National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending

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Template:TOCnestleft National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending

Communist Party front

A project of the Communist Party USA and a new front that they created, the National Conference on Military Spending Organizing Committee, which later became the National Center to Cutback Military Spending, the National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending was the latest creation by the communists and radicals to attack the U.S. military budget and our armed forces. It was held right at the time that the North Vietnamese Communists were in their final stages of conquering South Vietnam and Laos, while helping their maoist allies in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge take over that country and perpetrate a massive genocide against its inhabitants.

A more detailed history of the "Organizing Committee", the "National Conference" and the resulting "National Center" will be found under the Center's full name as revealed in the "Congressional Record" of April 1975.

The creation and development of this CPUSA front can be found by following its announcements and activities in the pages of the CPUSA newspaper, "Daily World", whose key articles are listed directly below.

  • "Resistance Grows Against Arms Budget", DW, February 15, 1975, pp. 1 & 10. Key personnel mentioned included:
  • Edith Villastrigo - WSP
  • Pauline Rosen - "a leading member of Women Strike for Peace WSP who announced that "Anti-war forces, she said, will convene a 'People's Summit Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending' in Chicago, April 5-6."
  • John Holum- "an aide to Sen. George McGovern". (Holum was Sen. William Fulbright's key assistant on arms control treaties and negotiations, and was known on Capitol Hill as one of the top Soviet appeasers up there.)

The article quoted him as saying: "We should bring home the divisions in South Korea and withdraw troops from Thailand," he said. "We should cut troops in German."

(This was shortly before the Communists overran and conquered South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, with its resultant genocide and cultural/political destruction. Only a strong stance in Thailand by the U.S. had enabled the Thai Army to defeat and drive back North-Vietnamese- backed Thai Communists who got their aid from the Pathet Lao/No. Vietnamese in Laos).

  • "Conference in Chicago to hit military spending", DW, March 1, 1975, pp. 1 & 3, which said that "A call has been issued for a 'National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending' to be held here April 5 and 6 at the La Salle Hotel."

Names that appeared in the article were the same as those on the "Sponsors List".

  • "'Bombers or jobs' to be theme at Chicago parley", DW, March 13, 1975. Names mentioned were also on the "Sponsors List".
  • "Center formed to fight for cut in arms budget", Richard Ashby, DW, Chicago, saying that:

" A national center to fight for reducing the military budget was launched here this weekend at at conference of peace, trade union, and community activists throughout the country. "The 183 delegated, from 21 states and from 90 organizations and trade unions, vowed to return to their areas to organize for a 50 percent cut in military spending and for a 'people's peace budget'."

Several new names of participants were mentioned in this article, except for Feinglass, included:

They were described by the writer as follows: "Trade unionists, including both officials and rank and filers, played a prominent role in the conference. Among them were..."

Others quoted were:

Among the speakers whose names had not appeared on the "Partial List of Sponsors" were:

And finally, the following identification:

  • Pauline Rosen - National Coordinator of the conference, (and id. CPUSA member as well as listed founding member of the CPUSA)

In large two-page story on the conference, entitled "Slash The Military Budget", by Richard Ashby appeared in the "Daily World" insert entitled "World Magazine", April 26, 1975, and featured additional names of speakers as well as photos from the conference of Abe Feinglass, Karen Talbot and Harold Rogers. The new named speakers included:

Previously mentioned individuals who were on the "Sponsors List" or mentioned in other articles, and who were speakers, included, in addition to those mentioned above:

[NB: The presence of so many open and identified members of the CPUSA leaves no doubt that his was one of their major "peace" fronts. The Party members and well-documented supporters formed the largest bloc of delegates gleamed from the "Sponsors List" and additional names mentioned in the articles listed above]

(Only one more major source from the "Congressional Record" is needed to complete this list of basic written sources about the CPUSA and its creation, dominating and staffing the "Conference", and it will be added as soon as possible)

National Conference on Military Spending Organizing Committee

Organizers/Staff:

The only publicized name associated with this Conference was that of Pauline Rosen CPUSA, who was mentioned in several articles in the CPUSA newspaper, "Daily World" and its supplement, "World Outlook" (as mentioned below). She was identified as the "National Coordinator" of the conference.

It is not too far-fetched to assume that other CPUSA members and supporters in Chicago helped to organize the conference.

National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending

Sponsors, Staff, and Participants:

A brochure announcing a National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending, to be held on April 5-6, 1975, at the LaSalle Hotel, Chicago, was printed by the National Conference on Military Spending Organizing Committee, of 156 Fifth Avenue, Room 716, NYC, NY, 10010. The printing Bug was that of the CPUSA's Prompt Press, 209.

Conference Workshops: 1. The Military Budget: Social and Economic Consequences 2. The Military Budget: Inflation, Jobs, Poverty 3. The Military Budget: Role of U.S. Imperialism at Home and Abroad 4. The Military Budget and Reconversion: Jobs for peace 5. The Military Budget and Detente

Partial List of Sponsors:

More will be written about this book under The Hanoi Lobby.

