2A
-THE CAROLINA TIMES SATURDAY, MAY IS, 1971
£KR Caroslitui DJH*S
EDITORIALS
A Candidate For Mayor
The matter of race is such an in
significant matter we hesitate to even
mention it in our effort to utter a
word in behalf of the candidacy of
Asa T. Spaulding. Sr. for the office
of Mayor of Durham. In fact, were it
not for the matter that we are aware
that race will play an Important part
in the decision of many voters of
Durham we would not even mention
it.
With the above in mind we. there
fore. call upon every sensible voter in
this city to weigh with great care the
selection he makes of the six candi
dates he votes for in Saturday's at
large seats on the council. The elec
tion is. therefore, no time for petty
thinking but serious thought of every
voter who goes to the polls on next
Saturday.
The Governor's New Plan
We cast our lot with educators and
public officials who oppose the new
plan for governing state supported
institutions of higher education in
North Carolina. We call upon those
connected with the field of black edu- p
cation to give careful study to the
plan lest they awaken to discover a
"mickey" hidden somewhere in the
back aimed directly at the black in
stitutions of higher education in this
state.
We also warn black educators of
North Carolina to be on the alert
lest they be found wanting in the
plan as approved 13-8 by the Gover
nor's Study Committee on Structure
and Organization of Higher Educa
tion. At the present we would like to
have revealed the black representation
that will be included on the central
board of regents. If the organizers
Bots Versus the Army Snoops
You'd think a fellow who had just
won 1 38th of a Pulitzer Prize would be
eligible if anybody is for the
government's list of "possible sub
versives." As far as I can determine,
however, none of the Journal and
Sentinel staff members who shared in
the 1971 Pulitzer public service award
has been accepted as a candidate for
mat select group.
One prominent Journal reporter,
hidden behind an outlandish growth of
mustache, complained bitterly about
the oversight last week. A few days
before he had written a story about a
former military intelligence agent who
confessed that he and other agents had
spied on a group of North Carolina
civilians. The list included such
unlikely suspects as Charlie Davis, the
Wake Forest basketball star, and
Louis Brooks, a proper ex-Marine who
serves as director of Ihe Greensboro
Human Relations Commission. Yet
nowhere was there the name of a
single reporter or editorial writer.
Does this mean that the Army
refuses to take us seriously, even if we
are a community of Pulitzer Prize
winners?
I got to thinking about all this, and
decided to chock with other well
known local agitators to find out
how they felt about being left off the
list. To a man. they expressed acute
disappointment, even outrage. My
friend Bots. the veteran of many a
futile march on City Hall, spoke for
them all when he said: "The Army are
a bunch of !"
At first Bots tried to explain his
absence from the list by pretending he
had been out of the country on
business while the Army was spying
on Brooks, Davis and company. But
you don't fool Pulitzer Prize winners
for very long. He soon broke down and
admitted that, ves, he had been right
here in town during the whole nasty
business. The confession brought him
very near to tears, but after ? moment
he got control of himself and*was able
to discuss the matter more calmly. At
length he grew philosophical and
talked of the days when he was just
beginning to make a name for himself.
do you think was responsible
almost single-handedly for the defeat
of Richard Nixon in the 1960 presi
dential campaign ?"
V
A careful study of the candidates
for mayor will reveal beyond any
question the lead in the qualifications
that Spaulding holds for the office
he seeks as mayor of Durham. We,
therefore, plead with intelligent voters
for the candidates of the top position
on the council to lay aside the matter
of racial identity, make a careful
study of the qualifications of the can
didates and cast their ballots accor
dingly.
What applies to the office of mayor
applies to the at-large seats on the
council. The time has arrived when
voters of both races must look beyond
the racial identity of candidates for
all public offices if we are to have
holders of such worthy of their posi
tions.
of the plan are going to follow the
age old pattern of staffing the board
with little or no black representation,
we will be diabolically opposed to the
board.
