Chaos on the Left

After a summer of mounting disenchantment with President Johnson, it seemed to many left-wing groups that the time was ripe to coalesce the nation's discontent into a third national political party. But when 200 radical organizations tried to do so last week in Chicago at a convention of the Nation al Conference for New Politics, the result was a shambles.

Delegates to the five-day meeting, 2,000 strong, ranged from Trotskyites to Maoists, from bearded antiwar pro testers to barefoot poverty workers. Their slogan : "Don't Mourn for Amer ica --Organize!" Martin Luther King urged that next year's elections be turned into a "referendum on the war" -- and Pediatrician-Protester Dr. Benjamin Spock declared his willingness to head the ticket. Such ambitions were quickly doused in a power grab by 400 militant Negro delegates.

The Dictator. For two days, the Negroes haughtily segregated themselves be hind a locked door at the Palmer House. "Black Caucus," declared a sign on the door. "For Blacks Only!!!" When they finally appeared, it was with a splenetic 13-point statement, which they insisted the convention accept or they would secede. The Negroes' demands included 1) Negro membership on all committees, though they made up only about 20% of the delegates; 2) "white civilizing" committees to "humanize the savage and beastlike character of whites" as "exemplified by Lyndon Baines Johnson"; and 3) condemnation of the "im perialistic Zionist war" between Israel and the Arab states.

The white delegates complaisantly approved the statement. "Anyone who does not like it can go to hell," declared James Forman, a director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. A delegate asked: "Is this a dictatorship?" "Yes," snapped Forman, garbed in a white African tunic and flanked by bodyguards. "And I am the dictator."

The convention fizzled to an end when the militants refused to support formation of a third party presidential candidate. Instead, they agreed to run local candidates in such states as New York and Michigan -- a development not likely to cost Lyndon Johnson or his Republican opponent much sleep.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.