AN ALTERNATIVE: THE PEOPLE'S
BICENTENNIAL

For too long patriotism has been used by the power holders to manipulate and exploit. It is time for all decent Americans who love their country and want to see it live up to its finest aspirations to take back the flag. Patriotism does not mean blind obedience but, rather, a dedication to political, social and economic changes that are so desperately needed to fulfill the American dream of life, liberty, and happiness for all people.

The fact that local and state governments and the business community are planning to celebrate America's Bicentennial provides activist groups with an opportunity to challenge their legitimacy and to draw public attention to alternative perspectives and programs that reflect the principles embodied in our own Declaration of Independence.

On a regional and national level, activist organizations can focus on the major Bicentennial exposition themes, their relationship to pressing social concerns, and the implementation of alternatives. For example, anti-highway groups, mass transit groups, labor groups, public health and safety groups, etc., can focus their efforts around the International Transportation Exposition planned by the major auto manufacturers in Detroit. Similar efforts by other activist groups can be launched around the International Oil Exposition in Tulsa, The International Ecology Exposition in Spokane, the Inner City Renewal Exposition in Niagara Falls, the Culture and Recreation Exposition in Miami, the International Food Exposition in Iowa, the Armed Forces Exposition in Topeka, Kansas, etc. There are hundreds of activist groups whose area of concern falls within the theme of one or more of these major expositions. Failure to challenge official programs will mean that millions of Americans will receive only one source of information on the institutions and values that affect their everyday lives.

Local and regional Bicentennial programs by Chambers of Commerce and Tourist Associations can be challenged in a similar fashion. On the local level, however, there is more opportunity to involve people in alternative projects and programs.

The Bicentennial motif can be used by local activist groups to reach out to large numbers of people and to involve them personally in the process of mobilizing for change. Coalitions of community groups and/or concerned citizens can come together as a "People's Bicentennial Commission," and can begin to involve local residents in an alternative Bicentennial. It is important to remember that most official Bicentennial activities will be going on from 1972 through 1976 which allows 5 years of active involvement around the Bicentennial motif.

The following outline is offered as a possible approach to local organizing during the Bicentennial years, with the knowledge that existing activist groups might find other tie-ins and approaches to the Bicen

tennial more appropriate to their own on-going community work.

PEOPLE'S BICENTENNIAL COMMISSIONS

Like their colonial counterparts, the Committees of Correspondence, People's Bicentennial Commissions will serve as platforms from which people can begin to participate in decisions affecting their community. PBCs will be formed around the Bicentennial motif, with the immediate objective of analyzing, exposing, and combating contemporary injustices in the local community.

A few of the many areas of concern around which local PBCs might organize are tax policies, noise, water and air pollution, hunger, health care, child care, old age care, racial and sexual discrimination, job discrimination, civil liberties, political corruption, prison reform, unemployment, inflation, industrial health and safety, corporate abuse, land speculation, crime, consumer protection, education, recreation alternatives, mass media, and political representation.

The fact that your local or state government is planning to "celebrate" America's Bicentennial provides a PBC with an opportunity to dramatize its challenge to their legitimacy and to draw attention to its perspective and programs.

Obviously, the plans of the "official" Bicentennial groups vary greatly from place to place. However, it is quite likely that the local politicians and businessmen have some plans in this respect. In New Jersey, for example, over fifty cities and towns have already created "official" Bicentennial units, in addition to the state commission.

While P.B.C.s will probably want to counter "official" programs, if any, they will also want to begin the development of a community analysis with a view toward implementing needed institutional change, regardless of what the "powers that be" are planning. Of course, the subject of this analysis will vary from community to community. In a factory or mining area, industrial health and safety may be a volatile issue, while for suburbanites, air or noise pollution may be the most visible of many problems.

ORAL HISTORY

P.B.C. coalitions should consider beginning affirmative activity with a small Oral History project. Oral History is more a means to action than an end in itself. It is a way of stimulating communication, particularly across age and class lines. Every generation tends to view its own problems as unique. In reality, there are innumerable parallels between the experience of one generation and the next.

To begin an Oral History project, one goes to those who participated in events and simply records their description of their experiences. Workers or union organizers usually didn't have the time or inclination to write letters or keep journals; nevertheless, their recol

lection of events may be more accurate, in some instances, than that of a scholar or historian. Anyone who is capable of asking a few leading questions and of listening can be an Oral Historian. It is making history from the bottom up-a process whereby we all become historians and come to understand the importance of each individual to the development of his society.

