Free Republic

New Party Update July-August, 1996 by Bruce Bentley The Chicago New Party is increasely becoming a viable political organization that can make a different in Chicago politics. It is crucial for a political organization to have a solid infrastructure and visible results in its political program. The New Party has continued to solidify this base. First, in relation to its infrastructure, the NP's membership has increased since January '95 from 225 to 440. National membership has increased from 5700 in December '95 to 7000. Currently the NP's fiscal balance is $7,000 and receives an average of $450/month is sustainer donations....

'There aren't any good brave causes left," railed Jimmy Porter in John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger" on its first night in August 1956. Both the phrase and the play almost immediately established themselves as revolutionary. Osborne's play changed the theater throughout the English-speaking world and opened the way for new dramas exploring themes of social criticism and the absurd. As for the phrase, it captured the mood of a left dissatisfied with the tepid social justice of the postwar welfare state and nostalgic for such grand revolutionary causes as the Spanish civil war. Two months later such a...