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marching upright or lying down in pine boxes.
He will decide whether stocks go up or down; whether money is loose or tight, whether our weekly paychecks buy more or less or whether we have any paychecks at all.
This election will decide whether we will have the politics of wealth [and] stealth [illegible] or the politics of compassion and openess.
If the recent public opinion polls are true, they demonstrate the frightening reality that the comfortable the callous and the smug have closed ranks - and closed their hearts - against the claims and call to conscience put forward by the forgotten and unrepresented in our society.
For Black Americans, an electoral victory in November for the present occupants of Uncle Strom's cabin will to mean
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It means re-installing in power those who believeor in priviledge for the powerful and neglect of the powerless.
It means giving a four-year lease to free-hand to men who have demonstrated they have no concern for freedom of the press, for the privacy of the individual, or the fundamental constitutionally guaranteed personal liberties we should like to believe are taken for granted by those who govern us.
It additionally means an end to any political chance we may have to improve our condition.
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jou Julian Bond 4
Earlier this last year, the national urban coalition tried to spell out what was wrong in this country, and how it could be set right.
"America's malaise" they said, -- which all of us feel in one way or another -- has its roots in the distance between national ideal and national reality."
"Our ideal is a country where every American gets an equal chance to perform, where jobs exist for everyone who wants one, where health care and personal safety are assured, where we live in harmony with each other and have a decent place to live."
"Our reality needs no full recital here. We know that cities are in trouble, that poverty continues in the midst of wealth, that unemployment is high, that malnutrion is widespread, that injustice exists, that tensions endure. In sum, we know that our society is
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not functioning the way it is supposed to."
"But if we solve the greatest of our ills" the coalition said, "Our paralysis of spirit and will, we can narrow the distance between what we have and what we want. Indeed, we must marshall our good sense and our good will. There is no sensible alternative."
In the coalition view "America must pursue several major goals between now and 1970 the future. It must try to:
"Achieve full employment with a high level of economic growth - all of our other policy goals depend upon it.
"Provide all citizens with an equal opportunity to participate in American society and in the shaping of governmental decisions affecting their lives.
"Guarantee that no American will go without the basic necessities: food, shelter, health care, a healthy environment, personal safety and an adequate income.
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"Meet our obligations to assist in the economic development of the world's lesser developed nations.
"These are the goals. We can move a long way toward them by 1976." *
But in addition to the coalition's major goals and their definition of "paralysis of will" as the greatest of our ills, there is another goal much more desirable and another ill much more horrible. The ill is racism and the goal its containment and eradication.
Everyone knows, or ought to know, that there is one consuming problem that makes life in New York's Harlem, Cleveland's Hough, Los Angeles' Watts or Atlanta's Vine City. Or any of America's other Urban Atticas - where some men are held in bondage by some other men - both intolerable and insufferable.
That problem is race. It is race that elected our present President in 1968; race that makes some Americans serve and die more
*Unpublished draft - Statement on National Priorities, The National Urban Coalition, January 18, 1971