The Dissolution of the National Center to Slash Military Spending

The only obituary for the end of the CPUSA front known as the National Center to Slash Military Spending NCSMS appeared in the April 18, 1980 issue of "Information Digest", the informative, insider publication on the American Left and foreign terrorist groups. In a short article entitled "CPUSA Front Dissolves", ID revealed the following:

  • A letter from longtime CPUSA member/founder, Pauline Rosen, the NCSMS's National Coordinator and founder, dated April 7, 1980, announced that the organization would dissolve at the end of the month. Rosen wrote that:

"we are now living in times when the threat of nuclear war is closer than ever, when the drastic increase in the war budget by Carter is a danger signal to the welfare of our people, when the rising cold war hysteria because of the Iranian and Afghanistan developments can lead us into a McCarthy period of repression."

(The Afghanistan development was the Soviet Union's cold blooded coup/invasion of Afghanistan and installation of a Soviet stooge. This "development" led to the death of over one million Afghanis).

  • The NCSMS Resident Committee 'communicated' "to the five NCSMS chairpeople, the National Committee, and sponsors" "that the people connected with us could be very effective, in this period, by working with organizations which concentrate on the need to make drastic cuts in the military budget and include the foreign policy of the U.S., which is moving towards confrontation with the Soviet Union..."..
  • Rosen noted that she had become a member of the National Executive Board of the WPC's U.S. Peace Council USPC, a newly created CPUSA/Soviet front, and "recommended NCSMS members join it."

"ID" noted that the 63 NCSMS "sponsors were top-heavy with well known CPUSA activists such as: Anne Braden, Angela Davis, Sylvia Kushner, Charlene Mitchell, Anthony Monteiro, Jessica Smith, James Steele, Helen Winter, and WPC Presidential Committee members Abe Feinglass and Carlton Goodlett.

"NCSMS sponsors also include Rep.Ronald V. Dellums D-CA and Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, recent visitor to U.S. captives in Teheran". (This action by Gumbleton expanded his far-left, anti-American activities beyond the Hanoi Lobby, Anti-Defense Lobby and the PLO Lobby.

"ID noted that "Rosen's note concluded with the recommendation "that you get in touch with the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy CNFMP, 120 Maryland Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C., 20002".

The CNFMP was the successor to the lobbying arm of the Hanoi Lobby, the Coalition to Stop Funding the War CWFW and was becoming the nucleus of a wider Anti-Defense Lobby effort aimed at stopping the U.S. from confronting Soviet aggression and arms build-up. It was, like its predecessor, located at 120 (and 122) Maryland Avenue, N.E., D.C., the United Methodist Church building right across the street from the Senate Office Buildings, Congress and near the Supreme Court and House Office Buildings. This address functioned as one of the key centers of anti-American activities and subversion by the Hanoi Lobby and the Anti-Defense Lobby since 1974. Illegal lobbying was carried out from, and by members of the United Methodist Church and the radical groups it housed.[3].

"ID" also wrote that the CNFMP, on April 13, "distributed its new "Cold War Reading Packet" to provide the correct "perspective" on current issues and U.S. policies, to "demonstrate to the candidates*** that there is a broad***constituency for peace'" and "to reverse the Cold War tide." Key reprints were:

The year 1980 marked a key benchmark in the evolution of the Anti-Defense Lobby from an Old Left/New Left hodgepodge of groups, coalitions and "united fronts" into a more sophisticated communist lobbying organization. It spawned the "Mobilization for Survival", a successor to the various "Mobes" and PCPJ, the CPUSA front, the CSFW & CNFMP, the "Nuclear Freeze movement", and the massive march on the U.N. in 1983 for "Disarmament", all made-in-Moscow by their fronts, (World Peace Council]] World Peace Assembly. Many of the same people who ran the so-called "Anti-Vietnam" movement showed up in the same leadership positions in these new groups including Pauline Rosen, Sid Peck, Leslie Cagan, Jack O'Dell, Damu Smith and the key CPUSA and possible Soviet agent-of-influence Cora Weiss and her far-left lawyer husband Peter Weiss.

However, a new challenge from within the Communists movements in the U.S. also emerged in the form of the then Trotskyite Workers World Party WWP and its new fronts, the All-Peoples Congress APC and the Peoples Anti-war Movement PAM. They held several major anti-military protests in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco in the early 1980's that drew major crowds and attached the support of some of the old Hanoi Lobby including Joan Baez.

In the early 1990's, these WWP fronts would morph into the International Action Center IAC, which was claimed to have been created by former leftist Attorney General Ramsay Clark, and then the larger ANSWER Act Now to Stop War and End Racism led by well-known but media-ignored WWP leaders Holmes, Moorehead, Becker, Rivas, etc.

Another "united front" that emerged in the 1990's also came out of these listed 1908's united fronts, esp. the Mobilization for Survival, namely the United for Peace and Justice coalition, created by old leftists such as Leslie Cagan and members of the Revolutionary Communist Party RCP and supporters, C. Clark Kissinger {once SDS). More on these groups can be found at Keywiki pages under their names (under construction and expansion).

References

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  1. ↑ Communist Infiltration and Activities in the South, Hearings, House Committee on Un-American Activities,HCUA, July 29, 30 & 31, 1958
  2. ↑ [[Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications and Appendixes, House Committee on Un-American Activities, December 1, 1961, House Document No. 398, p. 237 -Appendix II: "Organizations Designated by the United States Attorney General Pursuant to Executive order 10450"]]
  3. ↑ House Ways & Means Committee hearings on IRS Tax Reform, printed report on Illegal Lobbying written by the Council for Inter-American Security CIS, 1977. The report was submitted in lieu of testimony as CIS learned of a townhall hearing too late to get put on the live witness testimony list and was told to submit the report as their official statement
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