Communist Party USA

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Communist Party USA is America's oldest and most influential Marxist-Leninist organization. It was founded in 1919 and its constitution was first published in 1987. The constitution states the Communist Party USA is "the party of and for the U.S. working class."

It works to battle capitalism and the drive for maximum profits, because it believes the living standards of workers and the natural environment are under attack.[1].

As of April 2017. the party had about 5,000 members nationwide.[2]

Communist Party USA is affiliated with the Young Communist League USA, People's World and Political Affairs.

Personnel

Click here for a page containing comprehensive information on CPUSA leadership.

Secrecy

In July 1989, party organizational secretary Judith LeBlanc stated, in her report to a party conference, that because of anti-communist sentiment "only 20% of the Party membership is public".[3]

Infiltration

In a Janary 24 2018 article on the Communist Party USA website "Survey says, CPUSA members want to be heard" John Bachtell wrote;[4]

Most members are involved in their communities and in a range of labor, social justice, environmental and peace organizations.
Among the labor activists are trade union leaders and members of central labor councils, retiree organizations, Jobs with Justice and the Fight for 15.
Others are involved in feminist organizations including Planned Parenthood, defense of abortion clinics and the new #MeToo movement.
Many are involved in racial justice groups including Black Lives Matter and the NAACP, immigrant rights, LGTBQ organizations and disability rights groups.

Members were involved with Bernie Sanders campaign and are continuing their activism in Our Revolution, Swing Left, Indivisible, Working Families Party, statewide groups like the New Virginia Majority and local Democratic Party groups and 2018 electoral campaigns.
Several members are elected officials.

Black Lives Matter support

circa 2020

Defund the Police

circa 2020

"Democratic path"

In an April 2018 exclusive interview with Chinese news agency Xinhua, John Bachtell, Communist Party USA's national chairman, noted that Marxism has to constantly embrace what's new, including what the U.S. democratic movements have produced.

"For example, I feel very strongly that we have to embrace... what the class struggle in the United States has produced and what the democratic struggle has produced," such as the experiences of the civil rights movement from the 1960s, he said.

"That has a really important bearing in terms of strategy and tactics," Bachtell added. "Non-violent peaceful resistance is a very important form of struggle."

Compared with an armed struggle, the party chief favored political means to achieve the revolutionary change.

"It will be what we call a democratic path. One that utilizes the electoral arena but also other democratic venues where we're constantly trying to expand our rights," he said.

In this process, it's Marxism that will serve as an "essential outlook and tool" for every revolutionary party and every working-class activists, he said. "We intend to make it something which is the property of everybody." [5]

Fraternal ties with Chinese Communists

In an April 2018 exclusive interview with Chinese news agency Xinhua, John Bachtell, Communist Party USA's national chairman, said that Marxism is a revolutionary "guide to action" for the party as far as strategy and tactics.

Speaking of China, Bachtell said the CPUSA and the Communist Party of China (CPC) have forged “fraternal” ties.

“We try to find time to get together and to have bilateral meetings. We also have cooperated on the academic level. But it’s not enough,” Bachtell said, adding that his party would like to see “a higher and closer relationship” with the CPC, including mutual visits.

He explained that the CPC’s ability to find a path of socialist development under very difficult circumstances is the main thing that impresses him, citing the effort to transform China from “a very under-developed country to a modern country, and the strides that China has made in the last 15 years to really become a global power.”

“I think going forward China will influence more and more every aspect of life, not just because of its sheer size and influence in the global economic system, but also because of its focus on uplifting working people, eliminating poverty, and providing a basic material standard of living to every person,” he said.

Bachtell further noted that the CPC’s performance in governance and leadership will continue to be an important example of what can be done.

“We may not have the same concept about our models of socialism [given our country’s] different reality, different material circumstances, and different history, but China’s developing. Certainly it’s an important example, and we can draw upon the experiences that you have,” said Bachtell.

“I’m sure that there will be plenty of opportunities in the future for us to work together, absolutely,” he said.[6]

Boston communists in China

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On October 14-15, 2017, Communist Party USA Boston members Wadi'h Halabi and Dylan Walker participated in the 8th World Socialism Forum of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. The theme of the international gathering focused on the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia and applying lessons from it to an examination of the "Temporal Characteristics of the Great Transformation Era, and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics."

Comrade Halabi, a member of the CPUSA Economics Commission and the Center for Marxist Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts was invited to address the forum, speaking on the topic "What is the greatest honor we can pay the October Revolution?"

Halabi pointed out that "the Great October Socialist Revolution was probably the single greatest step forward in human history. It strengthened Marxism and the working class. The Revolution gave birth to all Communist Parties worldwide, and to the Communist International."

He continued, "It is true the Comintern suffered serious weaknesses, especially after Lenin’s death. These led, for example, to the severe defeat suffered by the Communist Party and workers in China in 1927. Some of the causes for the Comintern’s weaknesses and errors are discussed here. They are not reason to reject unity among Communist Parties, but it is essential to identify why they developed and to address them. The greatest honor we can pay to the October Revolution is to rebuild international Communist unity."[7]

May Day Greetings

Communist Party USA Members and Supporters May Day Greetings

Communist Party USA Members and Supporters

Communist Party USA Members and Supporters Communist Party USA Members and Supporters Page 2

State and City affiliates

KeyWiki has in depth information on the following state affiliates and Party clubs of the CPUSA:

Purpose

From the Communist Party USA constitution;[8]

The Communist Party USA is the party of and for the U.S. working class, a class which is multiracial, multinational, and unites men and women, young and old, employed and unemployed, organized and unorganized, gay and straight, native-born and immigrant, urban and rural, and composed of workers who perform a large range of physical and mental labor—the vast majority of our society. We are the party of the African American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, all other Latino American, Native American, Asian American, and all racially and nationally oppressed peoples, as well as women, youth, and all other working people..."
"Founded in Chicago in 1919, the Communist Party of the United States has an outstanding history in the struggles for peace, democratic rights, racial and gender equality, economic justice, union organization, and international solidarity. Our Party is organized on the principle of democratic centralism, combining maximum democratic discussion and decision-making with maximum unity of will and action, ensuring our ability to play a strong organizing role in the class struggle. We focus our efforts on increasing our ability to organize millions into struggle, fighting anti-communism as a divisive weapon of the capitalist class. With Marxism-Leninism guiding our actions, the Communist Party strives to build the broadest unity against global capitalist imperialism now headed by U.S. imperialism, for immediate gains and reforms that benefit working people, and for a progressive democratization of the government, the economy, and society of our country on the road to and after winning socialism..."

Regional strength

As of 2014, the party had established districts with stable, functioning leadership cores and one or multiple clubs in CT, NY, E PA, MD, FL, TX, OH, MI, IL, MN/DK, MO, NJ, S CA, N CA and AZ.

As demonstrated in the state conventions and PW events, many districts have fostered good relationships with the labor movement and other progressive forces.
In most cases we are very thin on politically developed leadership, in some cases we have aging district leaderships with no younger cadre being groomed, which we need to address in the coming period.

Districts that are fledgling include CO, TN, NH, VT, MA, RI, NC, SC, GA, OR, VA, WI, UT and WA which are at various stages of being reconstituted.

In most cases the activity revolves around one club. In some cases there are statewide teleconferences, statewide outreach and an occasional physical meeting. We need to develop leadership cores.

The Party had members but no organization in WV, AL, LA, WY, NE, ID, AR, AK, HI, MT and KY.[9]

Secret members/tactical deception

Communist Party USA members are often secretive about their affiliations.

Wrote New York based Communist Gary Bono in 2014;[10]

Some people are particularly "underground" others completely open, many others at one point or another in between these. This largely depends on the particular circumstances of the person and in certain cases great secrecy is warranted - an enduring legacy of the period of intense repression, ideological and propaganda offensive, a legacy, although diminished that still persists after more than 60 years and encourages red-baiting in its modern manifestation.

Bono also explains the covert tactics used by Communists like Mike Quill in setting up the Transport Workers Union in the 1930s;[11]

TWU was founded in the 1930's, specifically as a project of the Communist Party USA. At the time the party was forming "Red" unions and it was decided that urban mass transit was ripe for such a project. Towards that end the Party supported an organizing drive in transit. Even then, though, the Party was reticent to reveal its role and that of the individual organizers. A "creation" myth was concocted about the union being founded by a bunch of Irish nationalists meeting in a Columbus Circle dinner. There were a lot of workers of Irish origin in transit and the organizers did take advantage of the already existing social networks of these workers and, sometimes even adapted phony Irish personas, (they were called "synthetic" Irishmen), but the Columbus Circle story is a myth. In reality it was the CPUSA that organized transit and founded the TWU and all the original leaders of the union, including Quill, were members, although most of the time, due to the knee jerk anti-communism that existed even in those days and the political backwardness of much of the workforce they were "underground".

Work in the South

Election poster 1932

The party played a leading role in organizations like the Southern Negro Youth Congress, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Sharecroppers Union and in the organization of the tobacco industry in Virginia and steel in Birmingham, Alabama. The role of the party is well known in defense of the Scottsboro Youths but it was involved in many other struggles too - to register voters, organize unions, defend civil liberties, stop lynching, etc. People like Esther Jackson and James Jackson, Edward Strong and Augusta Strong and Louis Burnham and Dorothy Burnham were in the forefront of the party's work in the South[12].

