I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be here. I've never had such an opportunity and I think this kind of a discussion is on the agenda all over the nation. I see many friends out here. With whom I've worked through the years. And I appreciate the information Our Lady of it and agree to my understanding was that this was not a debate and informal discussion, really? And I hope that all of you will participate. As fully as possible. I did a program the other night and some of you attended. Around my FBI file and did it in such a way that it was on. It was entertaining and informative. I hope I think it was probably the first reading of an FBI file in the country with juggling and music. We have a juggling of the slippery bananas and come found him alive and trucking theater and the music singing of Judy Larson and Bell Hinckley and I read for my file. So one of the things that I what are the things that I said as we started the program I asked if there were any informers there there was silence, you know, because it was Yeah, we all of us knew one another and would work together for many years. So there was silence. And I said, well, you know in California when I work there and draft resistance we used to be able to spot them because they wore sandals with white socks because you could I in Minnesota tired to tell everybody wears those blue parkas. So you really can't tell. I recently got my FBI file and Look at it. It's right here. 442 Pages going back at 24 years bunch of a blacked-out. I want two things I want to say is that Congress protects the FBI up to this point protects the way the FBI is operated and protects the informers and we'd like to know the names of informers and how the FBI operated to a bridge political and civil rights in our country for many many years. anyway Last time I was in this room, it was to attend a party for my friend John Conlee who just walked in and so this is the second time. I'd like to start by saying that I have admired on for a long time. one of the things that I remember over the years which he did which was so admirable in the early sixties when Zavalla knee was one of the Freedom Riders went down to Mississippi weather was working for the Congress of racial equality in Florida. I think it was Zev was arrested and put in a County Jail in in Northern, Florida. And Adan went down to the prison to visit Zeb which gave a certain amount of protection. Does that civil rights workers were being beaten in the prisons of the South and I think it was very courageous and the kind of activity that that Congressional source of people ought to be doing among all other activities. And I really admire him for being among the Congress people who resisted the war for many many years voting against Appropriations to The Saigon government, but I must say. I still can't quite understand your support for a tattoo in the closing moments of the war as a matter fact I even voted for you at that point and I haven't voted since 1960. So it was a real effort on my part to do that. And I might add on for his human rights effort. I remember watching a program of William Buckley recently. Where you at on the u.s. Ambassador to Argentina and they were both criticizing Don for his efforts on behalf of human rights in Argentina. So I knew he was right in his activity. And for the activity over Korea and for the efforts to protect environmental Integrity of The Boundary Waters canoe area. And for the personal help that he's given us in our case and respect to Honeywell on the FBI many of you might know that we're suing people used to work with me in the Honeywell project are suing Honeywell and the FBI and when we first came across information that the FBI had infiltrated the Honeywell project with paid and farmers. Are we held a meeting in Walter mondale's office with staffers of Mondale Fraser and Humphrey submitted a letter. Surrounding an FBI memo that was in the Senate intelligence committee report staff report about FBI penetration of our effort and Don send a letter to attorney general Levy asking the relevant questions about that memo which was then sent to Clarence Kelly and Kelly wrote two letters to Don which were using as evidence in our case. To get to the subject. From 1950 to 1960. I worked in the dfl. Grassroots Precinct politics I worked on the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. I was a student at Macalester College. My parents were Democrats and have always voted straight Democratic tickets all their lives. However in and I voted and work for the election of John F Kennedy. But in 1961, I went on the freedom rides. and was imprisoned in the Mississippi Penitentiary along with 325 men and women black and white from all over the country. A My Life vision began to change as a result of that. following the freedom rides I was involved with an integrated Canada to Cuba peace walk inspired by the United States Invasion sponsored Invasion at the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then I began to work. Full-time against the war as many of you did for an 11-year. Started the Honeywell project in 1968 and coordinated it for the next 6 years. So I've come to understand the following things. About our political reality and I'm going to use a little bit of rhetoric here. I hope you'll excuse me, but it's awful hard not to I think we live in a political economy. Our political social philosophical system, which one could describe is capitalism? And the operative organizational unit in capitalism where the power rear really resides in my view is the multinational corporation. I've come to the opinion. That we've got a class system in the United States. We have a working class and we've got a ruling class. And it is a ruling class which controls the multinational corporation. And it seems to me. the both Republicans and Democrats essentially agree to the assumptions of capitalism as The Guiding philosophical a background and in what you do politics remember for example meeting with James Banger who was board chairman of Honeywell at the time in I