkeley, these misunderstandings were most clearly manifest in the alienation that occurred between Dellums and the Black Caucus, and the politi- cal movement that developed around D'Army Bailey. In both instances, the alienation occurred almost immediately after the Bailey-5immons election. In the case of Dellums, D'Army announced almost immediately and re- iterated on a KQED-TV documentary, that he felt Dellums' priorities were wrong, particularly with respect to the war and women's rights being issues that should be of concern to the Black community. The alienation from the Black Caucus began before the election, and was solemnized at a press conference called by the caucus a few months after their election. D'Army was not more traditional. He was a Black Nationalist who, so far as I could determine, could not accommodate a more general political or civic outlook with his understandable concern for Black issues. My opinion is that the Black Caucus members felt he was arrogant, and complained that he refused to consult with them on anything. My thought was that he looked upon all of us as sort of local yokels who had little political vision and less to say. So I suppose It was a combination of the arrogance (perceived} and single-issue orientation that put him in trouble with both Blacks and whites in the community.

THE BLACK CAUCUS AND THE WHTTE RADICAL COALITION

As we noted, Dellums had sought to encourage and strengthen the Black Caucus by giving them carte blanche to use his endorsement for candidates they would select for the 1471 city council elections . The first choice for the endorse ment within the caucus was Margot Dashieil, who had been a student at Berkeley in the mid-60's and who had cut her eye teeth on the political and ideological currents of the emerging Black nationalism . Her candidacy was ideal in that she not only was smart but was supremely issue-oriented, and understood the importance of coalition . She was not the traditional Black politician. D'Army Bailey and ira Simmons were also members of the caucus, and when time came to select candidates, they took the position that the caucus should endorse both of them. Many caucus members were most reluctant to endorse either because they were newcomers to the city, and while they were both very intelligent and were politically knowledgeable and articulate, it appeared too great a risk and somewhat presumptuous, to offer the voters two un- knowns as the caucus selections. Margot had been convinced by many of her friends in Berkeley including Dellums, that she should be a candidate, but her decision to file was predicated on handling the D'Army and Ira candidacies so that only one would run. It became clear that D'Army and lra were not going to compromise on the issue, and that a very debilitating struggle would ensue within the caucus before one could be prevailed upon not to run. The caucus did not want to lose D'Army's and Ira's energy, brightness, and political perspective ; moreover, if the two ran without the endorsement as they had threatened, a caucus campaigning against two of its most visible leaders would lose credibility in the total community. Being reluctant in the first place, Margot bowed out, and D'Army and Ira became the officially endorsed candidates of the caucus. The April Coalition accepted these candidates as part of the overall coalition slate, but the slate was a slate in name only. Meetings were held between the candidates and representatives of the coalition and the Black Caucus in an effort to develop a working relationship, but it was difficult early on, and impossible later. Loni Hancock and Pete Brown were most anxious to develop a united campaign, and it is my sense and recollection that they tried very hard to bring this about. Other caucus members such as Matt Crawford, Maudelle Shirek, Mark Allen and Margot Dashiell were equally anxious to work out a relationship . 1 had a number of talks with D'Army during this period in an effort to see whether there was common ground on which they could cooperate but my sense is that D'Army's distrust for the white left was too deeply ingrained to make this possible. In addition, my representations bore little clout. Early into the first Dellums term, D'Army had cast himself as opposed to the emphasis on coalition politics, and thought Dellums' advocacy of an end to the war was a case of seriously misplaced priorities. Hence, while Dellums was to be opposed to the effort to recall D'Army two years later, this came as a result of his belief that recall was not an appropriate method for dealing with a politician who manifested D'Army's political behavior. It was not because they were politically allied or in agreement, for almost from the inception of D'Army's campaign, they were poles apart ideologically . It would be difficult to assess with accuracy the serious setback these machinations and disagreements gave to the efforts of the Black Caucus and the April Coalition. This will be discussed later in a different context. Suffice it to say here that it resulted in a serious Black-white split, with mounting distrust and mutual suspicions of motives between the Black and white left. The Black Caucus was seriously dispirited, and much of the political organization effort in the Black community was affected by the splintering of activist energy between the caucus and the group Bailey organized, which was known as the Community Coalition for Political Action. The duplication and waste of energy was almost ludicrous during the campaign against Measure "M", the ballot measure that would have required a majority vote far a council seat . While every faction in the Black community was opposed, the Black Caucus, the CCPA, and an ad hoc organization developed by Warren Widener worked independently in opposition to it. T'he entire Black-white-left community was so split by these ideological im- broglios that the outcome of the 1473 Berkeley Four/April Coalition slate race was clearly determined, and ironically enough, D'Army's own defeat in the recall election was assured. I often told D'Army that Black nationalism was splendid ideology, but was most certainly lousy politics. He never understood this.

