This article was reprinted from the June 29, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.
Gus Hall is national chair of the Communist Party USA. This article is taken from Hall's opening remarks to the Party's National Committee meeting on June 15. For the full text write: CPUSA, 235 W. 23 St, New York, NY 10011.
Stand for Children was an entirely new and different kind of mass action. It was a culmination, a coming together of all the work in building broad coalitions and alliances.
The composition was as diverse as our country: well-integrated - Black, Brown, Red and white - from all walks of life and 3,700 participating organizations including unions, churches, Girl and Boy Scouts, YMCA's, civil rights and human rights, women's, seniors and youth organizations
It was not called as a political protest and political organizations were not invited to be sponsors or speakers. However, the moment the ultra-right attacked it, the event was transformed.
The event marked the public initiation of a new movement - an all people's unity against the whole ultra-right political climate led by the Gingrich Gang of 73 in Congress with their Contract on America, economic insecurity and much more.
For many, it was the first time they took a public stand in a mass action. The character of the rally made our newspaper, our politics, our program, demands and solutions, including advocating socialism, all the more important.
When we deal with Stand for Children we are dealing with a new set of people, who are dealing with a new set of right wing dominated politics.
The all-people's nature of the fightback is also reflected in the fact that the cities, counties and states are taking big cuts in already-strained budgets. This has moved local politicos and city councils into protest actions.
For example, the mayor and city council of Yonkers are organizing people to go to the state capitol in Albany to demand the restoration of cut funds, services and people-helping programs. This will happen increasingly all over the country. Because of the nature and severity of the cuts, affecting just about all cities, regions and sectors of people, the movements and fightback struggles will emerge on many levels, in diverse ways.
Given the new, national united front movement, there is still a desperate need to organize the unemployed, the homeless and the hungry - people who are angry and desperate and would respond to a call for militant struggle and fightback at the local level. There is a crying need for forms that will bring people together to fight for the the right to live and to work, for dignity and self-respect.
Communist Party clubs should take immediate steps to initiate the formation of such groups. People in trouble, in poverty and in a state of everyday crisis and desperation will respond to organized, united, protest actions that can win local struggles, and at the same time, help people assert their will to fight.
Who is better equipped to initiate, to help form and build such new, working class kinds of organizations than a Communist Party club?
In addition to such initiatives in our communities, we should help the trade union locals and central labor bodies establish committees that will go out and organize struggles of the unemployed, hungry and homeless - many of whom were once workers and members of unions - around immediate, often life-and-death, issues.
We should take the same kind of initiatives to organize united struggles of the elderly, who are among the hardest hit and most insecure and vulnerable.
We should take initiatives to organize groups of youth, who are not only poverty-ridden, jobless and pushed out of school and into the streets, but are also without hope for the future.
The same holds true for farmers who are already living on the edge, in a situation made more desperate by the drought. We have growing numbers of farmers and agricultural workers who could take initiatives where they live to bring farmers together to protest and demand government assistance, especially to save family farms.
In light of developments in the labor movement, we should approach some local unions and central labor bodies about initiating alliances between workers, farmers and agricultural workers.
Local Communist Party organizations should also take initiatives in every struggle, wherever we are, to organize forms against racism on everyday issues like police beatings and killings; church burnings; for decent jobs, education and affirmative action.
This kind of local organization is not in contradiction to the work of the broad, national organizations, such as the NAACP, National Council of Senior Citizens, NOW or the Children's Defense Fund. Local organizations would not substitute for, but would complement the national broad organizations, to add a militant, community-based ingredient to each area of struggle. In fact, good relationships between our party and these national organizations should develop as one result of the initiation of local formations.
The Communist Party's overall role is to inject advanced concepts and to convince people and their organizations to take the demands and protest one step further from where they are. To do this we, as a party, have to be immersed in the daily struggles of our class.
We should become totally involved in the electoral struggles. We should work in united front relations on many levels, including in formations with Democrats.
There are some trends that move in the direction of a sharpening of antagonistic contradictions and relationships. The deepening structural crisis confirms the conclusions of our 26th National Convention that the "U.S. economy is suffering from a terminal structural crisis, a long-term systemic crisis that cannot be cured, except by replacing capitalism with socialism."
The continuing structural crisis is reflected in monopoly's continuing trend of downsizing and privatization, while at the same time cutting and eliminating entitlements, increasing speedup, overtime and other measures to shift the burden entirely onto the working and poor people.