think it was 1969. And baker said to me I'm for the eighteen-year-old vote. And I said well Jim I know and he always used to call me Marvel, whatever. He called me Mark. I called him Jim, you know get away from that sort of paternalism. He said I'm for the eighteen-year-old vote. And I said I understand why you people control both political parties. You give to both the Bangerz gave to Mondale and I'm sure they gave to Nixon. That which is done all across the board throughout the country. And you're trying to get people into both parties. It doesn't matter which and although I think your Allegiance goes with the Republicans essentially. And bigger sets me know I have one vote. You have one vote. Doesn't that make us equal and I said no gym. Who do you think we are, you know, you're on the board of Chase Manhattan bank, which puts you into the big time with the Rockefellers. You're on the president's committee for economic development. You're on the board of the phone company, which is an AT&T affiliate. You're on the board of Northwestern Bank systems, which controls banking in the sixth state area. Steve Keating is on the board the First Bank systems and there's a member of First Bank systems on your board Bruce State and chairman of Dayton Hudson Corporation is on the Honeywell board and kings on the Dayton Hudson board, Don naira president of Northwest Airlines is on the Honeywell board and bangers on the board of Northwest Airlines, you control the cultural institutions in town in a certain way. You're on the board of the symphony the Guthrie Theater and so on so it hadn't been there was chairman of the University of Minnesota Foundation which invest A Corporate Park corporate money and a university portfolio. What do you mean one vote one person? We're all equal. Well, the discussion ended at that point. All right. So that's the point of that I wanted to make. Further capitalism and Plies and a leader ruling class control of the means of production distribution Transportation communication and education entertainment as well Sports as well. And capitalism inevitably am I view leads? To imperialism Vietnam chili the Philippines the Dominican Republic are ran and other atrocities that have been committed over the years by the American government. In the name of the American people with taxpayers money. I have the opportunity last night. To listen to Isabel letelier whose husband was murdered in, Washington. Orlando letelier had been in the in day cabinet in Chile. He was also Chilean ambassador to the United States. He was working in Washington with the institute for policy studies. and at the direction of General Pinochet Who's the dictator of Chile today? He and rowney Moffett. The work that the policy Institute were murdered bomb placed in the I-beam of their car Isabel said last night. That she and Michael Moffitt. Had to witness Pinochet walking into the White House have lobsters with Carter and the others at a meeting of OAS leadership around the Panama Canal treaty. The justice department has an investigation going there's a grand jury, but I hope people will will get behind this to find out to prove who the murderers were. Not only of Orlando letelier, but an American citizen routing on Moffett. Further I think that under capitalism. Although not exclusively capitalism because these kinds of things happened in socialist systems also racism and sexism are endemic. Another point I want to make is that full employment under capitalism has never achieved except during war. When Democrats or Republicans talk about phone format, they're talking about 3% employment and we know that 3% really means eight or 10% especially in the ghettos and among women. Democracy for most people means pulling a lever every two to four years and 50% of the American people do not vote and I think friends for some very good and valid reasons. And I think under this the kind of system. We're operating on at this fine Artist as second-class Citizens poets writers painters musicians and the rest. Further it's a fact of life according to my experience at the poor and minorities cannot rely on the ballot to advance their interest. The only means they have of securing Justice in America is disruptive protest. The will to reform in America has always come as a result of pressure from Below. Rent strikes crime and Civic does disruptions are the politics of the poor. And working people in the thirties one concessions because of their capacity to disrupt to disrupt the economy and by virtue of their growth and numbers as they were organizing the unorganized. And we have to remember that during this. On at least 160 occasions from 1902 and to the late thirties federal troops were used to put down strikes. Big labor gave up disruption at the point of grievance and took on the role of pacifying the rank-and-file. And now we see Nene as the prime example of this kind of philosophy. They channeled in Greek urn of Insurgency into the sedate Waters of electoral politics. I mean, we've got the example of sweetheart contracts signed by the steel unions. The union contracts at this point man uninterrupted production to the companies no more Wildcat strikes. If we turn for a moment to the southern Civil Rights Movement, where did the changes come about they came about the thousands of people taking the streets of the country. And we saw please using water hoses and clubs against unarmed individuals who buy a large. We're operating off the ethic of non-violence. Then we saw the legislation and when the legislation came There were Riders attached to it. The Civil Rights Act that was passed during the Johnson years had a riot act attached to it out of that came the Chicago 8 trial. I remember another thing about those years because I was in the south from 1961 until about 1964. I remember the Snick Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee conference in Washington in 1963 where Bob Zellner it was a snake field secretary stood up and he said we better begin to question where our money is coming from and what kind of strings are attached