The key, once again, is the ability to translate energy into social action. Initial P.B.C. oral history projects will serve to get projects in touch with the surrounding community, over an exploration of the history and struggles of the area. When young and older people begin to see the similarities in their lives and struggles, one obstacle to unity-the generation gap begins to give way.

As problems are exposed and their historical causation laid bare, the group will be able to locate areas for group action and begin to devise programs that deal with them directly.

IN DEPTH RESEARCH

Another approach to locating and analyzing local and regional problems is to undertake a public interest history project-researching the history of the community, its power structure, business development, population changes, ecological trends, as well as a regional history of ethnic groups, non-white communities, farmer, labor and women's movements. This is an especially good project for people within the university community to undertake. Much of this information can be found in local libraries, historical associations, and in the massive volumes of municipal and state records that are generally available to the public.

Chances are that one or more of the local problems around which a P.B.C. decides to build its action program have already been experimented with by activist groups in other communities. The following list will give some idea of the general areas of concern dealt with by action groups over the past several years: Adequate housing and tenant's rights; City & regional planning; communications; co-ops; education; laborhealth & safety, worker control, etc.; legal rights; oppression-racism, sexism, etc.; power structure-local, state, federal; transportation & public services; urban renewal; urban & rural research, economics & organizing; and many others.

OTHER USES OF THE BICENTENNIAL
MOTIF

We have already mentioned the use of oral history techniques and public interest history programs as ways of identifying and analyzing local problems so that effective programs for change can be initiated in the community. The Bicentennial motif can also be used to build community identification with, as well as awareness of, the philosophy and goals of local P.B.C. programs. For example, the local PBC can introduce resolutions in city councils and state legislatures on set

ting aside days for observance of historic moments in regional struggles; legislation calling for the renaming of streets, buildings, and parks can also be introduced. This is a good way to open up dialogue in the community and the state around the true meaning of the American humanist tradition.

PBCs could publish and distribute calendars, newsletters, and journals concentrating on the regional histories of farmers, labor, women, blacks, native Americans, and ethnic groups. These materials can be distributed daily at county and state fairs, parks, monuments, the state capitol and other sites where people tour and vacation. This offers a good opportunity to expose thousands of people especially grade school and high school students-to their own history and to publicize PBC activities.

Speakers' corners in parks and tourist areas could be set up, with actors and actresses giving famous orations and speeches from radical American heroes and presenting skits of famous moments in American working struggles. This could be followed by an open platform to allow people in the audience to speak their piece or interpret the skits and speeches in terms of the problems facing the community and the nation today. This is a good way to introduce people to the principles of freedom of asssembly and speech as living concepts, to air frustrations and grievances and to reflect upon the American legacy as it relates to all of us during the Bicentennial years.

Another way to reach out to people is to reprint the Declaration of Independence and/or the Bill of Rights and distribute them door to door in the community. This is an especially good project for high school students. Visits to neighbors' homes could include a discussion of the meaning of the documents and their relevance today in the community and the nation. This kind of outreach program provides an opportunity to dialogue with people about their frustrations, desires and ideas and acquaint them with the activities of the Local PBC. Similar discussions can be held in more formal settings; for example, at local civic and fraternal functions, youth organization meetings, PTA gatherings, school assemblies and church forums. It is important to re-establish the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights as living concepts. Official holidays such as Lincoln's Birthday, Washington's Birthday, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, etc., are generally celebrated in the local community with parades, public ceremonies and pageants. The local PBC should take advantage of these observances by planning its own activities either as part of the official ceremonies or as separate events. Again, this offers the PBC the opportunity to emphasize the radical-humanist aspect of American history and more important, its application here and now in the community and the nation. The PBC might also want to initiate its own local holidays by sponsoring memorial ceremonies, parades and pageants that honor events and people not officially recognized who fought for the common person. PBC sponsored activ

ities such as these are a good way to involve local unions, women's groups, blacks, as well as bands, fife and drum corps, entertainers and others.

Recognizing the important contributions made by local activists in the day-to-day struggles for justice in the community can be an important way to forge a new sense of the meaning of patriotism among the citizenry. Public acknowledgement of the work of activists concerned with the real issues of human dignity and freedom, especially when given mass visibility through press conferences, can be a very important educational tool. PBCs might even want to time such

ceremonies to correspond with the hollow award ceremonies of the local chamber of commerce or American Legion, where a bank executive is invariably praised for his great humanitarianism and goodwill. The contrast can be a powerful experience for people watching the evening news, and is a way of getting people to reflect upon their own social and political identifications.

So much for openers. The possibilities are limitless. To commit ourselves to each other; to plan a birthday party the world will never forget; to fulfill the American dream; to create a world of peace.

