People’s Progressive Convention

About 300 people gathered in Ypsilanti, Michigan on August 21-23, 1992 for the People’s Progressive Convention. By the end of the weekend, the convention had achieved its basic goal. A network of organizations committed to independent political action was formed: the National People’s Progressive Network (NPPN).

The convention wasn’t as big as the 2000-3000 originally projected last spring. Nor did it meet its goals of 50% women, 50% people of color, and 25% youth. It was something like 40% women, 15% people of color, and 5% youth.

But given the limited time and resources that went into preparing the meeting, it has to be considered a successful first step in building a vehicle through which the various organizations and parties committed to an independent political movement can begin to coordinate joint action and lay the basis for eventual convergence.

What it lacked in quantity, it had in quality. There were many veteran activists with long experience to share, people like Phil Hutchins, at one time the Program Secretary of SNCC, and Dan Leahy, a public power advocate who played a prominent role in the Citizens Party and now teaches Labor Studies at Evergreen State College where he is involved with a local group discussing the formation of an independent party in Washington State. There were also newer activists for whom this was their first national coalition meeting. It was diverse enough that it is safe to say that no one there knew most of the other people there.

Reds, Greens, and Blacks

The convention had the most diversified mix of Reds, Greens, and Blacks of any national meeting to date. There were many socialist groups, especially Trotskyist and post-Trotskyist groups: Trotskyist League, Fourth Internationalist Tendency, Freedom Socialist Party, Solidarity, and a split off from Socialist Action (whose name I do not recall) that is pushing a Labor Party Organizing Network. The Socialist Party, the Committees of Correspondence (a democratic socialist tendency that has been formed this year principally by people who recently left the Communist Party), and the National Committee for Independent Political Action (NCIPA) also had people there.

Many of these socialists have become members of Labor Party Advocates, the organization that Tony Mazzochi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers is building, although Labor Party Advocates did not endorse the convention. Nor did the 21st Century Party that is growing out of the National Organization for Women. The New Party did endorse the convention, but only two people were present as far as I know. They declined to make a plenary presentation on “Barriers to Independent Party Efforts” and so the Greens were asked to fill in, which was done by Charlie Betz.

About 25 Greens were at the convention, including seven from the Green Politics Network which chose this meeting over the Greens Gathering in Minneapolis as a priority. Ironically, this conventions’ politics expressed strongly two positions that the GPN has objected to in the Greens/Green Party USA: commitment to a movement-based, action-oriented party, not just an electoral party and a strong orientation to replacing capitalism with economic democracy. The whole convention had more of a leftist/red/socialist ambiance than a Left Green Network conference. But no one from the GPN seemed to complain.

Most of the reds barely acknowledge the existence of the Greens when they discuss in their literature bringing together the independent political initiatives. They usually mention the Labor Party Advocates, the 21st Century Party, and Ron Daniels’ Project, New Tomorrow (although a Trotskyist League leaflet does mention “even the ‘Greens’” when enumerating the trends in independent politics).

Part of this failure to acknowledge the Greens may be ignorance. Valerie Ackerman, a member of the Huron Valley Greens and one of the organizers of the conference, was asked to give greetings to the conference on behalf of environmentalists. She used the time to point out that the Greens are not only environmentalists but are also advocating that environmentalists must embrace struggles for social justice and grassroots democracy as part of the struggle for an ecological society. She further argues that this is necessary because the misuse and abuse of the environment is connected to the misuse and abuse of people in our society. This genuinely was news to many of the reds.

But there is also a measure of hostility from some of the reds because the Greens don’t embrace their version of class politics. The reds are looking to the working class as the agent of change, the hegemonic class under which oppressed ethnic groups, women, and issue-oriented “middle-class” peace and environmental activists can be subsumed. The Greens have not oriented to the working class as the hegemonic agent of change, but to a heterogeneous alliance of social groups struggling against multiple forms of domination which includes class exploitation but does not privilege it as primary.

Ron Daniels, on the other hand, did affirm the importance of the Greens to the independent political movement. In a working group meeting on multi-racial coalition building, Daniels said that of all the national independent party efforts, he felt that the Greens had been the most committed to building multi-racial alliances. Daniels’ shares the Greens’ perspective of a heterogeneous alliance of groups rather than the hegemony of the working class. He is especially concerned with avoiding a repeat of the racism and paternalism that has relegated the concerns of people of color to the back burner in so many past movements and notably the labor and socialist/communist movements of the 20th century. Most of the people of color at the gathering were African-Americans associated with Daniels’ presidential campaign. Indeed, there was only one Chicano, one Native American, and one Puerto Rican in attendance.

In addition to reds, greens, and blacks were state third parties that aspire to encompass all three: the Consumers Party of Pennsylvania, the Peace and Freedom Party of California, the Progressive Vermont Alliance, and the Labor-Farm Party, “Wisconsin’s Party of the Rainbow and the Greens.” Of course, every political current present aspires to encompass all oppressed groups, working people, and issue-oriented activists of all backgrounds. But the difference between the Old Left’s strategic orientation to the working class and the strategy of an alliance of groups and movements that owes more to the New Left movements since the 1960s, is an issue that will undoubtedly provoke much discussion as different currents of the independent political movement begin working together.

Independent and Radical

What the overwhelming majority did agree on was probably best expressed by Ron Daniels in his plenary speech giving the “Charge to the Convention.” Amy Belanger of the Greens introduced him and he began by noting how his attendance at the 1991 Green Gathering in Elkins had been a “turning point” in his campaign. He then quoted from the statement of the founding convention of the National Black Political Assembly in Gary, Indiana, noting how the problems it identified and the independent politics it called for could have been written today and are as relevant as ever. Daniels called for new participatory political structures that would enable grassroots people to monitor and mandate their elected representatives, for new democratic economic structures based on decentralized, cooperative worker and community ownership, and for near total elimination of the U.S. military budget.

Daniels went on to say how he “used to talk about an inside/outside strategy” of supporting progressive Democrats and running progressive independents against mainstream Democrats, but that now he wanted to focus on building an independent party on the outside. He lamented how black elected officials had become part of the system, “trying to manage the mess,” instead of being connected to a popular movement and using the office to expose the system and provide leadership in the form of direct action for fundamental change.

Although still in a presidential campaign on several state ballots, Daniels projected beyond the election to the Spring when he hoped there could be a spring offensive of direct action between April 4, the anniversary of the King assassination, and May 19, Malcolm X’s birthday. Daniels said he was committing “at least” the next ten years of his life to building an independent party and appealed to “the extended family” for support to enable him to do that work.

When it came to deciding on the principles of unity, purpose, and structure for the National People’s Progressive Network, among changes made to the proposed draft were those that strengthened the commitment to independent politics and economic democracy. Some people, notably those in NCIPA committed to the “inside/outside” strategy, objected to language that said the NPPN would only support candidates independent of the Democrats and Republicans, but the language passed overwhelmingly by about 10-1.

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