to that money because money was coming from the Rockefellers and the Kennedys the various foundations. a number of cars That they were using for the field secretaries. They had Watts lines and rather sophisticated equipment and their offices in Atlanta. And what Bob was saying is that maybe we're being pushed into voter registration and out of the streets. Because he felt those were the kinds of strings that came along with that big money. So what I'm saying is that if there's to be profound change in America. It will come from below as it's always come. It'll come through disruption are by numbers of people and when that disruption begins to get organized into a lobbying effort. The effort is dissipated. Atlanta task I think is to unite the underemployed and the unemployed in a class-conscious movement for socialist revolution in America. So again what I'm saying? Is that no fundamental change for the benefit of minorities or working-class Americans has been initiated? from within the two party system only when this disruption comes by masses of people does Congress the executive and the Cards begin to react to it and ways designed to co-opt what the people are doing and saying Vietnam is an excellent example of that. I think the operative factor in ending the war. first and foremost was the fact that the Vietnamese people the Cambodian people and the lotion people carried on the most heroic resistance the world's ever seen. Giving us there for the time to look at ourselves as Americans and look at our system. And began to do the things that might help to bring the war to an end. It was the street demonstrations the tax resistance the draft resistance the draft card raids a burning of draft cards the military resistance, which we initiated by virtue of GI coffee houses projects like the Honeywell project the effort against Dow Chemical and which initially created the fermented Brock broke the consensus that Johnson was talking about in the early sixties. There's a United consensus behind the war that gave rise to the McCarthy movement the movement of Peace candidates and in my view the efforts that Don and other people of good will talk to finally end the war with a lobbying effort in the latter stages conducted by Hayden van. Daan many American friends service committee clergy and laity being extra. Only important to cut off a tutu in the ladder 8 years last thing I want to say. Is that my experience? With the Honeywell effort was so Illuminating. It's something I'll never forget and I'll never forget Vietnam. I think wherever I speak from now on the rest of my life. I'll always bring up Vietnam. Because it seems to me that in Vietnam. we've got the mirror of what America has been is today and will forever be during that six-year period in which we were operating intensively around Honeywell. Trying to do really three things. We got the kind of insights that I'm I'm talking about right now. Just for a moment. We were trying to do these three things stop the production. The anti-personnel fragmentation Bombs all weapons and weapon systems that were made at Honeywell. I always bring a bomb with me so you can feel it. These bombs are exploding today all over Vietnam. Weather unexploded mines that farmers peasants working in the fields are stepping on them coming across them. billions of dollars Have been produced in St. Louis Park in Hopkins plants. Current weapons production research and development at Honeywell is 420 million this year alone. So we were trying to stop. The production and use of these kinds of weapons second thing that we were trying to do at that. What's to get a piece conversion going to goods and services that people needed rather than weapons that create inflation, which the American people are still facing today 200 billion dollars put into genocide. And we're facing the results of that inflation today. a piece conversion To be created without loss of jobs and paid for out of corporate profits because the average profit margin on weapon systems is 56% the third thing that we were talking about or trying to get a debate around. Was the concept of worker and community control of the nation's corporations. And I think that's going to be a discussion on the agenda in America for many years to come. What a rate during this process we came to understand where the Press was at in the Twin Cities. They only covered one part of that program the first part stop the production of the anti-personnel weapons. And never only rarely covered the other two ponds so that the working people on the assembly line six thousand of them working in three shifts at st. Louis Park and Hopkins plans. Thoughts of themselves here come these crazy kids to take our jobs away. Secondly, it was rare to see publicly elected officials in the state of Minnesota stand up and talk about daily death coming out of Honeywell. Rare, we saw a few Bill Ochoa. For example, when he was in the state legislature came to our demonstrations and spoke later. Alan spier and Phyllis Kahn and some others add Faline on the city console. meanwhile, Honeywell was laying off something like one third of the workforce many of them in weapons production because weapons production is cyclical unemployment. A 1968 Honeywell at 680 million dollars into weapons production. It went down to 420 million. A lot of people got laid off. We were talking about that and there was no response coming from the dfl party. about this Essentially, these are the reasons I'll just stand with Adam and Anna along thing about Halloween. These are the reasons that a person like myself becomes a socialist. Call Donna kind of a cross between an anarchist in a socialist. Well, I land there except to say that the sense This Is Halloween. I'm announcing my candidacy for the US Senate. but thank you very much for introducing our subject with with such eloquence and with so many anecdotes and descriptions of your own involvement in issues of enormous concern. Concern that ought to be shared more widely than it is today. I think I have to confess that I had some sort of