Interview with David McReynolds

David McReynolds has been one of the leading voices in progressive politics since the 1950s. He has been affiliated with the War Resister's League, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Socialist Party of America. In his lifetime, David has run for president twice, once in 1980 and again in 2000. He has twice placed bids for the U.S. House of Representatives, once in 1958 and again in 1968. In 2004, he ran against Chuck Schumer to represent New York in the U.S. Senate. I met David through our mutual affiliation with Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Recently, I asked David if I could interview him for JuliusSpeaks. This is what transpired.

1. How long have you been active in Socialist organizations?

I've been active in the Socialist movement since I joined the Socialist Party in 1951 in Los Angeles.

2. Where are you from?

I was born in Los Angeles in 1929 and lived there until leaving for NYC in 1956.

3. What is your social and ethnic background?

My ethnic background is Scottish, English, Welsh, Dutch, French, German. The class is middle middle.

4. What would you say most influenced your political ideology?

Hard to say what "most" influenced my political ideology. Certainly reading The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffans while in High School played an important role. Also the influence of friends at UCLA, and hearing Bayard Rustin speak in 1949.

5. What was Liberation Magazine?

Liberation magazine, founded in 1956, was a monthly publication committed to a radical nonviolent viewpoint. I served, from 1957 to 1960, as the editoral secretary (which really meant the guy who bundled the magazine for the post office, handled the mail, etc.)


6. How did you become involved with the War Resister’s League?

I became involved with WRL before leaving California, as I moved toward a CO position in relation to the draft.

7. When did you become involved with the Peace and Freedom Party?

My only involvement with the Peace and Freedom Party was as their candidate for Congress in 1968 here in New York City.

8. What is your political philosophy?

My political philosophy is democratic socialist, with libertarian leanings, and of course with a pacifist underpinning.

9. What compelled you to run for president on the two occasions that you posed a bid?

Nothing compelled me to run for office, but Maggie Phair encouraged my bid in 1980. I was, in 2000, more genuinely drafted (but happy to accept).

10. What was the platform you ran on in 2004 against Chuck Schumer in the New York Senate race?

The main platform in 2004 in New York was the Iraq War - plus the general Green Party platform.

11. What was your association with Bayard Rustin?

My association with Bayard was his impact on my from 1949 on. He was my boss at WRL from 1960 until he left in his "turn to the right" in 1965.

12. You were the first openly gay man to run for president. You also wrote one of the first exposes on life as a gay man in 1969. What was it like to be one of the lone openly gay public voices before Stonewall?

I did not become an "open gay" until the article in WIN magazine in 1969 - though I had not, with friends and associates, made any secret of my life. And my piece in WIN came just after Stonewall - not before. If the question is what was it like to struggle with "gay identity" that is complex. There was a combination of guilt, confusion, etc. and one must realize that when I "came out" in 1949, and admitted to myself that I was homosexual, that was a period when the whole gay community was - without exception - "underground".

13. Bayard Rustin was both political and openly gay in the 1950s. Do you see your life as parallel to his in any way?

Bayard's life and mine are not parallel. He was not, by the way, "openly gay" in the 1950's, despite his arrest in 1953. Everyone in the movement knew Bayard was homosexual but he himself never made any public statement about it (of course, given his morals charge arrest in 1953 he hardly needed to make a public statement!). His
first response on reading my piece in WIN magazine was to call Ralph DiGia and urge I be fired. I did NOT take offense at that, and understood it very well - Bayard was one generation earlier than me. Later in his life he was open about his homosexuality.


14. Did you know James Baldwin?

I met James Baldwin once when I got him out of the Community Church after a talk he had given for WRL there. I got his cab and went down to the Village with him to Folk City. That doesn't constitute knowing him. His writings are very important.


15. It has been said that you were in a long term relationship with the choreographer Alvin Ailey. What was the nature of your relationship with Ailey?

I did NOT have a long term relationship with Alvin and as noted earlier I've got to write this up before I die and Alvin's own life history gets in any way confused with mine. We were friends from May of 1949 on. But I saw him rarely after he came to New York. I had seen him often in Los Angeles, visited him in San Francisco and in New York, and saw him in London when he was there and we met by accident on the Underground.

