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News-Review - September 23, 1971 THE NEWS-REVIEW PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY 930 Gwinnett Street - Augusta, Georgia Mallory K. Millender Editor and Publisher Mailing Address: Box 953 Augusta, Ga. Phone 722-4555 Application to mail at Second Class postage rates is pending at Augusta, Ga. 30901 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Pay able in Advance One Year in Richmond County $2.50 tax incl. One Year elsewhere $3.00 tax incl. ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT Classified Advertising Deadline 12 noon On Tuesday Display Advertising Deadline 12 noon On Tuesday Office Hours -10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mon, thru. Fri. "Politics, Power And Blacks” THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL POWER By Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm In the 1972 elections, I expect a new generation of Black political leaders to emerge, signalling the beginning of true maturity and effectiveness for Black political power in the United States. Many struggles lie ahead of us, but many victories have been won. The significant fact about the Black Caucus Congressional Dinner recently was not so much the presence of 13 Black members of the House of Representatives, although their number was impressive and gratifying; it was the presence in the ballroom of Washington’s leading convention hotel of hundreds of local and state elected officials. Meeting together as they were, truly meeting for the first time, I observed that they gained for the first time a feeling of their own numbers and potential strength, and a sense of the deep identity of their needs and goals, cf the experiences and purposes that they shared regardless of their party affiliation or the section of thy country from which they came. The time at last has come, for Black leaders to step forward and take the share of political power to which the numbers of their people, and the centuries of repression they have suffered entitle them. There are no obstacles in our path that cannot be overcome. But there are some political facts of life that we have learned along the hard road to where we now are that must not be forgotten. One is expressed in my favorite political maxim, which I learned from Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.” Rhetoric will not win us any elections. Black leaders in the past, like white reformers today, have usually substituted talk for action because all they were able to do was talk. Action is possible now, and action is what we need. Every candidate who steps forward to offer himself or herself as a leader must be subjected to this test: “We don’t care what you say. Rhetoric is easy; talk is cheap. What have you done? What are you doing? What do you intend to do?” Aspirants for political office will face one of two situations: either their area will be predominantly black or it will contain a significant proportion of other races. Whether the challenge is to unite a divided Black community behind him, or to build a coalition of varied racial and class interests, his approach must be basically the same. If he shows he is a person who knows and understands what the needs of his community are, and if he has a program to meet them, he will deserve to win, and he will win. The needs of Black people today are greater, and they cry out to be met because they have been cruelly denied for so long. But the needs of all people are the same. In the south and in the north, Black candidates who feel these needs and offer a plan for meeting them have begun to appear and to prevail at the ballot boxes. Although the Black vote may be the base of their success, it is not often the whole basis. They are winning elections because they are the people who have made other people, Black, Brown, white, Red and Yellow, feel and know that they offer hope, real leadership, and a plan for action. This is what I meant when I said at the outset that Black political power is entering a period of maturity, and that 1972 is or can be the year that will mark the beginning of this period. Perhaps I should point out two important qualifications to what I have said. One mark of this maturity be a realization that racial appeals, as such, of any kind. ' usually fail at the polls and deserve to fail. I mean on the one hand the shallow appeal for Black support that rests on a bush hairdo, a dashiki and a line of angry talk, and on the other hand the sellout of true Black interests and demands through concessions and compromises to the existing interests, those who have in the past controlled the business and political power and the money. The time is past for Black power charades, and the time has come to reject leaders who deceive the people and play ball with the old establishments. True political effectiveness is now within our reach, we do not need to play the old games any longer. But we must remember, finally, the second qualification to which I referred, and that is that the acquisition of political power always has and always will rest on organization and unrelenting effort. By this I mean first of all that voting power does not exist until voters are registered and actually vote. The success of Black candidates in many southern areas is the payoff from years of year-round work on registration drives. The vitality of the Black electorate in the south has begun to appear in sharp contrast to the lethargic, apathetic character of urban Black communities in the north, like Harlem; Bedford-Stuyvesant and South Jamaica. Every black social, civic, religious and political organization must grasp this fact and make it a number one, continuing priority of their programs to support and work actively in registration campaigns. Register and vote register and vote this theme must be stressed night and day, everywhere and at all times. This is the sine qua non without which we can do nothing. Before the black vote becomes the power that it can be, there must be a black vote. I have not mentioned political parties, because I do not think party labels have much meaning any longer for black Americans. We have been deceived and betrayed equally be politicians of both parties in the past and will be in the future if we permit ourselves to be. We must be independent of parties, ready to work with and for any party, or against any party, ready also to go outside existing parties and work