THE BLACK CAUCUS AND THE CHARTER AMENDMENT I INITIATIVE: A CASE STUDY IN THE IDEOLOGICAL STRAIN THAT RADICALISM BRINGS TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY

Charter Amendment 1 had as its general thrust the division ofthe Berkeley police department into three decentralized units, roughly reflecting the socio- economic divisions of the city among white hill residents, Black residents and students. The issue well reflected ideological differences between those Blacks who supported the Black Caucus positions, and those Black moderates who favored a political union with white moderates and conservatives. (It is noted that in every election of the late 60's and early 70's, the white "liberal" has not been clearly defined in these alliances. At times, significant liberal votes undoubt- edly contributed to the passage of measures supported very strongly by the white left: the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, rent control, police review commission, the defeat of Measure M, and the election of radical council candi- dates. On the other hand, this vote was also critical in the frustration of efforts initiated and supported by the white left: the public power initiatives, the Bailey recall election, the Berkeley Four election, and the rent control commission election come most readily to mind.) In all of these elections where progressive issues were at stake, the Black vote could have made the difference, had it followed the Black CaucusJwhite- left coalition lead. Hence, the question of which ideological direction the Black leadership points for the Black electorate is most critical in the City of Berkeley.

Perceptions Concerning Police

The 81ack Caucus had strongly supported the community control of police measure. Its perception of the police has been that the police department has been virtually an outside army occupying the Black ghetto communities. Far from providing that community with the necessary protection against criminal forces, it enforced the laws differentially, overlooking what has came to be known as "black crimes"--burglaries and inter-family, inter-community assaults--while being oppressive in its manner of enforcing those laws it chose to enforce. Ct is generally believed in the Black community that policemen overlook such crimes. They investigate them casually and often do not prosecute. Periodically there were large protests in the Black community, usually dealing with police conduct in making routine traffic arrests, the stopping and apprehending of burglary and robbery suspects, and in the enforcement of drug laws. In these instances, the complaint brought to the council was of "police brutality ." (There was one incident in 1969 involving the shooting of a young man by a Berkeley policeman, which stands out among all such events in recent years.) It was argued that outside policemen-most of whom were not residents of Berkeley, let alone its Black communities--who were under the control of a conservative city manager and police chief, could not be expected to be sympa- thetic and sensitive to the Black community. Therefore, a mechanism ought to be developed that would force this sympathy and sensitivity upon policemen. The mechanism in this instance was to be the elected neighborhood councils whose policies would provide effective community control over the police. For a Black to be opposed to this kind of reform, aside from arguing whatever may have been its technical imperfections (and there admittedly were same serious ones}, it was necessary to argue against the need for dramatic re form in police-community relations. As i reflect, the imperfections had to do with such matters as administrative control over the various police substations, delegation of authority, etc. The newspapers of the time are replete with Long technical discussions of these matters, and the opposition developed a lengthy legal brief which laid out the alleged imperfections--factors that would make the plan unwieldly, unworkable, dangerous, divisive, and unconstitutional, according to these arguments . Already in the East Bay, the Black Panther Party had focused upon anti- Black police behavior as a major organizing tool, and their confrontations with the police had dramatically illustrated the brazen arbitrariness with which police too frequently approached their duties in the Black communities of Oakland and Berkeley. In addition, the specific examples of unresolved complaints of police misconduct in dealing with Blacks were imposing, and used with great effective- ness by Dellums in a public debate with Wilmont Sweeney, held at the height of the 1971 campaign . Further, the historical knowledge of these relationships, brought by Blacks to Berkeley from wherever their origins were in the United States and most certainly from the South, would have appeared to incline the Black community toward such a reform. (The difference between police be- havior in the South and in Berkeley lies particularly in that in the South it was not uncommon for policemen to act in concert with lawbreakers--a la Cheyney, Goodwin, Schwerner--and to commit crimes very blatantly under the color of law. Often the official attitude there was one of hostility and from a service standpoint, one of neglect. Foz example, rather than few Blacks hired, for many years the pattern was that none were hired. In the North the behavior is invariably unofficial, subtle, covert, and sporadic in incidence. i would say that the dif- ference is more than a shade .) D'Army Bailey and Ira Simmons, the Black Caucus-endorsed candidates, campaigned vigorously for the CCP measure in the Black community. Yet in the equally vigorous debate over the issue that took place in the larger community- led by hysterical editorials, cartoons and columns in the Berkeley Gazette, which emphasized the segregationist aspect of a measure that provided a separate unit for the Black community--Blacks were turned against the avant gazde position taken by the caucus.

