constituencies that can offer a community radical political education, power to combat effectively certain self-interest issues, a forum for people seeking new definitions for their lives and their work, and a method for relating the specific constituency to other parts of the movement. I have tended to regard national demonstrations as relatively insignificant in comparison to the task of creating permanent local organization. I see us moving from strong local projects to regional structures to some kind of functional equivalent to a radical national party. That scenario is a whole interview in itself.

Those of us who have held this view and made this emphasis in our work, however, should recognize that demonstrations, especially in the past four to five months, have exhibited in several instances a new power for radicalizing¦' those involved and terrorizing those against whom the power is directed. Both the militancy and the new tactics make the acts tremendously important to Vietnam and other people's movements around the world, useful in changing the image of blacks toward white students, important for the education and consciousness of the participants, and appealing to certain--not all--segments of the American population. This last by-product--who we appeal to and whom we alienate--is important and, as I suggested before, should give direction to our strategy. It should guide our thinking, for example, at the Democratic Convention this August.

Democratic Convention

THE MOVEMENT: What do you see happening at the Democratic Convention? DAVIS: For this particular action, I believe we will be guided in part by Establishnient events and political factors not yet known. There is every indication today that Nixon, the Republican frontrunner, will keep his lead and sail through the Republican Convention. McCarthy's candidacy has little chance of catching fire.

And Kennedy seemingly has no primary strategy at all. We shall see. If the Republicans give Americans no "choice" on the issue of the war, and the Democrats, whose convention follows the Republican's, go to Chicago with Johnson fully in control, millions of people are going to feel doors closing on their hugt school conception of American democracy. millions are going to be asking, what now? The question of what the movement says to such people at this time should guide our planning for the confrontation, in my view.

I think we can do better than attempting to prevent the convention from taking place, as some have suggested by closing down the city on the first day of preconvention activity. The delegates should be allowed to come to Chicago, so long as they give their support to a polic of ending racism and the war. I favor letting the delegates meet in the International Amphitheater and making our demands and the actions behind those demands escalate in militancy as the Convention proceeds and as the TV's drum into everyone's home that we're moving towards a johnson-Nixon "choice". I would like to see us be able to carry our incredible, imaginative actions ever against Chicago's blanket injunction the will prohibit all demonstrations. Ever against the two US Army regiments that will be "protecting" the convention, i would like to see the delegates confronte: by masses of people each day, organized perhaps by that constituency which leads a particular struggle--one day for ed.cation, one for welfare, one for women. one for black people, and so 0.1.

Sophisticated Movement

There should be elbow room in Chicago for a national youth festival, a women's army marching on the US troops, several thousand people who call "their" delegate promptly at 7:00 am and midnight to ask to meet him to discuss the issues of war and race, doctors who march on the troops demanding to speak to the delegates about the children of Vietnam, etc.

etc. I would like, in other words, for us to create a more sophisticated movement machinery for this late August meeting than we have previously had and which we need as we enter this new period. I would hope that this machinery would be used by the widest possible political forces opposed to the war, that it would be used to appeal broadly to the American people, not just to ourselves, but that it be used in the end to release the real power of our many forces in a new and significant way at the time that John

son is nominated, turning the delegates back into the amphitheater as they attempt to leave, demanding that the American people be given a choice, demanding that thev reconsider a decision not in the national interest, a decision that can only lead to the funeral of the democratic policies that support racism and the war, should carry not only us, but thousands of Americans into an active boycott of the elections and giant showdown in Washington to prevent the inauguration next January.

Priorities

THE MOVEMENT: Do you feel that national confrontations such as you envision for the Democratic Convention detract from your own priority of organizing locally? DAVIS: Yes, in part. The Democratic Convention will have mixed results for local building. Since most people in the movement are not organizers, it is said that a national action allows non-organizers to find a role. I believe it also reinforces the idea that one's role is to go to demonstrations rather than build radical organizations day-to-day. And pressure mounts among the actual dayto-day organizers to respond to the call and fit their local needs into the national strategy of the moment.

THE MOVEMENT: Why then do you ac

tively support building the machinery you called for in preparation for the Democratic Convention confrontation?

DAVIS: The confrontation will have mixed results for local organizing and highly important consequences in other ways. I believe it is important for what we can say to Americans at this time. I believe it is very important to Vietnam. And frankly I see it as a possible turning point for the country and the movement.

