Page 10, Out in the Mountains

Therapy and Politics: The New Alliance Party

by Euan Bear

There's a newspaper floating around
Burlington these days, mostly found in
laundromats. It is called The National
Alliance, and it is radical. Not only is it
rhetorically radical about class and
economics in the style of left organizations
of the late sixties and early seventies, it
also puts out a line about a political party,
The New Alliance Party (NAP). The
NAP says in its literature that it is
black-led, women-or-color-led, and pro-gay.
I had never heard of them.

But then Howdy Russell called and
asked if I would cover a panel discussion
sponsored by NAP, because the party‘s gay
and lesbian caucus national coordinator
would be there. I am an old radical, a
little burnt out, ,very disgusted with
Democratic Party politics, and I was
intrigued.

The gathering was billed as a panel
discussion on Women and the Rise of the
Right with reference to the defeat of the
Equal Rights Amendment in Vermont.
Admission cost 34.

There were supposed to have been five
speakers: Charlotte Dennett, a tireless
worker for Vermont NOW during the
ERA campaign ‘and a published author
who has researched the historical connec-
tions between economic crises and the
repression of women's rights; Joy Living-
ston, a Burlington College administrator

and an active member of the Burlington

Women's Council; and state Representative
Micque Glitman, a strong feminist who has
supported gay and lesbian rights by intro-
ducing an anti-discrimination bill in the
state legislature; and two speakers from the
New Alliance Party (NAP) - Cathy Steward,
Boston organizer for the party and medical
director of the party-allied Institute for
Social Therapy and Research; and Mary
Fridley, national coordinator of NAP’s gay
and lesbian caucus and New England
regional coordinator for the NAP.

But two of the three Vermont speakers
did not show up. Glitman was in a legis-
lative hearing on the death penalty;
Dennett bowed out because of a publishing

deadline. Livingston arrived in plenty of
time, and an immediate confrontation
occurred at the door.

According to Livingston, she had

discussed the admission charge with NAP’s.

Burlington organizer, Richard Ronner, well
before the date of the event, saying that
she could not appear on the panel unless it
was clear that people could pay whatever
they wanted to or could afford without
being confronted and made to identify
themselves as low income at the door. She
suggested that a donation box or can be
placed on the table. Livingston said she
thought the organizer had agreed.

When she arrived, a man sitting at the
door was asking for $4. A woman who
had come in just before Livingston was
asked for $4. She said, "I can't afford
that, I don’t have any money." The door
man said, "Well, that’s what we’re asking."
There was a tense silence. "I guess I have
to leave," said the woman. There was no
mention of a sliding-scale admission.

Livingston restated her position and
left when NAP’s Cathy Stewart agreed to
explain to the audience why she would not
appear.

Meanwhile, I was interviewing Mary
Fridley. Fridley came to the New Alliance
Party by way of the women’s movement.
"I was a cultural worker in Oregon," she
said, producing concerts. But as a working
class lesbian, she felt politically unsatisfied
with where the women's movement was
going. It held little promise for poor and
working-class white women, or for Latino
and Black women. She came to New York
after hearing of the Coalition of Grass
Roots Women, and worked with the coali-
tion before joining NAP.

Perhaps the most important thing she
said is that NAP is the only independent
political party (with about 30,000 members
nationwide, mostly concentrated in New
York City with a scattering of members in
large, urban areas across the nation) that is
committed to the Black and Latino grass-
roots leadership of women, and' that is
pro-gay.

Their line on homosexuality is that it
is not a sin, and not genetic, but a political
statement protesting restrictive gender roles
in a white-macho-male dominated society.
By extension, the NAP believes that
homosexuality is the free and conscious
political choice of individuals to go against
the mainstream.

In some circles, those are fightin’
words. According to Fridley, Gay Com-
munity News has a policy of not covering
the NAP’s events in the Boston area. But
when I called GCN for a comment, editor
Stephany Poggi said there is no such policy.

Fridley also said that the Los Angeles
National Gay Rights March Task Force had
banned the NAP delegation from participa-
ting because of the party's advocacy of
gayness as a political choice. Such a
position, say critics of the NAP, opens gays
and lesbians to further attacks from the
right wing.

The NAP’s response is that viewing
homosexuality as genetically determined is
the same as saying it is a genetic disease,
giving the right wing a basis for quarantin-
ing gays.

The second most important thing she
said is that those of us who were politically
active agitators in the past, but are now
burnt out (and, I mentally add, supporting
liberal causes with occasional checks from
backwoods hideyholes or downtown apart-
ments), are burned out for a reason.

"There's nothing magical about the high
level of burn out," Fridley said. "Radical
energy had an impact in the seventies.
The contributions of the gay movement
were profound, but that .energy was
channeled into the Democratic Party.
Deals were then made to purge the least
desirables: transvestites, gays, lesbians, the
poor, and people of color." Gays and
Lesbians, Fridley said, have consistently
been ripped off and sold out by the
Democratic Party.

The next thing that caught my
attention was that the New Alliance Party
is sponsoring a petition drive, aiming to get
a million signatures. The petition is
directed to the Reverend Jesse Jackson,
leader of the Rainbow Coalition of the
Democratic Party, and asks him to support
an independent Black candidate for
President of the United States.

"Who?" I asked. "We don’t have a
particular candidate in mind," Fridley
responded. "Whoever comes from the
people" she said. "We want massive
grass-roots participation, which will create
an environment where leaders will arise."
The NAP is organizing an independent
People’s Convention to establish a platform
and choose candidates. The party is aiming
to get on the ballot in all 50 states.

As for the NAP’s political record, the
party ran Dr. Lenora Fulani, director
of Community Clinics of the Institute for
Social Therapy and Research, and
coordinator of the NAP’s Women of Color
Caucus, for the Governor of the New York
state in 1986. She received 25,000 votes.
Cathy Stewart ran for state representative
from Boston-Cambridge area against liberal
Democrat John McLaughlin. She lost.

The party aims to build coalitions, said
Fridley, between groups that have
traditionally been at odds with each other:
Blacks and Gays, Blacks and Jews, Latinos
and all three groups. "Some people say it
can’t be done. But given the state of
things now, I don’t know what else to do,"
she explained. "It’s either build this party,
do nothing, or rely on the same people
who got us into this mess."

The NAP, she said, recognizes the
progressive leadership which the Black
community has given to the country. It is
a multi-racial party which sees racism as
the cutting-edge issue. The progressive
movement, she continued, is doomed to
failure unless it deals with racism.

A brief discussion of Vermont issues
followed, including the recently introduced
gay rights anti-discrimination bill and the
betrayal of lesbians and gays by straight
feminists during the ERA campaign. One
man in the audience seemed intent on
stirring up a heated debate over economic
analysis. (I wondered if he was an
old-style Marxist-Leninist, or perhaps an
agent. The lessons learned in the sixties

continued, page 11