The crisis is reflected in the accelerating decay of our cities, in the continuing shutdown of plants and whole industries, in the transfer of capital to regions and other countries in search of low-wage, non-union sweatshops, with child labor and slave-like working conditions. It is reflected in the accelerated pollution of our environment which is incompatible with capitalism, privatizing public resources and corporate greed.
There will be no abatement of the structural or general crisis of capitalism. The massiveness and the inclusiveness of "Stand for Children" was an expression of the sharpening, more antagonistic relationships between the people and the corporate-ruling class, its ultra-right Republican domination of Congress and the U.S. political scene on every level.
There is an increase in the rate of exploitation. Employers are using old and new methods to squeeze more profits from workers.
There is an increasing antagonism between the corporations and the new trade union movement. The corporate killers know that they are in a struggle on a totally different level, with a radicalized, militant and angry class opponent.
Acts of racism, beatings and killings, cross and church burnings, especially in southern rural areas by Ku Klux Klan, militia and fascist goons, is sharpening racist contradictions across the whole country.
There is a sharpening contradiction between the anti-equality legal and legislative trends, the measures to eliminate affirmative action programs and the growing inequality, re-segregation and discrimination in our society.
The recent Supreme Court decisions to eliminate congressional redistricting to increase minority voting power is an example of that trend.
The burning of churches is almost exclusively the burning of African American churches. The criminal hatemongers are encouraged by the attacks on affirmative action and civil rights, by the overall racist atmosphere in a Congress dominated by the Right, in the racist Supreme Court decisions and regressive legislation.
The anti-immigrant assault by the ultra-right, carried out by racist police, border guards, the INS, vigilante gangs and employers is sharpening the class antagonisms between the ruling class and Mexican and Mexican American workers.
Anti-immigration rhetoric and racism against Mexican Americans is a major ruling class weapon to keep people divided by race, nationality, citizens and non-citizens. There is a sharpening of relations between the ruling, corporate class and the communities of all the racially and nationally oppressed.
There is a resurgence of anti-communism on the left that is causing antagonisms between the Communists and liberal-left forces.
Left anti-communism is falling into step with the resurgence of a new brand of cold war anti-communism - the knee-jerk response of U.S. capitalism to the return of Communists to elected positions of power in the ex-socialist countries and, at the same time, the rise of a new, militant class struggle-oriented U.S. trade union movement that is rejecting anti-communism by labor, from top to bottom.
Add the radicalization and anti-corporate sentiments of the great majority and monopoly capital is having its worst nightmares in many a year. Most of these developments, trends and sharpening relations are a direct response to the Contract on America and its backers.
The positive, opposite side of these same developments is also related to the overall sharpening of antagonistic contradictions and class struggle.
The trade union movement is developing and carrying out policies and programs based on more militant and fightback policies. The new policies and actions are more openly anti-monopoly, anti-corporate and class struggle oriented.
In a desperate effort to make points in the polls when the majority are anti-Contract, Dole quit the Senate and is working to distance himself from Gingrich and his "Gang." But it isn't working, because Dole is just as reactionary on the campaign trail as he was on Capitol Hill. From the latest drop in Dole's ratings, it appears the public does not see his resignation as the majority leader and from the Senate to run for President as a positive move. Trent Lott as Dole's replacement will only deepen the public's anger at the ultra-right.
Instead of moving left, as the polls would indicate, Dole keeps moving to the right and concentrates on attacking Clinton's credibility and character. It is not working because people are interested in issues and policies and so far Dole has no program.
There is a sharpening of relations and antagonisms between national, state, city and county governments because the cutbacks of the right-wing Republican-controlled Congress are having disastrous effects on state, county and city programs.
However, important as building broad united front formations is, we must also help to build other kinds of formations. For example, because the AFL-CIO is completely immersed in the electoral struggles there will be coalitions that will be led by labor.
There will be united formations that will be coalitions of left and center forces. There will be campaign committees to support independent and Communist candidates.
We Communists should be involved in as many of these movements as possible. But we should be involved on the basis of one important criteria: that the new formations we help build and actively support must be involved in the defeat of the ultra-right Republican candidates.
Working in the new, united all people's front on all levels and initiating local forms of struggle on immediate, every day issues of fightback is the very best way to be immersed in the class struggle, defeat the ultra right and win people to the Communist Party and the Young Communist League.
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