New Alliance Party
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- For other uses, see New Alliance Party (disambiguation).
The New Alliance Party was an American political party formed by psychotherapists Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani. The party is notable for getting Fulani on the ballot in all 50 states during her first Presidential campaign in 1988, making her both the first African-American and woman to do so.
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Background and ideas
From 1974 to 1979, Newman had acquired some experience in politics in managing the International Workers Party. By the end of this period it seemed that to expand the influence of Newman's ideas it would be necessary to set up a public electoral party, controlled secretly by the IWP (which itself was now "underground"), but with a less rigid ideological face than the IWP. The idea was to create an electoral party independent of Democrats and Republicans (but NOT of the IWP) that could create "new alliances" of groups marginalized by the American electoral process, namely racial minorities, homosexuals, anti-Zionist Jews and women. The climate of some sectarian Left groups in the 1970s was intended to be "race neutral"- that is, strictly dedicated to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" regardless of race. This was seen as naive by some revolutionary groups set up by minorities. In 1979, Newman started the New Alliance Party (NAP) to expand his base beyond the IWP and into the marginalized communities.
Like all groups founded by Newman, the basis for the NAP was in his own Social Therapy methods. The group did label itself as "pro-socialist" but it is unclear whether the group's platform was really rooted in Marxism or in Newman's own more eclectic views. Social therapy posits that personal problems are brought on by the political system- a member of a marginalized group would be less likely to be in emotional distress if they had a stronger political voice instead of being reliant on a system that mistreats them.
Dr. Newman's patients went from "one-on-one" therapy sessions to "grouplets"- mixed groups where each person was encouraged to speak out against any social or racial group, especially if members of that group were in the grouplet. Newman believed that only by making his patients vulnerable to these attacks could they all see how the divisions created in society were harmful to their psychological states. The sometimes brutal shared abuse of these therapy sessions drew accusations from outsiders that the group was less a political organization than a cult using leftist lingo as a control mechanism. The sessions did produce a "collective" mentality that focused an intese amount on sexual and racial identity politics. The grouplets nicely served as a starting point for NAP activism because the mixed groups could all return to their diverse communities for recruitment.
Electoral politics
In addition to being harshly criticized for its internal practices, the NAP also came under fire for its campaigning activities. The NAP was frequently accused of practicing entryism. This caused problems not only with the Democratic Party but also many independent groups.
In 1984 the NAP made its entry into the Presidential campaign scene. Its candidate was Dennis L. Serrette, an African-American union activist who would later leave the NAP alleging questionable methods used by Newman and others. Serrette's running mate was Nancy Ross, a Jewish follower of Newman (and a founding member of the secretive IWP) who had previously won a seat on a community school board on Manhattan's Upper West Side and today is a staff member of Newman's political think tank.
In 1985 the NAP began its unusual political "relationship" with Jesse Jackson. While Newman was initially dismissive of Jackson, Fulani had praised the popular activist during his 1984 Presidential run. However, it was after he founded his Rainbow Coalition group that the NAP got him to take notice of them. Newman and Fulani created the similar-sounding Rainbow Alliance, which at first lobbied for the benefit of small political parties. It later changed its name to the Rainbow Lobby and expanded its lobby to include issues of Joseph Mobutu's presidency in Zaire and the Haitian dictatorship of Prosper Avril. It is unclear how many people gave money to the Rainbow Lobby thinking that it was connected to Jackson, but when asked about his political relationship to Fulani in the press he said that there was no relationship at all. The Rainbow Lobby continued to raise money into the early 1990s but Fulani criticized Jackson for his support of the Democratic Party.
The 1988 presidential race was a big step for the NAP. In the previous election, they were only able to get Serrette on the ballot in 33 states. This time around they pursued every avenue they could imagine to gain ballot access. This included attempts at taking over other small political parties which had existed previously without any involvement from NAP members, such as the Solidarity Party in Illinois. The easiest way to do this was to bus as many NAP members as possible to the unsuspecting party's convention and have them vote as delegates to endorse the nominations of NAP candidates. They had unsuccessfully attempted this technique in the 1984 election with the Peace and Freedom Party (P&FP) in California, but this time around they simply held another convention and declared themselves to be the real P&FP. California refused to recognize any P&FP convention results that year. Nevertheless the NAP succeeded not only in getting Fulani's name on the ballot in all 50 states but also at diminishing much of the "competition" from other leftist small groups, whom they sometimes accused of being "bought" by the Democrats. Fulani had six different running mates; different ones in different states, among them Joyce Dattner and (in Oregon only) Harold Moore,<ref>Gessen, Masha "“Radical Social Protest: NAP and the Gay Community" Next Magazine, August 31-September 6, 1988</ref> each "representing different constituencies."<ref>Fulani, Lenora (1992). The Making of a Fringe Candidate 1992, page 127.</ref> Asked which one would become Vice President if she won, she answered "If we got elected, we'd figure it out."<ref>Athitakis, Mark "Booty Call" SF Weekly Aug 11, 1999</ref>
Fulani ran unsuccessfully as a New York gubernatorial candidate in 1990. She was endorsed by Louis Farrakhan who had recently been politically involved with Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign only to be dropped at the recommendation of Jackson's campaign advisors. This was due to the public's perception of Farrakhan as anti-semitic, which amplified the reaction to Jackson's slipped comment of calling New York City "Hymietown". Fulani and Newman embraced Farrakhan and angered the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) by refusing to call him out for comments he had made. Accusations of anti-semitism were nothing new to Newman. The ADL quotes him as saying in a 1985 speech that Jews had become the "stormtroopers of decadent capitalism" in response to the Holocaust. In the wake of this criticism, Fulani moderated a "historic conference" on Black-Jewish relations, featuring the "Jewish Marxist" Newman sitting down with activist Al Sharpton.
