The NAM statement made practical sense. NAM called itself an organization fighting for "a completely democratic form of socialism," rejecting both socialist bureaucracies and welfare statism. It criticized the classic errors of the New Left: extreme sectarianism, the cult of the Third World, persecution of people for not devoting all of their time to the movement, and downgrading of community action as somehow reformist.

The real reason for NAM's quick popularity was the growing realization--simultaneously occurring to many radicals who have been steeped in the harsh realities of day-to-day local organizing for several years--that the fight for socialism is going to be long and hard One does not try and tell an American worker to support or oppose Mao's China if he is not yet convinced that his union does not serve his interest or that his government serves the ruling class. NAM has replaced nonsensical talk about seizing state power with a band of Yippies by seriously considering the best programs and organizing techniques with which to reach working people and make them consider socialism as a real alternative. NAM sees itself as performing an interim function for the seventies: co-founder Lerner summarizes its modest goal as putting "socialism on the national agenda."

People of all kinds responded to the NAM statement and went to Davenport. Many, as previously mentioned, were ex-student radicals in their mid-twenties who now consider themselves part of the working class--white collar or blue collar--and have been organizing in communities on a variety of issues. Some of them were former SDS'ers--several people had been at Port Huron--but many were independent radicals who found NAM appealing because of its realism and openness.

(PL was the only group specifically banned from attending: the group feared that they would attempt to take over the conference. Two PL'ers showed up and were asked to leave.)

The NAM people have spent the past several years, looking for political activity with which to complement--and not exclusively dominate--their lives. "I was into the women's movement for a while," said a woman from Washington, D.C., "but they were giving French lessons at two in the afternoon. I work and can't go traipsing off to study French. I found NAM much more relevant."

The 25 NAM chapters which already exist (which have 10-20 members each) represented a fairly even cross-section of American communities. Only the South was under-represented. The traditional radical centers, Cambridge. New York and Berkeley, sent contingents--along with groups from less likely places such as Baltimore. Durham, and Davenport itself. The largest chapter is in Pittsburgh.

Even the old-time populists were represented. Firtz V. Stover, a weather-beaten Iowa farmer in his sixties who nominated Henry Wallace at the 1948 Progressive Party convention. ("I knew soon enough though that he was a sell-out"), told the farm workshop about the plight of the small farmers being bought out by agribusiness. "It's almost as bad as the Hoover Depression," he lamented.

Staughton Lynd and James Weinstein were the radical celebrities in attendance. Lynd, who formerly taught at Yale, has been at the center of many of the radical turbulences of the past decade. He presently teaches at a city college in Chicago, lives in a working class black neighborhood on the city's South Side, and has spent the past several years organizing steel-workers in Gary, Ind. Lynd has been in NAM since its inception and his reputation and calm bearing were an important mediating force at the conference.

Weinstein, author of The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State and presently working with Socialist Revolution magazine, came to the conference skeptical of NAM. But by the end of the week-end he had changed his mind. "I now believe that NAM can become an effective democratic socialist organization," he said.

The NAM conference had two basic objectives: to coordinate the emerging local efforts with some form of national structure, and to select 'program priorities'--issues of national importance which chapters would work on in addition to engaging in local work. The overriding question at the conference was how the national structure would function and how the inherent tension between local needs and national priorities could be resolved.

The original proposal--initiated by the West Coast founders--was for a fairly centralized National Interim Committee (NIC) that would aid in organizing new chapters and publicize NAM by publishing a national newspaper. In addition, the founders proposed that the conference select three program priorities which all chapters would work on in addition to local projects.

The conference watered down the centralization plan. This was done for two reasons: a desire to broaden the organization's base by remaining decentralized and the desire to avoid the possibility that a central power structure might direct NAM in undemocratic ways. People remembered the SDS experience, when at times the national office would war with various factions by controlling the SDS newspaper, New Left Notes, and by scheduling conferences and conventions in locations where a preferred faction would be likely to predominate.

The conference limited the power of the NIC--which will serve until NAM's official 'coming out' at a founding convention in June--by specifying that regions will form their own conferences instead of allowing the NIC to organize regional conferences and by providing that the newspaper be published in a different city from the NIC headquarters. The conference also required that at least 7 of the 13 NIC members be women--in response to charges by people of both sexes--that NAM was dominated by men.

The conference considered 13 priority proposals before selecting three. Both the proposals and the plans for organizing reflected a broadening of the New Left's traditional base. To the old radical stand-by concerns of imperialism and racism, the group added issues like the problems of the small farmer, industrial health and safety, and the establishment of food and automobile co-ops.

The group shifted its emphasis away from foreign policy--a move that disturbed many of its members. Perhaps underlying the shift was the somber realization that an imperialist foreign policy--above all--is determined with impunity by the ruling class, and that changing society through community and national organizing is a precondition for halting imperialism.