Hartford Chronicle

NORTH END WITCH HUNT FALLS FLAT

Residents of the North End are not quite sure whether the enthusiasm injected into the Hartford Times news story about the North End Community Center and the A.Y.D. of Saturday April 5th was an effort to spread panic or the youthful imagination of a young reporter anxious to make good with his city editor. For looking and ferreting as diligently as we could into both the activities and groups of the Center, we could not find a single "Red" or even much evidence of the A.Y.D. In fact most people that we talked to either at the Center or in the community, were not even familiar with the name American Youth for Democracy.

One man who was questioned, rather seriously asked if it was that new organization that was being set up for the City Councilman plan of government.

We did talk though with some of those who said they were members of the A.Y.D. But not a single one of them manifested the least interest in Communism and rather vociferously repudiated any such charge. They all stated that if anything Communistic was tied up with it, the same had never showed its hand in any of the activities locally.

We did not get anything much out of the North End Community Center staff except laughs.

The Director, George W. Goodman had the following to say; "I have a pretty intelligent staff here at the Center and I have unqualified confidence in their saneness and sound judgement. As far as I know, they do not go about asking people what religion or political ideology they live by. Therefore an occasional Communist, or Fascist or atheist might come though the doors at any given time. But it is no part of our interest or programming to harbor groups of such people.

We are interested here fundamentally and solely in "Functional Democracy." But we are not unaware of the fact that there are some people who do not like democracy in any form if it includes anyone except their special group. Therefore they make every possible effort to strike at this dislike behind the smoke screen of indirect condemnation.

As for the American Youth for Democracy. Yes. we have let them meet here in the past from time to time, just like any other youth organization. This has not been their regular meeting place and they are not having their State Conference here. But we have treated them exactly like the University of Southern California and other institutions in the nation have, until the Department of Justice recently made its investigations known to the public."

So with this final interview we marked the Hartford Times week-end expose down as another false alarm and went back to thinking about slum housing in the North End.