Ben Bath
Ben Bath is a member of the Communist Party USA. Lives in New York, New York. From Cambridge, Massachusetts.
CP activists build the peace movement
Grassroots activists from around the country met in New York City on November 11–12, 2023 for a Communist Party USA peace conference. Responding to Israel’s razing of Gaza, the conference focused on demanding a ceasefire. “I really feel that we’re united and determined in this effort,” CPUSA co-chair Rossana Cambron remarked.
Throughout the weekend, the gathering’s participants were uplifted by songs of freedom led by artists belonging to the People's Music Network. “Our people’s music was a basic part of the proceedings,” said Ben Bath, the conference’s cultural coordinator.
Henry Lowendorf of the party’s Peace and Solidarity Commission asked the assembly, “How can we build on the ideas and energy of activists in labor, civil rights, environment, women, youth, and LGBTQ movements to change the militaristic policies of the Biden administration? How can we build broad unity around peace to defeat the extreme right in 2024?”
Moderated by the Rev. Annie Allen on Saturday and Angela Maske on Sunday, the conference featured presentations from leaders of the Communist Party of Israel and the Palestinian People's Party.
“The only solution to the occupation is a political agreement,” Aida Touma-Sliman of the Communist Party of Israel said.
Dr. Aqel Taqaz, the International Secretary for the Palestinian People's Party, which has a seat on the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, spoke on Sunday morning.
In his introduction to the conference, Lowendorf expressed solidarity with the people of Palestine and underlined the political battles ahead. “One thing we have before us is the toolkit provided by the Political Action Commission. It contains four pieces of legislation that support a cease-fire and ending arms sales to Israel; cutting the military budget and shifting those funds to end poverty, racism, and environmental devastation; and abolishing nuclear weapons.” He also called for ending the Cold War 2.0 against China, shutting down the 800 U.S. foreign military bases around the world, and dissolving NATO and AFRICOM.
Lisa Armstrong of the women’s collective declared. “In 2022, the average taxpayer gave $1,087 just for federal military contracts — four times what the same average taxpayer gave to K–12 education.” She highlighted the need for investments into child care and long-term care and expanding programs like the Child Tax Credit, SNAP, and other programs.
“There are peace constituencies alive and ready to build today’s peace movement,” Rosalio Urias Munoz of the Political Action Commission said. “This effort will take nuts and bolts organizing — working person to person, block to block, precinct by precinct, and engaging in other effective activities such as phone banks, petitions, delegations to our elected representatives, direct action, and more.”
“I do have some bad news,” Kooper Caraway of the Labor Commission warned. “Our bosses are still in charge of our government.” He connected the desperate situations they have created for working people to the poverty draft. “The reason it is important for the labor movement to build the peace movement is because our children are being funneled by our bosses into that vicious military-industrial complex.”
Dom Shannon, giving a report on behalf of the African American Equality Commission, called the trillion-dollar military budget a “form of welfare for the 0.01%.” Together with “money spent on … ICE and border patrol, and the funds spent on racist policing,” Shannon said it supports “the obscenely unequal distribution of wealth in the U.S. and globally under capitalism.”
Deb Wilmer, speaking on behalf of the Immigration Subcommittee on Saturday, pointed out that “immigration to the U.S. and globally today is fueled by the policies of imperialism.” Highlighting the fact that “racism is a primary driver of U.S. immigration policy and border militarization,”
“The most important thing that we could do,” Eric Brooks said on Sunday, “is meet people where they’re at, in the struggles that they’re already engaging in, and show how those struggles relate to the peace movement. We have to take the money that we’re spending now to oppress people and demand that money be spent for housing, for food, for education, for healthcare, for roads, and for potable water!”
For the Young Communist League USA, the issue of free speech loomed large as groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace are being banned on college campuses. “We believe the repression that is targeting youth activists right now is a part of the fascist offensive that is trying to erode away our people’s democratic rights,” YCL leader Aaron Booe noted. “There’s a lot of interest right now in learning how to concretely apply the principles of the popular front to the struggles of youth.”[1]
Housing protest
Housing rights groups, including supporters from the Movement School, the Young Communist League USA and the Communist Party of New York, stood with the tenants of the New York City Housing Authority’s Fulton Houses in Chelsea as they recently recommenced protesting the de facto privatization of their homes and the nearby Chelsea-Elliott Houses.
