By Keith Crandell
Months ago, as America tottered on the brink of its ghastly adventure in Iraq, tens of thousands of our citizens came together to protest. Two huge marches took place in New York. Villagers marched in droves — thousands of us. Especially, we saw young men and women taking to the streets. And in smaller gatherings, Villagers came together to denounce the perpetrators — Bush, Cheney, Perle, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, that whole nasty crowd of political thugs who have made off with our government and shamed us before the world.
There was excitement in these marches. Young and old, black and white, men and women, gay and straight striding along, singing and chanting, displaying our banners and signs, trying desperately to make a difference in our world.
Comes now the eve of the election of 2004 — our chance to throw the rascals out.
And here comes that good gray Democrat, Ed Gold, posing in last week’s Villager this quite relevant question for Village political activists: “How best can the Democrats maximize their strength in the district as we face the showdown a year from now?” He urges the Village Reform Democratic Club and the faction led by Democratic District Leader Arthur Schwartz to gather again under the banner of the Village Independent Democrats.
Of course. But I’m afraid that he’s talking about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Sure, it would be tidier if all the factions banded together behind a single goal. But Arthur Schwartz and Tom Duane and Chris Quinn know where the V.I.D. office is. These good people know they’re welcome back anytime.
Yet much more is needed. Village Democrats, whatever their faction, need to reach out and capture the energy displayed during the great peace rallies of early this year. And most important, we need to give younger Villagers incentives to get involved in the nuts and bolts of political action.
Let’s take a look at last week’s V.I.D. endorsement meeting, at which V.I.D. members came together to choose their presidential candidate. Big deal, huh? For the record, exactly 39 people came out to vote. As usual, trying to corral a gaggle of V.I.D. members into a majority vote for one of the nine candidates was like trying to herd an unruly passel of frogs into a cage. The candidates brought out serious vote wranglers to persuade this little band of V.I.D. voters. Howard Dean had Rep. Jerry Nadler on hand. Rep. Dennis Kucinich had State Committeeman Bob Ginsburg, a 30-year veteran of West Side political wars. Sen. John Kerry was well represented by his sister, Villager Peggy Kerry, and former Public Advocate Mark Green. Former State Sen. Manfred Ohrenstein, an icon of the Manhattan reform movement, spoke for General Wesley Clark.
They’ll have to come back in a month or two and do it all over again. Nobody won a majority. For the record, Dean won 15 votes, Kerry 10, Kucinich and Clark four each and Rep. Dick Gephardt one. The rest of the votes were “no endorsement.” Senators John Edwards and Joe Lieberman, Ambassador Carol Mosely Braun and Rev. Al Sharpton attracted no votes. Most notable was the blank for Lieberman. He had a half dozen campaign workers on hand and plenty of posters and literature, but persuaded nobody.
It was a nice meeting. People were cozy and courteous. Old friends chatted. But what impressed me was the paucity of voters. Especially young voters. Less than 40 V.I.D. members out to vote for president of the whole United States! I can remember meetings where we had 300 voting to endorse a candidate for Democratic district leader. And what’s more, we have a great field of Democratic candidates, I know that Lieberman is seen as too conservative and Sharpton has the Tawana affair hanging over him. None of them is perfect. But I’ll take any of them over Bush. And several of them would, I think, make really great presidents.
So here we are in politically sophisticated Greenwich Village, at a meeting of the political club that has brought forth some of the city’s most important public figures. We hope to endorse a presidential candidate from among a diverse and excellent field, to run against an incumbent whom many Villagers find loathsome. And only a handful of Democrats are on hand to make this important decision.
We need to do more than rearrange the deck chairs on our political Titanic. We must tap into the energy manifested by the massive anti-Bush marches. Most important, we must get younger people involved. We need a new generation of young Democrats to come on board and take up the burdens that Katharine Wolpe and Jane Sweeney and Sue Harwig and Herman Gerson and Tony Hoffmann and Le Enken have shouldered so well over the years. And Ed Gold, too. If we’re going to spend any energy on uniting local Democratic factions, we ought to spend 10 times as much energy in recruiting new, under-30 members into active politics. It can’t happen casually; we need a concerted effort to mobilize the same young people who were mobilized for the peace marches early in the year.
You might well ask, to what end? Why make a big political effort here in the Village? We know damn well that any candidate that Democrats run is going to carry the Village against Dubya. Big time. Alas, however, national elections are not won or lost in Greenwich Village. (I remember rushing home in 1972 after a long Election Day working at the polls and reporting gleefully that George McGovern had swept my polling place. My family, gathered by the TV set, explained gently that Nixon had already won — big.)
A couple of hints of how we might marshal and use a couple of brigades of young, enthusiasts were dropped at last week’s meeting. As I write this, Jerry Nadler is off to Iowa to campaign for his friend, Howard Dean. (I find the thought of this ultimate urbanite striding through the Iowa cornfields to be quite affecting.) The other thought came from V.I.D. President Chad Marlow, one of the young, fresh faces in Village politics, who remarked that he’d like to see a group of Village Democrats volunteer to help out in a neighboring state in which Democrats were in danger of losing.
What a neat idea! Could we fund a busload of young Villagers to spend a week in, say, eastern Pennsylvania to provide some extra political energy under the direction of local campaign leaders?
I’d like to see the three factions of local Democrats gather together in one meeting to plot out a common strategy for bringing young men and women into Village political life, particularly into the campaign to evict Dubya from the White House.
Beats rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.
