Cora Weiss

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Cora Weiss

Cora Weiss is the wife of New York Lawyer, Peter Weiss, founder of the Institute for Policy Studies and daughter of Samuel Rubin, a funder of many left-wing organizations. Weiss was a director of the Samuel Rubin Foundation from its inception. She was also instrumental in the funding decision to create the Institute for Policy Studies. She gained notoriety as a leader of the Vietnam War era anti-American coalitions who traveled to Paris and Hanoi for repeated meetings with communist leaders.

Peace activism

Weiss is a supporter of the United Nations, an early member of Women Strike for Peace (WSP), a leader in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States. In the 1970s Weiss was the director of the Riverside Church (New York, NY) Disarmament Program. Weiss was also active with SANE, SANE/Freeze, Peace Action, and The Hague Appeal for Peace. Weiss became president of the International Peace Bureau in 2000. She has always been active in women's peace issues, hosting the first women's radio program in New York City in the 1970s, attending women's disarmament summits in the former Soviet Union, the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and many other events.[1].

The Wilfred Burchett 60th Birthday Committee

Both Cora Weiss and her husband, radical lawyer Peter Weiss were "Sponsors" of "The Wilfred Burchett 60th Birthday Committee, a group of hardcore communists, Marxists and leftist liberals who, "in association with the "Guardian" maoist weekly newspaper, announced "A Burchett Antiwar Chest Campaign" to raise money for this identified KGB agent, Australian Communist Party member, and Red Chinese operative during the Korean War.

The announcement about both the birthday committee and the antiwar chest appeared in a half page ad in the "Guardian", February 27, 1971, p. 9. The complete text of this ad can be found under "Wilfred Burchett" at KW and lists all the officers and sponsors of it at the time of publication of the Guardian. It was a literal "Who's Who" of the Old and New Hanoi Lobby including two old Soviet KGB/NKVD/GRU American communists, Harry Magdoff, I.F. Stone - Isidor Stone aka "Izzy Stone" and Carl Marzani.

Hard Times Conference

In 1976 Cora Weiss for Friendshipment and Women Strike for Peace attended the Weather Underground and Prairie Fire Organizing Committee organized Hard Times Conference Jan 30 - Feb 1 at the University of Chicago.[2]

July 4th Coalition

A Marxist-led protest coalition named the July 4th Coalition (J4C) was formed to protest the 200th anniversary of America's "Independence Day". It was a more hardcore Marxist organization than the cover Marxist one known as the People's Bicentennial Commission (PBC).[3].

A good congressional hearing volume on the J4C was put out by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), Sen. Judiciary Committee, as "Threats to the Peaceful Observance of the Bicentennial", hearings, SISS, June 18, 1976, 94th Congress, 2nd Session. (Subdoc No. 75-425). Cora Weiss' name was on several J4C lists including the "Dear Friend" letter from Marxist Alfredo Lopez, National Coordinator, to recipients about the protests. Weiss was listed as an "Executive Board Member" with the identification of "Friendshipment", a Hanoi Lobby aid project to North Vietnam.

In fact, many of Weiss' Hanoi travelling friends and supporting comrades were on this list including Dave Dellinger David Dellinger - Seven Days Magazine; Rev. Paul Mayer - N.Y. Theological Seminary and Clergy & Laity Concerned (CALC); Dave McReynolds - War Resister's League (WRL); and Sid Peck Sidney Peck - anti-war activist and former member of the CPUSA's Wisconsin State Party.

Women for a Meaningful Summit Conference

Weiss was involved in the Moscow Women for a Meaningful Summit Conference, May 31 – June 7, 1989.[4]

Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama

In early 2008 Cora Weiss, an U.N. Representative, International Peace Bureau signed a petition circulated by Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama[5].

In the coming elections, it is important to remember that war and peace are as much \"women\'s issues\" as are health, the environment, and the achievement of educational and occupational equality. Because we believe that all of these concerns are not only fundamental but closely intertwined, this Tuesday we will be casting our vote for Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Affiliations

Cora Weiss, formerly active with the Emma Lazarus Clubs, a CPUSA controlled if not founded organization and Women Strike for Peace (WSP), played a leadership role in the CPUSA-controlled anti-Vietnam coalitions New Mobilization Committee (NMC), People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ) which collaborated closely with the WPC. She received considerable media attention for her numerous meetings with Vietnamese Communist officials in Paris and Hanoi and for her controversial role in the Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam COLIFAM and in a project to provide material aid to Hanoi, the Friendshipment/Bach Mai Hospital Fund (FRIENDSHIPMENT).

She and her husband, Peter Weiss, president of the IPS board, are officers of the Samuel Rubin Foundation, which provides the major financial support to IPSITNI, and of the Fund for Tomorrow, a smaller foundation which is apparently wholly funded by the Rubin foundation, which supports many activist groups spun-off by IPS including WISE.[6]

Of the above organizations, the Emma Lazarus Clubs was a CPUSA front, formed out of the older Jewish Cultural Clubs that the CP set up from their even older fronts the Jewish Culture Society and possibly the Jewish People's Committee and Jewish peoples Fraternal Order IWO International Workers Order,[7].

Weiss liked to use her Jewish heritage as a cover for her half century of working in CPUSA fronts and causes, as well as other marxist causes by other communist parties (Trotskyite). Once she reportedly described herself as simply "a Jewish housewife from Brooklyn" CITE, not as the daughter of a member of the CPUSA, Samuel Rubin, who himself apparently was a Soviet agent-of-influence starting back as far as the Spanish Civil War.[8]

The following is only a partial list of CPUSA, SWP, or other communist "united front" organizations and causes that Weiss participated in since the 1960's. It will be updated as more citations are found.

Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1972, "Two POW Kin, Group Leave for N. Vietnam" (AP):

  • - 'Paying for Trip'

"Dellinger said the trip was being underwritten by Anniversary Tours of Manhattan and added the he hoped the agency would be repaid by Americans opposed to the war."

A small article on this revelation was published in "The Pink Sheet on the Left", shortly after (CITE issue).

A brief summary of some of Weiss' affiliations can be found in "New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Part 2", Hearings, HISC, June 9-11, 1970, p. 4285, along with the testimony of two POW wives about Weiss' COLIFAM extortion organization.

The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam, 1965-1972

Weiss' story is told in her own words in the book "The Loyal Opposition: Americans in North Vietnam, 1965-1972" by James W. Clinton, University Press of Colorado, 1995, Chapter 15. For those who know her background and activities, it reads, in part, like a work of fiction. However, she did admit on page. 165 that COLIFAM was formed by herself and David Dellinger, a self-avowed small "c" communist whose record of supporting communist causes was about as long as that of Cora Weiss and even her husband, Peter Weiss.

Committee of Liaison with U.S. Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam COLIFAM

This was essentially a CPUSA/mixed communist created, dominated and run anti-U.S. propaganda organization admittedly created by top of the top Communist cause supporters in the U.S., Cora Weiss,David Dellinger, Ethel Taylor WSP, and Madeline Duckles WSP, plus the addition to the Board of Richard Barnet IPS and Richard Falk.(See the already cited "The Loyal Opposition" book, p. 165 and the rest of Chapter 15 on Cora Weiss. Dellinger, Duckles and Taylor also had chapters in this book).

Abstentively its goal was to create a non-governmental mail delivery system from the U.S, during the Vietnam War, especially for the families of American POWS in North Vietnam, that would not be run by the U.S. Government. However, as extensive congressional testimony from some of these POWs wives showed, COLIFAM did its best to use the mail-delivery scheme as an extortion mechanism to get family members of POWs to join the anti-war movement, in return for which they would get more mail from their POW husbands/relatives, and perhaps an early release as happened in 1972, when Lt. Norris Charles, Major Edward Elias, and Lt. Markham Gartley were released into the custody of COLIFAM.[10]

It was no coincidence that the mother of Gartley and the wife of Charles had joined a COLIFAM trip to Hanoi in August, 1972. It is worth noting that the trip actually took place in September.[11]. This trip will be discussed under the Hanoi Lobby and Hanoi Visitors sites at Keywiki.

Medical Aid For Indochina

The Hanoi Lobby in the US created a new organization to aid the communist forces in S.E. Asia with "medical supplies" and named it Medical Aid For Indochina (MAI), (i.e. for North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, Pathet Lao (Laos communists) and possibly the Communist groups in Cambodia, i.e. the No. Vietnamese/Viet Cong organization and the Khmer Rouge.

Among this group's sponsors was Cora Weiss, brochure, undated, 1971. There is a page for MAI here at KW.

Disarm Now! conference

In June 2010, Cora Weiss addressed the Disarm Now! Conference, Riverside Church, New York. (Workshop: Peace as a Human Right) is the President of the Hague Appeal for Peace. She ran the disarmament program at The Riverside Church from 1978-88 during the ministry of Rev. William Sloane Coffin. She was a leader of Women Strike for Peace when it worked to educate public opionion on the perils of atmospheric nuclear testing and became a leader in the Vietnam anti-war movement. She has devoted her life to the movements for civil rights, human rights, peace and gender justice. She was the past president of the International Peace Bureau, which she represents at the United Nations. The Hague Appeal for Peace focuses on peace education. The Hague Appeal conference in 1999 had two banner calls: Time to Abolish War and Peace is a Human Right.[12]

IPS panel

Connies.JPG

Institute for Policy Studies panel with Cora Weiss, Phyllis Bennis, John Conyers and Peter Certo.

References

Template:Reflist

  1. ↑ http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DG201-225/dg222cweiss.htm
  2. ↑ Outlaws in Amerika, West Goals 1982, Pg33-35
  3. ↑ "The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial: The People's Bicentennial Commission", Hearings, SISS, March 17 and 18, 1976, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, and "The Meaning of the Bicentennial: Volume One: The Peoples (People's Bicentennial Commission", Max Friedman, 1976, ACU Education and Research Institute, DC.,
  4. ↑ http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DG201-225/dg222cweiss.htm
  5. ↑ http://www.i petitions.com/petition/nyfeministsforpeace/
  6. ↑ The War Called Peace: Glossary, published 1982
  7. ↑ Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (and Appendixes), Revised and published December 1, 1961, House Committee on Un-American Activities HCUA, citing to original government findings, pages 95-96 and 241.
  8. ↑ Forbes Magazine, approximately 1980 or 1982, need CITE,
  9. ↑ The War Called Peace: The Soviet Peace Offensive, foreward Rep. John Ashbrook, Western Goals, 1982.
  10. ↑ New Mobe Staff Study, HISC, 1970;New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Hearings, Parts 1 & 2, 1970, HISC;American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1971, Hearings, March-April, 1971, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments, esp. testimonies of Max P. Friedman and Cora Weiss.
  11. ↑ Los Angeles Times, Sept. 14, 1972, "Two POW Kin, Group Leave for N. Vietnam", AP.
  12. ↑ [1] conference speaker bios, accessed, July 18, 2010
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