◆ SpookStack

pst cadley, “White America d have the right to tell '* Amierica Who to follow or who 9 respect.” Ther: h th... .3 true, it's a weak I. cr a political allegiance, «specially when the NAP garps.¢ + beachhead in the Ne sh Agenda, a progressive ., op that has little love for Fanay ~an. David Coyne, a spokesperson for the 4500- member NJA, suggests that the NAP was eager to join the NJA in order to have a Jewish shield against a Farrakhan backlash. “They picked the wrong group,” he says. “We won't just sit still. We can’t afford to have these people around us if, with princi- pled efforts, we're going to attract people to our banner.” And that from a man whose group in- cludes every shade of left politics. Perhaps most damning, though, are the statements made by Dennis Surrette, a black man who ran for president under the NAP banner in 1984 and says he later left the party because it offered blacks no real leadership roles. “I left the party because it continued to claim it was black- led — I knew better,” Surrette told Mississippi's Jackson Ad- vocate. “I don’t feel they can use ‘black-led’ continuously without falling on their faces — falsehoods just won't hold up under close scrutiny.” Finally, the NAP’s persistent, self-serving use of “Rainbow” titles for its affiliated organiza- tions has long been a target of other NAP higher-ups say, the Rainbow Lobby, a Washington- based NAP offshoot, makes clear that it is separate from the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rain- bow Coalition, the similar name is conveniently opportunistic at best. “Our contention is, we don’t think the Rainbow [title] belongs in the Democratic Party,” says Fridley, “but .<e’re more than willing to give them the name. 1 mean, we're not going to fight ovey it. But we're certainly con- cerned with where the Rainbow ends up. We don’t want to see it end up in the hands of a Richard don’t kh Gay and Lesbian Political Al- liance’s assertion that their short title — the “Alliance” — was ripped off by money-hungry NAP canvassers is dismissed just as easily: “Who said those people own names? It’s more and more likely that they go around saying they're the Alliance and people vision.” And the Greater Boston them because they think - —— ee oe OELGL, UE GUUIIE, 19 smmswe wwe The NAP’s own tactics — d scribed usually as either “wil disruptive’ or “annoying” - have left a bitter taste among, ’ Boston‘s activist community, and reports like Berlet’s have become standard testament against New- man and his Alliance. But though all the political sophisticates have been, as GBGLPA‘s Will Hutchinson says, “making it a int not to work with them” (though GBGLPA does include the NAP in candidate forums it sponsors), nobody's bothered to spread the news to the politically disenfranchised people the NAP targets. In fact, as Rerlet rightly argues, the progressive reaction to the NAP — namely, to isolate its members as freaks — is backfiring badly. “It’s a double- edged sword,” Berle says. “On the one hand, they lie consistent- ly about who they are and what they do. But mainstream political ups use totally inappropriate means to isolate them. The whole idea of democracy is informed consent; excluding them doesn’t Yet the NAP, armed with shrewd organizers, has managed to make its isolation work to its benefit, recycling criticism into ammunition to use on the streets. The party blasts the American political superstructure for, as it sees it. moving further and further right, dropping the work- ing class and oppressed like so many pebbles in the wake of a glacier. In turn, mainstream ives, it argues, cling to the Democratic Party like 80 many half-starved lamprey, suck- ing out what legitimacy they can. The criticisms launched at New- man and the party, NAP figures, are just more evidence of an increasingly paranoid, desperate, and impotent Establishment. Even worse, NAP members use the cult brand to tie the tra- ditional left to the rise of the right. “It's part of the cover-up the left is doing,” says Fridley, “because I think that, if in calling the NAP and Dr. Newman a cult and a guru, that kind of allows them to call LaRouche a guru and a cult, which he isn’t. And it kind dA. serious issue. Again, if you want about the right, which is the ~ to talk about the serious and . principled issues, it's ‘Fuck the NAP, what are going to do about the right?’ It’s rising, and LaRouche isa major player in it. Dr. Newman recognizes that, and I'm proud to follow him. I will $a} that unequivocally.” Frighteningly enough, Fridley’s assessment of LaRouche is pretty accurate. For years LaRouche was dismissed as 2 cultist and a flake, albeit a scary one. But while he was being written off in the world of traditional politics, he was mak- ing some nasty entrances: two LaRouchites won Illinois De- mocratic primaries in April 1986, joining the ballot as candidates for lieutenant governor and secretary of state with gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson, who later dropped out. That same year, LaRouchites in California managed to get on the ballot a plan for what amounted to mandatory and widespread AIDS testing, and. state-backed discrimination ~~ against people who had been exposed to the disease. A similar # 1 goes before voters in ai the next election there. And in “* 1987 the New Alliance Party, the left’s own dirty secret, has a can- didate running for president in all $0 states, armed with $205,565.18 in matching funds from the federal government. So, - indeed, what will the left do about the right? And what will it do about itself? o bo F “4 “3