Word: clubs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...vicious cycle--a reputation for inaction does not attract action-oriented people. Young Dems echo each other in articulating the problem; few see a way out of the cycle. The panacea offered most frequently is leadership--a charismatic leader for the club who would both attract a devoted following and, in the words of a former Radcliffe coordinator, "get people to think they're giving their time for something worthwhile. It's all a question of security--people don't want to commit themselves to something that might be a bust. Freshman Cliffies are so vulnerable to being used...
Last month, Young came before what must have been a very surprised Cleveland, Ohio, City Club, and urged--in effect--withdrawal of American troops in Vietnam. One might suppose that his constituents were a little unnerved by this development, but Young says his mail has been running five-to-one in his favor from Ohio, and twenty-to-one nationally...
Young can be painfully predictable in his speeches. While Julian Bond and Donald Duncan, the other two speakers at last week's forum, made a point of avoiding the usual moral and practical evaluations of American policy, Young acted as if he were still taking to the Cleveland City Club. "Historically, there is no North and South Vietnam," he told an audience which was already way ahead...
Zonalizations about the club's failture to mobilize the energies of its membership and to define a meaningful role for itself flow freely from all quarters of the club. Critics charge that the club is bound to attract young politics on the make--"oftensive, back-slaping manipulators," one former executive committee member called them--who in their frantic efforts to establish the groundwork for future political careers inevitably make fools of themselves and a farce of the organization...
Disillusion in this situation sets in quickly, and the turnover on the executive committee, the club's ruling body, is extremely high. Among those members who remain, too, are those who privately express doubt that the organization will ever be able to justify its existence by doing more than what one calls "diddley work"--stuffing envelopes, writing letters, lending the Harvard name to worthy causes. (And worthy causes, members point out, are at their weakest position in several years as ways of attracting either commitment or attention.) Only about one-third as many people filled out Civil Rights Coordinating Committee...