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Activists Plan Return Trip to Gary, Ind. to Develop a StrategyBy Hazel Trice EdneyNNPA Washington Correspondent WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Black Democratic activists, angered by what they describe as increasing disrespect from the Democratic Party, say they will reconvene a Black political convention next spring that started in Gary, Ind. in 1972. “I’m not advocating bolting the Democratic Party. I think what we’re saying is that we want to establish an agenda that the party will have to react to,” says labor leader Bill Lucy, who was the first national figure to publicly call a return to Gary. “I think without question, the overwhelming majority of the Black voters still favor the Democratic Party and its Democratic policy platform. But I think that the fact of the matter is that we’ve got to have an agenda of our own that we will impress on the party as if to formulate its platform. We can’t keep having knee-jerk reactions.” But Ron Daniels, a co-convener of the original Gary meeting, says bolting the Democratic Party should always remain an option. “I’ve always been willing,” says Ron Daniels, who at the time was executive director of the Rainbow Coalition. “My whole life has been as an independent political activist, so that’s no question.” Daniels, who says he has not been asked to help with the Gary reunion, says he intends to participate and hopes that it establishes something new if not a third party. “My expectation would be the creation of some kind of third force in American politics,” he says. “It is simply done by having the capacity to support Democrats or support Republicans and also run independents and do independent direct action.” The National Black Political Assembly in 1972 co-chaired by poet Amiri Baraka and Daniels, now executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, drew 10,000 African-Americans to Gary, Ind. with a goal to strategize for the election of Black elected officials and to establish a Black agenda. Lucy called for the return to Gary in a speech during last month at the international convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). He is president and co-founder of CBTU. “It’s time to go back to Gary,” he told the crowd. “CBTU and others have spent a lifetime trying to prove our value in the political process. I pledge to you that we are out of the game of begging for resources to mobilize our communities. Whether we are accepted by the powerful players in labor or the Democratic Party or not, we will continue to come to the aid of unorganized workers and we will continue to mobilize our communities.” In an interview, Lucy says it’s time to reestablish a firm Black agenda from the grassroots state and local on up because events have caused Blacks to wonder whether they are really respected by the Democratic Party, which receives more than 80 percent in national elections. Black Democratic activists were disappointed after several Senate Democrats cut a deal with Republicans that allowed three anti-civil rights federal judicial nominees that Democratic activists had vehemently protested to be voted on rather than filibustered, a political strategy to prevent a vote. All three of the candidates, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, have been confirmed. Many activists were so angry that they said it was time for a Black political movement to begin. But many are not angry enough to break from the Democratic Party. “I think that’s something that would be too extreme of a position to take right now,” says University of Maryland Political Scientist Ron Walters, who was an organizer of the 1972 Gary convention and is helping to strategize for the March gathering. Walters, who said the deal on the judges was clear reason for Black Democrats to start a new movement, says he learned a lesson during the organization of a National Black Independent Political Party in 1980. “It was probably a mistake to try to challenge Blacks with leaving the Democratic Party and dropping their basic political identification. That’s a losing proposition because Blacks have too much invested in that.” The debate over a third party, in part, caused the movement to fall apart in 1980. Many participants then joined the Rainbow Coalition, the base of the 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson Sr. Jackson backs Lucy’s call for a new Gary convention. “The women’s struggle for the right to vote was independent. The labor struggles of the 1930s were independent. The 1955 bus boycott against segregation was independent. We must build an independent political struggle that will define priorities and behavior of both parties,” Jackson said in a statement. Walters said the upcoming convention will focus on developing an effective strategy. “This one is not expected to be totally a political convention in the nature of the Gary convention,” Walters says. “I would not think it requires Blacks dropping the Democratic Party identification. We don’t have a political institution. We need it for strategy making. We need it for mobilization. We need it for fund-raising. What happens is that it becomes a vehicle that can be used for bargaining and these things are done in the interest of the Black community.” Lucy says it hasn’t been decided whether someone from either major party will be invited to address the event. He says, “This is not being billed as a partisan activity.” Although no exact date has not bee set, it is expected that the convention will take place next March. Former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton, who, at 18, was among the youngest to attend the 1972 convention, says the convention is crucial. “If there ever was a time that we need to come back together and come up with a collective political strategy, now is the time,” he says. “The problem is that we keep analyzing how bad we’re doing, but, we’re not saying what we’re going to do about it. So, it’s like getting a diagnosis from the doctor but the doctor is not telling you how you’re going to treat the ailment. What must come out of this is ‘Whereas we have these problems, therefore, we’re going to do this at this time and this will be responsible for it.'”