If the Convention confrontation can be placed in a broader strategy, it can perhaps induce many people to take up organizing positions. Can the Democratic Convention focus have a relationship to an over-all white organizing drive beginning in the summer? Can SDS, the Student Mobilization, the Resistance, the Young Christian Movement provide the network for recruitment and the resources for training and direction to make possible new white projects in dozens of communities leading up to the Democratic Convention and then continuing beyond it. Can the anti-war movement, identified publicly as people who organize national days of resistance, or Washington marches

or bank accounts for NY Times advertisements, become associated more directly with efforts to build power locally?

I'm interested personally in working for the Democratic Convention challenge because it's being held in Chicago-a really arrogant thing for Daley to do-and because I want to work more directly with the anti-war movement as an organizer, and this offers me a way to do just that. One of the challenges to organizers is how the enormous energy and numbers of people who are opposed to the Vietnam war can be directed towards building organization which has permanency, power and radical posture long after Vietnam.

Beyond Vietnam

THE MOVEMENT: How does the Vietnam issue become the issue of imperialism and how should the anti-war movement organize to outlast the Vietnam war? DAVIS: SNCC, SDS and the people who make up the Resistance have been fairly successful. Perhaps they offer approaches to the problem, I would add, as a way to expand into the constituencies which perhaps these people are not reaching, the idea of "localizing the anti-war movement." Since returning from North Vietnam, and speaking to more diverse groups than I am accustomed, I have been struck by the militancy of suburban groups, newly organized student committees and clergy peace associations on the issue of the war. People are willing to work as organizers, as well as support the Resistance, etc., if they believe it will help build pressure to end the war. These same groups become angry, bored or generally turned off if they are bombarded with words like imperialism, neocolonialism, or tightly drawn analysis too thick with Marxist or left slogans.

Not everyone who comes in the from door of the JOIN office in Chicago is opposed to the Democratic Party, the machine and the war in Vietnam. It may

only be the policeman who beat their head or the case-worker who is threatening to cut off support which provides the will to consider a political act. For the organizer the problem is to search with that individual for the process which is the most liberating and radicalizing, as the immediate political act is thought through and carried out, a process which can connect that individual to a larger organization and more radical program.

If the radicals in the movement are to give leadership to the anti-war movement in its broadest sense, it will not be because we joined the National Mobilization to fight for "our politics" or demanded a focus on 'imperialist targets". We will have to suggest programs and organize work which allow people new to the movement to learn from experience who holds power, how decisions are made, the relationship of the war effort to corporations which operate in every major city. There are numerous examples of such an approach. Let me suggest only one.

Discovering the War Makers

In those regions of the country where the movement is strong in the ghettoes, I would like to see organizers develop programs that recruit people basically concerned about the napalming children or the use of indiscriminate US fire power against the civilian population of Vietnam

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the people regarded by some in the movement as too apolitical or too humanitarian to work with. The program might begin by helping people learn about the experimental weapons being used in Vietnam; the Shrike guided missile, the electron bomb, the cluster bombs, the cylinder fragmentation bomb and the long line of incindary weapons, toxic chemicals and poison gases. Then research could begin on who makes these weapons in the local community--what corporations are involved, who sits on the board, where do they live, what positions of influence in the community do they hold? The program would urge people to look into the kinds of weapons that are actually being

used in Vietnam only to learn that the people who manufacture these weapons that have been banned by international agreement are the very people who sit on the Board of Education and the Mayor's Committees in their own cities. This process, I suspect, would radically expand people's consciousness and the scope of possible activity. Suddenly the war makers become real people, the same people, if the ghetto movement is strong, who are being attacked by the blacks or poor whites because of rotten schools or urban renewal. War crime tribunals that put these individuals on public trial for complicity in US war crimes might represent still another dimension of a process that begins with simple moral concerns but allows "nice" people to grow politically through their own work and experience.

I believe anti-war activity of this sort -and there are many other examples--begins to suggest to various movement constituencies in a city new kinds of political relationships we have not seen significantly at a local level

Repression

THE MOVEMENT: We've been reading

reports coming into our office of people supoened, arrested or investigated all over the country. It appears there is a coordinated effort to intimidate and infiltrate every protest organization, In fact, it appears that the Administration is extremely afraid for it's convention next summer and will be making moves to repress those involved in the convention strategy. How should the movement respond to these events? DAVIS: While the movement is still small and generally overly preoccupied with talking to itself, these limitations every