Human Rights Party (United States) - Origins of The HRP

Origins of The HRP

The organization was established in 1970 under the leadership of Zolton Ferency, and it quickly gained strength following the 1971 ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote. In October 1971, the Radical Independent Party (RIP), which had been formed by members of the Students for a Democratic Society, New University Conference, and White Panther Party, merged with the HRP. The Human Rights Party’s platform included calls for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from foreign soil, the end of the ROTC and Selective Service, repeal of laws against homosexuality and prostitution, the closure of all state prisons, and provision of day care and health care based on ability to pay.

Working to gain electoral votes among the city's large population of students at the University of Michigan, the HRP succeeded in electing two candidates to the Ann Arbor city council in 1972, and successfully defended one of the seats in 1974. Building support through rock concerts, local radio spots, and coverage in the underground press, the HRP won 25 percent of the 30,000 ballots cast in the 1972 Ann Arbor municipal election. The party's victors in the city-council races – Jerry DeGrieck, a history student at the University of Michigan, and Nancy Wechsler, a U-M graduate, both 22 years of age – defeated two professors, both of whom were Democrats, and one of whom was an incumbent member of the City Council. As DeGrieck later noted, the party garnered substantial support not only from students, but also from low-income voters and factory workers. In two other Ann Arbor wards, reported the New York Times, "the Human Rights Party drew off enough votes from the Democratic candidates to help conservative Republicans win." In the next-door city of Ypsilanti, the HRP elected two city council members in 1974, both of whom were re-elected in 1976.

During the 1972 election, the HRP chose a fifteen-year-old Sonia Yaco, an activist affiliated with Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor, as its Ann Arbor school-board candidate. Yaco's demands for a student voice in school governance earned her 1,300 votes as a write-in candidate, or eight percent of the total, and indirectly influenced the establishment of the experimental alternative Community High School later that year.