YDs To Declare Against Johnson

The Harvard arm of the national "Dump Johnson" campaign is expected to begin at a public meeting sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe and Law School Young Democrats next Tuesday night.

Allard K. Lowenstein, the New York liberal leading the National Conference of Concerned Democrats, will call for the creation of a Harvard Concerned Democrats group at the meeting. Lowenstein's group hopes to force Johnson to withdraw from contention for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.

The Undergraduate Young Democrats are expected to endorse the new organization at a general membership meeting next Thursday, YD publicity director Steven J. Kelman '70, said yesterday. "The entire executive board wants to dump Johnson. We believe that the membership feels about the same way and will endorse the group," Kelman said.

Preliminary planning for the new Democratic group began three weeks ago when Curtis Gans, executive director of the national Concerned Democrats, met here with Arlene R. Popkin '68, of the YD executive board, and Steven Cohen, a first-year graduate student in Economics, who led several "politically-moderate" anti-war groups last year.

Harlon Dalton '69, president of the H-R YD's, Samuel Brown Jr., a Divinity student who served on the National Student Association supervisory board last year during the CIA controversy, and officers of the Law School Young Democrats were also brought into early discussions.

"Johnson is about as popular as the Edsel," Cohen said. "The most effective way to put pressure on a political person like Johnson is through the ballot. By defeating the President in a series of primaries next spring we hope to demonstrate Johnson's unpopularity--which is tremendous--as forcefully as possible.

"If the President wants the nomination, he can have it but he will also lose by one of the largest landslides in Ameri-history. We are offering him the joys of elder statesmanship instead."