Word: actioneers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Independents, on the other hand, not required by their supporters to present detailed stands on such issues, come into the council without any such proposals--without, in fact, any clear idea of how to vote on them. Thus, when a CCA-initiated proposal comes up for action, the Independents may vote against it because some special-interest group has requested opposition or just because they are suspicious of any sort of CCA proposal which seems to have no origin in popular demand...
...Cambridge voters, it must be admitted, demand progress; most like conditions the way they are, or feel that political action can do nothing positive and may make everything more difficult. Politicians, sensitive to this sentiment, oppose actions with uncertain social effects. If there is no public outcry for Urban Renewal, they think, why should we risk our future by agreeing to tear down slum dwellings? After all, voters live there...
...course, be compromise. One sees no relatively important compromises worked out on the floor of the Council; perhaps both sides feel that they should not deal with the enemy in public. Eric H. Hanson, executive secretary of the CCA, and a regular observer of the Council in action, insists, however, that there have been frequent and important concessions by both sides paving the way for major steps. These seem to have been made informally in discussions between individual members and perhaps with the Mayor as mediator...
While the CCA remains in the minority, it can hope to make progress principally through compromise with the independents. But if it regains dominance and shed that check on its action, it is in the position to destroy the social balance of the city. Of the present CCA Councillors, only Mrs. Wise has so far expressed concern for this aspect of Cambridge life...
...audience realizes from the first the inevitable outcome of the action, if not from the title itself, then from the basis of the doctor's optimism--the liberal press and the "middle-class majority." Hovstad as the curly-haired 20th century editor is at his best when his true yellow colors are flying; his bourgeois publisher, superbly acted by Al Sperduto, epitomizes the egoistic middle-class man of moderation. The result of the audience's foreknowledge of failure is a tremendous irony that fills the play and nearly offsets its didacticism...