This article was reprinted from the February 25, 1997 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. The following is Part III of excerpts from Hall's address to the Jan. 25 meeting of the CPUSA's National Committee.
In the African American community the crisis of everyday living has reached new depths. Corporate downsizing, which is wreaking havoc in the lives of millions of working families, has been a problem in the African American community for a generation, since the structural crisis first hit in the 1970s.
Half of all African American children live in poverty. Unemployment in most inner cities is now three to four times the national average. African Americans have the highest infant mortality rate in the country. Most African Americans live in segregated neighborhoods and have to send their children to segregated schools, 40 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education.
The main problems are persistent long-term unemployment, discrimination in hiring and promotions, low wages and a steady decline in health care and other government services.
The recent exposes of the raw racism practiced in the highest quarters of corporate America are a stark reminder that the main source and main force that benefits from racist oppression in America is the racist capitalist ruling class. With the implementation of the welfare bill, on top of the on-going crisis conditions in the African American community, the quality of life will drastically deteriorate further.
These overall conditions do not fundamentally change, even when the overall economy improves. These conditions are a national scandal and cry out for the most urgent attention.
We have to say that as a party we are not nearly enough addressing the critical problems confronting the African American people. The African American Equality Commission recently met and made some good proposals for action that will help change the character of our work. The commission proposes that we develop a grass-roots action program on the Martinez Bill. The first phase is to work for the maximum sponsorship of the bill by visiting local members of Congress.
While we have signed up hundreds of African Americans into the Party, most have not been activated or consolidated, as yet. Club activities around the fight for public works jobs is a main key to activating them.
February is African American History Month. Here in New York, on Feb. 23, the New York district is planning an evening of African American culture to celebrate the 129th birthday of Comrade W.E.B. Du Bois.
The Party must strive for a more active, visible presence in the African American community. We have a vital contribution to make.
The anti-Mexican, anti-Latino agenda of the ultra-right is centered in its anti-immigrant legislation. The immigration and welfare bills are both killers. They doom immigrants to a life of exploitation, repression, fear and deprivation.
Of the $55 billion in welfare cuts, $20 billion will be cuts in desperately needed funds for "legal" immigrants. The denial of food stamps and other life-saving welfare benefits will cause massive hunger and homelessness in the Latino community, which now faces a national poverty rate of almost 31 percent and Depression-level unemployment.
In the coming period we must up the ante in the struggle for equal rights for immigrant workers, documented or not. We must up the ante against sweatshop and child labor, of which Latinos make up the largest component. We must up the ante in the struggle for Mexican American, Puerto Rican and Latino equality and against the attacks on welfare, affirmative action and bilingual education.
The new Latino political clout should be welcomed and built upon. It signals a historic change which will have ramifications not only for Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and all Latinos but will strengthen the working class and people's struggles overall.
Latinos now have better leverage against the ultra-right agenda. Even California's Governor Wilson, well aware of his upcoming reelection campaign, acted out of character by pulling back from his demand that prenatal care be denied immigrant women.
Mexican American and Puerto Rican voters, who are the majority components of the Latino vote, and who are over 90 percent working class, vote overwhelmingly in support of labor, African American, women's, people's and Latino issues. Latinos voted overwhelmingly against the ultra- right, against the anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 and for increasing the minimum wage.
Loretta Sanchez' win over Robert Dornan in California is more than a Mexican American victory or Latino victory. It is an all people's, anti-racist victory. It marks a historic turning point away from decades of ultra-right domination in a national Republican Party stronghold.
This achievement will open the door for more labor and people's victories on every front in Orange County. The fact that ultra-right and Dornan forces are still seriously trying to overturn the election results shows the universal importance of this victory.
The Oct. 12 Latino March on Washington drew tens of thousands from all over the country. The turnout of Latinos, in unity with representatives of the AFL-CIO and many elected officials, was a positive beginning for more national initiatives and protests.
The new national Latino clout will enhance national efforts of every kind. It will strengthen Black, Brown, white unity, all people's unity and the efforts of the labor movement to organize the unorganized.
The new leverage, along with increased unity with the labor movement, African Americans, women, seniors, youth, is necessary to fight the anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant, anti- Latino ultra-right agenda.
The first step in advancing the struggle for equality is to repeal the Welfare Reform Act and anti-immigrant legislation. Aggressive, demonstrative, united political pressure from the grass roots will be necessary to force positive change.