One very relevant congressional hearing was held by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and entitled "Communist Infiltration and Activities in the South", HCUA, Hearings, July 29, 30, & 31, 1958, including Index. It featured the testimony of a mixed group of witnesses, but the three top Communist Party members whose testimony are extremely important to read to understand CP operations in the South, were:

Religious work

The Communist Party has a history of working with "religious activists and communities of faith". According to an article from the Communist Party's newly re-established religious commission, "many of our members are people who are active in religious communities, or have connections with faith-based groups. Gus Hall was a baptized Lutheran who, although he was not religious as an adult, supported close working relationships with religious communities, and spoke highly of the role played by U.S. churches in the progressive movement. The Rev. Arnold Johnson, a Methodist minister, joined the Communist Party while he was in jail during the Harlan County, Kentucky coal miners' strike, and he went on to be an outstanding leader of the Party. Paul Robeson never lost touch with his roots in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. His work combined an appreciation of scientific socialism with the spiritual dimensions of the Black Church. Robeson's funeral was held at the AME Church where his brother was the pastor. Among his pallbearers was Gil Green, a longtime leader of the CPUSA. Because of his public role, he was not in a position to publicly acknowledge his Party membership. But Robeson was a leader and Party supporter, and both a Communist and a Christian for all of his adult life, and in the best senses of both.

It has been the intention and the result of the Religion Commission that we are religiously diverse and racially diverse. We are a part of the mix of what the Party needs to be.

Religious activists, both in and outside of the Party, have played significant roles in the peace, civil rights and labor movements. Meetings of movement groups, including Party meetings, are often held in churches which are at the center of community life. There have been Passover seders hosted by Party members in Party buildings, which celebrate the liberating tradition of Exodus. Religious leaders, including many clergy, have supported the right of the Communist Party to be on the ballot in several states, and have served as Presidential electors for the Party. Many of the leaders of the American-Soviet Friendship Society were clergy. And Party members have been active in several movements that have been led by people of faith, especially in the civil rights movement, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference played the leading role under the great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "[13]

Healthcare

In 2003, that Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced in the U.S. Congress HR 676, the first Medicare for All bill. HR 676 has been reintroduced in various forms every year since. Introduction of this bill inspired years of struggle for universal health care, a fight that blossomed from deeply democratic roots in working peoples’ needs and demands.

In 2003, Communist Party members joined labor and community organizations and individuals to fight for HR 676. For the CPUSA, Medicare for All has long been a component of the organization’s larger struggle for socialized health care and socialism. Henry Winston, past co-chair of the Communist Party, said “every democratic victory won by the masses” was “a means of gaining greater mass power for still greater struggles against the exploiters.”

The 2022 National Convention of the AFL-CIO ratified a call for “Winning Guaranteed Health Care for All,” a result of decades of rank-and-file organizing among union locals, including by such luminaries as Kay Tillow, a nurse and organizer in Louisville, Ky., coordinator of the All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care.[14]

Cultural work

According to contemporary New York Communist Party member John Pietaro, "Communist Party cultural workers have always been part of organizing and agit-prop efforts and a glance at the incredible list of artists who have fought in the trenches alongside--or as--Party activists speaks volumes. While many of the Party cultural workers were actual members, others were not--needing to avoid the stigma due to professional pressures and a fiendishly reactionary entertainment industry. Such fellow travelers took a stand within their actions, writings, performances, which all served as a new and often global kind of widespread outreach. Giants like Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Howard Fast, Mike Gold, Meridel Le Sueur, Pete Seeger, Aaron Copland, John Howard Lawson, Tillie Olsen, Charles Lewis Seeger, and an endless supply of others, in and out of organizations like the John Reed Clubs, the Almanac Singers, the Theatre Union, the New Theatre, the Composers Collective of New York, the Red Dancers, the Workers Film and Photo League and on and on. Some of these organizations, and organs like the New Masses, Partisan Review and a bevy of smaller, short-lived titles, reached out directly to a socially conscious public, while others were designed specifically for inner Party functions. These varying levels of activism--some on the front lines of political and social action, others further back and acting as a means of commentary and awareness--allowed Party cultural workers to have a powerful voice in serious activism...and a means toward the ultimate goal of socialism.

With this, the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party, I state unequivocally that the Party needs to take a closer look at not only its history of cultural programming, the work of artistic leaders such as Mike Gold and V.J. Jerome, but further back to the Party's roots. The two organizations which begat our current Communist Party USA counted two powerful cultural workers among it's earliest founders...and what better way to celebrate this Party than by taking note of its cultural heritage. I have proposed for months now that a cultural discussion should be paramount in the line-up for this coming convention. And during this discussion that a Cultural Commission be adopted without question. In a climate of reactionaries desperately seeking out the evils of "socialism" and "Marxism" in the Obama Administration, its of great importance that we speak directly to the American public-and to do so effectively we need to make full use of the artists of conscience. The word of such dedicated cultural workers is by far the most visceral communication there is. It speaks directly to us all via the colors of the visual, the pulsations of rhythm, the soaring of melody, the power of drama, the wonder of literature and the vastness of movement. It speaks from the heart, the mind and the soul. Art is a weapon-an important one-and needs to be part of our revolutionary political and social change."[15]

Communist Party Platform, 2004

  • Provide free health care for everyone
  • Expand funding for HIV/AIDS programs
  • Provide reproductive rights and health care for women
  • Fully fund public education from pre-K through college
  • Increase federal spending for job programs for minorities
  • Increase aid and job creation in rural areas
  • Continue price supports and subsidies to family farmers
  • Raise minimum wage to living-wage standard
  • Expand Section 8 and other affordable housing measures
  • Do not privatize Social Security
  • Outlaw racial profiling
  • Abolish the death penalty
  • Institute alternative sentencing for non-violent crimes
  • End discrimination based on sexual orientation
  • Pull the U.S. troops out of Iraq
  • Stop development and testing of nuclear weapons
  • Repeal NAFTA
  • Develop renewable energy alternatives
  • Repeal Healthy Forests and Clear Skies Acts
  • Ratify Kyoto Treaty
  • Increase access education for immigrants
  • Repeal tax cuts for the rich
  • Restore tax rates on the wealthy and corporations to 1970 levels
  • Repeal the Patriot Act
  • Fund enforcement of the Voting Rights Acth[16]

Communist Party and POC

When the Communist Party USA, entered its period of crisis following the Khrushchev report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on the crimes of Stalin, there arose within the Party in the U.S. at least four different factions. The first of these was the right wing, led by Daily Worker editor John Gates, Fred Fine, and others. The second was the center grouping, led by Eugene Dennis, the Party’s general secretary. The third was the “left,” led by William Z. Foster, Bob Thompson, and Ben Davis. The fourth was the so-called “ultra-Left,” which called itself the Marxist-Leninist Caucus. It was this grouping, out of which grew the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, with which Noel Ignatin was associated.[17]

CPUSA Printing Shops

Information on CPUSA Printing Shops, Union "Bugs", and those who used CPUSA printing establishments to publish their literature.

Prompt Press - Allied Printing Trades Union - Bug 209 and its Counterpart Bug 412:

The CPUSA established several unionized printing shops in the Allied Printing Trades Union, and each shop was given a union 'Local' number. The one for the CPUSA's main print shop was "209", representing Prompt Press. This number showed up on the various CPUSA newspapers Daily Worker, Daily World, Peoples Daily World and the Peoples Weekly World. West Coast weekly versions of the old Daily Worker, sometimes called the Peoples World or possibly the Weekly World had a shop number from that region.

Official citations of Prompt Press as a CPUSA print shop were found in The Guide to Subversive Organization [18] on p. 142, as follows:

  • 1. "A printing union identification symbol described as "Bug 209" appears on many of the (Communist) Party publications including Party membership cards, and pertains to the printing plant of Prompt Press, a Party publishing organization."

Source: Subversive Activities Control Board, Docket No. 108-53, Report and Order with respect to the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, December 21, 1955, p. 8; and Docket No. 111-53, Report and Order with respect to the United May Day Committee, April 27, 1956, p. 65; see also p. 73."

  • 2. "Prints the bulk of the literature issued by the Communist Party and its affiliates and is reliably known to be owned by the Communist Party."

Source: Attorney General Francis Biddle, "Congressional Record", September 24, 1942, p. 7685

Several different "bugs" used by the CPUSA include the following:

A fundraiser letter from The Daily World DW dated April, 1972 was sent out to ask "readers" to donate towards A $150,000 fund to keep the newspaper going. Signed by Si Gerson, Executive Editor, and Dorothy Robinson, Administrator, the letter had a printing bug 209. However, the mailing envelope, also from the Daily World, 205 W. 19th Street, New York, New Yorik, 10011, featured a new printing bug, S142 of the Allied Printing Trades Union. This number would be used in tandem with 209 in many of the CPUSA printings/mailings for years. Another bug that was often used with 209 was 412, a parallel CPUSA print shop.

A fundraising letter from the YWLL postmarked May 7, 1980, 235 West 23rd Street - 5th Floor, NY, NY, 10011, featured the union bug number [[209], while its return envelope had a bug numbers S142.

