CE Progressive candidate president VINCENT HALLINAN Progressive candidate for president CHARLOTTA A. BASS UT Tt for vice rin ‘WEIE blood and bones” of the A Progressive party is how John Coe, Florida chairman of the eredentials committee, describ- ed the 2,500 white and Negro delegates who met for three days in Chicago to chart a course for peace, democracy and security in the 1952 election campaign. The “summer soldiers” had left; the noise and the tumult of 1948 had died down. ‘ : Present at the Ashland Audit- orium for the great Progressive ‘party convention were “the blood and bones?’ of the ’48 Philadel- phia parley: ‘‘the wind and the air has gone,” said Coe. And what “blood and bones!” They were the guts of the na- tion, the heart and soul of the America that lives from coast to coast dreaming, hoping and wanting peace. 3 In nominating Vincent Halli- nan, imprisoned labor lawyer, and Mrs, Charlotte A. Bass, her- oic Negro leader and the first Negro woman ever named by any party for the second highest post in the nation, the convention delegates made history. The de- monstrations for these two peace candidates were exultations not alone for the calibre, character and principle of the nominees: but a salute to the masses of Ameri- eans for their deep-rooted faith in liberty, for their unyielding resistance to the stampeding war parties, for their fundamental devotion to democracy. Though these masses are still enmeshed in the electoral . trap ef the twin-party machine, the delegates raised the election ban- ner of Hallinan and Mrs. Bass determined that their standard- earers would unfold the strv ‘gle for peace, Negro rights, ©” curity and democracy to heights mever before reached. These delegates had come to t and to eheer, to organize a os and to self-critically examine mistakes, They were a sober, hard-working (oh, how they worked!) untiring and de- termined gathering of Americans who had re-dedicated themselves to win the peace and retrack the nation on its democratic rails. é : The delegates from all over the nation in post-convention dis- cussions, in hotels, on trains, in buses and over hurried depot dinners, critically took stock of some of the convention’s short- comings. They admitted that the representation wasn’t ‘broad enough.” Some used the word ‘limited’? and some decried the insistence on writing into the platform every nuance on every issue which, correct as tr might be, “still can’t become the sign- post to steer the two-party voters out of their war camps.”’ An educator from New Eng- land wondered why it was ne- cessary to “cross every t and dot every i” in the platform, and an- other from Pennsylvania thought that many delegates were too de- manding in projecting and stub- bornly insisting on their advanc- ed views without regard to the vast potential voter who is not in agreement and may not be “convinced so soon.”’ “If we’re to be a big party of all kinds of people who want peace then let’s give all kinds of people who want peace in all” kinds of ways a chance to fight for peace with us,” satd a woman from the midwest. After alll, she added, ‘The platform says we should try to reach ‘all Americans of good will regardless of party or view- point?’ ” "War HE platform of the Progres- sive party may be reduced to these planks: Peace; Stop the Korean War; Offer Friendship to the Soviet Union and the Peo- ple’s Republic of China; Restore and Rebuild the United States. War is a vicious human habit, a throwback to primeval barbar- ism, an anachronism which shames religion and retards civ- ilization. Before this century war may at times have been the lesser of two evils. Since world wars have come, and the atomic age, this is no longer true. War is the supreme disaster. There is nothing worse. What did we get from the “‘war to end war’’? ‘More war. “What did we get from the “war to preserve democracy’? Less democracy. - What are we getting from this “cold war for freedom’’? Less freedom to think and more free- dom to kill. What will come when war in Korea beeomes war against China and a third world war with Japan and West Germany as our armed allies? The end of European culture and long re- turn to barbarism. Peace, then! Peace now! other convention But the overall conclusions to * the conventions were the posi-’ tive, grassroots character of the peace movement; that the Pro- gressive party was now more ma- ture, more alert and more steel- ed than ever and that from here in as Mrs. (Bass said, ‘‘Win or lose—we win.’’* : © The delegates weren’t there to barter, compromise, make deals, or retreat. They weren’t there to merely count votes. They were there to fight and deepen the break through into the Dem- ocratic-Republican camp. Listen to what some delegates said: Miss Virginia Marson, young Negro worker from New York City, who represented 250 fellow union members. A typist in the office of the Retail Drug Work- ers Union, local 1199-DPOWA, she was sent to the convention by the extra dollars ‘collected along with monthly dues by her own union members. “Most of the members of my union are white,’’ Miss Marson said, “‘but they felt that it was This America of ours, hope of our dreams, refuge of mankind, today appears as the greatest warmonger of all history, Never before in the annals of mankind has a nation planned death and destruction on the scale now en- visioned by those who rule the United States. With one burst of flame we killed at Hiroshima DR W. E. B. DuBOIS and Nagasaki 210,000 human be- ings, aged and infants, sick and helpless, unarmed and unwarn- ed, an attack as horrible as it was needless, a deed which civ- LE The daily newspapers gave their headlines. to the Republicans and the Democrats. But how much space did they give to the Progressives - the . only real alternative for peace against war? TLL important that we send’a Negro delégate to the convention of the politica] party that has nominat- ed a Negro woman for the of- fice of vice-president, and has. maintained a consistent fight for _ equal rights of my people.”’ ““T’m a hod-carrier,’ declared 25-year-old Bob Smith of Pitts- burgh, ‘and the Progressive party is the only party that’s really fighting to repeal all the ‘anti-labor laws in this country. I spent ten months in @ Pennsyl- vania jail for being on a picket line. A whole lot of working men and women have. The poli- ticians in the old parties only recognize the rights of big busi- ness, not the workers’ rights. Want any other reasons why I’m here?” Three Minnesota farmers who live near the Canadian border raised funds to go to Chicago from farm neighbors. ‘‘They knew why we wanted to go. They were happy to send us.’’ “Peace was established with the beginning of the world, and it’s up to all of us to see that i ilization will never forget. Why is this nation, the most secure from foreign attack of any in the world, being rushed to war? What is it that has lit- erally scared us to death? No foreign foe has touched or threatened our shores; no na- tion has planned our destruction. ‘Our economy is sound unless we let war upset it; our technique is unsurpassed; our ability and . is the supreme disaster’ talent have all the possibilities - of the most favored nations of men. Why then have we gohe com- pletely out of our minds and embarked on a fantastic plan of world control at the cost of na- tional impoverishment, moral ruin and the hate of mankind? We seek to assure ourselves that our present hysteria is caused solely by the designs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Re- publics, a nation separated from us by the width of the world, which has never attacked us, ne- ver taken our territory, but who. some of us believe, is so deter- _ mined to ruin us that in sheer _defehse we must ruin ourselves. There is no proof of this even. Dulles, Eisenhower, Brad- ley and Acheson admit between peace reigns on this earth,” said Margaret Robison, Negro mother shop worker, unionist and as- sistant superintendent of the Sunday School at the First Bapt ist Church of Nutley, N.J. A former radioman in the merchant marine, Z. R. Brow2 of Huntington Beach, Calif, “screened”? out of work by the FBI, denied the right to trial of face his accusers, barred from employment, was at the convel- — tion to fight for his constitu- tional right to happiness. want a job, a damned job,’’ he — said. Jerome Schorr of Detroit, said “you can’t talk about anything until you talk about peace Everything hinges on it, Thats why I’m working so hard 10 — bring the Progressive party pr gram to everybody I can. That's why I’m here.”’ Sa “Since the Mexican War of 1848,my people have been vit tims of oppression in this coul- try,”’ declared Laurence Alvare’: 28-year-old Los Angeles steel worker. ‘I am in the Progres sive party to end this oppressiO2 to win peace for my people and all Americans, to unite the 14 tion for democracy and the rights of labor.’’ “They broke up the meetins and gave me a whipping.” Thats what Dr. Livingston of Wisco? ‘sin, told of Birmingham, Ala police who attacked a group Negro workers. His trip to Chi cago was financed by the Wis consin National Negro Labor Council, and he has been 4 active organizer in the South. 2 Mississippi he was carried to th® state line and run out of thé country by plantation and KKK sheriffs, “This is the only party conven” tion I could or should be at,” }® said. 3 North, South, East, West they were the people of the UD” ited States of America who 2" forging new weapons to eat back the horror of atomic W#- poverty, jimcrow and anti-mir ority oppression, disease, fire trap and vermin-infested home’ they were going out to bring tH? truth to the entire American DP ple. — warnings that the Soviet unio® has at present no plans for W™ Leaders of industry during * past year have questioned imminence of Russian agst of sion. Whence then comes th push toward ‘war? : Back of this belief lies Bt propaganda of a group of P ness men in America who mae to revive a system of world ia dustry long since doomed tO ©” tinction. ... i of Facing a worldwide upsurse ef labor, a revolt of the i races, and a refusal to peliey that the majority of men be be poor, ignorant and sick i p der that industry and civilzatio” may progress, the United St# t has apparently placed itself the head of reaction. ..- ut The Progressive party is ye only alternative for doing ee the world must do, And that. stop War and control the Pole of corporate wealth over production of distributio® “ne” goods, and over ee truths, te! ® Excerpts from the xe speech to the Progressive tb vention in Chicago last MOP, made by Dr, W. E. B. Dube eminent author and historia” PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 1, 1952 — PAGE 0 owners — .