Local Anti-War Activists Prepare National Peace Campaign for 1970

Harvard and other Boston-area anti-war activists have taken the first steps in setting up what they hope will be an organized, nationally-co-ordinated political campaign on behalf of "peace candidates" in next year's Congressional and Senatorial elections.

A group of fifteen to twenty Moratorium staffers, veterans of the 1968 McCarthy and Kennedy Presidential campaigns, and representatives of liberal Massachusetts political organizations met last Thursday evening at the Institute of Polities to approve a letter inviting more than 300 anti-war leaders across the country to join in such an effort.

Present at the meeting, among others, were Kenneth L. Hurwitz '70. New England campus co-ordinator for the Washington-based Vietnam Moratorium Committee: Charles E. Schumer '71. President of the H-R Young Democrats; Doris H. Kearns, assistant professor of Government; Paul D. Selver '69; and Holly C. Evarts '71.

Selver, a first-year student at the Law school, and Miss Evarts headed the H-RStudents for Lindsay group this fall, Representatives from the state chapter of the Americans for Democratic Action, and from the Citizens for Participation Politics-a remnant of the McCarthy campaign-also attended.

Richard M. Neus?adt '69, a first-year Law School student-who organized the meeting-said the group thought that an organized peace campaign could "put pressure on the President to increase the pace of troop withdrawals" from Vietnam.

"The President says he won't be influenced by demonstrations at the polls: maybe we can beat the war in Congress. All it would take would be 51 votes in the Senate."

Neustadt is one of four co-chairmen of the Democratic Council of Massachusetts the Commonwealth's chapter of the liberal New Democratic Coalition.

Hurwitz said last night that "some sort of coordinating effort for the 1970 national elections" is also being considered by staff members in the National Moratorium office. In Massachusetts, he said, local Moratorium organizers are "already very much into the Congressional thing-doing research and trying to get people to put up dove candidates."

A nationally-coordinated campaign. Hurwitz said, could "funnel campus people to key elections next year" during primary elections, which some states hold in the spring. It could also arrange "national funding" for local candidates, he said.