  • Long View Publishing Co. Inc. LVPCo at 239 West 23rd Street, New York, New York, 10011, (selected mailings from 1980 and 1982) featured the union printing shop bug [[443]. This was the publishing company of the CPUSA's newspaper Daily World and 443 appeared on its subscription renewal envelopes and notices.

In a mailing postmarked November 6, 1981, from Long View Publishing Co., Inc, same address as above, the "Bug was 209. The letter was a "Holiday Greetings" asking for people to buy holiday greetings and/or to give a gift subscription of the "Daily World" and all the enclosures had 209 on them, including the letter by Pat Barile, Business Manager of LVPCo.

A fundraiser letter dated April 1980 by Daniel Spector, Organizational Secretary of the CPUSA's youth arm, the Young Workers Liberation League, asked for money to support the publication of their bi-monthly newspaper Young Worker (which was later changed to Dynamic. The union bug used on this letter was illegible.

The address of the YWLLwas: 235 W. 23 St., 5 Floor, New York City, New York, 10011. A subscription/donation return envelope was addressed as: Post Office Box 544, Old Chelsea Station, New York, New York, 10011, Bug 209.

A letter "From the desk of Tim Wheeler, Editor of the People's Weekly World, postmarked July 18, 1999, was asking "readers" to donate at least $100,000 of their $400,000 goal to keep the paper going. While there was no printing bug on the letter, the mailing envelope did have an almost illegible bug without any shop number. The return envelope, address to [[LVPCo] did have a union label/bug 490M but the shop name was illegible.

A People's Weekly World subscription renewal letter postmarked Sept. 11, 2000, from the PPW at 235 West 23 Street, New York, New York, 10011, had a printing bug of 318 on the envelope, nothing on the letter, and bug 318 on the return envelope.

The 1972 issues of the CPUSA theoretical journal Political Affairs had the Prompt Press printing ship bug number 209 on it.

Communist Party fronts

See individual KeyWiki pages.

Communist Party Schools By Location and Over Time

"The People's School for Marxist Studies winter semester beginning January 10 will offer four new courses" -

  • "National Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa", will be taught by Dr. Gerald Horne...

"Horne, on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, is national director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Free South Africa Movement. He is the author of numerous articles and a recently published book on W.E.B. Du Bois, "Black and Red".

FILL IN REST

  • Prof. David Eisenhower, "Labor and the Military-Industrial Complex" will be taught by Prof. David Eisenhower on Thursdays 6:30 to 8 PM for eight weeks starting Jan. 16.

"This course traces the development of the military-industrial complex and analyses its relationship to monopoly and finance capitalism. Eisenhower teaches political economy at Manhattanville College and is writing a book on the military-industrial complex."

  • "

Events

Events run by the CPUSA are detailed below. However where an event has clearly been run by a state affiliate of the CPUSA, it will be listed on that state affiliate's page. Click here for a list of KeyWiki's pages on state affiliates of the CPUSA.

Environmental activism

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The CPUSA got involved in environmental activism in the late 1970's with a major focus on it as an agitating issue against "big business" and corporations in the 1980's. Among the names associated with this effort were:

Membership numbers

In 2002, the Communist Party USA claimed 20,000 registered members and groups in 28 of the 50 US states[19].

In a 1974 issue of "Saturday Review", in a somewhat benign story on the Communist Party USA, CPUSA, the author, Roger M. Williams wrote the following regarding Party membership:

"By its own count, the CP now has a slowly growing membership of 16,000 - down from the 100,000 it boasted in the Thirties, up from the few thousand it hung onto under the heaviest of the McCarthyite pressures. Its appeal among the young was virtually wiped out by the "unstructured" New Left philosophy that ruled radical politics in the mid-Sixties. Today's radical youth still tend to regard the party as establishmentarian, but they no longer dismiss it out of hand."[20].

Mr. Williams not only parrotted the CP's language, but also showed a great lack of historical understanding of what the CPUSA really was, i.e. an arm of the Soviet Union's Communist Party, a fact that would devastatingly revealed in much greater detail and documentation in the 1990's when both the Mitrokhin Archives and the Venona Papers would finally be published.

Daily World 50th Anniversary celebration

The Daily World 50th anniversary celebration was held on December 8, 1974 in New York and was marked by the participation of large numbers of non-Communists and New Daily World readers. These included many prominent personalites. The following in a list of those personalities from the main article "3,000 Hail 50 Years of the Marxist Press" and another one, "And in the audience." (The front page of the "3,000 Hail" article is missing but the tag piece and the complete "Audience" article are available at the moment).

Speakers:

Performers:

In the audience:

Other CPUSA friendly artists/cartoonists mentioned by Refregier in the main article as having "worked with the "Daily Worker" and "Daily World" were:

Communist Party infiltration of the Democratic Party

Writing policy

The Political Buro of the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA called a special meeting in Cleveland, Ohio for Saturday, April 17th, 1937. Due to the delay in the arrival of some of the leaders invited, the meeting did not convene until 9 A.M. Sunday, April 18th. It was held in the Jewish Labor Center, 55th and Scoville Streets, Cleveland. Among those present were: Jack Stachel, F. Brown , Clarence Hathaway, Elizabeth Lawson and Harry Raymond (of the "Daily Worker" staff), from New York; William Weinstone, District Secretary for Michigan; John Williamson, District Organizer for Ohio; Ned Sparks, District Organizer for Pittsburgh; John Steuben, Section Organizer for Youngstown; June Croll, from the Women's Department of the national office in New York; Morris Childs, District Organizer for Illinois; Israel Amter and Charles Krumbein, District Organizer and District Secretary, respectively for New York, and Jack Johnstone and Robert Minor, members of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. There were several others present, who were not identified.

Stachel told the gathering that the Communist Party job is to try to introduce amendments in Congress that will strengthen the pro-labor sections, and some of the leading comrades have recently had conferences with Senator Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota on the possibility of such amendments. While Senator Lundeen was in the Lower House he introduced the Unemployment and Social Security Act that was written by the Political Buro of the Communist Party and presented to him through the Unemployment Councils. It may be possible to get such amendments introduced by some such round-about method at this time. Congressman Maury Maverick is also amenable to influence by groups close to the Communist Party and he can be used to aid in putting over the program in the House of Representatives.[22]

Direct quotes

Communist Party USA plans to infiltrate and manipulate the Democratic Party can be illustrated by direct quotes from Communist Party literature.

In 1972, Gus Hall, then leader of the Communist Party USA, wrote in his book, "A Lame Duck in Turbulent Waters," describing what had been the long-time party policy:[23]

Our electoral policy has for 25 years been expressed in the phrase, 'the three legs of a stool'....The stool was constructed at a time when the Party was under sharp attack....a reflection of the Party's response to the difficulties.
The flexibility was contained in the idea that no one leg of the stool was the main leg. Depending on the political pressures, one could choose a particular leg or legs. In fact the concept was built on the idea that when the other two legs, namely, the Communist Party and the forces of political independence, got strong enough, then and only then would the stool sit on three legs. But until that day comes the one operating leg would be the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Hall, writing this in 1972, at that time claimed that he had decided the policy was wrong. It is apparent, however, from later quotes and actions of top Communists, including Hall, that the policy was in fact been continued and even augmented.

Gus Hall himself said at the time:

We are going to work towards independence, but I think it is clear we are going to work with people who for some time will be 'riding two horses' in the field of political action.

Mitchell on moving the Democrats left

Charlene Mitchell, then Executive Director of the African-American Commission of the Communist Party USA, wrote in the Peoples Daily World June 9, 1983:

To date, most of the debate has centered on the personalities of potential Black candidates and the pros and cons of such a challenge. The thrust of such a candidacy must be to develop the popular electoral base to prevent the Democratic Party from continuing its shift to the right and force a more progressive platform and program in the 1984 campaign.

Mitchell went further in the March 1989 issue of Political Affairs, the monthly theoretical journal of the Communist Party USA;

We see building political independence based on the alliance of labor with the African-American community as the aim for changing the relationship of forces in elected office. The Party Program maintains the ultimate expression of this would be a mass anti-monopoly people's party...
From the standpoint of process, even if it is currently developing primarily through the Democratic Party, the fact that labor, the Rainbow Coalition, and the African-American community are the main generators of the new developments substantiates our policy and our historic approach of basing the building of political independence on the alliance of the trade union movement and the African-American people...
Should the party strive to play a leading role helping those forces gain and consolidate new positions of strength, even inside the Democratic Party or shouldn't it?, I think it should.
How is our party going to develop its all-sided electoral presence? This cannot and should not repose solely on Communist or Left-independent candidates. Not if there is any intention of emerging as an integral component of the overall progressive coalition. especially in view of the fact that the Jackson-led progressive wing of the Democratic Party is that coalition's major organized. component.

"People's forces"

In the September/October 1988 issue, Political Affairs states:

Beyond the rhetoric, politics in the United States invariably reflects the class struggle. Even as parties of capitalism, the dynamics between and within the Democratic and Republican parties express the interests and demands of competing sections of the ruling class, on the one hand; and cross-purposes of contending class forces vying for control of the Democratic Party, on the

other.