Fulani again ran for president in 1992 on the NAP ticket. Maria Elizabeth Munoz, a chicano activist, was chosen as her running mate. Munoz had previously run for Senate and Governor in California on P&FP tickets. The NAP again tried to take over the P&FP convention, but lost the party's nomination to Ron Daniels of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Fulani also entered the New Hampshire primary for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination in 1992, and gained some press coverage for frequent heckling of Bill Clinton's campaign appearances after she was excluded from the New Hampshire Democratic debates.
By the mid 1990s the NAP and its weekly newspaper The National Alliance had been disbanded, although the IWP remained as the internal control mechanism of various new and old Newman fronts. In 1994, Fulani and Newman for a period joined the Patriot Party, one of many groups which would later compete for control over Ross Perot's Reform Party in the years to come. This same year, Fulani would with fellow Newmanite Jacqueline Salit start the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, an organization dedicated to bringing various independent groups together to challenge the bipartisan hegemony in American politics. Critics say that these groups are actually a way for Newman and Fulani to manipulate the independent parties, and many respected political figures such as Ralph Nader and George Pataki have been condemned in the press for their cooperation with Newman-led organizations. Supporters of Fulani and Newman were successful in gaining control over some state affiliates of the Reform Party, most notably in New York, leading again to charges of entryism.
Affiliated projects
The NAP released various periodicals such as National Alliance and Probe as mouthpieces for their political ideas. Newman (sometimes with Fulani) also created a number of community programs like the All Stars Project Inc. and the Castillo Theatre, the latter a venue for producing "postmodern" plays, and the Barbara Taylor elementary school (now defunct) in Harlem. All Stars and Castillo are still active and use social therapy as their basis. They propagated NAP political platforms when the party was still active. Many of the plays put on by the off-off Broadway Castillo and by affiliated amateur theater programs in several cities were written by Newman himself, and occasionally stir up controversy for their portrayals of Jews.
"Front group" criticisms
The formation of NAP did not bring about the dissolution of the IWP. Many former NAP members have reported that the IWP served as a secret governing body for NAP. (See the "ex-files" at http://ex-iwp.org.) Knowledge by NAP members of the IWP operations within its ranks was exclusive to NAP members singled out for recruitment. Those who joined the IWP (also known as the "Tendency" or the "preparty") were expected to maintain complete secrecy about the party's existence, function in a clandestine manner and turn over all their assets to the IWP. The transcript of a secret 1983 meeting of the IWP's Office of Economic Development (the Central Committee's financial committee), with Chairman Newman doing most of the talking, makes unequivocally clear that Newman regarded NAP as an entity controlled by the IWP collective.<ref>Meeting of the International Workers Party's Office of Economic Development, January 27, 1983</ref>
Fred Newman's habit of starting very similar organizations concurrently with largely shared memberships has led some to believe that his political activities are simply a "paper shuffle"--a complicated, therapy-drenched fundraising web that is centrally, and tightly, controlled. Newman has responded to this criticism by saying that many political organizations turn to partnered groups for support and that the apparent incestuousness of Newmanite groups is overstated in the press. Significantly, Newman has never publicly acknowledged the ongoing existence of the clandestine control mechanism, the IWP, in spite of the massive amount of testimony presented by numerous former members on the web site http://ex-iwp.org.
Some leftwing journalists and activists believed in the 1970s and 1980s that all of Newman's enterprises - including the NAP - were actually front groups for his former ally Lyndon LaRouche. This is because Newman brought his organization into an alliance with the LaRouche organization in 1973-74, and willingly collaborated with LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) after the NCLC had conducted Operation Mop-Up against the Communist Party but while the NCLC was still engaged in violence against black nationalist groups and Maoist sects. The NAP has no history of systematic LaRouche-style violence, although IWP members are known to have occasionally assaulted dissenters from Newman's views, defectors, and rival groups. In addition, the IWP, operating through NAP and NAP's publications, has slandered many of its opponents in "smears" similar to those that the various LaRouche organizations carry out (and, like LaRouche, the IWP operating under NAP cover has filed numerous lawsuits to harass opponents).
The issue of LaRouche influence is therefore a murky one. NAP's 1984 presidential candidate Dennis Serrette said that even he couldn't tell whether NAP was a LaRouche front. This was because Newman was found to be lying about his claim that he had only worked with the NCLC pre-"Operation Mop Up". However, in 1996 LaRouche himself issued a warning to Fulani that he would expose "significant features of the Fred Newman organization" after Fulani and Newman became involved with the Reform Party. Interestingly, this threat was issued in response to an article that Fulani had written criticizing Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Al Sharpton, both of whom had previously been supported by NAP. LaRouche was allied with Farrakhan's Nation of Islam at the time of his warning to Fulani, but no evidence has surfaced about LaRouche ever working with Sharpton.<ref>Open Letter to Lenora Fulani, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (Jul. 31, 1996)</ref>
Notes
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