Alvaro Rodriguez

Alvaro Rodriguez

Template:TOCnestleft Alvaro C. Rodriguez is a Houston, Texas activist. He is a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA.

He is the father of Alvaro C. Rodriquez.

China

International solidarity was the theme of a meeting of Chinese and U.S. Communist Party leaders held on March 10 2021.

The International Department of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the International Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held a bilateral meeting to celebrate and discuss the 100th anniversary of the CPC. Rossana Cambron, national co-chair of the CPUSA, and Alvaro Rodriguez, International Secretary of the CPUSA, led the CPUSA’s delegation.

The history and friendship of both parties were expressed and celebrated. Tony Pecinovsky, a CPUSA organizer and labor historian, presented the last 100 years of the militant history of the USA to our Chinese comrades beginning in 1919 with our foundation, and expanding on our leading and participatory roles we played in the labor and people’s movements over the past century. From sending comrades to defend the Second Spanish Republic from the fascist hordes to organizing a global movement to free Angela Davis, the CPUSA has always been at the front lines of the struggle for democracy and socialism.

Comrade Zhou, the CPC’s international secretary, remembered 100 years of CPUSA-CPC friendship in addition to 100 years of USA-Chinese relations: ones that have not always been easy. “We remember how Americans came to help us during the War of Japanese Aggression, we remember the solidarity that the CPUSA showed the CPC during this time of resistance,” he stated proudly.

Comrade Yinchun, a member of the CPC’s central committee and international commission, gave an analysis of China’s recent eradication of extreme poverty, particularly in Fujian Province, whose example was applied to other provinces for economic development. “Our socialist market economy has lifted millions out of dire poverty, and by 2035, they will have achieved an even higher standard of life,” she said.

Rossana Cambron recalled the last time she was in China as a delegate of the CPUSA. “I fell terribly ill and was so warmly and professionally received by medical professionals,” she said. In an emotional response, Comrade Zhou stated, “The Chinese people read Rossana’s story and were deeply moved about her experience in a Chinese hospital” and were thankful for her telling the story to the American public.

Despite the CPUSA and CPC being briefly estranged during the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s and ’70s, the parties have been working to strengthen their solidarity and the relationships between their working classes for nearly two decades now.

In response to a question about climate change policy, Comrade Yinchun responded that China takes environment policy very seriously and implements economic development with due consideration of environmental regulations and climate change agreements. Responding to questions about how young people in the U.S. perceive socialism and the CPUSA, Comrade Maicol David Lynch stated that most young people have a positive attitude toward socialism, especially after the political election campaigns by Bernie Sanders. The CPUSA has attracted a lot of interest from young people, and increasing numbers of young people are applying for membership.

The PRC has been engaged in humanitarian efforts to ship COVID-19 vaccines to many developing countries. In a time when many developed capitalist countries are producing and hoarding vaccines, it demonstrates real international solidarity. We agree that peace, multilateralism, and win-win outcomes should be the goals for international relations. The CPUSA will continue to work in the interest of world peace, international solidarity, and cooperation rather than international confrontation.

International secretary

In 2019 Alvaro Rodriguez , was International Secretary, Communist Party USA and a delegate to the “ One Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist International: The Fight for Peace and Socialism Continues”, Izmir, Turkey, October 18-20, 2019.

Communist Party

Alvaro Rodriguez is a Houston Communist Party USA activist.

Convention discussion

In 2014, Alvaro Rodriguez, from Houston, contributed a pre-conference discussion paper, to the Communist Party USA.

Ant-Trump rally

The Communist Party USA is one of over 500 partner organizations of the Women’s March that have joined together around eight “unity principles” for ending violence, and for reproductive rights, LGBTQIA rights, worker’s rights, civil rights, disability rights, immigrant rights and environmental justice.

Across the country CPUSA members were part of the massive marches and rallies from the nation’s capitol to large cities and small towns.

The rally in Houston, Texas was organized in ten days, led by the League of Women Voters. It was the largest in the city’s history. Houston

“Houston loved our banner!” said Alvaro Rodriguez. Houston Mayor Silvester Turner, and Congressman Al Green who boycotted the inauguration were among the speakers along with the many organizations who sponsored and spoke.

Presentation of the History of the Texas Communist Party

Presentation of the History of the Texas Communist Party. Hosted by Communist Party of Texas.

Saturday, April 1 at 2 PM - 4 PM

Cepeda Branch, Austin Public Library, 651 N Pleasant Valley Rd, Austin, Texas 78702

Austin area meeting presentation of the history of Texas Communist Party. Please join us. Members of the Houston Communist Party will be in Austin to discuss the history of the Communist Party from its formation to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Presenters were Bernard Sampson and Alvaro Rodriguez.

New member phone bank

New member phone bank Public · Hosted by Communist Party USA.

Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 11 AM - 4 PM EDT

Your living room

We're organizing a phonebank to our new members on Saturday and we need your help. The callfire service allow you to make the calls from home, using your smartphone, laptop or deskstop. You'll get a real charge from talking to them! Aint' nuthin like it!! Please click "going" if you can make calls! Thanks!

Those invited to participate on on Facebook included Alvaro Rodriguez.