During the Reagan-Bush years the Republican Party has become the party of the ultra-Right. Organized forces of the working class and people are almost totally absent from it.
For the last fifty years the Democratic Party has housed a broad mix of class and social forces that are often in conflict with each other. This has given rise to a sometimes subtle, sometimes sharp struggle over direction.

The status and intensity of this struggle depend on the level and strength of the political independence of the labor movement and other people's forces operating inside the (Democratic) party.

Political Affairs for March 1989 contained the following statement:

Organized mass movements, especially the African American community, the Rainbow Coalition, labor on all levels, SANE-Freeze, and other mass organizations- became more independent of the Democratic Party establishment on policy and political direction. but more organizationally involved in the Democratic Party.

The same issue also contained the following:

This much is clear - the overall movement will grow. So will the role of the Rainbow Coalition and the labor movement. And it will unfold in the 1989-1992 quadrennial cycle primarily, but not exclusively-through the medium of the Democratic Party.[24]

CPLAN

In the late 1980's Communist Party USA publications also specifically described a party apparatus for directly influencing the votes of Congress and even Congressional and Presidential Elections. This was called CPLAN, or the Communist Party Legislative Action Network.

This network was organized to influence other mass organizations cooperating with the Communists through the "All Peoples Front" to stimulate telephone networks and letter writing campaigns to influence Congress on legislation and even to reach voters regarding election campaigns.

The May 1987 issue of Political Affairs described CPLAN in more detail:

Every party organization should assign a comrade to be in touch with the legislative and political action department of the Central Committee. This could be a key for rapid mobilization.
The aim is to activate within a day or two all party organizations, as well as our mass movements connections, to pressure their Senators and Representatives. . .
Nationally, CPLAN would be ableto generate tens of thousands of letters, telephone calls, mailgrams, etc....There are few questions on which CPLAN cannot make the difference in how at least 5 to 10 Senators or Representatives would vote...
CPLAN is an important means of strengthening the unity of the independent forces, and this could have a great bearing not only on the l00th Congress but on the 1988 electoral struggle.

The same issue of Political Affairs went on to say:

When account is taken of the Party district and club organizations, as well as the thousands of trade unions, coalitions, and mass organizations on the grassroots, citywide, and national levels that Communists belong to, help lead, are active in, have friends, relatives, and contacts in, then the answer as to how to organize a Party legislative apparatus, as well as the Party's potential for influencing the legislative scene, become clear. . .the basis for an extraordinary legislative action network that could impact on the l00th Congress in a major way.

Working through the Quad caucus"

The Communist Party aims to exert pressure on "progressive" Democratic congressmen in the so called "Quad caucus" to get desired legislation passed. According to an April 2010 CPUSA Political Action Commission report submitted as part of the discussion leading up to the Communist Party USA's 29th National Convention May 21-23, 2010;[25]

The formation this year of the Quad Caucus within Congress is a reflection of a growing demographic and progressive shift within the electorate. The collaboration of the Congressional Black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific and Progressive caucuses creates a strong counter-force to the conservative element within the Democratic Party.. Here, the support for single-payer among a section of members, and the push for "public option" from the majority of members of those caucuses, while unsuccessful, kept the pressure on until a final bill was passed.
Many of our clubs are located in Congressional Districts of Quad Caucus members. A labor-people's electoral force working within the broad alliance and relating with members of Congress can project specific legislation like passage of the Local Jobs for America Act to restore one million jobs in cities and towns, and bigger goals like shifting military funding to human needs with massive public works job creation.

Such creative applications of our electoral policy build working relations and respect with the labor/people's forces and further political independence in a fundamental way. Similar approaches can be developed in relation to problematic policies of the Obama administration including the direction for public education, energy resources and military funding.
As Communists, we look for the key demand that will put the maximum number of people into motion and help to move other demands. At this moment that key demand is for good job creation. Working class families are hanging on to survive this economic crisis. Young people are being shut out of the economy. A huge infusion of funds is required to put people back to work and restart the economy.

Working with the labor movement, civil rights, environmental and other organizations to create a groundswell that can push positive initiatives through Congress is the most important way to meet needs and prevent a right-wing takeover in the 2010 elections.

Running as Democrats

In 2010, in a report prepared for the Communist Party 29th National Convention, several members of the Young Communist League USA wrote;[26]

Currently, the conditions rarely if ever allow us to run open Communists for office. When members do run for office, it is within the auspices of the Democratic Party. Otherwise, we find ourselves supporting progressive (and in some instances not-so-progressive) Democratic candidates. Despite how much many of us would love to run comrades for office as Communists, we all agree that this is how we currently have to function in this political climate.

Party USA Discusses Obama and Democrats, at Int'l Communist Meet

A report praising Barack Obama, and the changes wrought by him, was delivered at the 14th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, held in Beirut, Lebanon, November 22-25, by Erwin Marquit, member of the International Department, CPUSA.[27]

We express our gratitude to the Lebanese Communist Party for hosting this important meeting under the present difficult conditions.
The Communist Party USA not only welcomes the reelection of President Barack Obama, but actively engaged in the electoral campaign for his reelection and for the election of many Democratic Party congressional candidates. We regarded the 2012 election as the most important in the United States since 1932, an election held in the midst of the Great Depression.
The election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 led to the legalization of the right of workers to organize labor unions and to bargain collectively with employers. It led to the establishment of a compulsory employer-worker funded pension system for retired workers. It also introduced measures that enabled unemployed families to survive the Great Depression, among which were employment in the public sector for the unemployed, work camps for youth, and food provisions for the poverty stricken. Except for the youth camps, which ended with the onset of World War II, all of these are measures that the 2012 Republican Party agenda would have eliminated or greatly weakened. We believed that if the Republican candidate for President were elected and if both houses of the Congress fell under the control of the far right, racist sector (calling itself the “Tea Party”) that now dominates the Republican Party, the nation’s return to pre-1932 conditions would be a real danger.
Because of this danger, we viewed our participation in mainstream electoral activity as obligatory, even though both major parties in the United States are dominated by capital, with no effective competition from a mass-scale social-democratic party, We are aware that some on the Left in the United States thought that the correct approach to the elections was either to boycott them, or as a protest, to run or support small-scale left-wing candidacies with no possible chance of winning. We Communists rejected this strategy because too much was at stake.
The most import success of the Obama Administration since its election in 2008 was the introduction of a major expansion of the people’s access to financing of their health care. As a result of this legislation, 25 million people now have access to health care who previously did not have it. The repeal of this health care law was one of the main points in the programs of the Republican Party presidential and Congressional candidates in the 2012 election. Even without a repeal, there is still the danger that it will be ruled unconstitutional by the present Supreme Court even though the lower courts have upheld it. Whatever the present Supreme Court might not rule, a Supreme Court loaded with right-wing justices appointed by a Republican president would still be able to do so.
Obama has opposed Republican attempts to introduce austerity programs similar to those in the European Union. The Republicans have opposed his efforts to use government funds as economic stimuli to reduce unemployment, as well as his attempts to remove the special provisions of the income tax code that have allowed the rich to be taxed at a lower percentage of income than the average working person, and to eliminate of tax benefits that the corporations get when exporting of jobs abroad. The Occupy movement, with its slogan, “We are the 99 %,” that swept through the country in 2011, sharply drew attention to the power of the top 1%” of the population and stimulated support for Obama’s efforts to require higher taxes for the wealthy. The Republicans have blocked all proposals to reduce global warming, environment destruction, industrial pollution, and other actions arising from corporate greed that that threaten to destroy the biophysical basis of human existence. Republicans even want to privatize the FEMA, the federal agency for disaster mitigation.
Another important issue is that of justice for immigrant workers and their families. There are between 10 and 11 million irregular immigrants in the United States, mostly from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Our Party supports the regularization of their status, with full rights in the workplace and in the community, and access to U.S. citizenship. The Obama administration has moved too slowly on this issue (and the CPUSA has been sharply critical of this), but it is now taking some modest but real steps. The Republicans, on the other hand, have whipped up a racist frenzy against immigrants that has led to vigilante action and in some cases the murder of immigrant workers. Romney had promised to make life so hard for undocumented immigrants that they would all “self” deport.
Faced with a choice between the victory of either the Democratic Party or Republican Party, the Communist Party viewed a victory of the far-right Republican Party as an extreme disaster. In this situation, we saw the necessity of a policy of center-left alliances in order not to separate ourselves from the people’s struggles for dealing with the far right onslaught, The basis of such an alliance now includes the labor movement, organizations of African Americans and Latinos, the women’s movement, gay and lesbian civil rights groups, and organizations of the elderly and retirees. On some issues, these groups are joined by a few far-sighted elements of capital.
What do we mean by “far-sighted” elements of capital? As in all capitalist countries, big capital is not a monolith of common interest. Not only are elements of capital in competition with one another, but differences in their investment policies give rise to conflicting political interests. Corporations with investments in the oil, coal, and natural gas industries tend to have the most right-wing orientations. Corporations with heavy investments in China are somewhat wary of China bashing by the Republicans and even by Obama. Some corporations derive their superprofits by operations that do severe environmental damage and contribute heavily to global warming, while others depend on a relatively healthy environment for their maximum profits. That is why some elements of big capital support the Republican Party, while others support the Democratic Party because they can see a limited common interest some issues with the working-class base of support for the Democratic Party. Our present strategy is build alliances both inside and outside the Democratic Party to curtail the dominance of big capital over the lives of our people.
We are well aware that mass political activity on issues of social justice domestically and anti-imperialist solidarity internationally will not spring from within the Democratic Party. The Communist Party must continue to work with other components of this alliance to generate mass activity independently of the two parties to pressure the president and the Congress to act on its demands.
In our electoral policy, we seek to cooperate and strengthen our relationship with the more progressive elements in Democratic Party, such as the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. Congress, a group of seventy-six members of the Congress co-chaired by Raúl Grijalva, a Latino from Arizona, and Keith Ellison, an African American Muslim from Minnesota. We also will strengthen our relationship to the Congressional Black Caucus (formed by African Americans in the Congress), which has been the point of origin of innovative policies including an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, and with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In its domestic policy, for example, the Progressive Caucus has put forth a program for using the public sector to deal with unemployment. It has opposed the use of the so called “war on terror” to incarcerate U.S. citizens indefinitely without criminal charges. In its foreign policy, the Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus are outspoken in their opposition to U.S. imperialist policies abroad. The Progressive Caucus, now that Obama has been reelected, will be playing an important role in contributing to the mobilization of mass activity on critical issues to bring pressure on the Congress and administration to act on them.
In this year’s elections, the labor unions made vigorous efforts to involve their members and their retirees in phoning and door-to-door visits to campaign for Obama and the Democratic Party candidates for the Congress and state legislatures. In my state, our Party members preferentially participated in the election campaign through these labor-union channels.

