Zolton Ferency: Hrp Gov. Race Challenges "politics As Usual"

Zoltan Ferency: HRP Gov. Race Challenges "Politics As Usual"

Voters  unimpressed with either incumbent Republican William Milliken or Democrat Sander Levin in the gubernatorial sandbox race this year can vote for a viable third party candidate. This is the Human Rights Party 's Zolton Ferency.

   Ferency helped form the state HRP after rising to prominence in the state Democratic party, serving as state party chairperson for a time and also running against George Romney in a previous governor race.. As he puts it, the state Democratic party has become unresponsive to peoples' needs, beginning with the civil rights movement and continuing through the anti-war movement. Now Ferency is running for governor again, this time on the HRP ticket. In the following interview he talks about his campaign and the failings of the major party candidates.

SUN: Do you see any reason to prefer Sandy Levin over William Milliken?

FERENCY: Well, no, I don't think so. I've studied the Levin campaign for five years - that's how long he has been running for governor - and frankly, I can't tell the difference between them.

   The Human Rights Party is an effort to establish a viable political alternative to two-party politics. The reason is that a number of people are convinced the two major parties are part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. They are not responding to what we consider the critical needs of the people. The people ought to be afforded a reasonable alternative when they go to the polls.

 SUN: Both of the major party candidates have focused on economic issues. For example, Levin backs the ballot proposal to repeal the sales tax on food and drugs, while Milliken claims Levin 's stand is irresponsible, since the loss of the revenue only means the people will be taxed some other way. Don 't you think there 's a difference between their stands?

FERENCY: We've got a campaign in this state with a Republican and Democrat running around blaming each other for inflation. That's a totally irresponsible campaign as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who gets elected governor this year, including me.' As far as a governor's ability to do something about 1 1 percent inflation in Michigan, well, it's a world-wide problem.

   Same thing is true of unemployment. We have 9.2 percent unemployment in this state, but every other industrial state in the union is suffering the same. It isn't Governor Milliken's fault. It's like blaming Euell Gibbons for Dutch Elm disease.

   But they make political capital out of this. And while they're doing it, one of the things which really enrages us is that engaging in that kind of campaign cons the people twice.

   It cons them first because they're told the politicians can do something about it if they get elected. And secondly, that these are really the problems. What we want to do is to go out and tell people what the problems really are, whether we get elected or not, so they won't get ripped off at the ballot box.

SUN: So you see this campaign as a way of educating people about the issues?

FERENCY: Yes, we can not only develop issues, but maybe we can get some damn progress.

   For example, the Red Squad is one. Here's a statute, and l'm quoting, authorizing the State Police director to establish a "subversive activities investigation division." That's what it's called. There's been some heat brought on by that because one of the legislators last summer asked the State Police to investigate a consumers group, and they did. As a result, the word got out that there are over 50,000 names on file.

   So I went to State Police headquarters and asked to look at my file, because I know that anybody that's been to any kind of demonstration, rally or meeting or on a picket line is listed. If you got over 50,000 names in that file, that's where those names came from. You don't get your name on there going to the League of Women Voters or whatever.

   They tell me in Lansing they're not going to release that information. And so, we pressure the governor, and he's ordered them to destroy all the files except for those that are open for active criminal investigation.

Now that's going a distance toward the objective that we want. We want the whole thing wiped out.

   By the way, another thing I found out when I was there. The State Police chieftain says every trooper in the state of Michigan - that's 2,000 officers - have this as part of their regular duty. I said, are you telling me we've got 2,000 undercover agents out there surveying the public and making license píate notes whenever they think there's a subversive activity going on? He says, well, I never looked at it that way. And I said, well, that's what you're telling me.

SUN: What other kinds of issues have you tried to bring out?

FERENCY: Well, amnesty's an issue today, much more so than it has been in years, really, because of Ford's proposal. The Human Rights Party has supported war resisters all along, and universal, unconditional amnesty. And really, we don't even like the word amnesty because that connotes forgetting something when we feel the people who resisted the war were doing the right thing.

   In addition, we're arguing, and we're the only ones that are arguing on this point, in support of all the hundreds of thousands who were conned into getting out of the army by giving them less-than-honorable discharges because they were resisting the war. And now, those people are suffering from unemployment shortages, educational benefit shortages, they can't participate in the bonus on the ballot, and so on.

   Numerically speaking, that's one hell of a lot more people than the exiles. Among other things, I urged the governor and the attorney general of this state to start a lawsuit to help these people. There's not even been a response to that.

SUN: What about Levin 's response on this?

FERENCY: Levin's response, for whatever it's worth, is that his position on amnesty is the same as it was in 1970 - that is, he favors alternative service for draft evaders to work their way back into the society. Well, there's two things wrong with that. Number one, that's a bad position. But number two, that isn't what his position was in 1970. He just lied to those people. In 1970, he was gung-ho no amnesty under any conditions. He said those who violated the law must pay the price under the criminal code. And then the next sentence was, if we show leniency at all, all we're going to be doing is encouraging others to break the law.