16. What are your thoughts on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

I think the repeal of DADT is a very good thing but the more important thing is getting rid of the economic draft which forces youth into the military.

17. How would you grade President Obama on the job he is doing? How would you advise him?

I think Obama has been somewhat of a disappointment but I think he was always part of the establishment- he'd never have gotten the nomination otherwise. He has accomplished more than those of us on the left realize, but he has not met the challenge of the economic crisis and his foreign policy, while better than Bush
(marginally better), is basically very much the same. One has to judge Obama in the context of how he has been "bounded in" by the right wing of the Democratic Party and the fierce (and incredible) attacks on him from the Republicans, driven by racism. Aside from advising him to be tougher with Israel and getting out of Afghanistan, I am not in the business of advising him but of shifting public opinion so that whoever is President has new pressures to face.

18. What do you say is the most pressing issue for progressives and activists today?

There are so many pressing issues. I don't even begin to know what should be done to get the economy moving. I don't think socialists have quick answers to this. Certainly the military - its budget, its role in the culture- is a major (really very major) problem, but so is the environment, and so is the problem of how to get the US to adjust to the fact our role is "sliding downward" in the world.


Thanks, David!

A Biography in Tribute of Lena Horne

Lena Horne, actress, singer, and civil rights pioneer, was one of the most talented and influential women of her generation. Born in 1917 in an upper middle class home in Brooklyn, New York, she was raised by her grandmother and grandfather, Cora and Edwin Horne. Lena found an early inspiration for the course she would take in life in the person of her grandmother, Cora Calhoun Horne. Cora Calhoun was a seasoned political activist, recognized during her lifetime as a major suffragist and one of the pioneers of the Niagara Movement, the movement that led to the founding of the NAACP. Under her grandmother’s guidance, Lena became a member of the NAACP as a toddler. Along with her social and political activism, Cora Calhoun was also a philanthropist and an advocate of education for Blacks. In 1917, Cora Calhoun secured a scholarship that allowed a young Paul Robeson to attend Rutgers University. This legacy inspired an intense friendship between Lena Horne and Paul Robeson in later years. Horne’s uncle, Frank S. Horne, was an advisor in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. Her maternal grandfather was the inventor, Samuel R. Scottron.

At fifteen, Horne left her grandparent’s home in order to live with her mother, Edna, an aspiring actress and former debutante. At sixteen, in an effort to support herself and contribute to the family income, she took a job performing in the chorus at the Cotton Club in Harlem. At the Cotton Club, Horne was influenced by such major figures as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. After a while, she joined the orchestra of famed band leader Noble Sissle and toured the country. Horne first earned fame and recognition with his orchestra. She has credited Sissle’s mentorship as the bedrock on which she built her future career.

In 1942, Lena Horne signed a contract with MGM Studios. She became the first Black actress to sign a long term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Considered too light to appear on screen in Black roles, the studio commissioned Max Factor to create a special make-up, known as “Dark Egyptian,” to darken her skin. Her first major role came in 1942’s Panama Hattie. In the film, she played a singer whose on screen performance had nothing to do with the plot. The reason for this was so the studios could cut out the role (as well as those of other Black performers) when the film was screened in the South, where Black performers could not be portrayed in major roles on screen. She followed Panama Hattie with her two most successful efforts in Hollywood, Cabin the Sky and Stormy Weather, both released in 1943. Both films were major Hollywood musicals that featured all black casts. Stormy Weather gave Lena her signature song. Since that time, the song “Stormy Weather,” has been identified with Horne and has been a hallmark of her long, illustrious career.