In our foreign policy, U.S. Communists consistently oppose all U.S. imperialist activities abroad. We participate in the Cuban solidarity movement and demand the end of the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba and the freeing of the Cuban Five. We opposed the NATO intervention in Libya and oppose U.S. intervention in Syria. We support immediate withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and oppose the use of drones for assassination and bombing. We call for the end of sanctions against Iran. We oppose the intrusion of the United States militarily and politically in the affairs of Southeast Asia. We oppose the China-bashing policies of the U.S. government. We welcome the election of several progressive, anti-imperialist governments in Latin America and oppose U.S. attempts to undermine them. This leftward shift in Latin American, opening a path to possible socialist development, is of tremendous importance in the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle.

We call for the replacement of U.S. support of the apartheid regime in Israel by support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with the right of return of Palestinians to their native cities and villages. The day before the elections, the New York Times, in discussing the prospects of a Palestinian/Israel agreement, wrote: “Whatever chance exists of a new American peace initiative after the election is likely to vanish if Mitt Romney wins; at private fund-raising event, he said that the Arab-Israeli conflict was ‘going to remain an unsolved problem’ and seemed unconcerned about it.”
With the elections now over, there is a prospect that growing support in the United States for a just Middle East solution can induce President Obama once again to put pressure on the Israeli government to end the settlement expansion and resume negotiations leading to such a solution. An indication of such growing support is the letter on 19 October 2012 signed by fifteen leaders of the principal U.S. Christian churches calling upon the Congress to reconsider giving aid to Israel because of human rights violations. Reverend Gradye Parsons, the top official of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said, “We asked Congress to treat Israel like it would any other country, to make sure our military aid is going to a country espousing the values we would as Americans—that it is not being used to continually violate the human rights of other people.” The letter said that Israel had continued expanding settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem despite American calls to stop claiming territory that under international law and United States policy should belong to a future Palestinian state. This is a sharp contrast to the evangelical Christian churches, which have been part of the core of the far right support of the Republican candidates for president and the Congress. A Jewish-American organization called “J Street,” first organized six years ago as a “pro-Israel pro-peace” organization, has been gaining growing support among Jewish Americans for its advocacy of an end to the settlement expansion and a two- state solution based on the 1967 borders. In the 2012 elections, it contributed 1.8 million dollars to support the election of 72 candidates for the U.S. Congress, of which 71 were elected,
A key element of the Communist Party’s strategy of alliances is to imbue the struggles of these alliances with enhancement of the democratic rights, and to promote the increasing use of the public sector to extend the acceptance of a socialist consciousness. Obviously the Communist Party needs far more growth than it has been able to achieve. We are, however, effectively using our participation in people’s struggles and the Internet to recruit new members. We have an online daily news publication, People’s World, www.peoplesworld.org, a monthly online theoretical journal Political Affairs, www.politicalaffairs.net, as well as national and district Websites. As a result of our online activities, we have been forming Party clubs in states in which we previously had very few or even no members. This influx of new members led us to have a national Party school earlier this year to acquaint new members with the Marxist-Leninist orientation of the Party.
The reelection of Obama places before us the high-priority task of reversing the decline in labor-union membership by securing the enactment of the law requiring the recognition of labor unions when supported by the majority of workers of an enterprise and securing passage of other legislation that benefits the working people. The fact that the composition of the new Congress did not change ideologically enough to facilitate passage of this law still presents us with a difficult struggle. The fact that Republican Party still controls the lower house of the Congress and has enough votes in the upper house to block legislative changes of a highly progressive nature presents an obstacle that we will have to combat until it can be changed in the 2014 elections. We still have the task of strengthening the center-left alliance and enriching its anti-imperialist character.
While the victory of Obama is a welcome aid for us in our domestic struggles, we still face the challenge of mobilizing mass pressure on his administration to reverse the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy. The CPUSA will pursue this formidable task vigorously in alliance with domestic progressive forces and with our comrades in the Communist and Workers’ Parties and their allies throughout the world.

Communist Party “utilizes” the Democrats

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In January 2015, new national chair of the Communist Party USA, John Bachtell has admitted that his Party “utilizes” the Democratic Party “to advance its agenda.”

Writing on the People’s World website Bachtell explains that much of the left wants to abandon the Democratic Party to form a radical third party.

In an article entitled "A radical third party? I agree!" Bachtell explained;

Certainly, there’s widespread disillusionment with both the Democratic and Republican parties. That’s reflected in the latest Pew Research poll: 38 percent of voters describe themselves as independent, 32 percent as Democrats, and 25 percent as Republicans. In 1991, the three were approximately equal.

While acknowledging that both major parties are heavily influenced by Wall Street, Bachtell still saw a big difference;

However, it’s not enough to make sweeping generalizations about the Democratic and Republican parties. It’s true both parties are dominated by Wall Street interests, but it’s also necessary to see how each party differs, particularly their social bases and how this affects their policies.

While the Republican Party is led by the most reactionary sections of Wall Street capital including the energy extractive sector and military industrial complex, it also consists of extreme right-wing elements including the Tea Party, white supremacists, social conservatives, right-wing evangelicals, climate deniers, anti-reproductive rights groups, etc.
Meanwhile the Democratic Party is also home to labor, African Americans, Latinos, other communities of color, women, most union members, young people, and a wide range of social and democratic movements. These constituencies exert influence on party leadership and hold positions at all levels.

Therefore it makes sense, according to Bachtell, for the Communist Party, to stick with the Democrats until a viable third party is feasible. To Bachtell, progress towards socialism is possible only after the “right” is soundly defeated.

The Communist Party’s tactics for political independence rest on several interrelated elements. First, they occur within the constraints of the two-party system. We don’t operate in a parliamentary system which allows proportional voting. Instead, winner takes all, and during the general election it usually comes down to voting for one of two candidates most likely to win.
That means candidates are backed by coalitions. Under these circumstances voting based on purity of positions is not a viable tactic. Coalition forces may disagree with a candidate on one or another issue, but find they must support candidates for strategic reasons – to advance issues and create a more favorable terrain of struggle.
Our tactics also occur within the framework of our strategic policy of building a broad coalition to defeat the extreme right, which we see as the main danger to democracy and social progress, embodied within today’s Republican Party. There are voting constituencies that presently support the GOP that have to be won over. Such an approach sees the need to actively challenge right-wing and GOP ideas that influence sections of the people, especially working-class whites, for example, through hate talk radio. This includes racism and intolerance which are key issues dividing the working class.
We see this as one of the stages in the long struggle for advanced democracy and socialism. Without decisively defeating the most reactionary sections of monopoly capital, disintegrating Republican Party support at every level, it’s hard to see winning more radical and advanced programs and policies and waging a fight against the monopoly class as a whole.
We envision a prolonged process toward political independence, with many turns, advances and defeats, utilizing many forms, resulting in a radical third party based in labor, working-class neighborhoods, communities of color, and democratic movements. Such a coalition third party must extend its reach beyond urban areas, to suburbs, exurbs, rural areas, and in “red” states and congressional districts.

Until that day arrives the Communist Party would continue to “utilize” the Democrats;

First, we are part of building the broadest anti-ultra right alliance possible, uniting the widest array of class (including a section of monopoly), social and democratic forces. This necessarily means working with the Democratic Party. This differentiates us from those left groups who underestimate the right danger and overestimate the readiness of key class and social forces to bolt the Democratic Party.
Second, our objective is not to build the Democratic Party. At this stage we are about building the broad people’s movement led by labor that utilizes the vehicle of the Democratic Party to advance its agenda. We are about building the movements around the issues roiling wide sections of people that can help shape election contours and debates.[28]

Communist religious conference

“The word of God and communism are hand in hand,” said Diana Sowry, a school bus driver from Ashtabula County, Ohio. She was one of a group of clergy and lay people participating in a conference on religion sponsored by the Communist Party USA in Des Moines Iowa April 15-16, 2005.