political science lecturer alongside for a graphic description of somebody else and difficulties facing America none the last let me give you a sort of abstract conceptual notion the doubts and then I'd like to finish by just touching on a few of the issues it marvez raise because if you go to the very heart of a of the debate about which way our nation not to go. At the beginning I thought maybe this was a debate and is I sat down the road at my notes. It was clear to me that it wasn't because you haven't argued that people should not be involved in politics. What you've argued is a people need to do more than that if they're going to affect change and I have no quarrel with that if there's anything is characteristic of American politics today it is it it's it's responsive to pressure and in some respects us a crisis oriented type of government. We wait for a crisis then we react and the crisis may be produced by natural events, or maybe the Christ is produced by the demonstration in the street, but it is a government that is responding to pressures which I don't find particularly attractive. I this is one of the big difficulties I find American government today. Will any event let me go first to the question of what they're all isn't it? But it's a party in the United States today. This is sort of the political science approach. I suppose it but it is the idea that Is it at the organized aggregation of interest groups when people get togethers? We are here this morning. It was shared values and shared perspectives finding organization a power in the political field that we don't find if we stay at home and simply write letters to people. And people and political life know this they instinctively fear or I've become more aware of organized concern about an issue. Then from Individual responses are or Communications. So we have let's take now the Democratic party nationally a whole series of kind of aggregated interest groups. The farm groups the labor groups consumer groups. And each of them are potentially a political party under themselves, but of course under our system a two-party system, which I think is a driven consequence consequence. Groovin by the electoral process itself. They have to aggregate into the larger party system in which you make your compromising your trade off so that the farmers get some kind of income support program labor gets labor reform law that we try to do something for the consumer and conservation and environment and if you look at the Democratic platform, you see the consequence of the bargaining and accommodation of compromises, which take place Well, we have a new phenomenon in the United States today. I think it's new that is the growth of interest groups that lie outside the political party system the Ralph Nader organization and common cause environmental groups to human and civil rights organizations. Peace groups in my impression is that there's been an enormous increase in these interest groups, which don't four-part to function within the political frame are correctly. They organized in their own right? They have their own issues and a pound away at the political process and the governmental process as best they can. Well, I'm a great supporter of this kind of activity. I myself again my political life being active in a liberal veterans organization and I watched people come into politics from Liberal veterans groups are from the world Federalist are from the students for Democratic action or the Ada. Now what seems clear to me that and still is today when people come to the political life from an interest group where they have been primarily attracted by the challenge of public policy. They make far better and effective participates participants in the political process. I would contrast those with others who find themselves involved in politics because they like the socializing they like the access to power if they're going to run for office. They like the influence knows they like some of the trappings of politics, but they're not driven by the underlying concern of for Public Policy so that as a source of recruitment for American politics, I think the interest group serve and enormously important function Well, so for the individual the choices that are multiple you can be active in politics, or you can be marching with Marv or you can do both. And my own ideas for those were prepared to devote the time and energy doing both is the best way to accomplish the kind of change you like to see. One of the things I've come to believe is that the fact that the debate over Vietnam took place in the Democratic Party. Was enormous influx of people into the Democratic party process? He's across the country is likely to profound reshape. Politics in this nation for several decades. I think one of the consequences is at the Republican party for decades is going to have great difficulty because the young people who are challenged by the issues of the war moved into the Democratic party and many of them have remained not all certainly but in both the legislature and Congress now, we have people who came into Politics As a result. Of their concern over the war as well as concern over other issues. Well that then leaves I think the choice up to each of us to work. This question out is we find our time and interest permitted to do. So, let me know turn Howard a one or two issues that Marlborough is because I think they're for me very profound issues. the question of how government works Needs to be thought about more. I think then we often think about it. I find that the political party ultimately is the key link. The relates the interest of the public or the citizenry to government it's the mechanism for the transmission of ideas. It organizes ideas into policy. It recruits candidate selects people. So the political parties a very vital link In the United States, we are very weak political parties. And I think this is one reason we've had the growth of the interest groups. I've not found in the political parties the expressions and the interest in deferment that satisfy them