Beginning in the 1950s, Horne was blacklisted by Hollywood and the entertainment industry because of her friendship with Paul Robeson, her dedication to progressive politics, and her outspokenness on racial issues. Lena Horne literally embodied the turmoil of racial politics in the United States. Through the Calhoun family, Lena Horne was the great-great grand-daughter of the staunchest pro-slavery senator to sit in the United States senate before the Civil War, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Her passion for justice matched his fervent calls for human bondage. During World War II, while performing on a USO tour, Lena decisively left the front of the room where the white soldiers sat along with several German prisoners of war and moved to the back of the room to sing for the Black soldiers. Horne was one of the earliest participants in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and was a participant in the 1963 March on Washington. She was a close ally of Paul Robeson during his troubles with the United States government and the entertainment industry.

Horne has said, “Whatever petitions I’ve signed or benefits I’ve played I’ve not done because I had any broad or deep political program I was pushing. I had just learned from my father and from my grandmother not to take any nonsense from anybody.”

In 1978, Horne played Glenda the Good Witch in the Diana Ross/Sidney Lumet classic film, The Wiz.

Lena Horne was married twice, once to Louis Jordan Jones and later to MGM band director, Lennie Hayton. She bore two children with Jones, a son Edwin, who died in 1970, and a daughter, the writer and journalist Gail Buckley Lumet. Her granddaughter is the screenwriter Jenny Lumet.

Conversation with Matthis Chiroux

I recently had a conversation with Matthis Chiroux, the soldier who is refusing to be deployed to Iraq. Outside of the list of questions I sent his way, we had a very interesting conversation. Here is what transpired.

Brandon:
hi there

Matthis:
Hi, how are you?
Brandon:
good and you thanks
Matthis:
I'm fine. Super busy and even more broke, but not in jail, and still kicking against the flow.
So those questions you sent me, what exactly were they for?
Brandon:
hehe
Matthis:
You didn't really specify.
Brandon:
great stuff
for my blog
just an interview type thing
Matthis:
Oh, I see.
You did send me that, didn't you.
Brandon:
send what?
my blog?
yes
I did
Matthis:
Sorry, my heads been in about amillion places at once.
Brandon:
in an earlier note
ahh understand
;-)
Matthis:
Yeah, that's right.
Brandon:
I bet there's a lot of things going on up there
um
it is www.juliusspeaks.blogspot.com
Matthis:
Well, just got back to brooklyn and am trying to figure out how I'm not going to be another homeless vet.
Brandon:
oh my
what are your options?
Matthis:
Quit the activism and get a real job.
Or some kind of public support needs to start flowing in.
Brandon:
haha
isnt that always the way?
you know
there is a real need for money on the left
things are not as organized
or perhaps are too organized
than what they used to be
although of course I wasnt around for that time
but i mean
they could actually operate
and it wasn't
"volunteer"
Matthis:
Well, there is just too much independent thought.
Brandon:
it was a way of life
no
never
Matthis:
People heading in 30 ways at once.
Not a bad thing, but makes organizing difficult.
Brandon:
are you an agent provacateur?
well
I dont know
I think there is a bit of that
but no
I think what there is
is just too much coalescensce
and too much
complacency
you know the black panthers
alwasys had
at least a million dollars in their coffers
Matthis:
That's pretty nice.
IVAW does not.
Brandon:
yes
of course
Matthis:
And not nearly as many guns, either.
Brandon:
yes
Matthis:
In fact, I have a broken one tattooed on my arm.
Brandon:
for sure
but alas
the panthers
also had the second most successful newspaper in the country
from 69 to 72
and there were a lot more people
with money
who were willing to put their money
and their lives
whre there mouths were
as you can hear now
a lot of neoliberal right wingers
complaining now
about Leonard Bernstein
and Jane Fonda raising money for the black panthers
lol
Matthis:
Well, unfortunately, things have devolved in this country. Alienation has set it. The shocks of oppresion have masked the shocks of economic reform which has all in all left everyone quite broke and helpless.
Brandon:
well alienation was always there
but solidarity
certainly has fallen apart
and yes
everyone is broke and helpless
Matthis:
But you know, I don't buy into the whole astrology thing, but apparently the stars haven't been aligned like they are right now since the American Revolution.
Brandon:
but so will be the rightwingers too
this country
as a whole
is falling apart
and thats not necessarily a bad thing
interesting
I have never heard anything about that