Sowry is a union activist and also active in her church, where she sings in the choir. She feels communists and others who are working to defeat the ultra-right and advance peace, social and economic justice, and socialism are “doing the work of the Word.”

The Rev. Scott Marks, from New Haven, Conn., said “people in the pews” cannot simply stick to “feel-good issues,” but must “be willing to go to the wall on the real issues.” Noting that attendance at soup kitchens is “piling up,” he said, “People full well know, no matter what happens in heaven, this morning I woke up hungry.”

Marks, son of a North Carolina sharecropper, is a Pentecostal minister who leads the Connecticut Center for a New Economy. For him this is doing “the real work” of Jesus. “It’s not pie in the sky when we die,” Marks told the World. “It’s how are we going to change things in the here and now.”

Conference sessions dealt with the history of religion and Marxism, the religious right, coalition building, and work in local churches and denominational and ecumenical groups.

In the session on work in local churches, the Rev. Gil Dawes, a retired volunteer pastor at Trinity Methodist Church in Des Moines, emphasized that grassroots progressive religious activism has deep historical roots, and has to be re-energized today. “That’s where the right is way ahead of us,” he said.

Dawes, a second-generation Methodist minister, draws inspiration from the circuit-rider preachers who traveled through small towns and rural areas to teach a social gospel. He teaches Bible study classes with a materialist interpretation that lets ordinary people see how their problems are connected to larger political and economic forces.

“People are repressed about their own pain,” he said, “but when I choose a story that’s 3,000 years old, that’s far enough in the past. When I start to unravel that story, people break out of that repression.” They relate stories of farms lost and families shattered by hard times.

“People suffering will become leaders if they have a chance to put it together with other people,” Dawes said. This kind of Bible study helped turn one congregation from fundamentalist to one of the most progressive, he said.

In the session on Marx and religion, Paul Nelson, a Lutheran minister who teaches at a community college in Iowa, disputed the idea that Marx opposed all religion. What Marx denounced was an “illusory” form of religion that served as “ideological cover for the exercise of aristocratic economic and political power,” Nelson said. Like the reactionary state religion in 19th century Germany, today “we see religion twisted and turned and used to discipline people,” he said.

Right-wing Christian ideologues focus on the next world and individuals’ private relationships with Jesus, Nelson said. But progressive, “living” religion is based in human activity in “the world we know,” he argued. It sees the “kingdom of heaven” as something to strive for in the real world.

The discussion included plans for a workshop at the Communist Party’s national convention in Chicago, July 1-3. Many participants expressed interest in the formation of an ongoing party commission on religious work encompassing all faiths. Its activities could include initiating a national newsletter of social activism and left politics in religious communities, and a web site with tools for progressive religious activists.

Participants came from seven states ranging from New England to California. They included people who are active in interfaith social justice work and others interested in combining religious belief and communist activism. It was the first time in attendees’ memory that the Communist Party had initiated such a discussion.

The spirit of enthusiasm and comradeship was stoked by home-cooked meals and singing led by the Rev. David Carl Olson, minister of the Community Church of Boston and also a musical theater artist. [29]

Relations with China and Vietnam

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In recent years, the Communist Party USA has grown more oriented to the People's Republic of China.

China 2021

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.[30]

2006 China, Vietnam delegation

A Communist Party USA delegation to China and Vietnam returned to the United States on Dec. 12 2006, with a "wealth of political and cultural experiences they say they hope to share with the U.S. public in order to build better understanding and friendship between the peoples of the U.S., China and Vietnam."

The delegation, made up of National Chair Sam Webb, Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner, International Secretary Pamella Saffer and Labor Secretary Scott Marshall, visited at the invitation of the Communist Parties of China and Vietnam.

In China, they were hosted by the CPCs international department and were able to meet with leaders of the All China Womens Federation, the All China Federation of Trade Unions including a leader of the now famous Wal-Mart union and other leaders, party members and everyday citizens.

Saffer said that, although shed been to China before for a UN conference, this was the fist time she had ever had the chance to experience China. While much of the U.S. news media portrays China as a land of freewheeling capitalism and exploitation, Saffer said she was impressed by the country's socialist construction.

You have to get out of the mindset that socialism looks a certain way, and that we know what it looks like, she said. In China, laws are made to support working people.

While no one would deny China's current problems, such as the gap between urban and rural areas, or the hardships faced by migrant workers, Saffer said that the Chinese leadership seemed to be determined to solve them.

This is what CPC leaders mean, she said, when they talk about building a harmonious society. She added, Theyre lifting people out of poverty. Its an enormous task, if you picture the population of 1.3 billion.

Chinas Communist leaders expressed a desire for peace and better state-to-state relations. Saffer added, The Chinese were pretty clear on that. They're not into getting into any conflicts or confrontations. They want to develop their own country, continue to lift people up to a better standard of living.

The entire delegation engaged in cultural activities, such as a visit to the Peking Opera and a visit to the China Folk Cultural Heritage Village, which showcases the culture of Chinas 55 minority ethnic groups.

The delegation then traveled on to Vietnam. While the CPUSA has sent people to Vietnamese party congresses, and Tyner himself had visited Vietnam in 1972 while bombs were falling, this was the first official CPUSA delegation to ever visit. They described it as a moving experience.

All of us were of the generation that had opposed the Vietnam War, Saffer said. Its astonishing, the progress that Vietnam has made. One of the things that was very clear to me, and very moving, was how they have always made a distinction between the government that dropped bombs and Agent Orange on their people, on the one hand, and the American people, on the other.

One of the challenges for Vietnam is how they are taking care of victims of Agent Orange, and their children, she said. These are disabled people. How do they fit them into society, to be contributing members of society? This is a challenge.

Saffer noted Vietnam's stunning progress since the war. It has been able, despite immense destruction wrought by the U.S. during the 1960s and 70s, to become one of the most economically dynamic nations in the world. In doing so, it has brought huge swaths of its population out of poverty and has plans to eradicate all poverty within a few decades.

Saffer and Webb both said that relations with between the CPUSA and the Chinese and Vietnamese parties had been further strengthened, and they look forward to building even stronger relations in the future.[31]

Possibilities under Obama

In a speech given at the Peoples Weekly World ’s Better World Awards banquet in New York City, May 17, 2009, entitled "the impossible becomes possible", Communist Party National Chair Sam Webb, explained the possibilities opened up under the Obama administration.

It came down to a point by point Communist Party USA agenda for the Obama administration;

On the heels of the first 100 days of our new President, we heard nearly endless commentary and analysis. Much of it was favorable; and some wasn’t.
I would like to briefly add my two cents
After the first 100 days I would say without hesitation or qualification that the political atmosphere, landscape, conversation and agenda compared to the previous eight years of the Bush administration have changed dramatically.
To borrow an expression of Jarvis Tyner, the executive vice chair of our party, “What was once impossible during the Bush years has become possible, thanks to the election of Barack Obama.”
In this new political climate, we can foresee winning a public option, like Medicare, in the current legislative fight over health care reform.
We can visualize enacting tough regulatory reforms on the financial industry that brought the economy to ruin.
We can imagine bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, while being part of a regional process that brings peace and stability to the entire region.
In this new political climate, the expansion of union rights in this legislative session is not only sensible, it’s doable.
Much the same can be said about winning a second stimulus bill, and we sure need one, given the still rising and likely long term persistence of unemployment with the heaviest burden, as usual, falling on communities of color.
Isn’t it possible in the post-Bush era to launch a vigorous attack on global warming and create millions of green jobs in manufacturing and elsewhere?
Can’t we envision taking new strides in the long journey for racial and gender equality in this new era, marked at its beginning by the election of the first African American to the presidency?
And isn’t the overhaul of the criminal justice and prison system – a system steeped in racism and employing punitive treatment as it organizing principle – no longer pie in the sky, but something that can be done in the foreseeable future?
All these --- and many other --- things are within our reach now!
We can dream again, knowing that the gap between our dreams and reality is bridgeable.
We can turn King’s words --- that “justice roll down like a mighty stream” --- into a living reality for every American.
We can re-bend the arc of history in the direction of justice and peace.
But only if we, and millions like us, do our part in these struggles, much like we did last year.
Neither President Obama nor progressive congress people can do it by themselves --- they can’t be the only change agents.
After all, they are up against formidable opposition.
On the one hand the extreme right is badly weakened, but is still a poisonous and reactionary political presence in our nation.
On the other hand, the Obama change coalition includes people and groups that want to cut down on the scope and sweep of the reform agenda.
So both the new president and new congress need our help. Our responsibility is support them as well as prod and constructively take issue with them when we have differing views.
But more importantly – and this is the nub of the problem – we have to reach, activate, unite and turn millions of Americans into change agents who can make the political difference in these struggles.
Changes of a progressive nature, especially major ones--- if history is any guide ---usually combine the bottom up and the top down.
So the challenge facing the discontented of our land is to be the bottom up change agents this year and in the years to come.
Our parents and grandparent did exactly that in the Depression years. Not happy with the pace and substance of change, they sat down in plants and in the fields, marched on Washington, petitioned local relief agencies, lobbied for a social safety net, established unemployed and nationality (immigrant) groups, organized industrial workers, opposed discrimination and racism, elected New Dealers to Congress and re-elected Roosevelt in a landslide in 1936, and turned (not all at once and not perfectly) multi-racial unity into an organizing principle.
I am confident the American people in their millions – reeling under the weight of this terrible economic crisis and yearning for a more decent, equal, peaceful and just world – will follow their example and turn this country into a more perfect union.
Yes we can --- Si se puede!

