After several days of debate, the conference selected three priority programs, but--fearing over-centralization--said only that local chapters "should" participate in one of them. The three priorities selected were: the economy, anti-corporate organizing and war and imperialism. A child care proposal--which dealt with the entire question of child socialization--was narrowly defeated in the closest vote of the conference. In a compromise settlement, its important provisions were tacked on to the economy proposal. All the priorities were long and somewhat vague; local chapters will be able to interpret them broadly.
The proposal on the economy--probably an inherent priority--was concerned with devising a radical response to Nixon's new economic policy. Questions of income distribution--thrown into sharp relief by the wage-price guidelines--are fundamental questions that NAM chapters can organize around.
The conference agreed that workers should be organized, but disagreed over whether the most effective place to organize is at the workplace or in the community. The six-page economy proposal reflected both points of view. It supported "all strikes which attempt to break the wage guidelines" and gave priority to "wildcat, illegal and profit-limiting strikes," and called on unions to fight the divisiveness of racism and sexism and supported rank-and-file union insurgents.
The statement also called for community organizing to "combat oligopoly pricing" and tax inequities. It attacked the decline in the quality of government social programs. Above all, the proposal called for "people's control of the economy" and advised chapters to raise questions of "Who decides?" In specific projects so that working people can see where American power is and try to seize it for themselves.
The war and imperialism priority was passed with overwhelming support, placating to some extent people who felt that the conference was slighting questions of foreign policy. The statement called the Indochina war "an acute crisis demanding continued action" and recommended continued action" and recommended continued local and national demonstrations and other anti-war actions. It supported anti-war GI's and veterans, and called for local NAM chapters to devote resources to "education around the international aspects of imperialism."
The anti-corporate priority contended that corporations are "pervasive and ubiquitous" and said that "any organization which aims at radical change in the U.S. must attack the corporation." It called for local chapters to choose a local corporate target and "develop sustained long-range research action projects" against the target.
Other priority proposals--which were not selected but which the conference emphasized should not preclude chapters from working on them--included: health care, ecology, election strategy (primarily local), campus organizing, justice and law, the media, and the problems of the small farmer.
The priority programs--because of their broadness--serve more as a statement of NAM's purpose than as an actual everyday organizing too. Disagreements over the programs were often vociferous but were never really expressed along sectarian lines, with the accompanying caucusing and chanting.
The conference's primary success--beyond relatively technical matters of structure and policy--was the sense of cohesiveness and solidarity that it generated. People who had spent the past several years organizing in isolated communities drew strength from meeting people with parallel experiences and sharing ideas and strategies.
NAM seems to have a good chance to avoid the problems that have crippled the New Left in recent years. The organization is grounded in reality: it seems to be broadly based and it attracts people who have proved that they are serious about changing American society by persevering through several years of difficult and frustrating organizing experiences. People returned to their home communities from Davenport with a kind of hold-your-breath optimism.
Yet there are difficulties with NAM that make its success problematic. The organization is still very small; it will have to grow quickly and dramatically if it is to avoid becoming just another one of the sects or sectlets that dot the American Left's landscape. The organization's broad base makes this possible but not inevitable.
NAM must also expand to include life-long workers and not just students-turned-workers. It must come to grips with how it will relate to black. Puerto Rican and Chicano movements, a consideration conspicuously absent from the Davenport conference.
And finally, the organization will have to help rekindle the student movement. The experience of the sixties teaches one lesson above all: universities are not idyllic places removed from conflict, but play a key role in generating ideology and providing personnel and technical expertise to buttress the American corporate state and empire. Universities are centers of conflict; NAM will have to involve students so that conflict can be continued and new generations of students educated.
The problems are staggering: the struggle will be long and hard; but a cautious optimism seems to be growing. The movement has passed into a new phase and seems to be seriously repudiating the mistakes of the past and looking to the future with hope. Many people at the Davenport conference sensed that NAM may be as significant for the seventies as Port Huron was for the sixties. Perhaps that is being overly optimistic, but the spirit of Port Huron--a break with the past, a renewal and an optimistic willingness to grasp the future--was recaptured in Davenport.
Copyright by Daniel A. Swanson, 1971.