INTERVIEW BY MIRIAM ROSEN
PACIFICA RADIO
JUNE 1972
MIRIAM ROSEN: The first thing that I wanted to talk to you about is the program that you have, because very few people talk about it. And I see that you even have sheets—position papers that you have put out—and I just wanted to know how you went about creating your platform.
SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: For four years, I was a member of the New York State Legislature, and then for the past three years a member of the United States Congress. And I’ve had an opportunity to assess and evaluate, by the voluminous correspondence that was sent to my state legislative office and then later my congressional office, as to what the needs and the hopes and the concerns are, in the minds of the American people. So over a period of time, whether on a state or a national level, one begins to be able to piece together the kinds of things that the American people want to see their representatives move in the direction of.
So this year when I decided to make a bid for the presidency, I went back over all of my notes and all of the concerns that have been shared with me via letters from people, not only in my own state but all over this country. And I also began to listen to some of the gentlemen who had indicated that they would be interested in running for the presidency of this country. And on the basis of some of the things that they were saying, I began to put together my thirteen position papers. And believe it or not, I was the first person running for this office that sent these papers out to the newspapers, the media. Papers on law and justice in our country—consumerism, housing, education, women’s rights, day care centers—papers on the domestic concerns of the American people.
And I have had to spend so much time during the past seven months, while I’ve been out here defending why I am running for the presidency of this country, the people, who now have recognized and have seen my position papers, realize, that I am truly a person. Let’s forget the woman or man bit. Truly a person with depth, with capacity and solutions to problems in this country. In fact, when people saw me for the first time three weeks ago on the three networks after I won that suit,* the letters that came into my office in terms of the fact that people said, “Why, you have more sense than some of the rest of them put together, where have you been”—it’s unfortunate, but because I am Black, simultaneously a woman, both of these things wrapped into one, it has been the most difficult thing to get the American people directed to what I’ve been talking about.
When you hear George Wallace talking about the tax reform, so much of what George is saying came right out of my position papers! So much of what [Hubert] Humphrey has been saying came out of my position papers—I recognize the words, and the putting together the sentences! But they are serious candidates. Shirley Chisholm is not serious. So Shirley Chisholm never got the projection that she needed to get. It was a wonderful thing that I won that ballot, with the FCC, about three weeks ago. If not, the American people would never really have known that I am a woman, and I’m not trying to boast at all, but I am a woman with ability and with intelligence and with depth. That is the sadness about this country. And that’s why I made my mind up that I was going to stay in this race come thick or thin. And I was going to go all the way to Miami because even though the papers have been underscoring me, even though many people have been saying, well she can’t be serious—they’re going to see me in action at the National Convention. And I mean this. I am committed to this. As an instrument of people in this country who’ve been left out. An instrument of people whose councilman advice has never been sought in terms of putting a ticket together, only using the people every four years for their votes.
I look at all of these distinguished senators telling all of the people what they’re going to do for women, what they’re going to do for blacks, what they’re going to do for Chicanos, what they’re going to do for this group and the other group. Oh darn it, they’ve been in the United States Senate for ten or more years—if they had a concern about the American Indian, they would have done something already about the miserable living conditions that those Indians live on, in terms of the reservations where 70 percent of them don’t live to see the age of forty. They don’t have a concern about women! They don’t have a concern about the conservation and preservation of human resources! They’re only interested in these human resources every four years when it’s time to go out and get the vote.
And that’s why, when people say, “Oh what makes you so different from all the rest of them,” I say, “I am different. Because I have a gut commitment to people first of all.” All of the rest of them have a commitment to different interest groups, financial groups, power groups—I’m espoused only by a lot of folks in this country who told me they didn’t want to vote between the lesser of the two evils anymore. They wanted to give their vote to somebody that they knew deep down within themselves had a commitment to people, and for whatever that vote would mean, at least it would give me that much more added strength that I need when I get to the convention.
ROSEN: I saw an ad in the Village Voice that referred to you as “[fellow candidate George] McGovern’s conscience” and then I heard you call yourself “the shaker-upper of the system, within the system,” so I’d like you to talk a little bit about…about that role that you’ve taken on, because a lot of people are saying, you know, what is that woman trying to do, and I think that that deals with the issue.
CHISHOLM: Many people don’t understand that when you’re going to bring about change in a society, that change has to come from those individuals who have a really deep commitment to what they’re doing—and not only have a deep commitment to what they’re doing but to be able to withstand the stresses and the strains that will come from people misinterpreting your actions. Because I am not a traditional candidate. I am not a white person and I am not a male person. I am a part of two segments of America who have never had any real solid input in terms of running for the highest office of this land.
