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readily than others in Vietnam; race that makes some children more educated than others; race that colors all of our lives.
For the past several years solutions to the problem of race, and thus to the pathologies of society that spring from it, have been more than abundant.
There are several solutions that, if implemented, would begin to make this country a proper place for men and women to live and work and a healthy place for our children to play and grow and learn.
The nation can adopt, and strive for, a policy of full employment.
Equal opportunity, both racially and sexually, can stop being the rhetoric of campaigns and platforms and become the reality of the present.
Through public service employment, increased economic growth, increases in wage minimums and in minimum wage coverage, and in guaranteeing social insurance by radically altering public assistance.
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every American can be guaranteed an income.
The institution of a National Health Insurance Program and a radical alteration of federal housing programs will additionally aid in making both urban and rual America more attractive places to live.
None of these things will be done, however, unless there is increased interest among the people who desire them in politics; unless there is a growth in political activism, coalition, and organization between now and November, 1972.
This is a drive that must spring from a careful calculation of what is at stake and what the issues may be are:
For too many Americans, an exchange of Presidents is nothing more than an exchange of photographs on the post office wall or a dormitory dart board; for black Americans, the issue is whether we progress, run in place, or continue to slide backward as we have been doing since 1968.
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Since Richard Nixon took office in 1968, we have spent billions more on war; over 2 million more Americans have been added to the ranks of the unemployed; 2 1/2 million more are on ever mounting relief rolls, inflation have reduced our standard of living, and elitist, sexist and racist practices run unchecked through public and private America.
We will select a new Congress in 1972 as well. These for the most part must be new men and women, not the tired old faces of the past. It should be a congress that would reject Nixon's Family destruction plan, that would say "no" to more war, no to Freezes on wages with no freezes on profits, no to secret government, and no to mediocr preventive detention
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and no-knock justice.
Such a transformation can be achieved.
To do so, you must be prepared to confront some serious enemies.
These are not the hooded midnight rider or bigoted Southern sheriff of the past, or his crew-cut chamber of commerce contemporary of the present.
They are instead those who will tell you that politics is useless and accomplishes nothing. These are many of the same people who told you in 1968 that George Wallace's election would be a good thing, because it would heighten the contradictions and therefore hasten the revolution.
Thats fine in infantile campus revolutionary theory, but its Black peoples contradictions that are being heightened not theirs.
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These are the spiritual descendants of the same people who in Germany in the 30s, urged the election of Richard Nixon for the Adolph Hitler for the same reason.
Other enemies are found in our own ranks, clustering around the President like fleas on a dog.
I speak here not of those thankfully few but honestly motivated Black Republicans like Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and others around the country who believe in the nearly forgotten tenets of the Grand Old Party.
These men of whom I speak are neither Democrats nor Republicans nor independents, but belong instead to the "I've got mine" party, the "trickle down" party, the "take the money and run" party.
They urge us to vote for the man who gave us