The Sweeney-Dellums Debate

The move toward a left alliance can be extremely painful to a Black poli- tician, for more than ethnic politics, left politics is often austerely issue-oriented . Issue-oriented politics is something new to the Black community. After years of exclusion from the electoral process in many parts of the country, and from holding office in almost all of the country, the mere fact of getting a Black elected was considered a sufficient achievement of any electoral foray. The assumption in the $lack community has been that if a Black is elected, he can be counted on to "do the right thing." Having been the subject of oppression, he will always remember from whence he came, and can be depended upon to vote right on issues that affect, or are important to, the Black community. Undoubtedly for this reason the debate between Wilmont Sweeney and Ron Dellums over the issue of community control of police--which debate in my judgment was as instrumental as any other single factor in assuring Sweeney's defeat in the mayoralty race--was such an excruciating personal experience for both gentlemen. These two men, one fortyish, liberal, and a veteran of many lonesome and thankless hours of community political toil ; the other, thirtyish, radical, and in the morning of a political career that still would pose many chal- lenges to his youthful idealism and enthusiasm, both Black and dedicated to the cause of the Black community, engaged m a death duel for a mutually held goal. I recall that at the close of the debate both men were literally in tears, as though they realized that the great political differences that had brought them to opposing positions on this issue really dwarfed both of them, and that each in this moment of personal pain was being sacrificed in a struggle for some greater understanding of the hard political realities that the Black community would need to accommodate in the 1970's.

SOME PERSONAL REFLECTION5 ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF COALTfION EFFORTS IN BERKELEY

The Bailey, Simmons, coalition debacle was a serious blow to the future working relationship and the political organization efforts that the ostensible 1972 coalition represented . One of the most vivid memories of this election was of an incident at a party I had given for Bailey and Simmons at my home in Berkeley on the Saturday night before the Tuesday election. The reason for the party was to raise some money for them and to introduce them to many Blacks in the city who would provide votes and support for them. The white members of the coalition were also invited, and showed up with a substantial number of their key supporters. Within an hour after alI the actors were present, it became apparent that the only rational purpose for such a gathering would be to prove that oil and water could nat mix. I tend to enjoy parties, even political ones, so far a time I was oblivious to the intense discussions going on about me, and was content to serve and consume cocktails in this delightful setting--a Spruce Street penthouse overlooking the gorgeous Bay. The next thing I knew, I was being told by various persons that a press conference would be held on Monday morning to "blow this . . . . thing out of the water." I cautioned as many people as I could to relax and do nothing until after the election. Within minutes almost every white person, including both Rick Brown and L.oni Hancock, had left the party and the coalition lay literally crumbled on the living room floor.

The D'Army Bailey Syndrome

Significant, I believe, For the future of relationships between $lack political organization and the liberal and radical left, is the fact that the argu- ments that took place between these particular Black and white progressives were distinguished mostly by their insignificance and aberrant nature. Some arguments were outright sophomoric in my view: whether it would be presump- tuous of a white candidate to sit next to a Black congressman while on tour aboard a cable car in the Black community; whether the Black candidates should "introduce" the white candidates to Black community meetings early on or later in the coalition campaign; whether whites should be burdened with their appro- priate proportion of guilt For 40(3 years of Black oppression in America, and how this should bear upon the credibility of their political opinions and judgments. Same bases for the split were more substantial, but equally aberrant: should D'Army Bailey disclose the source of his campaign funds? How could he justify a top-heavy, predominantly white staff? The probability that this particular mix of political personality, circum- stance and issue conflict would recur must be a trillion to one, yet in $erkeley it did occur and profoundly influenced the relationships of progressive whites and Blacks. What 1 have called the "D'Army $ailey syndrome" hung like a cloud over deliberations for council candidates in the 1973 elections, and profoundly influenced the ability, or inability of whites and Blacks on the left to work together with mutual trust.

