Andre White
Portrait of Ron Dellums in 1997. Dellums was a member of the United States House of Representatives 1971 to 1998.
On July 30, former Congressman (1971-1998) and Mayor of Oakland, California (2007-2011), Ronald Dellums passed away at the age of 82. In June 1971, Erwin Knoll, as Washington Editor for The Progressive, wrote a lengthy portrait of Dellums in which the Congressman emphasized his commitment to peace and refusal to be cowed by the label of “radical.” In commemoration of Dellums and his legacy we share a portion of that article:
By this time, if the Pentagon is on its toes, it has alerted the commander of every military installation in the continental United States: Be on the lookout for Representative Ronald V. Dellums, Democrat of California. He's likely to drop in unannounced, inspect your facilities, talk to your troops, ask embarrassing questions. He's black, he's some kind of radical, and he's bad news.
Ron Dellums, freshman Representative from Berkeley, is carving out a new constituency. He wants to be the Congressional voice of the military—not of the Joint Chiefs and the brass, who suffer no lack of Congressional voices, but of the men in the ranks who are, Dellums believes, one of America's neglected minorities, victims of repression, discrimination, and poverty. He wants to speak to their needs and he wants to enlist their energies in the cause he puts above all others: peace.
“The one remaining constituency that needs to be mobilized if we are serious about peace is the military,” Dellums says. “These are the young men we ask to kill or be killed. They're inside; they know the situation. Having them stand up for peace can be a very powerful thing. The political leadership in America needs to know how the young people feel about it.
“For every young man who refuses to step forward and be inducted into the Army, there are thousands more within the military who feel exactly as he does. Their feelings ought to be expressed, and if they are expressed loud enough and strong enough, maybe somebody will get the message.”
When Dellums talks about peace, he means peace—not just American withdrawal from Indochina, but withdrawal from the mentality that relies on death and the threat of death as a national way of life; not just ending the war, but ending all war .
He is that rarest of phenomena, a radical in the Congress of the United States. Last fall, after he defeated a Cold War liberal, five-term Representative Jeffery Cohelan, in a hard-fought Democratic primary , Vice President Agnew denounced Dellums as "a radical extremist," a man whose purpose in running for office was "bringing the walls down." The Vice President was right on target. "I am not going to back away from being called a radical," Dellums said. "If being an advocate of peace, justice, and humanity toward all human beings is radical, then I'm glad to be called a radical. And if it is radical to oppose the use of seventy per cent of Federal monies for destruction and war, then I am a radical." As for wanting to bring the walls down, Dellums confessed to that charge, too. He was for bringing down the walls between the races, between the classes, between the generations in America.
“I tell my colleagues in the Congress, ‘Hey, man, you want to know something about all them young white radicals? They weren't parachuted into America from some foreign country. They were born to you.’ ”
“What I'm talking about is freedom and peace and the ability of human beings to come together.”
“This is 1971. We have a generation of young Americans—black, white, brown, red, and yellow—who are hellbent not to destroy the good in society but to change the institutions so that the good in society is able to reflect itself. And that means ending the insanity of war, that means ending the absurdity of repression and racism and discrimination and poverty and hunger and disease. What I'm talking about is freedom and peace and the ability of human beings to come together.”
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“A strange, old-fashioned kind of radical—one who believes in building bridges, in persuading people, in working together, in making the system move. Ron Dellums still has hope,” said Erwin Knoll concluding his more that five-thousand word portrait of Dellums. That hope was echoed in this final quote from their interview:
“It's the war that's at the basis of this economy, man. How are we going to deal with the problems of education, housing, health care, guaranteed annual income, all the other issues that need to be addressed in this country so long as we spend fifty and sixty and seventy and 100 billion dollars a year for killing other human beings—most of them black or brown or poor people? They say war is not a black issue —but we're dying there. They say ecology is not a black issue—but we live in the dirtiest, filthiest communities in America. We have to get our heads out of that patronizing approach that the only kind of issues are black issues. We've got to join this world. Black people's humanity and dignity may be the only thing that can save this country. Maybe we can be the people that can turn this country around.”
Erwin Knoll was Washington Editor of The Progressive from 1968 to 1973, and then Editor-in-chief of the magazine from1973 until his death in 1994.