alone or with any other groups with whom we can find a genuine unity of aims and build an effective coalition. Until we do these things, we might as well just continue to stand around and sing, “we shall overcome.” YOU COULD USE THIS SPACE TO SELL MOST ANYTHING FOR $2.50 Page 2 YOU COULD USE THIS SPACE TO SELL MOST ANYTHING FOR $2.50 “Nor has there been any access to any significant statistical information by repre sentatives of the minority community,” the Task Force said. “Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher tells us that all his department can do is coordinate, and that there is no information forthcoming from the agencies. Compare this to what Mr. Fletcher’s department does to ‘coordinate’ enforcement of the Wage and Hour Act and the Davis-Bacon Act, which are of im portance to white unions. Last year there were 2,835 government employees and over s4l million deployed in this effort.” The task force pointed out that Project Build, a federally-funded training effort sponsored by the Greater Washington Central Labor Council with Labor Depart ment funds, had failed to get a single black graduate accepted for membership in any Washington-area construction union. “This training program will be a dead end for every black trainee since none will be accepted into white unions and without union membership will be unable to find work in the construction trades until the federal government effectively enforces the Washington Plan,” the task force said. If the Washington and Philadelphia Plans have proved difficult to enforce, even more difficult to enforce are so-called “home town” solutions that the Labor Department began promoting after meeting resistance to the Philadelphia Plan. If a city’s voluntary plan is approved by Labor, the city gets money for job training programs and con tinues to receive federal construction funds. To encourage cities to develop these home town plans, Labor has threatened to impose plans on cities that fail to come up with their own approaches. Washington was the first of these. Os 102 cities designated as target areas for hometown plans, approximately 30 have come up with acceptable solutions. On May 12 the Labor Department announced it was preparing plans for Atlanta and St. Louis in the absence of local action. A government plan was imposed June 3 on San Francisco, which has a hometown plan that is not working. On June 4 the Labor Department an nounced that it was imposing a plan on the city of Chicago, where the “hometown” plan had collapsed and $94,500 was missing from the plan account, representing a total of 12 forged checks. Aiderman Fred D. Hubbard, a Daley Democrat representing the all-black Second Ward and project director, has been charged with forging a $20,000 check drawn on the account. The Chicago Plan began with high hopes. The Labor Department provided $824,000 for administration and training which was expected to give immediate union member ship to 1,000 blacks and Puerto Ricans and apprenticeship training to an additional 3,000 minority youths. The AFL-CIO lauded the plan as a model that should be used for future negotiations in other cities. Despite the enthusiasm generated by the plan, it never got off the ground. One difficulty was Mayor Richard J. Daley, who became interested in the negotiations when he saw that his Model Cities funds might be tied up because of street demonstrations by black contractors and their community allies. At stake was $35 million in Model Cities funds, with which Daley wanted no interference. The Chicago Plan placed im mense power in the hands of the mayor, giving him the swing vote on the seven member committee that oversaw administra tion of the plan. Each faction-labor, em ployer and minority coalition—had two LOOK! What’s New In Hair Styling Mr. Leon Austin’s Barber Shop Divide And Rule (This Is The Last In The Current Series) P.I.C. NEWS By Stephen Clapp, Staff Writer And Manicuring 1715 Gwinnett St (fat man's corner) Mr. Leon Austin David Cheatham John Adams members, with the seventh member being the mayor or his representative. Since five votes were needed to pass any matter, the mayor could veto any action unsatisfactory to either the contractors or the unions by adding his vote to theirs. There was constant bickering between labor and the minority community over how the numbers would be apportioned among the 19 craft unions involved. Since the plan became effective 17 months ago, 885 minority group members have begun ap prenticeship training, but few have been put to work. Last year’s construction season ended without a single minority worker on the job as a result of the plan. The city of Buffalo, N.Y., has a plan imposed by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller against the wishes of the minority com munity. On February 3, 1970, Rockefeller lifted an 11-month moratorium on state financed construction and imposed a plan on the Buffalo area. No members of Buffalo’s minority community were consulted on terms of the plan. The announcement of the plan was pre ceded by a year of community action directed toward unions and contractors’ associations. In April 1969 the Governor’s office recognized a Minority Coalition as the agent for blacks, Indians and Puerto Ricans; this group subsequently received $275,000 in manpower funds to “identify” minority applicants for training programs. That fall the Minority Coalition, the industrial unions and the contractors’ association reached tentative agreement on a plan. Five unions then refused to sign, and all negotiations were ended. Rockefeller’s response to this development was to lift the moratorium on New Town and State University construction projects valued at $135 million and impose a plan under which he claimed 4,500 minority workers would be trained and taken in by the unions over the next four years. The plan is based on the percentage of non whites in Erie County, which is only half the percentage of non-whites in the City of Buffalo. The task force that came up with the Rockefeller Plan included Peter J. Brennan, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. Bren nan, a powerful labor figure, was one of the first union leaders to throw the support of his organization behind Rockefeller’s reelec tion last year. A possible reason for Rocke feller’s desire to resume construction activities in 1970 was the fact that he had failed to carry Erie County, the most populous area of New York State outside New York City, in