Category: Party Voices
6/08/71 US COMMUNIST PARTY RUNS GUS HALL FOR PRESIDENT
| January 28, 2018 | 8:18 pm | About the CPUSA, Gus Hall, Party Voices | 1 Comment

John Bachtell divides the working class by splitting the CPUSA: Whatever happened to “Unity, the only way!”?
| March 16, 2017 | 9:04 pm | About the CPUSA, Party Voices, political struggle | Comments closed

John Case’s view of the CPUSA under John Bachtell’s leadership via the Socialist Economics listserv:

With the best of intentions and sentiments, CP leader Bachtell delivers a typically impotent CP rebuke to fascism. The fascist threat will be rebuked when its driving cause, 40 years of Austerity, is directly addressed and reversed. Not before. Bachtell does not even mention that. Doing that would mean raising, not burying, effacing, minimizing or damning with faint praise, class politics in the midst of reveling in the abundance of “resistance” movements. Hat tips from “Communists” to these movements are no doubt elevating to the tipper. But who in the movements cares? the CP represents no class, none, Airy speculations about all-peoples fronts and such from those with no base, and no prospects of one, are just that: hot air.

I suspect the faction online advocating that the whole Trump affair, and now the fate of democracy, is mainly about race and not class is loud in party ranks. I guess THEY won’t be contending, like Sanders, “the new center” — Joe Manchin— in the coalfields of West Virginia. Or engaging the gas fields either, with those evil pipeline workers and their building trades unions  begging Trump — not the “multi-class allies” — for jobs at a living wage.

Bachtell offers this, for those who might be tempted to criticize, like Sanders, the new “center”: Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia: “These approaches [that] advocate war against the political center at a moment when center-left unity is absolutely necessary…”
 
Unity on what? Does the “unity” include — first — reversing austerity, which, by the way, does NOT require overthrowing capitalism, but does require a determined class struggle against the rights and prerogatives of billionaires? If not, it won’t amount to dogshit in repairing working class disunity. And if that is not repaired, all the “multi-class” coalitions in the world won’t remove the fascists, and the fetid petri dish of austerity in which they thrive and are reborn. If you do not use a class approach — who are YOUR people, YOUR way of life — if ordinary people are not drawn into motion in the millions, you wont ever know what the basis of popular unity really is. For example — you might find that fixing austerity HAS TO COME BEFORE bathroom rights in North Carolina, if you were listening to millions, not the “left”.
 
Of course this discourse is all a waste of time with the CP and some similar orgs — orgs with no base have no real way of politically verifying their positions, and thus can remain firmly planted in mid-air for lifetimes. It was effectively liquidated in the 50’s by a combination of repression and sectarianism. It revived a half Zombie existence in the sixties at the pleasure of the  CPSU and a quid pro quo with the Kennedy Administration. It’s leaders got out of jail. It succeeded in getting Angela Davis out of jail — its singular post-war actual accomplishment, beyond a repository of militant memories. Soviet cash helped pay for the paper and presidential campaigns of Gus Hall. Which makes the CP going after Trump for foreign interference a bit, well, compromised to say the least.
But I offer it as an example of what not to do as the resistance goes forward.
Stay away from sectarian outfits with “profound world-scale views” but no legs, and giant suitcases of dead weights they will ask you to carry for them on the way to “liberation”.
jcase
Joes Sims response to John Case’s view of John Bachtell via the Socialist Economics listserv:

I was surprised and dismayed by John Case’s recent rebuke of John Bachtell’s article and more broadly the Communist Party.  Allow me a brief personal reply.
First it is absolutely untrue that the Communist Party downplays austerity now or in the past. I, for example, essayed an extended critique of this very subject, its influence on GOP and Democratic neoliberal politics and on the Clinton’s in particular. Combating the fascist danger as Case correctly emphasizes was its point of departure. So too with various articles in peoplesworld.org by many writers including Bachtell.  His most recent, taken to task by John Case, is no different, albeit its consideration of how to conduct this fight in the current dispensation, an issue that’s ignored at our collective peril.

