Rookie Perna

Template:TOCnestleft Rita "Rookie" Perna is the organizing secretary of the Pennsylvania Communist Party

Communist veterans

Tim Wheeler July 12 2019·

With Rookie Perna, Bea Lumpkin, Edie Fishman, Jarvis Tyner, Esther Moroze, Michelle Artt and Brian Steinberg at Communist Party USA national convention Chicago July 2019.

Radical life

The Mandela Human Rights Award is presented annually to an activist or activists for service to the people’s movement struggles over time. Previous recipients have included Native American activist and political prisoner Leonard Peltier, the Cuban Five, and Philadelphia health care activist Sylvia Metzler. In 2018, the award was presented to longtime Philadelphia activist and Communist leader Rita Perna in recognition of a lifetime of political activism and Party leadership. The presentation by sponsors Bernadette and Lawrence Geller took place at the annual People’s World picnic in Philadelphia’s Germantown section.

Perna explained to those in attendance how she had been given the nickname “Rookie” by her younger brother: he found it easier to pronounce than her Yiddish name and the name stuck with her.

Perna, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, grew up in a politically active family with Communist parents. Her mother, a public Communist even during the McCarthy period was active in supporting the defense of the Philadelphia Party leaders who had been arrested and charged under the infamous Smith Act.

Perna recounted early memories of being followed to school by FBI agents and again during after-school hours. She and her friends in their North Philadelphia community would go to nearby Fairmount Park after school. There they would report to the local police that they were being followed by “strange men.” The “strange men” would then have to identify themselves as agents of the FBI.

As an active member of the Socialist Youth Union, Rookie participated in the boycott of Woolworth stores, the fight to break the color barrier at Girard College and building a delegation of young people to go to the groundbreaking 1963 March on Washington.

Perna joined the Communist Party at the age of 17, continuing a of three-generation tradition in her family. She has for many years served as the organizational secretary of the Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware district and was elected to the Party’s National Committee in 1991. Her national responsibilities include processing new members who join the CPUSA on line.

Among the memorable experiences Perna shared at the award ceremony was her 1983 visit to the Soviet Union as part of a CPUSA delegation. There she had an opportunity to see the building of socialism at work. Especially moving, she said, was her visit to Ukraine, from where her Jewish grandparents had emigrated during Czarist times. By the time of Perna’s visit, it had survived World War II and seen the coming of socialism. Her grandparents had lived until the 1960s and so knew about the progress and the changes in their native land.

Communist Party USA

On June 1, 1975, Rookie Perna was elected both to the District Board, and as a member of the District Committee of the Pennsylvania Communist Party at the Party's District Convention.

Communist Party MLK tribute

On January 19, 2002, the Communist Party USA newspaper, Peoples Weekly World published a signed tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr..

We salute Dr. King’s courage and vision. He saw and struggled for an America and world that can be. We pledge in his memory to work to reorder our nation’s priorities “so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”

Signatories included, Rookie Perna. Almost all signatories were confirmed members of the Communist Party USA.

Communist Party Member

In September 2006 the Peoples Weekly World listed several members, or supporters of the Pennsylvania Communist Party:

Asad Ali, Billie Penn Johnson, Denise Winebrenner Edwards, Donna Puleio Spadaro Dr A S Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad, Gary Puleio (In Memoriam), George Edwards, Joe Kopnitsky, Ken Heard, Ben Sears, Dave Bell, Debbie Bell, Diane Mohney & John Vago, Evie Horwitz & Larry Horwitz , Frances Gabow, The Incognito Family, James Bradford, Jimmie Wayne Moore, June Krebs, Leonard Pepper, Rookie Perna, Rosita Johnson, Sharon Hurley.

Communist Party tribute

In July 2007, the Communist Party USA paper Peoples World published a tribute "We salute Joyce Wheeler" to retiring Baltimore public school teacher and Communist Party member Joyce Wheeler. Frances Gabow and Rookie Perna signed the tribute page. Most of the more than 100 signatories were identified Party members.

References

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