February is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry Winston, former national chairman of the Communist Party USA. On Sunday, February 19, 2pm, the Communist Party will hold a celebration and tribute on Winston’s legacy in New York City. The event, “The Legacy of Henry Winston: Fight against Racism and the Far Right in 2012” will be livestreamed. Speakers will include professor and political activist Angela Davis, CPUSA Exec. Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism founder Charlene Mitchell. More about this meeting can be found at http://www.cpusa.org/celebrating-the-life-of-henry-winston/

African American history is important. Even more important, and crucial for the future of our country, is the struggle against racism today.

At http://www.peoplesworld.org/i-remember-winnie/

One can find some remarks of Jarvis Tyner at a previous celebration of the life of Henry Winston. Tyner’s remarks are followed by this excerpt from a lecture Henry Winston gave to a seminar of Communist Party organizers in 1971:

Fight racism for unity and progress

By Henry Winston

The giant industrial monopolies, the big banks and insurance companies, the financiers and landowners, all spawn racism and use it as one of their chief class weapons to maintain and defend their regime of exploitation and oppression, of enmity among peoples, of imperialist wars of aggression.

It follows that all democratic and antimonopoly forces, with the working class and Black liberation movement in the van, can effectively defend the interests of the vast majority of people only when they actively further the struggle against racism. This is an essential precondition for the development of a fighting alliance which will unite all democratic and antimonopoly forces in the country.

Marx wrote long ago that “labor in a white skin can never be free so long as labor in the black skin is branded.” This profound observation points up the fact that racism is the consciously employed weapon of the white imperialist oppressors, who use it to create division in the ranks of the working class. And Marx correctly suggests that white workers must take the lead in the struggle against racism. This is the path which can lead to unity of Black and white workers in struggle, which can achieve Black equality and a real improvement in the conditions of all workers.

The conclusion which Communists must draw with respect to this most important question is that it is mere chatter to talk about trade union consciousness developing into class consciousness and advancing to socialist consciousness if there does not exist a conscious, unending struggle against racism.

No worker can be said to be class conscious who does not recognize the
community of interests of all workers as a class. And for white workers this means, first of all, recognition of the community of their interests with those of Black workers and therefore of the need to fight for the rights of Black workers.

If you would like to attend the livestreaming of this broadcast in Northwest Houston, contact PHill1917@comcast.net . Of course, you can access the livestream from your own computer on the party website www.cpusa.org .