the two previous guberna torial elections. Rev. James T. Hemphill, leader of the Minority Coalition, has accused Rockefeller of treating Buffalo blacks as a “plantation, to accept what is given.” “The community is awaiting Governor Rockefeller to announce and fulfill his pay off to the minority community for adopting his affirmative action program,” Hemphill said recently. “The Governor was paid off by the unions, who endorsed his reelection. Rockefeller paid off the unions by delivering the ‘minority community’ to embrace union designed programs which guarantee the unions absolute control.” Backed by the NAACP, the Minority Coali tion has filed suit in federal court to halt all state and federal construction in the Buffalo area. The Coalition has petitioned President Nixon in hopes of getting the Labor Depart ment to impose a plan of its own on Buffalo. Mini-Spiritual Reflections In A Changing World BY AL IRBY Could the old Monk himself take a seat with those Black students at the Southwest institution for an hour, with that calm illuminated face, and with immovable complacency, knowing how their race had suffered in America. How would he write today with relevancy to these Afro-topped youngsters? Or what have all the changes that have come to pass in the four hundred and ninety years since he lived? Os course it was no dull age, and his was not an average life. He was contemporary with John Hus and Jerome of Prauge, Savonarola, men of very different temper from his. It was the age of the “Maid of Orleans” in France, of “The Wars of the Roses” in England. The closing years of Kempis’s life saw the fateful marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. With none of these things did the old Monk concern himself. (To Be Continued) Walking WITH DIGNITY BY Al IRBY (AMERICAN WHITES HAVE BEEN AGONIZING WITH GUILT-RIDDEN ANGUISH ABOUT ITS BLACK CITIZENS SINCE 1954) The people that are howling to the high heavens about busing are the same persons that are saying Blacks are lawless. Now they are barking up the same tree because the courts are attempting to do the right thing by Black children, so they can be able to compete in a highly technological society. Their forefathers should have accepted a relative few Blacks into the human race in 1876, before that demon “Jim Crow” had saturated America. The nefarious pitch-out at that time was when that Republican President-elect Rutherford B. Hayes, who was a devil incarnate, bargained the Blacks back into a Ku Klux Klan’s hell, far worse than chattel slavery. The honorable Reubin Askew, the courageous Governor of the State of Florida,summed up busing in a manner far superior than our President did. Mr. Askew speaking at the University of Florida summer commencement sounded like the greatest statesman heard to date on this labyrinth of busing emotionalism. The governor said, “Busing certainly is an artificial and inadequate instrument of change. Nobody really wants it - not you, not me, even Black people nor the courts. Yet the law demands, and rightly so, that we put an end to segregation in our society. We must demonstrate good faith in doing just that. In this way and in this way, only will we stop massive busing and put the divisive and self-defeating issue of race behind us once and for all.” Accordingly to the assumptions on which he habitually acts, our Governor thinks in that same manner, but he has pseudo Christian Lt. Governor going around the State spreading sanctimonious “Hell and Brimstone” against Washington, but spending every dime they hand-out up there. He would crucify Mr. Carter if he would make a straight-forward statement on this vital and moral issue. (IT IS THE NAACP VS THE CALIFORNIA TAX STRUCTURE) Richmond County’s whites had better save some of their busing venom for the above epoch case; because if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the California Supreme Court, which handed down the ruling, all restricted suburbias will be doomed. It will wreck the exclusiveness and destroy the tax mode of every bourgeois development in America. Then arrogant middle and upper white classes will be sorry, that every tax dollar was not truly and equally spread over the poor communities. Os course this case is aimed only at school taxes, but if it is upheld, who knows what will be next, street paving, utilities etc. The crux of the case is that the California Supreme Court elaborated that widely varying local communities violated the federal constitution in their outlay for schools. The court held that because the property tax bases of local communities varied so widely, the amount of money available for education also varies, particularly when translated into per-pupil expenditures. This contravenes the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. This ruling could easily be a serious weakening and maybe destructive of the principle of local government, as it is today in America, since all local principalities discriminate against the poor and the Blacks. The equal-protection clause has been abused over the years by many states, chiefly in matters of race. Since the famous U.S. Supreme Court Brown decision of 1955 which discarded “separate but equal” sanction of school segregation, the U.S. has made significant strides toward equal protection for minority groups. The California decision appears to be another giant step in this direction. White America just as well get into the mood for a truly pluralistic society, because the American judiciary from the very top is tired of pussy-footing on this senseless business of race. The federal courts are saying that state laws must not arbitrarily discriminate against any person or group not even in what they offer their citizens in municipal services. $$ WANTED $# LADIES TO BE TRAINED IN IBM KEYPUNCH. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY, WE TRAIN. ONLY SINCERE NEED APPLY. Call 724-0249 CTI FIVE POINT PROGRAM ★ J. W. SPENCE WILL WORK TO ACCOAAPLISH THE FOLLOWING: 1. PRESENT A PLAN TO HELP ELIMINATE "AGE OLD" RAILROAD PROBLEM 2. HELP PREVENT INCREASE IN YOUR CITY TAXES. 3. WORK TO LOWER OUR WATER RATES. 4. HELP PROMOTE MORE "EQUAL OPPORTUNITY" PRACTICES IN OUR CITY GOVERNMENT. 5. HELP PROMOTE MORE "NEIGHBORHOOD P.ARKS". PLUS: WILL ALWAYS VOTE ON ANY ISSUE FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF ALL OUR CITIZENS. I \ ELECT J. W. SPENCE 7TH WARD CITY COUNCIL "A MAN WITH A PROGRAM FOR YOU" YOUR VOTE AND SUPPORT WILL BE APPRECIATED