Widener's Position

It should also be clear that Warren Widener's relationship with the 1971 April Coalition also contributed to this difficulty. Warren had been the left's choice for mayor in the 1971 campaign. The key issue around which the left was organized, as noted, was the community control of police Charter amend- ment. It is my understanding that Warren had initially or tentatively indicated his support for the Charter amendment. Hence the April Coalition early on could look to a slate consisting of the Black Caucus nominees and the coalition convention nominees for the council, and Warren Widener {over Sweeney) for the mayoralty . Somewhere along the way, Warren began to waver on the police issue. I am told that he was approached by representatives of the left in an effort to ascertain his position; they wanted to know before the filing date had passed, so they would not be precluded from running their own candidate for mayor. There was talk, during this period, of Mario Savio running. Savio's candi- dacy, while probably difficult, would have been sufficient to do to Widener what John De Bonis' candidacy did to Sweeney--drain off a sufficient amount of support from the side that would normally be supportive, to make his candidacy that much the less probable of success. Warren finally came out formally opposed to the police amendment, while supporting the concept of community control of police in principle . This decision was enough to cost hire the formal endorsement of the April Coalition, but because they were faced with no alternative, was not sufficient to cast him their tacit support. This support was most probably a key factor in his election. Nonetheless, the experience with Warren, just as is true of the experience with D'Army and Ira, dealt a crucial blow to the ability of progressive Blacks and whites to work together politically . To put it quite bluntly, the white left could no longer trust the Black left to come up with candidates who could be reason- ably expected to hold up their end of the coalition ideology.

Leadership and Alliances

I tend to be optimistic about the ability of the white and Black left to provide political leadership for a city such as Berkeley. Having now had a taste of representation and political influence, it is doubtful that the student, Black and left communities will settle again into a pattern of allowing the conservatives and moderates to dominate city policy . However, it is equally clear that a method must be found to defuse the all-too-frequent divisiveness that ethnicity introduces into political discourse. Coalition will continue to depend upon the ability of individuals and groups with different interests to come together in a joint effort to achieve their respective goals through the exercise of political power and influence. This necessitates, on the face of it, a willingness to sub- ordinate from time to time one's personal opinions, predilections and garden variety principles for the good of the overall coalition . Doctrinaire individuals can neither build nor maintain coalitions, regardless of race or political per- suasion. Doctrinaire individuals will often play along with others who are building a coalition, hoping to reap some temporary personal advantage from the asses ciation ; but they always, in the end, work to the destruction of the coalition . I tend to face political problems from a left perspective for the simple reason that I believe that only with the kind of fundamental change offered by the left can the basic problems faced by Blacks in the country be successfully and expeditiously addressed. Being one of an ethnic group that represents some l5 percent of the total population in the nation, I have an obvious interest in looking for political alliances that can result in electoral majorities for candidates who share the basic economic and political interests of my identity group. As a Black professional, and one who has had opportunities that the vast majority of Slacks in the country have been denied, I feel a special obligation to this majority to serve its interests, rather than the interests of my own economic and social class. I feel obligated to vote or work against my own personal interest if this serves the interests of most Blacks and other minorities and poor people in this country. As a consequence, 1 could never enter a political alliance with a group that worked against those interests, regardless of whether the alliance would benefit me personally. For practical and ideologica! reasons, the white left needs an alliance with Blacks and other ethnic minorities. For practical if not ideological reasons, Blacks need the alliance with the white left. As more and more Blacks are ed ucated and grow in political sophistication, the Black community will become less concerned with Black faces per se, and more concerned with the issues and politics of those who would represent their interests. When this occurs, it will not be possible for Black and white moderates and conservatives to sell that political alliance to the Black community. Just as it does not make sense nat- ionally (Negroes for Nixon being the most recent example that comes to mind), it does not make sense locally. We have seen that in Berkeley the alliance between the Black community and the left was set back significantly by what I have chosen to view as aberrant behavior--by accidents and circumstances not likely to be repeated. In the neighboring community of Oakland, Black, white and Brown political or- ganizations are working together very effectively, being assisted by an absence of much of the ideological underpinning that is nourished so well in Berkeley soil.