Houston comrades

According to Mark Gruenberg, Peoples World, Democracy is hard work, thank these folks in Texas! October 19, 2018:

This is a message of thanks, to Maria Baca, Steven Flores, Betty Ortega, Rita Lucido, Penny Morales Shaw, Bernard Sampson, Alvaro Rodriguez here in Houston and to tens of thousands of other people like them across the country. They make democracy work. It isn’t easy. And more of us should be out there with them.

Lucido is an attorney and former teacher. She’s also a second-time candidate, a progressive Democrat running for the state senate in Houston’s District 17, against a GOP incumbent. She’s putting herself out there to be judged by her peers – the voters.

This time, she’s really motivated because “Trump got elected,” Lucido says, referring to the current GOP Oval Office occupant. “I thought ‘There’s no way he’d win’” after the release of the videotape where Donald Trump bragged about repeatedly and vulgarly groping women.

Then he did – and she realized she’d have to fight Trump and his allies, starting on the local level. So she’s running, against those, like Trump and her Republican foe, who would deny Medicaid dollars to people in need, and, in Houston, deny flood repair money, too.

So is Morales Shaw, an attorney, widowed single mother, and activist for progressive causes such as better schools improved housing and decent wages for everyone, especially African-Americans and Latinos. She’s running for Harris County (Houston) Commissioner, in District 4, to break up the “good ol’ boys club” that controls a $2 billion budget there.

Flores is a 40-plus year shop steward, chief shop steward, union rep and now the president – though he says he’s ready to retire – of Communications Workers Local 6222.

He spends his time trying to get his members engaged and active in politics, reminding them what they gain in bargaining can be taken away at the ballot box.

Baca is an organizer for Communications Workers District 6, which stretches from St. Louis to El Paso when she isn’t working in the global anti-fraud unit of the Houston office of the phone company. Ortega works in that office’s dispatch unit.

And on a mid-October Saturday in Houston, which started out spring-like but quickly turned into summer heat and humidity, Baca and Ortega as volunteers went house to house, working from the Lucido campaign’s list, to try to get people to vote for her this fall.

They rang 79 doorbells and talked to those who answered about the importance of the election and the issues they and Lucido believe in. And even down on such a local level, national issues percolated.

Lucido’s GOP foe, the incumbent, supported GOP Gov. Greg Abbott’s refusal to accept extra federal Medicaid money, available under the Affordable Care Act, to expand Medicaid in the Lone Star State. Abbott, of course, is hewing to GOP anti-ACA ideology, including a court suit to overturn the health care law entirely, and dog-whistling by calling the ACA Obamacare.

The result of such GOP Medicaid refusals? There are still 27.6 million uninsured adults aged from 18-65 in the U.S. That’s one of every ten, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health care think tank reports. In 2013, before the ACA fully kicked in, it was one of every six.

In Texas, without Medicaid expansion, it still is one of six – the worst ratio in the nation.

And that same GOP state senator, along with her Republican colleagues in the Texas legislature, refused to use millions of dollars from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to help residents whom Hurricane Harvey clobbered unless the Republicans got a political bargain out of it.

Those were the issues Lucido, Morales Shaw, Baca and Ortega talked about in Houston and will continue emphasizing throughout. Coast to coast, other volunteers and candidates, including record numbers of women angered and energized by Trump, are out on the hustings, too. They, plus Rodriguez, Sampson and Flores, deserve our thanks.

But there are not enough of them. And not enough of us. That concerns Baca. That concerns Flores. That should concern you and me.

“The majority of our members that will vote will vote the right way,” for Lucido, U.S. Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke and pro-worker candidates, says Flores.

“But most don’t take the time – or don’t care.”

Democracy, you see, is hard work. You must educate yourself, Baca told voters she met. You must listen and learn about the issues, and then exercise your rights.

Trump and demagogues like him depend on you not to invest the time, effort and sweat. He and his GOP puppets draw howling but committed mobs. They cut down ballot access, too.

Now, in the campaign’s homestretch, there’s one key way to combat Republican rage: Get out there. Educate yourself on your issues and where candidates stand on them. Go door to door. Phone bank. Get active for what you believe in, and what your nation can do for you.

Tell the people you talk with that every vote counts. Remind them of elections – from Minneapolis to Houston to your hometown – decided by a handful of ballots. Remind them that what you win at the bargaining table, or through laws passed by allies, can be undone by a governor’s pen, a representative’s bill, or a president’s proclamation or executive order.

Then vote. And thank those – like Baca, Sampson, Lucido, Flores, Morales Shaw, Rodriguez and Ortega – who help make our democracy work. Then join them.

United Socialists initiative

United Socialists initiative is a Houston based Facebook group, run mainly by the Communist Party USA, but open to other leftist tendencies.

This group is for left unity. All factions of leftists welcome for open debate and forum discussion

United Socialists initiative closed Facebook group, as of December 13, 2017.

Admins and moderators

• Brett Clarkson, created group on June 23, 2017
• Bernard Sampson, Houston, Texas
• Kaitland Rios, Arlington, Texas
• Hobie Hukill, Highland Park High School
• Alvaro Rodriguez
• Joe Sims, New York, New York

References

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