CNCV'S Future

Last Election Day, 39 percent of Cambridge's voters chose to reject United States policy in Vietnam. They voted for the Cambridge Neighborhood Committee on Vietnam's anti-war petition, which called for "the prompt return home of the American soldiers from Vietnam."

This "referendum on the war" had occupied virtually all of CNCV's time and money since midsummer. In the last weeks some 450 to 500 canvassers urged voters throughout the City to "vote yes to end the war."

When the results were finally counted, both pro and anti-war forces claimed victory. Presidential aide John Roche telephoned Sen. Francis X. McCann (D.-Camb.) to say that the White House was "delighted" with the support given to Administration policy. But John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, noted that the United States has seldom waged war on such a narrow basis of support.

Anti-war votes were by no means confined to the Harvard and M.I.T. enclaves in the City, though the CNCV petition did run strongest in areas near the Universities. Even in the lower-in-come wards of North and East Cambridge, the petition drew over 20 per cent of the vote--about twice what CNCV hoped for there.

Now that the referendum is over, CNCV is trying to turn the "yes" vote into more effective political action against the war. The committee has enough money left over from the referendum campaign to keep its office open until next spring, and is now appealing for more funds from its past contributors and workers. At the present time, CNCV is taking its first tentative steps along three different courses of action.

Thirty members are planning a campaign for Sen. McCarthy's candidacy. Though details of CNCV's participation have not been fully worked out, the committee will probably have only a loose affiliation with Citizens for McCarthy, so that CNCV would retain its identity if McCarthy's campaign flops. With remnants of the vietnam Summer organization in Allston-Brighton and PAX in Somerville, they will nominate a slate of McCarthy delegates from the Eighth Congressional District. CNCV plans to drum up support for this slate prior to the State Democratic primary on April 30.

Another group of 30 to 35 CNCV members, which feels that McCarthy's campaign chances are dim, is planning a long-range community organizing effort in selected lower-income areas of Cambridge. One member of the community organizing group expressed its rationale: "The war reveals the massive lack of power in the hands of the people in this country."

They will eschew what they call "the bankrupt New Left technique of single issue organizing" in favor of linking the war to a variety of local problems--welfare, inflation and particularly Cambridge's shortage of low-income housing. They hope local residents will then organize to solve these problems and, at the same time, express their opposition to the war. The details of this organization are still vague, but members of the group have suggested putting pressure on the Cambridge City Council to pass a rent control ordinance, and beginning a weekly newspaper to compete with the Cambridge Chronicle and the Boston Record American. They will also encourage draft resistance."

A third and smaller group of middle-aged women (several of whom have sons of draft age) hopes to begin a program of "draft education" aimed at high school students in the City. Members of the draft education group say they will not advocate resistance, but will merely provide information on alternatives to the draft, including conscientious objection.

CNCV's new activities clearly represent a break with the group's past method. Since its inception last spring, CNCV has had only one major activity at a time. First, it petitioned Rep. Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. (D.-Mass.) to come to Cambridge for hearings on the war; next, it held the Cambridge Peace Fair; and then it waged the long referendum battle. Now, CNCV is moving in several directions at once--an approach which creates both possibilities and potential problems.

Some members of CNCV feel the new approach will create a coalition that represents various shades of anti-war sentiment. Multiple approaches to anti-war work could bring both SDS members and middle-aged matrons into one organization with a capacity for large-scale action.

Other observers take a more dismal view. They feel that CNCV's one-project at a time approach has helped hold the organization together. As McCarthy supporters and more radical community organizers go separate ways within the organization, conflicts of interest and/or allocation of resources might arise. These conflicts might ultimately split CNCV into quarreling factions reminiscent of last summer's National Conference of New Politics.

"Cambridge's "referendum on the war" has come and gone. The organization which fostered it remains, but the coming months may provide a severe test of its staying power.