DON'T EXPEL MELVIN LITTLE!!!

This is from a DSA member in Yipsilanti, Michigan. Dennis will tell you this about Eric Chester.

FROM DENNIS GALBRAITH

WRL in the late 60s, HRP/People's Party in the early 70s. DSOC later. Retired from active politics in the middle 80s but kept my DSA membership.

Chester and I were in Washtenaw County in the late 60s and early 70s. I was in blue collar Ypsilanti and he was in elitist Ann Arbor. I've seen him and his people in action in Ann Arbor. Most incompetent group of sectarian screw ups I've ever seen in my life. Their one single attempt at union organizing was a disaster. They couldn't take city council seats. Some of those county meetings were incredibly bitter. They were very arrogant and hostile towards blue collar people.

I told Mel how we elected a democratic socialist city council and mayor..and how they crashed and burned. When you run for local city council, people except you to talk about city issues. Ann Arbor ran on foreign policy...like the voters really cared. They split into factions and unfortunately, the best people left the party.

Our joke was that the problem with Leninists is that they all wanted to be Lenin. I can see the same stupidity coming out right now...driving people out of the party. They eventually became New American Movement but that failed after DSOC and NAM merged (they were opposed to it). Apparently, they've wound up in sectarian groups or...in Chester's case, SP....I suspect there are some of the old group in the SP. Most of them left Ann Arbor.

I had hoped that Chester and his crowd had disappeared from the political scene but alas, that was wishing too much.