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JULIAN BOND Page 1

The election approaching on November 7th is of crucial importance to all
Americans, but particularly those whose condition is poverty and whose
skin is Black. For whomever he happens to be, the next president of the
United States will affect all of our lives. He will place his men on the
Supreme Court, and will turn it back into the activist liberal force it
used to be or will continue it's present trend toward facism. He will
name the directors and set the budgets and policies for the Department of
Justice, the Department of State, the Departments of Health, Education and
Welfare and for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He will decide whether
the American agression against the innocent people of Southwest Asia con-
tinues, and will decide whether the American troops there now come home
marching upright or lying down in pine boxes. He will decide whether stocks
go up or down; whether money is loose or tight, whether our weekly paychecks
buy more or less or whether we have any paychecks at all. This election
will decide whether we will have the politics of wealth and stealth or the
politics of compassion and openess.

^But if the recent public opinion polls are true, they demostrate the frightening
reality that the comforable, the callous and the smug have closed ranks--
and closed their hearts-- against the claims and call to conscience put
forward by the forgotten and unrepresented in our society.
For Black Americans, an electoral victory in November for the present
occupants of Uncle Strom's cabin will mean consigning ^nearly all our hopes and dreams