FREEDOM NOW. PARTY FILES IN MIGHIGAN
DETROIT -- The Michigan Committee for a Freedom Now Party has | completed its petition campaign to place candidates on the ballot for the November 1964 elections. More than 21,000 signatures were filed at the Michigan Secretary of State's office in Lansing. | -To place a new political party on the Michigan ballot, 14,892 signa-~ tures were required,
If the Secretary of State's officé- certifies ‘the signatures, the Michigan Freedom Now party will be the first all-Negro party’ to gain a place on any state ballot, Democrats, who usually. attract over ecighty per cent of the Negro vote, have led the opposition against the Freedom Now party,
The petition campaign was conducted by a dedicated group of people numbering less than thirty. The State Chairman is the Rev, Albert B, Cleage, Jr.,. an outspoken opponent of gradualism and tokenism, ;
The Detroit Free Press reported that the Democratic party has voiced some “consternation” over the fact that the Michigan Freedom Now party had filed for a place on the 1964 state ballot.
The Detroit. News quoted Secretary of State James Hare, a prom inent Demoorat, who said that "the Freedom Now Party might: get up - to 100, 000 votes with its program of ' independent black politioal action. mao
The Freedom Now party is bad news for the capitalist politicians but Michigan leaders of the Socialist Workers party have hailed its appearance. On the day the Freedom Now party filed its petition, Frank Lovell, Socialist Workers party, state chairman and candidate for governor, said: ~
"Instead of consternation, we feel gratification about the | Freedom Now party filing its petitions, and we hope that public opinion will prevent any Democratic monkey business such as chal-~ Tenging their validity,
the Socialist Workers party is in this campaign to fight and expose the Democrats and Republicans as the agents of big business, racism and reaction. We are not campaigning against the Freedom Now party, which in our view has valuable contributions to make to the electoral struggle for a world free of oppression and exploita+ tion. We welcome its entry into the election campaign, and hope it will get a fair hearing from whites as well as Negroes,
"Our only regret is that the labor movement hasn't broken from the old parties and asserted its political independence too, Let's. hope that the independent example set by the Freedom Now party will be contagious, catch on among white workers, and give birth toa —. labor party,"
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ALFRED ROSMER
By Pierre Frank
On May 6, Alfred Rosmer died of a cerebral hemorrhage at a hospital in the Paris suburb of Créteil. He was born in 1877 in San Francisco, California, where his father, a Loire worker, had | emigrated for a time. :
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