Observations an BaBey's Style

The Bailey syndrome not only influenced the ability of the left to organize politically, but it most definitely influenced the ability of the left to present itself as able to govern the city in an effective and respectable manner. It is my opinion that the success of the recall election and the results of the 1973 council race wherein only one of the radical four (Ying Lee Kelley) was elected, was as much attributable to Bailey's style as to the substance ofhis politics. The issues that Bailey fought for: affirmative action, greater community input and representation, accountability of managers to the council, police accountability and community control of police policy, improved delivery of service to minority communities, an end to the war in Southeast Asia and an end to im- perialistic policies in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere--all these were issues calculated to gain rather than lose support among the majority of Berkeley voters. But Berkeley voters on the left pride themselves in being not only pro- gressive but humane, civil toward minorities, and basically non-discriminatory and without prejudice. Bailey challenged the very character of his apposition, and was so sweeping in his denunciations that at one tune or another he in- sulted nearly everyone. It is not customary political discourse to comment that one's opponent in a campaign or in an argument or on a vote is "an evil man." Most civil political discourse skirts the issue of the other person's character, and challenges that person's politics or other objective position. My sense is that D'Army violated this rule, and tended to make political arguments very personal. To this I attribute the dedication that Wilmont 3weeney gave to his recall. So the spectre presented was that of a radical politician who would attack the moderate-to-conservative Black councilman as "Uncle Willie," the moderate mayor as the city's "chief pig," and the fellow radical councilwoman as "spokesperson for the white ruling cuss," all in public and with equal venom. Again, my desire here is to be analytical and descriptive rather than judgmental. The argument can well be made that the desire for "good government" and the respect for the "kid gloves" approach only allow the entrenched poli- tical forces to mask their real intention of maintaining the status quo against the onslaught of the political newcomer, who must try to overcome through extraordinary zealousness the political ground that centuries of deprivation and institutionalized racism have taken from him. Nonetheless, it is my sense that a reaction was present, and was a factor in the political response to Bailey's style. {By this reaction I mean a desire to return to a political style that did not embrace personal vilification, rancor, long acrimonious meetings, and perpetual conflict among individuals and factions. It was also a reaction away from a spirit of ideology and innovativeness that said, "Give the radicals a chance," and toward a more conservative, cautious, good government approach.) As a final example of 8ailey's style, Berkeley as a city that had made great efforts toward a fair housing ordinance in the early 60's and a good faith attempt at totally integrating its schools through a massive busing program, Bailey characterized as being "worse than Mississippi." Democratic politics de- pends upon a level of civility in public debate that does not admit this lower level of characterization, particularly in public debate. I suspect that Berkeley, being a political community in the upper ranges of civility and sophistication, could only find such behavior abhorrent, regardless of its source. Bailey's failure to observe these rules of civility became the left's failure, and being tarred with a common brush, the left was to suffer in future elections . CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS ON THE "WHY" OF A BLACK/MODERATE COALITION IN BERKELEY

It has been my experience in Berkeley that for the Slack politician the question of with which white political faction to coalesce is perhaps the key factor that determines his overall political direction. Given the traditional disinclination of the Black community and the Black politician to begin with a political view of the world, how one ends up philosophically can be dictated by the most fundamental consideration: Where does campaign money come from? Black politicians in Berkeley have traditionally looked for those resources that are most readily accessible, and generally these have been in the white moderate and conservative political communities .

Demands of the Radicals

This analysis requires some explanation. It has been my experience that the white left exacts a rather emotional price from candidates, candidates' strategists, and campaign workers for the opportunity to participate, or coalesce, in its political activities.* Usually the issues developed on the white left are intellectually demanding. They tend to be very intricate, often abstract, and invariably controversial . While the white conservatives talk politics in readily understandable terms, their politics being basically civics textbook politics, the white leftists will talk politics in terms also based on the civics text but liberally supplemented by material and ideas that often are not taught in even the most sophisticated graduate schools--those of Mao, Fanon, Fidel, G. Wright Mills, and so on. Because many of the ideas drawn from such esoteric sources are so unfamiliar and the discussions of them are so abstract, many Blacks will dismiss the discussions as so much rhetoric, and will become very impatient with the person or political movement that trafftcks in it. The same may be said of the white left's insistence upon the cult of participatory Democracy. While one might think that Blacks, having been traditionally excluded from the political process by insufficient Democracy would be heavily sympathetic toward a movement that offered more Democracy, this is rarely the case. In Berkeley, Blacks have been conspicious in the large