What’s the basis of this fight? Clearly it will not be giving up on the fight for 15, Obamacare, acceptance of national stop-and-frisk, approval of right to work, etc.  In a phrase, we cannot stop saying no to neoliberal austerity.  These demands have had much room for initiative and setting the agenda – even for the most advanced elements of the political center.  This fact is suggestive of the danger of getting stuck in the middle of constricted phrases and formulas. My own view is that we’ve entered an unprecedented period where the defeat of fascism may well require radical radical reforms: or as John Case puts it, a defeat of austerity, a moment when for a time, Â the anti-right and anti-monopoly stages of struggle could combine.

It’s all the more curious then why John Case critiques  challenging the basis for Trump vote. Doing so does not necessarily undermine the anti-austerity motives behind sections of the vote.  An understanding of this vote is not written only in black and white, but also in many shades of grey.  A denial of one leads necessarily to a misunderstanding of the other. Not seeing the greys may obscure all.  Hence my complete disdain for the “identity politics” critique as if people of color, women, lgbtq people do not have the same economic claims and anxiety as working-class whites. In fact we have more. John Case knows that and in fact has written eloquently on it himself, which makes me wonder as to why the tenor, tone and content of his attack, a fusillade that goes beyond the present moment but dates a half a century back into the dark corners of the Cold War.

Speaking now as the son of a steelworker at Youngstown Sheet and Tube and coming of age in the direct shadow of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn I have to directly challenge Case’s allegations about the Communist Party, its working class influence and its source.  Coming from a party family in a  small industrial town in the 60s I witnessed the daily work of my mom and dad from a unique vantage point. I saw first hand their daily work on school reform, model cities, welfare rights, police violence, union rights, even questions of war and peace. I heard the phone ring and watched their grassroots defense of our class, work which won them respect and even election to community organization and union positions. And all of this was after having been twice hauled before HUAC. Dad was a grievance man for Local 2163; mom an activist and trustee in AFSCME, both members of the NAACP, CBTU, SANE FREEZE and many other organizations. When dad died the then USWA sent Oliver Montgomery from the Pittsburgh International to speak at his funeral. Montgomery reflected on dad’s work on the consent decree and importantly on the issue of black white unity urging him at a difficult time not to give up on his white union brothers.  Tributes were also brought from other community and religious leaders, including Ron Daniels. The same can be said for my mom, who twice ran for city and countywide office and was an elected leader in her union. Even today when dining out her lunch and dinner are bought by community figures who on occasion happen upon us – an offering of admiration and respect.

Here’s what I came here to say: this respect was not bought with Moscow gold. Not in Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago or any other town were communists worked and struggled. And these tales are not unique but are the stories of Frank and Bea Lumpkin, George and Denise Edwards, Wally Kauffman, George Meyers, Lorenzo and Anita Torres and hundreds if not thousands of communist trade unionists who labored in the factories and mines of our country.

So no John I can never agree with your charge that the U.S. working class doesn’t give a damn about the Communist Party.

No, respect cannot be bought. This I know. But I’ve learned something else. Lies come cheap, especially big ones.  And that’s what troubled me more than anything else when reading your critique.  We live in an age of the Big Lie, in a time when facts give way to unbelievably dangerous flights of fantasy. We cannot in any way accommodate them.  The facts I offer instead are small ones, grains of truth really, anecdotal sure, but taken together they weave an undeniable pattern of struggle, one that challenges your narrative John, then and now. These same truths obtain today as the CP experiences an uptick in membership brought about in response to the Trump election. Just last weekend we phoned some 5000 of them several hundred of whom joined since November 8th.

Winter is here and we must huddle together to avoid the cold. And for that reason I will end by reminding of you of my father’s lesson upon dying learned through the tears of Oliver Montgomery’s eulogy: no matter how difficult the time or how low the blow I will not give up on you my erstwhile comrade but remaining class brother.  Let’s not give up on each other.

