Cora Weiss

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, 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 Soveit Union, the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and many other events.

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.

Women for a Meaningful Summit Conference

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

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.

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 and Women Strike for Peace, played a leadership role in the CPUSA-controlled anti-Vietnam coalitions New Mobilization Committee, People's Coalition for Peace and Justice 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.

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.

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,.

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.

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.

• Emma Lazarus Clubs
• Women Strike for Peace WSP
• Foot Hood Three Defense Committee
• Committee to Defend the Panther 21
• Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Spring Mobe
• National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam National Mobe
• New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam New Mobe
• Committee of Liaison with U.S. Servicemen Detained in North Vietnam COLIFAM
• Printing Union Local 209 - a cited CPUSA printing shop (See previous cites in "Guide to Subversive Organizations" and a section on it in the KW "CPUSA" section. The testimony of Max Friedman, April 1, 1971, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee revealed that COLIFAM envelopes used to send mail to Hanoi were printed by the CPUSA print shop which used the printing "bug" 209.
• FRIENDSHIPMENT - a creation of the Hanoi Lobby - Mobes/PCPJ to send medical aid to North Vietnam and communist held territories in South Vietnam. It was a separate but parallel operation to the communist-aid coalition Medical Aid for Indochina MAES
• Bach Mai Hospital Fund - pretty much a project of the CPUSA which often cooperated with FRIENDSHIPMENT.
• National Coalition Against War, Racism and Repression NCAWRR
• Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee
• Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice PCPJ
• Institute for Policy Studies IPS
• Riverside Church Disarmament Program
• June 12 Disarmament Coalition 1981-1982- originally known as the Campaign for the Special Session on Disarmament CSSD, and affiliated with the parallel marxist-dominated coalition (a PCPJ linear descendant), Mobilization For Survival MFS
• Chile Emergency Committee - ad. NYT, 9/23/71 sponsor
• Anniversary Tours - A 1972 Los Angeles Times article revealed that a COLIFAM trip was funded by Anniversary Tours, a cited CPUSA front, and a business arm of the CPUSA that organized propaganda tours to communist countries at reduced rates. Key parts are worth repeating here:

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.

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.. This trip will be discussed under the Hanoi Lobby and Hanoi Visitors sites at Keywiki.

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.

References

Template:Reflist