It might not be out of place to
serve warning now that the time has
arrived for black opposition even to
the federal courts to any such plan,
local or statewide, that does not pro
vide ample representation of the
black citizen of any city, state or
nation. The misconceived notion that
black citizens are to give their support
as taxpayers, in the armed service and
anywhere else that duty calls without
having any voice in the plans of such
a program, must be done away with
if we are not to have a recurrence of
the March on the White House as it
occurred last week or upheavels of a
more destructive type.
"Larry O'Brien?"
Bots sneered and half rose out of
his seat. "Of course not, stupid!"
"You don't mean. . ."
"Yes. I suppose you remember the
knee injury that landed Nixon in the
hospital at a crucial period during the
campaign. Many experts believe that
he made a number of tactical errors in
trying to make up for lost time
errors that cost him the presidency."
"But how . . ."
Bots paused and lit a Hav-a-Tampa.
"No doubt you will also remember
that Nixon injured his knee while
campaigning in Greensboro." A sly
smile; another long pause. "And who
do you think was holding the door at
the time?"
The question, of course, answers
itself. Since then Bots has vastly im
proved his standing as a professional
agitator. Not long ago he planted pine
trees on the Reynolda Road right-of
way to protest a street widening
project. And last week when bis
neighbor. Mrs. l>attimore, returned
home from the hospital with her third
child he picketed her house with a sign
that said: "Population Explosion
Inside!" On another occasion, when
Mr. Lattimore came out to spray his
azaleas, Bots knocked the spray gun
out of his hand and lectured him 011
the DDT menace.
Bots has "had it up to here" with
the administration's non-war 0 n
inflation and its non-explanations 011
the war in Vietnam. Admittedly, this
is big-league stuff and a little out o r
his department; yet liots is not one t
turn his back on any protest, large or
small. One day we might find him in
Washington protesting the military
industrial complex ana the next day in
Wisconsin helping dairy farmers
/mount a ban-the-margarine campaign.
He has even picketed the Journal owl
Sentinel to protest the use of such
terms a s "socio-economic back
ground" and ''culturally disad
vantaged" in news stories.
So I ask you, is it fair for the Army
to leave a man like Bots off its list of
suspected subversives? Is this the kind
of efficiency we have come to expect
from our military snoops? Frankly,
f'm beginning to agree with Bots:
"The Army are a bunch of !"
A Community Without These Services ,;
Will Be A Jungle j V
BLACK COMMUNITIES ARE ABOUT TO LOSE SOME OF THEIR
MOST ESSENTIAL SERVICES BECAUSE OF CRIME WAVES.
BUSINESS MEN ARE AFRAID OF BEING HELD UP, FIREMEHME
UNEASY ABOUT ANSWERING CALLS, AND TELEPHONE REffIRMEN
HESITATE TO ENTER PREMISES.
fPITP
''!s H'i M; !j, #
I ■
Destination Uncertain
AMTRAK, born Railpax, enjoyed
something less than instant suc
cess when it took over the operation of
the nation's rail passenger service on
May 1. A Wall Street Journal reporter,
traveling cross-country on one of the
Amtrak trains, found very little to
persuade him that the new quasi
public corporation will be able to bring
about immediate improvement in
passenger service.
Criticism of the agency has come
from members of Congress whose
states are being by-passed by the
Amtrak trains, from passengers who
don't like the scheduling, from union
leaders who don't like the labor pro
tective clauses and from people who
doubt that Congress voted the cor
poration enough money (S4O million in
direct grants and guaranteed loans of
up to S3OO billion) to make the ex
periment a success.
It is, of course, much too early to
make predictions about that. The
prognosis i$ made doubly difficult by.. ,
the failure *of some f
Southern, to join the pact. Those that
didn't join are obliged to continue
passenger service if "service" is
• the word we seek at least through
1974. What happens after that is not at
all clear.
Doubts about the new rail cor
poration reach to the Amtrak
employes themselves. "Bitterness on
the part of train men against the new
system particularly based on lack
of communication is seen over and
over again," the Wall Street Journal
correspondent commented.
Economy Oils Open Door Policy
To understand the economic basis
of the new Chinese Communist open
door policy towards the United States,
we have to explore the origins of the
Sino-Soviet dispute. When he finally
won control of Mainland-China in 1949-
50, Mao Tse-tung turned to Moscow
and invoked the spirit of N. Lenin.