Joe Sims

CPUSA member renounces CPUSA leadership
| December 29, 2016 | 7:50 pm | About the CPUSA, Party Voices | Comments closed

In response to the article we posted “Elena Mora resigns from the CPUSA,” we received this comment:

“Good riddance to liberals. There will always be differences in any party and that is healthy ,but when one ceases to be a Marxist then they belong in a different political party. The CPUSA has grown alot in the last year. Our club now numbers 113 members,some are union members,some work in election campaigns,some in the environmental field,some in anti racist,anti sexist,and some in anti imperialist work. We sponsor 2 meetups and 2 websites. We sponsor a Socialist reading group every 2 weeks and a progressive movie night once a month. We built this club by carrying on a struggle against both left sectarianism and right wing revisionism. Anyone is welcome to come to our club meetings or other activities and see for themselves.”

We don’t understand what it means. Bourgeois liberals are hard to read. Splitting is usually the underlying motive.

Pablo Picasso- Why I became a Communist
| April 10, 2016 | 9:49 pm | Party Voices, political struggle | Comments closed

Κυριακή, 10 Απριλίου 2016

Pablo Picasso- Why I became a Communist

http://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/04/pablo-picasso-why-i-became-communist.html

Why I became a Communist.
Pablo Picasso, October 1944.
 
My JOINING the Communist Party is a logical step in my life, my work and gives them their meaning. Through design and color, 1 have tried to penetrate deeper into a knowledge of the world and of men so that this knowledge might free us. In my own way I have always said what I considered most true, most just and best and, therefore, most beautiful. But during the oppression and the insurrection I felt that that was not enough, that I had to fight not only with painting but with my whole being. Previously, out of a sort of “innocence,” I had not understood this. I have become a Communist because our party strives more than any other to know and to build the world, to make men clearer thinkers, more free and more happy. 
 
I have become a Communist because the Communists are the bravest in France, in the Soviet Union, as they are in my own country, Spain. I have never felt more free, more complete than since I jomed. While I wait for the time when Spain can take me back again, the French Communist Party is a fatherland for me. In it I find again all my friends the great scientists Paul Langevin and Frederick Joliot-Curie, the great writers Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, and so many of the beautiful faces of the insurgents of Paris. I am again among my brothers.
The CPUSA throws out the baby with the bathwater and then throws out the tub

Response to recent articles by CPUSA leadership

By James Thompson

The USA is in a highly unusual period. There is a global economic crisis which reaches from Asia to the Middle East to Africa to Europe to South America and North America. No capitalist country is immune to this looming disaster. Oil prices are down, inventories are up, sales are down, stockmarkets are down, interest rates are in purgatory, profits are down, unemployment is up and, understandably, the working class is angry.

At the same time, there is no organized communist or socialist movement on the globe. Historically, communist parties around the globe have fought for the interests of the working class. However, at this juncture, no such party or movement is effective or even exists. To some, it might seem that after years of repression, wars and rumors of wars, the working class has capitulated since the bourgeoisie has the workers on their knees.

The CPUSA has distinguished itself by becoming the vanguard party of the bourgeoisie. The so-called leadership of the CPUSA has recently posted a number of articles which are blatantly anti-Communist and anti-socialist. Let’s take a look.

Susan Webb

The first article appeared on January 4, 2016 to welcome in the New Year. It was posted on the People’s World website since the CPUSA no longer has a printed newspaper. It has been reproduced on this blog in an effort to promote public discussion. It was written by Susan Webb who is the ex-wife of former CPUSA chairman, Sam Webb. Sam Webb and his new partner, Elena Mora, have been slowly, meticulously and surely dismantling and liquidating the CPUSA. Ms. Mora recently wrote a letter of resignation from the CPUSA. Susan Webb has been standing by her man (even though he is no longer her man) and at times seems to be attempting to outdo Mr. Webb and Ms. Mora in their efforts to destroy the party. Susan Webb’s article is entitled “Everyone’s talking about socialism, but what is it?”