until they they form their own organization. well Which way for America one way would be to build stronger political parties and 1/2 within those parties the capability of dealing with challenges to the Future more effectively than we do today. Another ways to move away from the crisis or pressure response at the MARSOC for long-term planning to the extent that that's feasible within a Democratic Society. But how far do we want to go in this direction? Sorry, I asked you to think for a moment about the question who the secretary-general is of the of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. If my Recollections right is mr. Right now, although I think you know, I have some other offices as well. Then think who the secretary of the democratic party in the United States. Start a bush. In a way these people occupy the same position in the party hierarchy benchley is to the Secretary General of the Communist Party in the hierarchical scheme. Well in the Soviet Union that mr. Brezhnev is the leader. Dorothy bush has a name that one only intends to encounters you watch the call of the role at the national conventions every four years. Which way do we want it? The thing that characterizes the socialist countries that I'm aware of them by that those countries. I mean those in which the state controls the means of production it is at the political party has become Paramount to a point where it in his own right has become highly authoritarian the distinguishing characteristic of the party system in the Soviet Union is that it's a top-down directed operation. The input from the bottom is almost zero in any kind of sense that we would recognize within our party system here in the United States. Well what I find a little ironic then is it some who say and I'm not out to put curtains tomorrow, but there are some who would say stay out of politics. Do only the streets thing and I'll let's bring about then the Socialist Revolution. Well, what one will do in that case of substitute a week party system for one which is all-encompassing and is so highly structured and powerful and that you've lost the right for diversity of use. You've lost the right to free speech and the Soviet system. We had a a mathematician we've been let out of the Soviet Union. He's been put in the mental hospital there and give him some rather tough drugs. But he got out finally sores all the pressure from professional groups like The International mathematics and other professional societies, but he testified before the subcommittee I chair which is in the human rights area. He said he was a Marxist. Stay Albany was a democratic Marxist. He believed in the kind of pluralistic system. and but his views were simply intolerable and on to the existing power structure in the Soviet Union, so they they avoided their legal system. This is where the question of the role of the political party has to be examined with care revolutions will produce change. But the change has been accompanied in most cases that I'm aware of by highly authoritarian political regimes which may 1500 years perhaps longer gradually evolve into a bar pluralistic open a political system. think of Watergate think of Richard Nixon and ask him if you want him in charge of the means of production in the United States. That's one contrast or think of Leonid Brezhnev. Do you want him in charge of the means of production by these are not attractive Alternatives and it's one of the reasons that I tend to opt in my thinking about the economic and social Organization for more local control from our community control at rather than for highly centralized State control because if you're going to have to take control, you got to have strong political parties, if you're going to avoid the water gates and you're likely to have such strong political parties that you're going to have something like the Soviet model or others others of the highly highly illogical and Harley rigid and Doctrine are the systems. Well, I think there's a need for change in this country. I'm distressed with the unemployment because it is not visited equally on all parts of our society but falls disproportionately on the poor on minority's on women. And we pay a very high price for this very high unemployment. I think within eight more open and democratic system. We can change this but why option would be closed on this to build a stronger party system? I spent much of my last 10 years working on this I succeeded as you know, George McGovern is head of the Reform Commission. I don't often claim credit for cuz I'm not sure I should but the fact the national party has a charter I think is perhaps due to the initiatives. I took it that time the fact that we have midterm conventions conferences with Chevy up to really be tested flowed from that. We've tried to open up the system, but we need now to begin to build a stronger party system. Got have a national party and it really has working groups on the problems of Healthcare on Full Employment. There ought to be adequate professional staff. And when a Democrat is elected the White House there ought to be a whole assortment of highly trained professionals who've worked within the party system who then can move into the executive branch and carry on with the policies that have been developed through open public discussion within the party system. The national party needs better financing. I think we got to go to a membership system of a very open kind of the national party, but we ought to build a national party as a mechanism for translating the challenges to our nation in to Attica public policy responses. We don't have that now. And it's it's going to be a long-term struggle, but on that ground alone. I would urge everyone who likes to working interest groups and I hope all of you do to also take a part of your time to help strengthen the party system in this country. I think it is the way to go to keep our society open to keep a pluralistic to keep a democratic and yet to cure some of the very real social evils that we face as a national Community. Thank you very much.