'Yellow Power'

From an article dated Oct 19, 2016 by Eveline Chao at Gothamist titled "How Asian-American Radicals Brought 'Yellow Power' To Chinatown":[32]

"In October 1966—50 years ago—Chinese leader Mao Zedong appeared on Tiananmen Square in Beijing to address an audience of 1.5 million Red Guards, the paramilitary youth he had called upon to tear down the Communist Party hierarchy. "Long live the Red Guards!" he shouted, to roars of approval. "Long live the great Cultural Revolution!"
That spring, Mao first called for a "Cultural Revolution," urging the working class to "struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road" and "criticize and repudiate...the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes."
Tens of millions of Red Guards took up his call. By the revolution's end in 1976, millions of people—especially intellectuals and those with ties to the previous, Nationalist government or the West—had been denounced, tortured, or murdered. Many fled to Hong Kong, and from there to the United States and elsewhere. To this day, the period remains one of the most painful traumas in China's collective memory.
Outside China, the full extent of what happened during the Cultural Revolution remained largely unknown until the late 1970s. What came through were mostly propaganda messages about class struggle, economic empowerment and educational access for the poor—messages that resonated with radical leftists in the United States who were fighting for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War.
"A lot of us radicals at that time didn't know exactly what was going on. But [ideas like] reforming education were quite relevant to us," said Peter Kwong, a historian at Hunter College who during the late '60s was at Columbia University writing his master's thesis about the Red Guards. "The Chinese, through propaganda, were able to have a significant impact on the way young people were thinking."
People of color were particularly inspired by Mao's call to "serve the people," seeing in it a message that was relevant to poor, marginalized communities. The Black Panther Party formed just five months after the Cultural Revolution began, and it soon became commonplace to see black radicals selling copies of Mao's "Little Red Book" on street corners. The Puerto Rican nationalist Young Lords were also inspired by Maoism.
Less attention has been given to the Asian-American leftist groups that formed, including the Red Guard Party and Kalayaan in San Francisco, and East Wind Collective in Los Angeles. Here in New York, in 1969, a dozen or so young Asian-Americans formed I Wor Kuen (IWK), Cantonese for "Righteous and Harmonious Fists." The name came from a group that tried to expel Westerners from China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.
""We believed U.S. imperialism was a criminal system that conducted a genocidal war in Vietnam and maintained an oppressive racial caste system at home. We believed it was irredeemable and the 'system' had to be overthrown," said former IWK leader Gordon H. Chang, who is now a history professor at Stanford University.
That year, IWK members pooled their money and rented a cheap corner storefront at 24 Market Street in Chinatown, under the Manhattan Bridge, where they resolved to live collectively and "serve the people." Some dropped out of college. Four of the members held jobs, enabling the other eight to be full-time activists. Inspired by the Panthers, they adopted a uniform of berets and sunglasses.
IWK protested poor housing conditions in Chinatown, organized child-care programs and bilingual education and conducted door-to-door testing for tuberculosis, which was endemic in the overcrowded neighborhood. They also organized Chinatowners to join other Lower East Side residents in a fight for a new hospital nearby, then demanded the hospital hire more Chinese speakers.
The group led a successful protest against a Bell Telephone Company plan to tear down a block of housing for a switching station. They also protested the war in Vietnam, and taught young people ways to avoid the draft. Later, IWK would help defend small grocery owners who had been shut down by the Health Department for selling roast ducks and other traditional Chinese food items, eventually leading the agency to change its ordinances.
Former IWK member Karen Low was just 14 when she joined the group. Her mother worked at a garment factory in Chinatown; after school, Low and her siblings helped her do piecework. Poor people in the community, Low recalled, faced "miseducation and ignorance and racism." Moreover, they were often unaware of the many social services they qualified for. "So when IWK came along, it was an opportunity to say, 'Yes, it's about time somebody is speaking for us, somebody's trying to do something for us,'" she said.
Sometimes, the group joined with the Panthers, the Young Lords and other radical groups to protest larger issues, or attend political conventions. The Panthers' Ten Point Program inspired IWK to draw up a Twelve Point Program that called for "an end to racism," better housing and health care, and "community control of our institutions and land." The group even published a bilingual community newspaper called "Getting Together."
"Chinatown is a ghetto to Chinese people like ghettoes are to Black, Spanish and other non-white peoples," IWK wrote in the inaugural issue. "We Asians (Chinese) in Chinatown are living in a colony controlled by foreigners (the rich, outside whites). In fact, Chinatown is not only a ghetto, but a colony of sorts. What we have to do is begin to gain power to run our own community." The article ended with a call to "Yellow Power."
The paper helped publicize the group's work outside of Chinatown, and in 1971 IWK merged with San Francisco's Red Guards to form a national IWK.
Alongside IWK, numerous fellow travelers in Chinatown took up Mao's call. One was Corky Lee, a photographer who in those days had portraits of Mao and Ho Chi Minh on his wall. Inspired by the Young Lords' "liberation" of an X-ray truck to offer free tuberculosis testing in Spanish Harlem, Lee proposed running a free health fair in Chinatown.
He worked with IWK members, social workers and several community groups to organize the fair, which was held in August 1971. For 10 days, a fleet of doctors, nurses and technicians set up shop along Mott Street, and locals could come by to get tested for TB, lead poisoning, diabetes, venereal diseases and other conditions, with assistance from volunteer translators. The event was so popular—2,500 people came—that the organizers decided to rent a garage on Baxter Street and turn it into a full-time clinic staffed by volunteers. They called it the Chinatown Health Clinic.
Chinatown health fair.
Despite their good works, these young leftists were viewed with suspicion by much of the community. In those days, Chinatown was a stronghold of sympathizers for the anti-communist Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang [KMT], which ruled China until the communist takeover in 1949. The KMT, which governed the island nation of Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China, viewed New York as an important base for lobbying the international community and influencing media coverage of China. It poured resources into local institutions like the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which for decades served as the unofficial government of Chinatown. Only the Nationalist flag flew on Mott Street. The neighborhood celebrated the founding date of the Republic of China, October 10, also known as "Double Ten Day." Public support for communist China was not tolerated.
"I was called a Red Guard," said Lee. "Because we were giving out medical care for free. Some of the more conservative people in Chinatown felt this was the Cultural Revolution coming to Chinatown."
Gordon Chang recalled that political differences sometimes became violent. "We had fistfights; the storefront was damaged. I was stabbed by gang youth who worked with the 'reactionaries,'" he said.
Like many radical groups of that era, IWK was also dogged by the police. "The Fifth Precinct was always on top of us, the Seventh Precinct was always on top of us, we were trailed and followed by the FBI," said Low. "I mean things like that happened. In those times it was pretty much a given." The organization also clashed with other leftists, including former members who formed splinter groups.
Caught in the middle of all these politics were ordinary people in Chinatown who were growing weary of the decades-long diplomatic freeze between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China and longed to reconnect with friends and family in the mainland.
IWK tapped into these sentiments through public screenings of propaganda films, which showcased development projects like dam construction, as well as revolutionary operas like "The White-Haired Girl" and "The Red Detachment of Women." Low recalled people angrily pouring down buckets of water and throwing things from neighboring rooftops. And yet, thousands of people attended these screenings.
"A lot of them were older people, so they hadn't seen their homeland in 20 or 30 years. The only information they were getting was what organizations like IWK distributed," said Charlotte Brooks, a historian at Baruch College and author of Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years. "They were hungry for those details."
As the '70s wound on, America's stance towards the People's Republic of China began to shift. In October 1971, the United Nations voted to expel Taiwan and admit the PRC as the acknowledged representative of China. IWK cheered the news and organized a demonstration outside the UN to welcome the arrival of PRC representatives, while conservative Chinatown leaders hung banners on Mott and Pell Streets that read, "Mao's regime does not represent the Chinese people" and "We demand bloodthirsty Mao be punished."
In the Chinese-American community, too, openness toward the People's Republic of China became mainstream. When the U.S. recognized the PRC in 1978, Nationalist sympathizers were bitterly disappointed, but in the broader community, there was largely a sense of relief.
That same year, IWK merged with several other radical groups to become the League of Revolutionary Struggle. But by that point, the revolutionary spirit of the '60s and '70s was fading. The League formally dissolved in 1990.
With time, former radicals became business owners or professionals. They settled down and had families.
Today, some remain active in progressive politics, but "in different form," as Low puts it. She's spent her career as an educator and organizer. Corky Lee worked on a successful campaign to get formal recognition from the U.S. Department of Labor for the key role played by Chinese laborers in building America's railroads.
In Chinatown, the legacy of IWK is still visible. On Canal, Walker and Centre Streets, there stand branches of the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, a nonprofit that caters to medically underserved New Yorkers, particularly Asian-Americans. There are two more locations in Flushing. The Center grew out of the Chinatown Health Clinic, which in turn grew out of the 1971 health fair organized by IWK, Corky Lee, and many other idealistic young Asian-Americans. Each year, nearly 50,000 patients visit the Charles B. Wang facilities. The mission of those young radicals—to serve the people—lives on.
Eveline Chao is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. She is the author of NIUBI!: The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School, a guide to Chinese slang. Chao is currently working on an oral history project about Manhattan Chinatown.