Ms. Webb’s article sings the praises of Bernie Sanders while condemning the great socialist experiment which was called the Soviet Union. Ms. Webb attempts to outdo the apologists for capitalism by condemning anything which might be considered socialist. She even condemns what she calls “cheesy socialist realism paintings.” In doing so, she condemns the likes of Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, Charles White and John Biggers. These artists painted some of the greatest murals in the world. A recent article in the Houston Chronicle puts a value on one of John Biggers’ murals at over $1 million.

Ms. Webb quotes Bernie Sanders as he praises Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Pope Francis. In a speech that, according to Ms. Webb, Sen. Sanders delivered at Georgetown University, he stated, “Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the 1%.” He also said, according to Ms. Webb, “you cannot have freedom without economic security” and detailed this as “the right to a decent job at decent pay, the right to adequate food, clothing, and time off from work, the right for every business, large and small, to function in an atmosphere free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. The right of all Americans to have a decent home and decent healthcare.”

Those of sound mind will quickly recognize here a mixture of fantasy and reality. In the USA, under capitalism, the government serves only one function: To protect the interests of the bourgeoisie. In the history of the USA, there has never been a period in which working people have had any economic security. Unemployment in the USA varies, but has always been high. Access to food, clothing, paid leave, freedom from unfair competition and the right to a decent home and decent healthcare has always been nonexistent.

The problem here is not to achieve a kinder, gentler capitalism. The problem is to chart a reasonable, feasible path of struggle to the goal of socialism. Reforming capitalism can never result in the goals that Ms. Webb and her idol, Bernie Sanders set. Exploitation, repression, wars, racism, sexism, unemployment and other forms of hatred and abuse are inherent in any capitalist society.

Ms. Webb attempts to reduce socialism to co-ops, privately owned companies, individually owned businesses and sets tactics to achieve these goals to include worker decision-making, expanding town halls, implementing proportional representation, taking money out of political campaigns and making voting easy.

Such simplification is merely obfuscation of the main strategic goal of any Communist Party which is to bring about socialism.

Ms. Webb, in her article, returns to a maniacal rant against the Soviet Union. Interestingly, all of her criticisms of socialism and the Soviet Union are based on US propaganda. Her criticisms could have been written by Joseph McCarthy or J Edgar Hoover. She even goes so far as to say that the Soviet Union was not “socialist.” This may be an historical first.

She throws out red flags, Che and Lenin with the bathwater. She does not condemn Democratic Party president Harry Truman for the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and betraying the US ally, the Soviet Union, after their great contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany. After FDR’s death, Truman changed the course of US foreign policy which resulted in a very expensive Cold War and nuclear arms race which drained the resources of the working class and did irreparable damage to the planet. She did not condemn Democratic Party governor George Wallace for his virulent racism. She did not condemn the nasty, degenerate, vicious Dixiecrats.

You get the picture. Ms. Webb’s article is filled with filthy, destructive anti-communism which has always been a knife in the heart of the working class.

Let’s look at how Ms. Webb’s article measures up to Lenin’s 21 conditions (previously posted on this blog).

Lenin maintained that the political work of the party should have a “really communist character” and should be devoted to the cause of the proletariat. He stated “in the columns of the press, at public meetings, in the trades unions, and the cooperatives-wherever the members of the Communist International can gain admittance-it is necessary to brand not only the bourgeoisie but also its helpers, the reformists of every shade, systematically and pitilessly.” Ms. Webb obviously violates this condition. She seems to want to do away with the CPUSA and instead support a progressive candidate of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders apparently wants to reform capitalism to make it more comfortable for some sectors of the population in the USA. This is not a bad thing, but it is hardly the only thing that needs to be done. No one knows whether Sen. Sanders has any chance of attaining state power, and if he does, whether he will use that power in the interest of the working class. He is certainly not a communist or socialist.

