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Instead, the hopes and dreams of generations that each
succeeding year would be the year in which the land of the slave
finally becomes the home of the free have been set aside in favor
of defense spending, balanced budgets and corporate domination of
the economy.

In spite of the progress made so far, the real problem
remains to be solved. As Dr. W.E.B. Bubois put it, "The greater
problem, which obscures the basic one, the problem of the color
line, is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to
live in comfort, even when the price of this is the poverty,
disease and ignorance of the majority of their fellow men." (1)

What we need to be about today - and for many, many years to
come - is a version of politics which cannot be labeled by the
old terms.

If there is an opening for an American era of politics
different from the past, then it must be a citizen's democracy,
insurgent, but with its focus aimed seriously at power.

When I speak here of "democratic" I do not mean the
political party I belong to but rather the system of equally
distributing wealth and power in an organized society, through
institutions based on the premise that we all have equal
ability - an equal right - to make decisions about our lives and
our future.

This will require the creation of a large cadre of
organizers with the strategy, skill and vision to build a
democratic movement in the mainstream - a reassertion of the

1. W.E.B. Dubois, A Reader, Ed., Meyer Weinberg (1970) .