IT ALL COMES DOWN TO HEATHER

A veteran of every major social movement of the past 50 years, Heather Booth is now trying to help reelect Joe Biden. With the Democratic coalition fractured over Gaza, she’s in the fight of her life.

JOAN WALSH

HEATHER BOOTH HAS A SECRET, OF SORTS. IT WAS UNKNOWN TO ME, at least, and to a lot of the activists who’ve worked with the veteran organizer in recent years. In 1968, in the first presidential election in which she could cast a ballot, she did not vote for the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. A passionate grassroots anti-war and civil rights activist, Booth believed that he hewed too closely to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of escalation in Vietnam. She wasn’t alone; many people on the left refused to back Humphrey. Some sat on the sidelines; others, like Booth, voted for Dick Gregory, the Black comedian and activist who ran a gadfly but politically attuned campaign that year. Richard Nixon beat Humphrey by 0.7 percent of the vote. “I was…

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The Nation (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2024

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