Insurrection City

From the start, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy's lax grip on leadership of the Poor People's Campaign has been steadily slipping away. Last week his hold relaxed to the point of paralysis. While Resurrection City afforded Washington an unseemly display of backbiting and verbal pyromania, the protest movement's leaders purged the man who, above all, might have given their faltering cause realistic direction.

Bayard Rustin, invited by Abernathy to make order of the chaos surrounding the upcoming mass march June 19, took his task seriously and responsibly, setting out to organize a peaceful demonstration and asking the support of all "Americans of good will." When he followed by issuing a manifesto of reasoned, possibly attainable goals, his measured moderation proved too much for the conflict-ridden Abernathy inner circle.

Rustin's economic charter called for a million new public-service jobs for the poverty-stricken, passage of an omnibus housing bill, extension to farm workers of labor bargaining rights, more funds for welfare budgets and emergency food programs for the poor. Abernathy's fiery new demonstration director, Hosea Williams, sneered that Rustin's manifesto was an unauthorized "bunch of foolishness." Rustin asked for Abernathy's support. It was not forthcoming, and he quit. Abernathy had already named a replacement, and Rustin's departure left Resurrection City to ranters.

While Williams tried fecklessly to provoke mass arrests, bending the campaign toward civil disobedience, Resurrection City's population shrank to a minimum estimate of only 500. Violence was rising, vituperative militance was alienating liberals, who are Abernathy's only real source of mainstream support, and the pretender to the role of Martin Luther King was letting the Poor People's Campaign wallow into disorder, disintegration and self-defeat.

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