ustxtxb_obs_1966_07_08_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

ant factors. Disqualify members of the Board “for any conflict of interest, such as serving as an officer or shareholder of an insurance company.” Small loan companies should be required to state the true interest rates they charge on the faces of their notes. If credit insurance is required, provide for competitive rates. Intrastate phone rates should be regulated by a Texas public utilities commission. If private utilities use money for promoting their own economic or political allow this money as a legitimate business expense for rate-fixing purposes. Teachers should have salaries competitive with those of the most progressive states. So recommended the Scholzgarten Committee. The T.L.D. convention also agreed that the state of Texas should buy public service time on TV, “at regular commercial rates,” to permit all candidates for office to present their programs to the public, and the legislature should pass an industrial safety act, increase old age assistance and benefits and coverage under state welfare programs, modernize workmen’s and unemployment compensation programs, provide a permanent voter registration system, abolish capital punishment, provide single-member districts for state representatives, prohibit persons from having their votes counted in primaries of different parties the same year, and require the use of voting machines in all elections. In foreign policy the liberals adopted the two resolutions sharply critical of the Vietnam war reported last issue and ratified other declarations quite bold for Texas. They opposed any nuclear weapons for Germany or a role for Germany in controlling these weapons; they wanted the U.S. to promote a nuclear non-proliferation treaty among the nuclear powers and a veto-free international agency for the control of nuclear weaponry. The U.S. should provide birth control for those countries that want it; the U.N. should be used and supported; the U.S. should support the admission of mainland China to the U.N. in an attempt to communicate with “our self-declared enemy.” And the delegates agreed, after some debate, that the C.I.A. “constitutes a violation of the basic democratic right to know and control the policies and activities of one’s own government,” and they called for “responsible public disclosure about the internal operations and budget” of that agency. As to civil rights, the convention resolved to sponsor a youth conference for activists this summerwhat’s come of that, one has not yet heard, but we gather it’s nothing as of nowand to launch into a three-year program with Dr. King’s S.C.L.C. for Negro voter registration in 59 East Texas counties. Having heard a conscience-scourging address by Henry Schwarzschild of the American Civil Liberties Union on the failure of the Johnson Administration to require enforcement of the civil rights laws in the South and Ne 8 The Texas Observer groes’ growing intolerance of delay and deception, liberals also declared that because of “the violation and unequal treatment of citizens of this state at the hands of local law enforcement agencies, such that police brutality and harasstnent have become, a way of life in Negro and Mexican-American communities,” local police review boards should be established, with state investigators reviewing complaints from areas without such boards; and T.L.D. called for a public defender system \(despite the growing federal programs for legal aid for the poor and the Houston program, foundation-funded, for the same The resolutions were silent on national policies; I think the delegates mostly were too unsure of the deeper facts of what they would be talking about to undertake implicit additional criticism of Johnson. The nostrums the liberals proposed are a little too familiar, too; many of them are valid and necessary ideas that will be enacted sooner or later, but some are only slogans, and behind all the resoluting there was an improvising, a making do, that expressed everyone’s inadequacy amid the fiercely chaotic events and mostly ineffec Paul Kenneth Dempsey, an English instructor at South Texas Junior College in Houston, marched in Mississippi over the weekend of June 18-19. These are his observations, written for the Observer. It was surprisingly difficult to find the march. Negroes in Greenwood even though one would preamble one’s question with “Sir” pretended ignorance. Martin Luther King had been here the night before, but he was gone now. Finally a young man offered to call a Negro cab. After some hesitation the driver said that he could take me. The march, at that point, consisted of about 150 people, sandwiched between two five-ton trucks. There were no flags, no musical instruments, none of the paraphernalia which one associates with mass movements, just a double row of usually silent and always tired people. A long journey was over and now one was surrounded by friends. A feeling of calm joy never completely dissipated. As the sun grew hotter and as the little towns we passed through cut off their water, tempers became shorter, but one only had to look -at a white face to see naked hatred. I had not realized that there was so much hatred. The people in the march were a varied lot. Most were Mississippi fieldhands, dressed in their working clothes, unassuming and uncomplaining. There were college students, both black and white. They seemed older and calmer than the students at home. There were civil rights workers from S.C.L.C., Snick and CORE. Most were under 25 and could be told from the college tual programs of these days. NOTHING LIFTS a person out of a depression quicker than going back to satisfying work; for liberals in Texas this means getting back to what reform in Texas has been about from the start making Texas more humane, guarding the foxes that are supposed to be guarding the chicken coops, and trying to make this damn place of ours a more progressive influence in the world. As of now Texas has probably the worst influence of all the states on the country. Yet we have the resources to change this if we will go about using them resolutely. We have a liberal heritage running from Sam Houston to Bob Eckhardt. We have, in Houston and San Antonio, two powerful urban centers that are consistently liberal in outlook and mostly liberal in elections. We have a good people, much wealth, and pointed access to the national conscience. So, having done some good and lost some ground, let us begin again. I wonder if reform is not a little like Octavio Paz said love is, just when, with whom, you never know, but a thing that comes and goes, begins and ends and can begin again. R.D. students by their attitude. They were veterans, accustomed to difficulty and fear. In addition there were a few whites mostly in their thirties from the various professions. Those watching the march could be divided into categories with an ease that is probably an indication of the tremendous social pressure in that saddest of our states. First were the whites: uniform hatred, uniform obscenities, uniform threats. Next were the Uncle Toms, a few of whom drove by on Sunday, doubtless on the way to church. The marchers would see a black face behind the wheel, wave, and be ignored. The largest group were Negroes who would wait at country cross-roads to smile and wave. Some came with us. One old man, dressed in his Sunday best, was crippled. He hobbled about a mile and wept as he explained that he couldn’t come any farther. One thing which steadily became more oppressive was the guards. We were guarded by the FBI, the State Highway Patrol, the county police, and, in municipalities, the local police. Although the marchers and the police carefully ignored each other, one was always aware of their presence. Somewhat better than the Klan, yes, but to be guarded, to have to be guarded, was more humiliating than all the obscenities. We arrived in Benizonia after sundown and immediately marched to the Post Office where facilities were available for voter registration. A large crowd gathered. Speakers on the Post Office steps a’sked that all those who had not registered to do so. The response was disappointing until it was realized that registration was being On The March