Lenin had expected a Communist
revolution in Germany in 1918, which
would have provided advanced in
dustrial assistance to the Russian
peasantry and made it possible for
Russia and Germany to move forward
together into a Communist sunset.
This vision never materialized, but it
lived on as the theory of "combined
development," to use Leon Trotsky's
formula, and led the Chinese Com
munists to anticipate great things
from their Muscovite brothers.
Joseph Stalin, however, was not
very responsive, and Nikita Khrush
chev even less so. Subsequently Mao
accused Khrushchev of "great power
chauvinism," that is, of Russian
nationalism, and doubtless that was
part of the picture. In all fairness to
the Soviets, the tab they were asked
to pick up was enormous, and they
were still recovering from the
devastation of Jie war. In essence,
Mao asked Moscow to subsidize
China's primitive capital development,
its whole industrial base." ..
The Russians provided a trickle of
assistance less than what Eastern
Europe got and in economic terms
Mao went off his rocker: this was the
period when the Chinese were ordered
to build mini-blast furnaces in their
backyards. (Off in one corner, the
military ran their own highly effective
program of nuclear development,
though this aggravated the problems
of the rest of the economy because
of its priority demands on available
resources.) To shorten a long story,
the Chinese economy became a
disaster area. Its Gross National
Product is roughly that of Italy (S6O
billion).
All this effort at mind-over-matter
industrialization was augmented by
the disruptive shenanigans of the
Cultural Revolution. While it was
going on in China, the Japanese
(population: 104 million) were joyously
So about all we arc left with at the
moment is the rather vague and rosy
hope that gave the original impetus to
Amtrak. The hope was that by elim
inating about half of the nation's
passenger trains Amtrak directors
could eventually cut the annual rail
passenger deficit and at the same time
improve the quality of service on
routes remaining in operation. This,
sponsors said, would bring back to the
railroads all those people who, in
recent years, have taken to doing all
their traveling by car or plane
people who are fed up with airport
stackups and freeway traffic jams.
But then there was the question of
money. Could Amtrak make a go of it
with so few funds at its disposal?
That's what we are waiting to find out.
Friendly skeptics keep hoping for
some indication that the experiment
will be a success; yet the feeling
persists that we will not see much
improvement until the problem is
attacked in a more comprehensive
. .way* This means, in effect, that we
Jhave to decide whether totfceep!
putting more and more money Intc
highways and airports or to give the
rails their share.
The real answer, of course, is not
simply to improve the quality of cross
country and intercity passenger
service, but to put up more funds for
the development of better mass transit
systems.
In this way we can attack both our
pollution and transportation problems
on a broad front. But let's not wait till
the verdict is in on Amtrak before we
make a beginning.
and peacefully becoming the world's
third industrial power ($142 billion
G. N. P.). Nonetheless, as it was put
here a year or more ago, Japan is
a "giant without a shadow." It has
thrived under the protection of U.S.
military power and from the injections
of American money that the Korean
and Vietnamese wars provided.
If the Nixon doctrine makes any
sense at all in Asia, it calls for the
Japanese bearing a far heavier burden
of collective security, notably against
the potential expansionism of Red
China. But suppose that a rational
leadership in Peking, having written
off the Soviets as potential godfathers,
decides that partnership with Japan
is the only realistic route to in
dustrialization? Suppose that Chou En
lai and the Marshals have a Peking-
Tokyo Axis in mind? What would be
the impact on Japan?
First, it would provide a perfect
excuse for the Japanese to bow out
of their implicit role in the Nixon
doctrine. Second, it would brighten the
hearts of Japanese businessmen, dying
to move in on the Chinese market.
Third, it would demolish the political
standing of the pro-American Liberal
Democratic party and with it the
political configuration that has
governed Japan since the occupation.