Lenin goes on “Every organization that wishes to affiliate to the Communist International must regularly and methodically remove reformists and centrists from every responsible post in the labor movement (party organizations, editorial boards, trades unions, parliamentary factions, cooperatives, local government) and replace them with tested communists, without worrying unduly about the fact that, particularly at first, ordinary workers from the masses will be replacing “experienced opportunists.”

Ms. Webb advocates elevating a reformist, centrist opportunist, Bernie Sanders, to the highest office of the land.

Lenin discusses the class struggle but Ms. Webb seems to think that the class struggle is irrelevant to working people.

Lenin discusses the role of the Communist Party in working to prevent new imperialist wars. Apparently, Ms. Webb must believe that imperialism is also irrelevant.

Lenin advocates the elimination of petty bourgeois elements within the party. Ms. Webb embraces not only petty bourgeois, but fully bourgeois elements.

Lenin clearly states “all those parties that wish to belong to the Communist International must change their names. Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International must bear the name Communist Party of this or that country.” He goes on “The Communist international has declared war on the whole bourgeois world and on all yellow social Democratic parties. The difference between the Communist Parties and the old official ‘social Democratic’ or ‘socialist’ parties that have betrayed the banner of the working class must be clear to every simple toiler.” Again, Ms. Webb extols the virtues of the social Democrats while damning socialists and communists.

Lenin wrote “those party members who fundamentally reject the conditions and theses laid down by the Communist International are to be expelled from the party. Ms. Webb and her partners in crime, Mr. Webb, Ms. Mora and Mr. Bachtell have worked diligently to expel any members of the party who have expressed opposition to collaboration with the social Democrats.

Sam Webb

On January 29, 2016, Sam Webb, former chairman of the CPUSA, and his hand-picked puppet, John Bachtell, the current chairman of the CPUSA, launched two articles simultaneously. These articles have been reproduced on this blog in their entirety in an effort to promote public discussion. Webb’s article is entitled “Bernie or Bust.” As background information, it is important to know that Mr. Webb has advocated publicly abandoning the use of the words “œcommunist” or “Leninist.”

The thrust of his article is to maintain that the only viable strategy of people on the left is to fight the ultra right. His concept of the ultra right equates to members of the Republican Party. He maintains that if Sen. Bernie Sanders does not prevail in his effort to be the Democratic Party nominee for president, people on the left, particularly communists, should fall in lockstep with Hillary Clinton or anyone else that the DNC chooses to anoint. Presumably, if the DNC could resurrect George Wallace and nominate him for president, by Webb’s reckoning, communists should throw all their support behind him.

Webb argues that Hillary Clinton is a far superior candidate than any of the Republican contenders. He allows that Clinton’s foreign policy would most likely be “more aggressive and military-inclined then Obam’s.”

Mr. Webb’s convoluted, contradictory thinking is exemplified in this paragraph: “In sharp contrast to her Republican adversaries, Hillary has a democratic sensibility and the commitment, even if hemmed in by her centrist politics and class leanings. She may not want to break up banks too big to fail, or rein in US military presence and activity worldwide, or embrace single-payer health care (arguably for good reasons), but she will fight for the full range of democratic rights-collective bargaining rights, wage rights, job rights, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, and, not least, health rights-as well as defend the integrity of democratic structures, governance, and traditions.”

Que contrar, Mr. Webb. It is well known that the Clintons have fought the unions, failed to support the employee free choice act, and as you have cited, opposed single-payer health care. However, even if a hypothetical President Clinton II took office, if she led the USA in further and more intense military provocation of Russia, and China, all humans on the planet could be transformed into cockroach food. As Pete Seeger sang “we can all be cremated equally.” After mass cremation, all of the above reforms become moot issues.