*In response to a question, the writer added : The process of developing very detailed exhaustive and comprehensive platforms, of deciding whether to support a communist, a Trotskyite, a Marxist or a Maoist (with all the shades of difference in between), the extensive interviewing of candidates, the large public nominating conventions, the commitment to community participation and openness-all these taken togethez can be frustrating and certainly emotionally draining. At least I've always found it so, and I have a pretty heavy commitment, even ideologically, to the process. white left political gatherings more by their absence than by their presence. I think it fair to say that Blacks are impatient with these large democratic forums. The implicit demand by the white left that Blacks participate in the forums as part of the price for participating in their coalition makes these whites propor- tionately less "accessible" to Blacks looking for whites to coalesce with.

Attraction of the Moderates

The attraction of the moderate/conservative alliance is that it offers a possibility of winning without any of these difficulties. In Berkeley, to win an election requires either money or bodies. The white left, being younger and poorer, must rely on a sophisticated political operation depending upon inten- sive voter registration, propagandizing, precinct work, getting out the vote, and multiple event fundraising activity--all of which require commitment, a certain amount of enthusiasm, and people . The moderate-conservative group can escape the messiness of all this by paying for expensive mailings that carry its political message into the homes of every resident of the city in a neat, sophisticated, pro- fessionally prepared package . One prominent Berkeley Black politician summed up the situation very neatly: "When you decide to make a decision relative to what slate to run on, you decide to either go with the people who can put a lot of troops in the street, or you ease on over to the people with the money." He made it clear that his choice was to ease on over to the people with the money. (Given an issue that strikes at their guts, moderates will take to the streets, such as in the Bailey recall effort. I submit that this is the exception rather than the rule . The rule is that they sit at home and campaign with their money.) I have also come to the conclusion, not. popular in many parts of the Black community, that the tendency of the white left to expect performance from Blacks that is on a par with their own, contributes to the strain between Blacks and the white left, and leads to the anomalous situation where some Blacks feel more comfortable in political alliances with white conservatives than with white radicals. In one respect, I appreciate this attitude on the part of the white left, for I regard it as a rejection of paternalism and a willingness to com- up," pete with Blacks on merits. "Ante they seem to be saying, and keep saying, in a variety of different contexts. This sometimes can lead to debilitating hostil- ity within a political organization, particularly when the whites can deliver, and the Blacks cannot, for whatever reason. These constant challenges result in the white left being branded "racist" by some segments of the Black community, which still prefers relationships that do not demand equality of performance, and where #here exists a "ten point veterans' preference for failure." (To para- phrase the argument: Blacks have been oppressed for four hundred years, so we understand why they can't show up for precinct work, get-out-the-vote, etc . America's racial wars have produced plenty of veterans.)

A Look at the Future

This is a passing phenomenon within Black political organization . It results, I believe, from a past inability to perform on a par with whites, which resulted from a lack of resources and opportunity among Blacks. I regard the serious political work and thinking that go an within the post-1968 Black Caucus as a gearing up for the challenge of being an equally effective component in the left coalition . I also note the emergence in the past several years of Black neighborhood and community organizations, some spawned by citizens' interest in the Community Action Agency and Model Cities programs. They tend to be non-traditional in their style of advocacy, and have been willing to become a part of organized coalition political activity: The Ocean View Committee, Black Senior Citizens and Young Adult Programs, and other neighborhood groups that see moderate politics, of whatever hue, as "ripping off' the Black, the poor, the elderly, the unemployed and other traditionally "oppressed" groups within the city . The Niagara Movement Democratic Club, which comprises both Berkeley and Oakland Blacks, has emphasized the development of hard-nosed political skills in the way of precinct analysis, organizing, get-out-the-vote techniques, fundraising, voter registration. Perhaps the white left was premature in being so exacting, and perhaps they deserve the criticism they have received for being in- sensitive and presumptuous in their relationships with and attitudes toward Blacks. For the future this will probably be of little moment, for so long as the level of Black educational and professional attainment continues upward, the consequence for Black political organization is that when the challenge is posed, Slacks will be able to meet it.