1973 will mark the 200th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

1973 will also be a year in which Representative Wilbur Mills will report 54 tax loopholes out of the Ways and Means Committee for Congressional review.

The Peoples' Bicentennial Commission believes that this coincidence of history and politics affords the movements for social change a unique opportunity to invoke the memory of an important event in our history to reinforce demands for tax justice in the future. To this end, we have created the Bicentennial Tax Equity for Ameica (T.E.A.) Party.

The Bicentennial T.E.A. Party will attempt to wage a major campaign for tax reform during the Bicentennials years. It will seek support from public leaders already identified with efforts to create a fair tax system. It will bring together economists who believe that economic growth can no longer gloss over enormous gaps that exist between rich and poor. Most important, it will challenge inequities in the tax system by organizing grassroots movements throughout the country to change them.

How will the Bicentennial T.E.A. Party be organized? What tactics can it use? What results might it expect? Each question deserves consideration.

Of course, the Bicentennial T.E.A. Party will attempt to involve, public leaders who have participated in tax reform battles in the past who are closely identified with demands to redistribute the wealth today. Nationally, one thinks of Senator Fred Harris, Congressman Henry Reuss, and writer Fhilip Stern. Yet, equally important will be the development of committees of community leaders in cities throughout the country whose endorsement will mean needed local support.

The Bicentennial T.E.A. Party will also solicit advice from professional economists. Like it or not, our society still seeks out the opinion of "experts" in debates on public policy. Proponents of cuts in defense spending have recognized this situation long ago, as have leaders in the ecology movement. Both rely on testimony from academics who, if they serve no other purpose, at least neutralize the "expert" testimony of the other side. A movement for tax reform should follow suit by developing committees of economists in each state who can be counted on to evaluate proposals for reform and assure the public that these programs are sound.

The most important goal of the T.E.A. Party, however, will be to organize for tax reform at the grassroots level. In this regard, building a coalition among state and local tax justice groups would seem appropriate, but we cannot underestimate the difficulties. Even though a great many people favor tax reform, there is little agreement on how to go about it. Should the country revert to a simple, graduated tax on personal and corporate incomes to meet its needs, or should it retain loopholes which benefit middle-class citizens? Should the government use its tax system for any purpose other than raising revenue? What relationship should society develop between federal tax reform and reforms in local and state tax systems? Unless

the tax reform movement can resolve these questions -that is unite around one or two basic bills comparable to the end-the-war bills spawned by the peace movement-the coalition will disintegrate. Consequently, the T.E.A. Party will attempt to bring together the various tax reform groups for a series of fall and winter conferences to determine what its common position might be.

The T.E.A. Party will have a variety of tactics at its disposal. Recently, for example, a Citizens' Action Program in Chicago created a major scandal by exposing substantial underassessments of business properties. Urban tax reform groups elsewhere can proceed along similar lines. Movement supporters can send tea bags to state and national legislators, as tax protesters did a few years ago. The T.E.A. Party can publish Common Sense pamphlets to explain to the public why tax justice is both necessary and possible. It can sponsor King George Exhibitions displaying pictures of local magnates currently benefiting from loopholes in the system. And, of course, there are the old standbys-letter writing campaigns; rallies; marches; public hearings; referenda-which the movement must employ in its drive

to success.

What, however, will constitute success for a Bicentennial T.E.A. Party? What can it realistically expect over the next four years?

To be sure, the movement cannot expect to remedy every defect in the tax system in this brief period. The economy for over twenty years has relied heavily on government incentives to the rich as a way of creating growth that benefits working people and the poor. Any meaningful change in the tax structure must entail a shift in this broader economic policy as well. Some will call the new system-relying, as it will, on public investment to meet social needs-"socialism." Others will find the term Populism more appropriate. Whatever the term, the economic strategy will bring fundamental change. Such change takes time.

Nonetheless, the Bicentennial T.E.A. Party will have every right to expect an immediate end to the most egregious injustices in our tax system-the oil depletion allowance, the extensive credits for investment in foreign countries, the favored treatment accorded to insurance companies, the low capital gains taxes, low inheritance taxes, among others. The movement can win striking victories at the state and local level-abolishing property taxes, raising state business taxes, eliminating regressive wage and sales taxes. It might even be able to end, once and for all, the argument that tax reform in any particular state will force industry to move away.

Yet the most important result of a Bicentennial T.E.A. Party would be to change the context within which tax reform is considered altogether. By 1976, an equitable tax system must become as important a national objective as full employment is today. If this context is established, decent programs will take care of themselves. This is the real challenge that the Bi