People are going to say “what is she trying to do” because they don’t seem to understand that people like myself, and many others, are sick and tired of hearing about the multifacetedness of the American dream. They don’t seem to understand that what I am doing is trying to chart a course or open up the whole process to other kinds of Americans who have never had the opportunity to aspire for the highest office in this land. So therefore, people who are not deep thinkers, and people who don’t understand what a person like myself is doing, is going to always say “what is she trying to do.” Because it’s much better in a society to go along with whatever is happening, and when a person like myself dares to move beyond the realm of the traditional way of doing things, people either think you’re half crazy, or they think that you have a real lust for power, or they think all kinds of things about you.
But then if you go back in history, all of the persons who have brought about changes in society, for the most part, have been individuals who very much have been alone, have had to be lonely because they’ve always been ahead of their time. I am a shaker-upper of the system within the system! Because there are lots of Americans, black and white, who tell me straight, “You can’t do it, Shirley. The system is not the kind of system that’s going to be responsive to Indians, to Black people, to poor whites in the same way that it has been responsive to those who have been controlling the resources of this country—you can’t do it!” And I have said, “Well, I want to accept the challenge, to see if all of those of us who have been so helpless and so powerless cannot come together at a national convention and withhold throwing support to certain individuals who want to get across the top until they deal with us in terms of what our demands and aspirations are going to be.” And that’s what I have been doing.
I know that it will be difficult for me to become president of these United States, but I also know that those of us who just sit back, and just give up, and just mumble and grumble—those individuals are not going to bring about change either! So either you decide that you are going to take a challenge head-on, such as I am doing, or you’re going to become so completely withdrawn from the system that you’re going to say it’s no use. I don’t choose to take that latter course. I choose to still fight and believe, really believe, that we can make it responsive. That doesn’t say what’s going to happen to me in terms of the future. Will I be able to continue this way of changing do not come about I don’t know, but I’m willing to accept the challenge and try to do it.
ROSEN: Well if you’re McGovern’s conscience, how did you feel when he put his advertisement in the Wall Street Journal and started making statements that sounded like he was conceding a little bit to big business, that he was a little bit worried about losing the support of big business.
CHISHOLM: Well, I’ve always said over and over again that I’m the only candidate out here that is espoused by the people and comes from the people. But I haven’t had labor interests or banking interests or corporate interests or oil depletion interests or military-industrial complex interests give me a dime. And whether McGovern, Humphrey, or anybody wants to admit it or not, in the scheme of American presidential politics, he who pays the piper calls the tune. And that is why the American people distrust their politicians, and this is why I keep telling the American people, “Yes, I’m a politician.” But I am a different breed of politician that is emerging—that is why it’s so hard for many Americans to really understand “what is she up to” because I don’t fit the traditional mold. I don’t play the game cozily like it’s supposed to be played. I don’t wheel and deal and have conferences with the big bosses and the big officials. I cross all those lines and I go directly to the people. I’m a people’s politician. Now McGovern—with all due respect, he’s a decent, honorable man. But McGovern is not as free as Shirley Chisholm is, and he knows it and I know it.
ROSEN: But if you’re going to be tugging on his left arm, and business is going to be tugging on his right arm, where is that going to leave the people. That’s what I’m getting at. I see what you’re trying to do—you’re trying to create a space but business, or whatever, is trying to maintain a space. How is that going to be fought out?
CHISHOLM: Well, I don’t think you’re gonna fight anything out easily or bring it to a conclusion at this particular election. I really don’t. But I think, really, what is happening is that I’ve already had an impact on America. And I know this on the basis of my travels, that people are asking certain questions of Humphrey, McGovern, all of them; they see them after I have come into their community. I’ve gotten to the point where I have Humphrey and McGovern talking about Mexican-Americans in their cabinets and they didn’t say that at the beginning of seven months ago. But Shirley Chisholm has been saying this over and over, so this is pricking the conscience. All I can say is that I’m a shaker-upper. That’s exactly what I am.
ROSEN: Where do you have slates in New York right now?
CHISHOLM: I have slates in Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Congressional Districts in Manhattan. That’s in the East Side area, the Harlem area, and East Harlem area—Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth. I have two slates in Brooklyn, in the Eleventh and Twelfth Congressional Districts, and I have in the Twenty-Third Congressional District, Bronx, and a part of Westchester. And I just couldn’t run delegates in every district because, as you know, I don’t have that kind of money.
* Chisholm filed suits against the three major networks, the National Broadcasting Company, the Columbia Broadcasting System, and the American Broadcasting Company, on the grounds that they denied her television time equal to that scheduled for Senators Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and George McGovern of South Dakota before the June 6 primaries in California and New Jersey.