* Would you want foreigners to pick the president of the U.S.?

Report on Mrs. K.

A report published by the Vote on Vietnam Group contains several paragraphs describing some typical encounters between canvassers and workers. The description of Mrs. K's response--written by the canvasser--goes:

"Mrs. K., a middle-aged worker in light industry who lives in East Cambridge, read the petition but was too shy or afraid to sign. Then her daughter (a student at Cambridge High and Latin) spoke up and told her to go ahead and sign; she teased her mother and told her off, and went and got her a pen to sign with. Obviously proud of her daughter, Mrs. K. then signed and invited us in to talk....

Mrs. K and her daughter were pleased that students had some idea of how the war oppressed workers. They asked us about our college work and discussed Mrs. K's plans to become a teacher. One of us told her he was going into city planning, so we talked a while about the Cambridge Inner Belt. The other said he was giving up academic work in the capitalist university (a self-service supermarket for U.S. corporations and the government). Mrs. K. nodded in understanding: I felt she knew who the class enemy was, and how a student could prefer fighting this enemy to taking its lousy pay-off.

"Mrs. K. and her daughter are bright, strong women who see through the government lies and have strong class consciousness. This encounter could lead to good work in Mrs. K's shop and in the high schools."

Even if the Vote on Vietnam canvassers have as much success with all Cambridge as they seem to have had with Mrs. K., there is some question whether their resolution qualifies to be put on the ballot. It is uncertain whether the charter requires the City Council to place on the ballot a statement directed at a national issue, outsode the pervue of local government. The canvassers people expect the council to try to disqualify the petition "on technicalities," and they are preparing to fight the matter out in court.

In spite of their common goal, one would never expect three groups of such varying philosophical outlook as the CNC, Draft Resistance Group, and Vote on Vietnam to work side by side in complete harmony. And indeed there has been at least one minor scrape between the CNC and Vote.

Several weeks ago the CNC began canvassing working class areas whch were covered by Vote weeks before. The question came up in a CNC policy meeting whether to establish formal relations with Vote and agree upon a division of labor between the two groups to prevent double canvassing. Walzer, the head of CNC, urged "no relations whatsoever" with Vote and that policy was adopted. He brought up the role of PL in Vote in such a way that many of his own group criticized him severely for red baiting.

There are two lessons to be drawn from this intergroup backbiting. First, it is obvious hat the moderate-radical coalition which produced Vietnam Summer is an uneasy alliance. The moderates, like CNC, tend to concentrate in middle class areas trying to trying to build a peace bloc. But the radicals deplore electoral politics--they don't believe the U.S. will ever vote itself out of Vietnam. Since they are convinced that the System can't solve the problem, they seek the aid of those who will be most likely to take action outside the System. They organize in the ghetto and poor working class areas around issues like draft resistance. The moderates scoff at this approach, and point to the small numbers the draft resistors can muster.

But the second lesson is that this alliance is workable, under the Vietnam Summer umbrella. The key is local autonomy. The moderates can have their project and keep the radicals out, as the CNC did. The radicals can do the same. About the only place the moderates and radicals have to work together is in the national office, and although that office is sometimes in turmoil, the local projects go right on functioning as though nothing has happened. It is too early to tell whether all the canvassing will mobilize an effective opposition to the war, but it is clear that the coalition of moderates and radicals will at least put out a new message to thousands who have never thought to question the Administration's policy