US Communists vow to meet new challenge

by Tim Wheeler & Marilyn Bechtell

This article was reprinted from the October 7, 1995 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

NEW YORK - Fired up by thousands of new recruits from the streets and the picketlines, leaders of the Communist Party USA met here last weekend and set the date for the Party's 26th convention in Cleveland next March 1-3.

It was a perfect autumn weekend and the CPUSA's National Committee and guests were in a sunny, upbeat mood. They greeted a report from CPUSA National Chair Gus Hall.

"We have finally done some great, genuinely mass recruiting," he said, "where people in large numbers from all walks of life, from all around the country are joining off the streets, off the campuses, off the picketlines and even applying by mail."

The challenge, he said, is to change the Party's style, methods, and organization to make it a permanent home for these new members. This includes more socializing, popular issue-oriented educationals, and direct action, he said. Hall suggested a nationwide recruiting drive in the pre- convention period, a proposal approved unanimously by the meeting.

"The Republican-Gingrich demolition crew is now actually destroying lives," said Hall. Every Party district should issue leaflets and organize picketlines at the offices and homes of lawmakers who support the GOP's Contract on America that would slash or eliminate welfare, Medicare and other entitlements.

A burst of applause greeted Hall's announcement that WCI Steel in Warren, Ohio has given up its attempt to produce steel with scabs. WCI locked out its 1,700 workers, members of United Steelworkers Local 1375 Aug. 31. A month earlier the local invited Hall to speak at a special meeting of the local which he helped to build during the 1937 Little Steel strike.

"The locked-out steelworkers in Ohio, the strikes in the Illinois 'class war zone,' the Detroit newspaper strike are symbolic of what lies ahead for the class struggle," Hall said. "As in Warren, in each case they are out not only to defeat the strike but to smash the unions, Reagan style."

Hall spoke of the "merger-mania" sweeping Corporate America. Chase Manhattan and Chemical bank merged to create a mega- bank and destroyed 12,000 jobs, he pointed out. "Half the nation's 59,000 bank branches and 450,000 of the 2.8 million jobs in the banking industry will disappear," he said.

"There is also a merging trend in government, the courts, and the Congress. There is now a fully-merged coalition of reactionary Republicans and some right-wing Democrats," he said.

The federal government plays less and less a regulatory role while the "mega-monopolies" carry an ever-shrinking tax load, he said. NAFTA and GATT were a green light for " transnationals to move across borders to get away from better wages and working conditions, and most of all unions."

The working class has responded with growing militancy. Merger of the autoworkers, steelworkers and machinists unions and the search for new leadership of the AFL-CIO, he said, are the most important factors in this labor upsurge.

"In my mind, it is no accident that WCI in Warren was selected as the first line of attack," he said. Of course, the right-wing atmosphere gave a green light But WCI's brazen lockout is also a response to the leadership changes in labor and the mergers" in the labor movement.

Hall praised the party's solidarity work with the locked-out and striking workers as a model. "We have to see it as possibly a long battle and think about the kinds of contributions we can make."

In his far-ranging report, Hall also commented on the O.J. Simpson trial, focusing on the tape-recorded racist ravings of Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman. "Of course," he said, "the racially and nationally oppressed know only too well what the law enforcement agencies have become. But the Fuhrman tapes have forced the majority of Americans to face the open, racist nature of so many of our big city police department."

Separate reports were delivered by Political Action Commission Chair Jarvis Tyner, Labor Commission Secretary Sam Webb, New York State Chair John Bachtell and Party Treasurer, Esther Moroze.

Tyner reported that labor movement is targeting for defeat 30 reactionary members of Congress elected by small margins. He coupled it with a call by Rep. Major Owens (D-N.Y.) a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, for creation of an independent "third force" in the 1996 elections. The goal, he said, is to terminate the right-wing extremist GOP majority control of the House and Senate.

The party's Jobs and Equality Campaign is also crucial to political independence, with the aim of building support for Rep. Matthew Martinez' (D-Calif.) $250 billion emergency public works jobs bill, for stronger civil rights legislation, cutting the military budget and taxing the rich.

Tyner urged every district to field at least one Communist Party candidate, running either on the party line or as independents, in the upcoming election.

"The corporate power brokers are doing everything to misdirect the mass desire for independence in a right-wing, pro-monopoly direction as they did in 1994," Tyner warned. Such efforts include Ross Perot's new "independent" party and the presidential aspirations of Gen. Colin Powell.

But, he emphasized, true political independence means opposing the Contract on America -- criteria which neither Perot, Powell nor any presently declared candidate meets.

Webb said a hallmark of the current labor upsurge is bitterly contested strike battles in which corporations resort to permanent replacementsQscabs. New tactics are needed including common actions by workers in entire industries to counter this unionbusting strategy, he said. "Why not a one day work stoppage against the use of scabs?" he demanded to strong applause. The recently published CPUSA Labor Program, "Labor at the Turning Point," he said, has been warmly received and is being distributed widely in labor circles.

Esther Moroze reported that in a drive last spring to increase the assets of five Party and People's Weekly World endowments, $1.5 million was taken in. Nevertheless, both the Party and paper are operating with substantial deficits that must be erased with well-organized fund drives. The World's drive for $400,000 -- with $88,000 still to raise -- must be completed by Nov. 1, she said. The CPUSA fund drive will begin on that date.

John Bachtell, chair of the New York Communist Party, described the surge in party membership in working class neighborhoods across the country. Each neighborhood is different yet there are "common threads" in the successful party building - singling out a neighborhood and going door- to-door every week with the PWW, leaflets, petitions etc. and inviting people to join the CPUSA. "We must permanently change the style of work of the clubs," he said. "They must become a constant center of activity. The clubs need to take initiatives."

In a dramatic moment, Anne Burlak Timpson -- the "Red Flame -- recounted that she had attended the Party's 1930 convention, credited with moving the Communist Party into the thick of the struggles of the poor, unemployed and working class as a whole. "That meeting laid the basis for our initiating the Unemployed Councils, the struggles for unemployment insurance and Social Security, and the drive to organize mass production workers.

"I feel the same spirit and determination at this meeting," Timpson declared. "And I truly believe the Party today is gearing up to play a role that fits today's conditions but is every bit as significant."