Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 178179180181182183184185186187188189190191192193194195196197198199200201202203 of 592

And in addition to that, how you feel personally having been only seven or eight years out of the organized left.

By the time we're involved in '59 in the strike, my involvement is now totally not with the organized left, but with the organized -- whatever is organized -- support forces. If the organized left supports us, fine, and they do. But my concern is not with them. My concern is only with broader forces. As the civil rights thing develops, my concern is with them, and the organized left really does not play any decisive role with them. They're there helping, but they're really not a vital force So I am always -- and I think I stated it in the last tape -- I become critical of the organized left in this sense, and the organized left becomes critical of me. I am concerned that we do not adopt positions and take stands that will disunify us, move us away from the center of this growing movement. Not exactly, but this growing movement; you can be to the left of it, because it has its lefts and rights, too. But I'm not concerned about taking positions.

For example, I insisted and finally got Davis and the union to adopt a position on Czechoslovakia. Critical. In writing. His column. A position adopted. There had been a tendency by the left to ignore these things, “Don't take them up. Don't take a position. Take everything up, but don't take a position on these things.” I said that that is criminally wrong for the union, for anything; youe can isolate yourself completely. You've got to do it now. But it was not only on that. In the Vietnam thing, there was this thing, and I'm always trying to steer the labor people -- that means like Livingston, myself, and some others -- trying to perform a role of being a center to bring the left and the other wings together. In SANE, I'm on the board of SANE. I sit at meetings with Dr. Spock and Irving Howe. You have these currents going on in SANE on the war all the time. I am identified with Spock, but not with the far left in the thing. So that I can get the respect from all the groups, and all the groups begin to look to the labor people. See, the left wants the labor people to be the moderators. It's Dave Livingston, it's me. We're not terrible people. We let them try to work it out. They have their own axes to grind, too. So these are problems, but I become increasingly away from that. In my family, they create problems -- not my immediate family, but my brother Phil, who was always critical of us, that we're too broad and also that we're too wrapped up, that we only see the world in terms of 1199. That can be a problem, too, that everything revolves around 1199. Of course, we lived, ate, drank, and slept 1199. But in it we were involved in a lot of other things, you know. We had time to develop relations with Ossie, with Stanley Levison, with Wechsler, with all kinds of people who are on the outside and who are a part of that general good section.