Mr. Webb does not seem to recall that former Secretary of State Clinton committed international war crimes when she presided over the destruction of a sovereign state, Libya, and the barbarous assassination of its leader, Moammar Qaddafi. He doesn’t seem to recall that Hillary Clinton’s husband, former Pres. Bill Clinton (who would return to the White House if his wife is elected president) presided over the destruction of the sovereign state of Yugoslavia and the persecution of its leaders. He does not recognize that this set the stage for George W. Bush to preside over the destruction of the sovereign nation of Iraq and the barbarous assassination of its leader, Saddam Hussein.

He only recognizes the extreme right elements within the Republican Party. He turns blind eyes and ears to the extreme right elements within the Democratic Party.

Again, Mr. Webb, like Ms. Webb, violates Lenin’s conditions by denigrating the Communist Party and touting Social Democrats and reformists while working tirelessly to liquidate the CPUSA. One of the tactics Mr. Webb has employed was to elevate his favorite henchman, John Bachtell, to the position of chairman of the CPUSA.

John Bachtell

It is no coincidence that Mr. Bachtell posted his article “Taking a sober look at the 2016 election” on the CPUSA website on the same day that Mr. Webb posted his article on his own personal blog. Both articles make reference to “Bernie or Bust.”

Mr. Bachtell apes the Webb line of “defeat the extreme right” which translates into support for the Democratic Party candidates, no matter how reactionary they may be. Much of the article is extremely poorly written with grammatical errors that would make anyone blush. His sentences don’t have any logical cohesion. They are presented in a staccato fashion which is highly confusing and raises party obfuscation to a new level.

Bachtell writes “We have to continue to emphasize the issues, promoting the best of both Sanders and Clinton, especially the most advanced positions. For example, there is growing discussion among the candidates about a financial transaction tax on Wall Street.” Bachtell does not seem to think that the class struggle is an issue worth discussing. Imperialism, socialism, and/or Leninism are not on the table for discussion either. However, the class struggle, and imperialism/fascism are the evils which plague the working class. Marxism Leninism and socialism are the tools which historically have been most effective in fighting the evils mentioned above.

Bachtell fecklessly quotes the New York Times and other sources of the bourgeois media and continues to confuse these voices of the bourgeoisie with the voices of the working people.

Bachtell talks about building a grand coalition to defeat the ultra right. Unfortunately, his predecessor, Sam Webb, has been very successful in dismantling and almost liquidating the party. It would be interesting to know what the party has done over the last 10 years to build any coalitions. The only coalitions that the party seems capable of building is a convergence of various sources of hot air. They also have been successful in infusing reality with a heavy dose of fantasy about their own importance.

Again, Bachtell follows in Webb’s footsteps and violates Lenin’s conditions in all regards.

On this eve of the Iowa primary and caucuses, is there any hope that the working class will inch towards the achievement of state power in the coming election cycle in the USA? Lenin said bourgeois elections do not solve anything. The great CPUSA chairperson, Gus Hall, urged communists that choose to engage in electoral struggle to “Aim to win.” When he said that, the CPUSA fielded candidates for various electoral offices around the country with little success. It is likely that he would be horrified at the state of the CPUSA today. Communists and socialists have been reduced to the position of deluding themselves into thinking that if a Democrat wins office, it is a victory for the working class. On the contrary, some might argue that support of bourgeois candidates is “Aiming to lose.”

The choices we must make are disgusting at best. It is like being forced to make a decision whether to drink poison and die or drink castor oil and get sick. The reality is that it is better to get sick and recover rather than to die and be gone forever.

Mr. Bachtell and Mr. Webb seem to think that there is no danger of fascism in the USA. Some might argue that it is already here. Much of Pres. Obama’s foreign policy might be characterized as fascist. His failure to support working people on many levels is not antithetical to fascism. The same can be said of both Sen. Sanders’ and former Secretary of State Clinton’s platforms. Sen. Sanders is clearly more progressive on more issues than former Secretary of State Clinton.

Will working people decide to drink castor oil or drain the poison? We will know more tomorrow. For sure, the class struggle will be very intense in the coming years.

