America has come a long way since the political revolution of 1968, when Madison's Midge Miller and New York's Allard Lowenstein hatched a scheme that would depose a sitting president, reshape the Democratic Party and bring a generation of young activists into an electoral process that had until then seemed too closed and corrupt to bother with.

Miller and Lowenstein were part of a small band of anti-Vietnam War activists who believed it was possible to challenge President Lyndon Johnson on the issue in that year's Democratic primaries. They convinced then U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., to make the run and by the end of March, just a few days before the Wisconsin primary, Johnson was out.

Thirty-two years later, Midge Miller is still active in Madison, organizing forums and campaigns with an energy that is daunting to people half her age. But Allard Lowenstein is long gone -- murdered 20 years ago this month by a deranged man whose gunshots robbed this country of one of its most dynamic political leaders.

A measure of the loss America suffered with the death of Lowenstein was in evidence last week, when some of his friends organized a tribute to the man whose leadership was critical to the civil rights, anti-war, international solidarity and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The memorial event drew an overflow crowd to one of the largest gathering rooms at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. More than 200 people, including some of the most prominent Democrats in the current Congress -- not to mention a few progressive Republicans -- showed up.

Everyone in the room, it seemed, had a story about how Lowenstein, a man who literally demanded that young people commit themselves to a life of activism, had fundamentally changed their life.

For instance, former U.S. Sen. Don Riegle explained that Lowenstein "had some considerable bearing on my decision to change parties.'' Elected to the House as a Republican from Flint, Mich., in the 1960s, Riegle's office adjoined that of Lowenstein, who served one term as a Democrat from New York. The two men shared a commitment to the anti-war movement and to civil rights, and Lowenstein convinced Riegle that those causes could be better served within the Democratic Party. Riegle switched in the early 1970s and was eventually elected to the Senate as a Democrat.

Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., got to know Lowenstein when she served as a member of the Student Senate at the University of Minnesota in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Lowenstein, who was passionate about ending colonialism in Africa, drew her into the anti-apartheid movement in the days before®MD-IT¯ Nelson Mandela was jailed. "He had a knack for focusing in on issues that no one else was paying attention to and getting people to understand that these were vital struggles,'' Schroeder said. "That just shows you the energy and the passion of the man.''

Musing about how aghast Lowenstein would respond to conservative Republican George W. Bush campaigning as a "reformer,'' Schroeder said, "I would have loved to see Al's face when George W. Bush, this Texas oil-money candidate, started talking about how he's for campaign finance reform, about how he's a reformer. Al wouldn't have allowed him to get away with it. Al would have called the lighting down on that one.''

One after another, people testified to the impact that Lowenstein had on their lives, and to the activist path his memory commands them to follow even now. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., reflected about how he worked on Lowenstein's first congressional campaign. Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell -- the man who grilled Ken Starr during the House impeachment hearings -- recalled organizing an anti-war rally on Long Island in 1967 and inviting Lowenstein to speak.

"I remember his voice to this day -- calling us to do more with our lives, to do better,'' Lowell said. "For me -- as it was for a lot of people in my generation -- Al Lowenstein represented the reason I left a little place called Westbury on Long Island and ended up in a place called the Rayburn Building.''

As she listened to the testaments to her fallen comrade, Pat Schroeder noted that, in a time when Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates is considered a role model: "We don't need another Bill Gates, we need more Al Lowensteins. We really need to remember that this civilization needs a lot more Al Lowensteins.''

Al Lowenstein would, no doubt, have been honored by that sentiment. But he wouldn't have allowed the praise to deflect him from saying, "OK, now let's get to work. There's a campaign to get started, a rally to organize, a petition to be passed, a world to win.''

© 2000 The Capital Times

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