The strong showing of the African American and Latino voters united with Labor has helped place the right wing on the defensive and given new momentum to the struggle for equality. Black, Brown and white unity was advanced overall in the process of the election struggle last year.
The passage of Proposition 209 is a serious set back, although it has been challenged in the courts. The defeat of Harvey Gantt in North Carolina was also a setback, despite the coalition of labor and Black and white forces working for him.
However, this is a most difficult electoral struggle. Outside of Illinois, no African American has been elected to the U.S. Senate since the 60s.
The successful reelection of Cynthia McKinney and the two other redistricted African American Congressmembers shows what is possible today even in the deep South, with the unity of Labor and the African American people. This alliance is deepening in the South and can bring about new victories for civil rights and labor organizing in that critical region of the country.
The Republican campaigns were designed to appeal to racist sentiments and to divide. Everything was done to convince white voters that their interests lie in massive cuts in taxes and social services, along with ending affirmative action and anti-immigrant measures.
The fact that the Republicans suffered a setback is very important. Over all, the last election showed a heightened rejection of racism by white working people.
The AFL-CIO's readiness to organize low-wage workers, who are disproportionately racially and nationally oppressed, immigrant and women workers, will strengthen unity in every sense. The same can be said with regard to labor's efforts to diversify its own leadership, in terms of race and gender. Also, labor's new emphasis on labor-community coalitions creates a better climate to fight for unity. At the same time, the realization by labor's allies that go-it- alone approaches are self-destructive is another factor that adds to the unity process.
In a general sense, tens of millions of American people are coming to the conclusion that division along racial, ethnic, gender and other lines is not in their interests nor in the interests of the country. Clinton's inaugural speech reflected this shift in public opinion.
All this shows that perhaps more than ever we can say we have an anti-racist majority in the United States today. We are in a period where labor is on the move and building strategic alliances with civil rights, women, youth, seniors and environmentalists. In this atmosphere the struggle for equality can be greatly advanced.
The people's movements must take up the fight against the welfare bill. It is a cornerstone of the ultra-right program. It is now law and has bipartisan support. This bill is nothing short of a massive cut in welfare, leading to its ultimate elimination.
This brutal bill mandates the shredding of the safety net leaving millions at the total mercy of capitalism. If something is not done to repeal it, the consequences for our nation will be catastrophic for millions of working class families.
This bill will negatively affect the lives of most working people. For children and the racially and nationally oppressed the impact will be nothing less than a national disaster.
We have to point the accusing finger at those who passed this bill for the death of the New Jersey mother who killed her three children and then herself because she was at the end of her welfare rope. The cut in federal money, putting the states in control and placing a mandatory time limit on benefits will leave millions of families without any income, no food stamps, no way of surviving.
The ranks of the hungry, homeless and destitute will swell. The number of neglected and abused children and adults will increase. Without benefits people will become more desperate. The chaos on the streets will get worse and the prisons will be filled with more poor and oppressed victims of capitalism.
In the African American and Latino communities, these conditions will be a death sentence for new millions who will be without adequate food, shelter and heat.
This winter, which has been extremely harsh, especially in the Midwest, hundreds have already died. Hundreds more will die. And this is before the full impact of the welfare bill.
Here in New York, like most of the country, there is a heat and homeless crisis. The heat complaint bureau registered 9,000 heat complaints over one weekend alone. Last month two small children died in a fire in Newark, N.J. because their house was being heated by the kitchen stove.
The city is picking up thousands of homeless on the streets of New York in this frigid weather. They are forcing the homeless to go to the shelters where they are robbed, abused and, in some cases, murdered. This is an emergency and something must be done.
Workfare and the slave labor wages that will be paid to those forced to work for their food stamps and measly checks is a threat to the standard of living and job security of every working person. Unions must organize the workfare workers to demand they be paid union wages and benefits.
The AFL-CIO is committed to the fight against the welfare bill. We have to show, however, that it is not possible to win this fight without an all-out struggle against racism.
The Communist Party USA has a special political, ideological, organizational and tactical role to play, especially in the class struggle to advance working class unity in action against the common enemy - corporate America and the ultra-right.
(You can get a complete copy of Gus Hall's address by writing to CPUSA, 235 W. 23 Street, NYC 10011. The speech will be published in full in the January issue of Political Affairs, the theoretical journal of the CPUSA.)
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