Focus on Ukraine – fascist militias, civil war & economic chaos

Repost: Reply to an attempt to critically analyze the Houston Communist Party club
| January 20, 2016 | 8:47 pm | About the CPUSA, Party Voices, political struggle | Comments closed
| July 14, 2012 | 10:13 pm | Action
http://houstoncommunistparty.com/reply-to-an-attempt-to-critically-analyze-the-houston-communist-party-club/

By James Thompson

Dave Adkinson writes in his critical analysis of the Houston CP club:

“If those you criticise are as malicious as you say the i wonder why i cant find anything on the web where ‘they’ sling mud at you and your former club.”

We applaud Mr. Adkinson’s efforts to provide some critical analysis of our club, but his arguments fall a bit short. Here is a posting from our Texas district leadership about our website which was posted on 11/28/11. The link is: http://tx.cpusa.org/houstonweb.htm .

We recently received the following statement from CPUSA leadership:

Statement on Houston Phony Web Site

The web page calling itself the Houston Communist Party (http://houstoncommunistparty.com/ ) and the associated Facebook page and Twitter feed are not affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The person or persons behind the web site know full well that the site does not reflect the views and positions of our party. By undemocratically and falsely identifying the site as affiliated with the CPUSA they are deliberately sowing confusion and misinformation.

The Texas Communist Party web site at (http://tx.cpusa.org/ ) is a web site of the CPUSA that is endorsed and supported by the party membership in Texas and the National Committee of the CPUSA.

National Board CPUSA

It should be explained that the reason Houston put up its own website was that the Texas District leadership repeatedly refused to send us the names of people from Houston who contacted the national website. I spoke directly to Sam Webb, Jarvis Tyner and many others and made the simple request that the names of people who contacted the national website or state website from Houston be provided to us so that we could attempt to recruit them into our club. This was at a time when I was writing many articles for the PWW and PW. At this time, I was also invited to and was attending party conferences at various locations around the country to include the conference on African American equality in St. Louis, Missouri, and regional conferences in El Paso, Texas and Oakland, California. I spoke to Sam Webb at the meeting in Oakland and to Jarvis Tyner at the march on Wall Street in NYC. I also made up the slogans for the signs used in the march on Wall Street as requested by Libero della Piana. I was also a delegate to the 2005 convention in Chicago and wrote the front page article for the PWW about the CPUSA support of the strike against the Congress Hotel in Chicago. We elected a delegate from Houston to the 2008 CPUSA convention. This individual is an accomplished journalist and could have put various party leaders on the Pacifica network. In fact, I suggested this to leadership and it was ignored.

The reason for putting up the website was simple. We wanted people in Houston to be able to contact us.

One of our current members attempted to contact us through the national website and state website within the last year and a half. He was ignored by the national office. When he contacted the state directly, he was told that our club in Houston did not exist. He found us by our website.

When we put up our website, we were told by district leadership in Dallas that we should take it down and that the party should file a lawsuit against us for putting up the website.

I wonder how many people in the party really think that these actions by party leadership represent a real desire to build the party and fully support one of its most active clubs. Instead of expressing appreciation for the hard work of comrades in Houston, leadership has chosen to split and divide our original club and fecklessly attempt to depose its elected leader.

Nevertheless, we continue to survive and thrive. We will continue to fight for the working class no matter what CPUSA leadership does to us. We will not surrender. We will not back down. We will continue to build our club since we believe the Communists will take up their historical role as the vanguard party of the working class. We believe that once again the CPUSA will fight for peace, civil rights and will return to an anti-imperialist stance. We believe the CPUSA will fight once again to enact legislation for working people such as single payer health care or a national health care system and the employee free choice act. We believe the CPUSA can and will fight anti-communist laws and other forms of voter suppression. We believe the CPUSA can and will field candidates for public office on its own ticket. We believe the CPUSA can and will be a fully democratic organization and operate from the bottom up rather than the top down.