Under cover of the pandemic, city officials have been going forward with the push to convert a third of the city’s public housing stock to privately-managed Section 8 housing, a proposal that met fierce resistance when it was first put forward for Fulton Houses, one of lower Manhattan’s largest remaining public housing developments, in 2018.
Jackie Lara, the main tenant organizer at Fulton Houses who has lived there for 18 years, has been fighting RAD since it was first proposed for Fulton in 2018. She claims that during this time, there has been a significant uptick in property damage, and that the president of the tenant association, Miguel Acevedo, who is in favor of RAD, has done nothing to address damages in what she claims is an effort to push tenants to accept it out of desperation.
“I came from a homeless shelter to make Fulton my permanent home,” she told protestors at the rally. “And now, de Blasio is giving our development to private developers. There has been a lot of sabotaging going on at Fulton, doors and windows being broken, but they don’t want to fix any of it. This behavior was never seen at Fulton since I’ve been here.
Ramon Pebenito, who works for State Sen. Julia Salazar, spoke to tenants at the rally: “It’s a pandemic right now, but they are trying to push this through. We can’t have this conversation later? They got to do it right now during a pandemic? As if a third of y’all aren’t unemployed, underemployed, or have lost shifts…They hold meetings, they have these calls, when a lot of people don’t have the technological wherewithal to connect on those calls, or they co-opt part of the resident association board, as if they speak for all of you. If they truly spoke for all of you, you wouldn’t be here today.”
Jasmin Sanchez, who works for U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and is a lead organizer with Movement School, also addressed the tenants: “The people who live [in NYCHA developments] are 88% people of color. Poor air quality, infestations, holes, water leaks…it’s by design. They want us out of here so that they can convert this to a new demographic of people…In order for us to get the repairs that we need, we need to stick together and organize, strategize, and mobilize our communities to continue to fight against privatization…We are not second-class citizens, but that is what they treat us as.”
She then spoke about the Green New Deal legislation introduced by AOC and Sen. Bernie Sanders that addresses public housing by adding $172 billion in investment for maintenance and retrofitting. “We sustain public housing by investing. On the federal level, they have money for everything that is morally corrupt: wars, pharmaceuticals, bailouts, everything, but what about the 600,000-plus NYCHA tenants here in New York City? They suddenly ain’t got nothing for us.”
Ramon Pebenito added: “Senator Salazar, for whom I work, issued a bill in 2019. It’s a multi-millionaires tax, that is to say, that it only affects you if you make more than 1 million, and with that tax, we can directly credit NYCHA with funds to go to the capital repairs.
Ben Bath with the New York Young Communist League and the CPUSA also spoke: “Everybody has the right to live, but in this city in 2020, do working people have a right to live in this city? Do people who grew up here, who spent their lives here, do they have a right to live?…We have to unite and fight against the real-estate interests that are destroying this city.”[2]
The Day After
New York Young Communist League November 4 2020.
"The Day After w Senator Gravel & Arun Chaudhary" panelists included Senator Mike Gravel, Arun Chaudhary (former Obama White House) , Piper Winkler, and Ian Miller, Ben Bath, Justine Medina and Prasanna Shah of the Young Communist League USA, . [3]
Participants included Ani Toncheva, Jason Korzelius and Charlotte Forrester.
"Building the party among left and progressive youth"
By: Ben Bath May 16, 2019:
- It is spring again for Socialism. But only with the history and models, the theory and practice of the Communist Party USA can this Spring reach full bloom in our country. Without the youth left and working class we won’t survive and don’t deserve to if we can’t attract them. But without us, the left won’t survive let alone go on to seize its world historical task to end banish capitalism from the earth and build a socialist order that is the only way by which humanity itself will survive the current ecological capitalist assault on all of our lives. Socialism or Barbarism is no mere slogan, but a statement of truth that everyone under thirty has some inherent sense of, let us seize the moment and understand the stakes. Conquer or die.[4]