   Again, a politician attempting to use a political issue for temporary political advantage. Since the people are moving in the direction of doing something for war resisters, he's now done a complete flip-flop. In my judgement, he'd be better off not saying anything at all. By lying to the people, he's just making it difficult for everybody in the political process.

   The point is, amnesty is serious and it's a political issue. If a guy's willing to play politics with that issue, I have to believe he'll play politics with any issue. You can't play with the people's lives like that to seek political advantage. It's not the kind of issue you screw around with.

   I believe politicians ought to be straight all the time, but particularly in these controversial issues where people are really upset about it. He's a typical example of the politician prevalent in the two party system. All they really want to do is get elected to office, and they want to look good. They don't feel they need to have any position on anything. Just get into office, and everything else will be all right.

SUN: Well, what can you offer that 's different if you were elected governor? You indicated earlier the governor had little control over inflation and unemployment.

FERENCY: There's a hell of a lot you can do, even if you don't have control of the legislature. Of course, if you had control of the legislature, you might even put a program through.

   One of the things that's been missing in this country for the last 10 or 15 years is political leadership on some of the issues. Governors play an extremely important role in the development of political philosophy and thought in this country. For example, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace, Nelson Rockefeller, Spiro Agnew - all these people are, or were, governors. These people have changed attitudes, have firmed up beliefs, have propagandized people. All in the wrong direction, as far as I'm concerned. Which means, if you had a political spokesperson as chief executive of the seventh largest state of the union, showing the state and the country the way to go on some of these issues, I think it would be a tremendous thing that would happen.

   We don't have any such person today. Like the whole question of the drug scene. Everybody runs and hides from that. The truth is, we ought to decriminalize drugs, and cut violent crime by as much as 40 percent by so doing. If people don't have to hit somebody on the head to get a fix, they are not going to have to do it. People don't understand this, because nobody's talking to this point. There's nobody saying what is in the literature. There's nobody showing

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what's in the research, or even what could be researched as far as drug use and abuse is concerned.

SUN: What other kinds of changes would you like to institute?

FERENCY:  We can propose, for example, a much better tax program. The Human Rights Party is for a graduated income tax with no loopholes. And we can show by an actual study made by public policy economists at Michigan State University. that we can switch from a flat-rate income tax, which is really unfair and regressive, to even a moderately progressive graduated income tax run from one to seven percent, get more money as a result of that tax, and nine out of ten taxpayers would be saving money on income tax.

SUN: You've talked about being a spokesperson on issues if you're elected governor. But isn't it true that you've been quite out spoken on a wide range of issues in the past, outside of the electoral system?

FERENCY: What we've done in times past is translate political philosophies into direct action when the occasion demanded. For example, I've always been active in the civil rights movement. going all the way back to the late forties in Detroit, struggling for equal public accomodations statutes, for breaking the color barrier in bars, restaurants and hotels. People forget that used to be in Detroit.

SUN: You came out against the war in 1965.

FERENCY: Well, the reason we did that was that I was party (Democratic) chairperson in 1965. I ran the whole thing, got paid professionally to do it, and did it full-time.

   We campaigned in 1964 against Goldwater with Johnson. Johnson was a man of peace. He was not going to get involved over there. You know, "I'm not about to send American boys 10,000 miles away to fight a war Asian boys ought to." And that was the campaign.

   He was no sooner inaugurated than he escalated the war tremendously. He began bombing the north. He began introducing ground troops in division numbers. I mean large numbers. Some of us, when we saw what was happening, said that's for the birds. That isn't what we promised the American people, and certainly that isn't what we ought to be doing over there.

   So right, we were in the anti-war movement right from the beginning. It wasn't just a personal commitment. We went out and talked and tried to organize people around the war.

   The same is true with economic issues. I've been in full support, on the picket line, in court, protesting for the United Farmworkers on economic justice. Grape, lettuce boycotts, Gallo wine and the rest of it, right from the beginning. And that occupies a hell of a lot of your time.

   Another one is social issues. I was on the Free John Sinclair Committee. I gave assistance to that. Think of one man sitting in prison all those years for two joints.

SUN: You have a lot to tell people in this campaign, but do you really think you can win?

FERENCY: No, not this time. Let me say this though. If we ever get a viable, three-cornered race, a person can win with about 35 percent of the vote. That is certainly within talking range.

   I don't think that's going to happen this time, but I think we're going to awaken a whole lot of people to the possibility. That's what really gets a movement going, it's the credibility and viability. If everybody starts believing it could happen, it could happen. And we're going to try to make it happen.