Editor's note: After the publication of this story, Regina Lee, chief development officer at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, wrote in to Gothamist to express concern about our description of the origins of the Health Center. Her letter, along with a response from the author, follows:

As a volunteer in the 1971 Chinatown Health Fair and co-founder of the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, I am writing to correct and clarify some significant misstatements and erroneous conclusions in your article "How Asian American Radicals Brought Yellow Power to Chinatown."
The person responsible for the 1971 Chinatown Health Fair was Thomas Tam. At that time, Tom was an organizer with the Lower East Side Neighborhood Health Council. The Lower East Side, which had a very successful history of community mobilization to make health services more accountable, was the target area for one of the first neighborhood health service programs funded by the national Office of Economic Development. The Health Council served as the community council for this program, which was based at Gouverneur Hospital and sought to make services more accountable to the community and strengthen resident participation in policy making. It was Tom, Marie Lam (social worker at Chinatown Planning Council), and Kai Liu (staff at Two Bridges Neighborhood Health Council) who led the successful campaign to get the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation to hire more bilingual workers at Gouverneur.
Following the tremendous community response to the health fair, Tom and the health fair organizers worked together to establish a free clinic to meet the ongoing health care needs of Chinatown residents. The Church of Our Savior on Henry Street donated free space, and we recruited volunteer doctors, nurses and students to offer 10 hours of basic health care services free of charge to all community members. We also launched patient navigator and health education programs to supplement these basic services. The volunteers who maintained the health center during those early years were mostly college students. Several years ago, the corner of Canal Street and Cortland Alley in Chinatown was named Honorable Thomas Tam Way to honor Tom's role in initiating the health fair and the clinic.
IWK did not play any meaningful role in either the health fair or the health clinic. For those of us who were involved, we found inspiration from the social activism that was occurring in the US during the '60s and early '70s, such as the free clinic movement, which started in Haight Ashbury and Berkeley, and the Johnson Administration’s Great Society programs that gave us Medicaid and Medicare. Our vision for a community-based health clinic was not shaped by the ideology of the Red Guards, but by Dr. Jack Geiger, who founded the first community health centers in the U.S. at Columbia Point in Boston and Mound Bayou in Mississippi.
During the early '70s, several Marxist Leninist groups such as IWK, October League and the Communist Party USA had a small presence in Chinatown. I remember that many people in the community were wary about these groups because of the sharp divisions in Chinatown over US-China relations. The divisions were frequently along generational lines. The health clinic leadership was very careful to steer clear of any organizational relationships/affiliation with IWK and other radical groups out of concern that volunteers and patients would be turned off.
To suggest that the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center is a legacy of IWK is an absurd conclusion. The Health Center published a 308-page history book, From Street Fair to Medical Home, in 2011 to commemorate our 40th anniversary. The book is based on oral histories conducted with Health Center founders and volunteers, as well as our archival records. The book makes no references to IWK as an initiator/influencer in the health fair or the health clinic. No founders or volunteers who participated in the interviews even mentioned IWK.

Author Eveline Chao responds:

Thanks to Regina Lee for the important supplementary information. I would like to reassure her and all the other admirable people who helped bring about the Chinatown Health Clinic and the later Charles B. Wang Community Health Center that at no point during our interviews did any former IWK members ever take credit for creating either entity. What they discussed was helping with the Chinatown Health Fair, the one-off event that preceded those entities. That involvement is corroborated in published accounts of the fair and also came up in conversations with historians, leaving me no reason to doubt the claims. I agree that IWK was not involved in the fair's later transformation into a full-time clinic; for that reason they are not mentioned in the sentence describing the founding of the Chinatown Health Clinic.
I also agree that there was not a large Marxist-Leninist presence in Chinatown; as mentioned in the piece, IWK had just 12 members. As for the concluding paragraph, because the group volunteered at the fair, which became the clinic then center, I consider it fair to paint a symbolic link between the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center and the former "mission" of the group, and to portray their histories as having intersected.
The story of how the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center came to be is a rich and commendable chapter in this city's history, but was not the subject of this piece. For that reason, I did not get into the important work of Thomas Tam, Regina Lee herself, and the many other people, of all political stripes, who brought about the clinic and the center.
My aim in telling the story of one small group of people is certainly not to diminish the achievements of others not mentioned, and I welcome the addition of more voices and more context to this story.

Solidarity with Sept. 24 FBI Raid Activists

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression lists Communist Party USA as one of the organizations that has issued a statement of solidarity in support of the activists raided in the September 24, 2010 FBI Raids.[33]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Communist Party USA Constitution
  2. ↑ PW Communist Party membership numbers climbing in the Trump era April 19, 2017 11:36 AM CDT BY SERGIO ALEJANDRO GÓMEZ
  3. ↑ [The Cause That Failed : Communism in American Political Life: Communism in ... By Amherst (Emeritus) Guenter Lewy Professor of Political Science University of Massachusetts]
  4. ↑ [1]
  5. ↑ Xinhuanet, Interview: U.S. Communist Party leader says Marxism "vibrant, philosophical" outlookSource: Xinhua| 2018-04-15 14:57:47|Editor: Lifang
  6. ↑ Xinhuanet, Interview: U.S. Communist Party leader says Marxism "vibrant, philosophical" outlookSource: Xinhua| 2018-04-15 14:57:47|Editor: Lifang
  7. ↑ [http://www.bostoncommunists.org/single-post/2017/10/15/CPUSA-Boston-members-attend-8th-World-Socialism-Forum-Beijing Boston CPUSA, CPUSA-Boston members attend 8th World Socialism Forum, Beijing October 15, 2017 CPUSA-Boston]
  8. ↑ http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/15/
  9. ↑ Convention Discussion: Organizational status of the Communist Party, by: JOHN BACHTELL May 29 2014
  10. ↑ Discussion: Anti-communism today by: GARY BONOJune 5 2014
  11. ↑ CPUSA, Convention Discussion: Anti-communism today. by: GARY BONO June 5 2014
  12. ↑ http://www.peoplesworld.org/james-and-esther-jackson-and-the-long-civil-rights-revolution
  13. ↑ Convention Discussion: Religion in the Current Period by: CPUSA Religion Commission April 13 2010, This article is part of the discussion leading up to the Communist Party USA's 29th National Convention May 21-23, 2010.
  14. ↑ [2]]
  15. ↑ Convention Discussion: The Communist Party and the Visceral Weapon of Culture, by: John Pietaro April 20 2010, This article is part of the discussion leading up to the Communist Party USA's 29th National Convention May 21-23, 2010.
  16. ↑ [ttp://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/out-of-hiding/Content?oid=2271248, San Antonio Current, Out of hiding By Lisa Sorg October 14, 2004]
  17. ↑ Noel Ignatin, The POC: A Personal Memoir CoverF irst Published: Theoretical Review No. 12, September-October 1979
  18. ↑ [[Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (and Appendixes), House Committee on Un-American Activities HCUA, December 1, 1961, House Document No. 398]]
  19. ↑ http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=249251
  20. ↑ "Saturday Review", February 23, 1974, pp. 10-14 & 46, "What's Happened to the Communist Party USA?" (It is up and about again, the beneficiary of detente and a dramatic decline in public paranoia), Roger A. Williams,
  21. ↑ "New York Times", "Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits to Soviet Spying", Sam Roberts, Sept. 12, 2008; "Los Angeles Times", "Case Closed on the Rosenbergs", Ron Radosh, Sept.17, 2008,
  22. ↑ [3] John Frey's papers in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. Probably work of an FBI informant that had been leaked to Frey.
  23. ↑ Communists in the Democratic Party, by Concerned Voters Inc., Wilson C. Lucom, Chairman, Box 40309, Washington, D.C. NW, 20016, 1990, page 21, ISBN 0-9627427-0-8
  24. ↑ Communists in the Democratic Party, page 26
  25. ↑ Convention Discussion: Building Labor / People's Electoral Power by: CPUSA Political Action Commission April 13 2010
  26. ↑ Convention Discussion: A Time to Grow by: YCLers in transition February 2 2010
  27. ↑ Solidnet.org, Contribution of the Communist Party USA, 14th International Meeting of CWP, Presented by Erwin Marquit,, member of International Department, CPUSA, 25 November 2012
  28. ↑ A radical third party? I agree! by: John Bachtell January 22 2015
  29. ↑ Communists host meet on religion by: SUSAN WEBB april 29 2005
  30. ↑ [4]
  31. ↑ CPUSA Delegation returns from China, Vietnam, Dan Margolis, Peoples World, December 23, 2006
  32. ↑ How Asian-American Radicals Brought 'Yellow Power' To Chinatown (Accessed May 5, 2023)
  33. ↑ Committee to Stop FBI Repression: Solidarity Statements (accessed on Oct. 6, 2010)
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