However, the Japanese are a
cautious people; they are not going
to move rapidly without en
couragement from Washington. From
Peking's viewpoint, then, a signal was
necessary indicating that Washington
would not be infuriated by a Sino-
Japanese detente. Enter: the ping
pong players. As Americans gushed
with delight over the prospect of
"normalizing relations" with Peking,
the Japanese could not help but get
the message the light is green.
Some are quick on the draw. The
Japan Times (4-23-71) had a story
to the point: Sales Co.,
apparently in an effofjk to move into
the Communist Chines* market, has
made what amounts to' a promise not
to expand direct investment any
further in South Korea and Taiwan
. . ." There is more to ping-pong than
meets the paddle.
By JOHN MYERS
Carl Braden is information director and an or
ganizer for the Southern Conference Educational Fund
(SCEF). This is a Southwide Interracial organization
working to bring black and white people together for
action to solve their common problems.
In a talk given on the University of North Carolina
campus, Braden stated his plan for solving the economic
problems of the United States. He stated that the poor
black and white people must band together to form
their own political parties and elect their own delegates
to the national offices. He stated they must first gain
political power then economic power.
Under Braden's philosophy, there would be a mini
mum wage of five dollars per hour. Everyone would
have power centering i.j the party.
I asked Braden what the difference would be with his
philosophy. He would be taking the power away from
those who have it and giving it to those who do not.
The only difference would be the exchange of names.
Braden pointed to the facts that 80% of the country
is owned by 200,000 people. The remainder is spread
out among the latter 20% Under his philosophy,
Braden gives the country to the people. His philosophy
takes &p;n ithe few and gives equal shares to the masses.
The people* ih charge would have to answer to the
party. It wotrid be impossible to commit the sin of self
indi!£i
a I osanioni )ita-
FsfHfeW 1 asked Braden if under his statutes it would
7* • -IDO *>rlJ pyn rJJnoi,
beootme j: >ifc not,.a crime, at least a social downcast to
be ricJu..Rieaden openly stated that it would certainly
not be popular.
I asked about the man who owned ambition, drive,
personal determination. Braden and the people in the
room laughed. Braden stated that he didn't give a
damn if the guy lost $1,000,000. He said that this man
had let others starve. Why should he be allowed to go
untouched?
. Has. Braden fought the courts, the people, and the
1
surely felt at one time, of success? Has he lived so long
"for the people" that he no longer cares or knows that
he has a responsibility to himself?
What Braden is advocating is union of the highest
degree. A union so strong one can no longer see its indi
vidual assemblies. This world is made up of people, not
cities or nations. Are we to forget this. Are we to
dedicate ourselves tb the party, to the whole. No. Not
if we are to survive.
If I ever have a son, I wish to tell him that he
is a member of "The Party."
Religious Pains
On a single day recently newspaper pages told of grow
ing strife between the Catholic Church in Paraguay and the
Government of Paraguay (thirty persons were ex-commu
nicated by the church for having earned out a government
order to arrest a bishop), nine days of picketing of Governor
Nelson Rockefeller's office in New York by Catholics
demanding more public funds for Catholic schools, protests
by others on the use of any public money for religious
schools, the refusal of several U.S. television stations to
televise a Protestant religious program because of strong
pressure from Jewish organizations who claimed the pro
gram unfair, a scandal in Israel in which thePrimcMinister
and Defense Minister denounced ruling rabbis for highly
restrictive and undemocratic rules against several citizens
(in Israel only the church, not civil authority, is legally
authorized to marry), and other similar stories.
All of which proves anew that friction and squabbling
over religion, and also rules to live by as enunciated by
churches, are still very much with us. It is a process
which has continued down through the ages, only in recent
centuries have relatively few been killed in religious wars
and passions.
Continuing disagreement umong churches, and over the
rules of life, seems inevitable for the future, and this pros
pect is a reaffirmation of the wisdom of the founding fathers
of the United States in recognizing no religion, and of the
Supreme Court, in barring the practice of any religion in
the public schools.
Of all the world's bitterness and animosity, that over
religious theory is the most unnecessary and tragic. The
American example—of equal respect for all religions and
official recognition of none—points the way U) progress in
the future.
£hf Carolina Cimes
pjLMhiany
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