Peoples Korea Today Issue 26, Feb 2023

By K. A. Tyusha

UPDATE – May 4th, 2024: Students have been in negotiations with school administrators since at least Day 2 of the encampment, May 1st, 2024. The content of the discussions within those negotiations has not been shared with any media outlets from the administrators or the students at the encampment, likely for strategic reasons in the latter’s case.

On Day 5 (May 3rd) the University publication “The Daily Emerald” reported that the University placed concrete barriers adjacent to the quad with very obscure reasoning given to the encampment students about it being “for their safety.” The students are being swamped in almost an inch of rainfall and efforts have been underway using buckets and other methods to remove the water from the encampment.

The encampment itself now has well over 100 tents and has shifted orientation and moved further southward. Solar powered sidewalk lights have been installed around the walkways and security personell at the camp have now donned walkie-talkies and brightly colored vests, ensuring the safety of both students in the encampment, and folks outside of it.

There’s been minimal UOPD/EPD presence near the encampment and no indication that a sweep is imminent, but the community itself is still on standby. The University has maintained that it has no plans to use police against the encampment at this time but has stated “that can change.”

Community support is continually growing. Eugene-Springfield DSA (ES-DSA), Eugene Housing and Neighborhood Defense (Eugene HAND) and the Radical Organizing and Activism Resource Center (ROAR Center) have all posted statements on Instagram in support of the encampment. A faculty chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (UOFSJP) has formed rapidly and has so far obtained 37 faculty and staff signatures on their letter, which states:

“We want our administration to know that we stand by our students and refuse to allow them to be harassed or intimidated in exercising their rights to freedom of speech and expression to call for an end to their university’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We will not stand idly by if students participating in this peaceful demonstration receive discipline notices, arrest or any punishment related to exercising these rights and stand in solidarity with the demands they have made of the University.

The University of Oregon espouses the following values, among others;

● “We value the passions, aspirations, individuality, and success of the students,
faculty, and staff who work and learn here.”

● “We value academic freedom, creative expression, and intellectual discourse.”

● “We value our diversity and seek to foster equity and inclusion in a welcoming,
safe, and respectful community.”

If we are to embody these values, our students will stop receiving veiled threats and the administration will meet with students in good faith immediately to discuss their demands. We call upon university administration to engage in discussion and negotiation with the participating students on their demands rather than escalation through the use of discipline, force or repression.”

Tomorrow the camp will have reached an enormous milestone of lasting a week, and in the middle of a downpour of rain and chaotic politics all around. They’ve captured the attention of every media outlet in the area and are the talk of the town.

A transcription of the speech can be found here: https://dailyworkerusa.com/remarks-from-the-general-secretary-of-the-pcusa-at-their-3rd-congress/

By K. A. Tyusha

In Eugene, Oregon, University of Oregon (UO) students launched an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians amid ongoing atrocities and more revelations of war crimes by the Israeli government. This initiative follows the lead of Columbia University which has sparked similar actions in nearly 100 universities nationwide and around 20 abroad. UO’s encampment began on April 29, 2024, making it the second in Oregon after Portland State University.

For months, students from the University of Oregon’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace have been pushing the University’s Board of Trustees to divest from companies that are directly connected to the genocide in Palestine and to the Israeli apartheid. Their core demands simplified include the following:

– Immediate divestment from Jasper Ridge, a firm funding defense contractors like Boeing, Elbit, and Vanguard.
– Implementation of a campus-wide Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting companies complicit in genocide.
– Education for faculty on retirement plan options not invested in the military-industrial complex.
– Formal protections for expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.
– Ceasing academic exchanges with Israeli universities.
– Education exposing the reality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Despite doing peaceful rallies, marches, vigils, sit-ins, die-ins, teach-ins and meeting with President Karl Scholz, the University has disregarded student demands, prompting the encampment. Now in its third day, the encampment has seen growing support, with community members providing supplies and organizing solidarity events. The students intend to stay indefinitely until their demands are met.

As of writing this article, the encampment has been up for three days, and it seemingly doubles in size each day. For now, the students have requested that only students stay at the encampment, and for community members to support from outside the encampment, mostly to avoid the smears of inviting in “outside agitators”. The community has stepped up tremendously, gathering countless supplies for the encampment, organizing rallies in solidarity with the encampment, and standing by to respond if the University tries to call in police to sweep the students.

The University responded in a statement, saying,

“As we have seen over the last week, universities across the nation who have taken a hard stance – including calling in law enforcement as an early response – have seen an escalation in violence, including harm to bystanders and students alike. In keeping with our longstanding protocols, university representatives have been in communication with those participating, outlining relevant institutional policies, and advising them of an existing reservation for that space later this week. Representatives from the Division of Student Life and Safety and Risk Services are committed to remaining engaged with the students with the goal of centering student safety.”

The existing reservation in question is for the Associated Students of UO Street Faire. As of this point it is unclear whether or not this event will occur, but if it does, it will likely mean a full sweep of the camp, meaning the exact violence the University is pretending to be trying to avoid.

The third day of this encampment fell on International Workers Day, and students quickly organized a May Day rally at the encampment itself, inviting union workers and local organizations to celebrate this day together in solidarity with Palestine and with the students worldwide rising up against the genocide. A member of the John Reed Cell of the Party of Communists USA was able to attend and record some video and take some pictures of the event. Other organizations present included Eugene-Springfield Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Revolutionary Women’s Committee (RWC), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Graduate Teachers Fellows Federation (GTFF) and of course UO chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) and Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA).

The rally took place in front of the encampment, across the thoroughfare from Lilis Business Center. Speakers included SJP leaders, anti-zionist Jewish speakers, a member of the UO YDSA, a member of the RWC, a United Auto Workers member, and faculty from UO. Speeches spoke of the link between the Palestinian struggle and the labor movement in the US, including all the unions standing up for Palestine and the non-unionized workers facing discrimination around the country for standing with Palestine. They also highlighted the importance of the defense of Palestine in the struggle against imperialism and fascism, and how this is in the interest of the workers. They also reiterated solidarity with Palestinians, with the students who were brutally swept from Columbia University by the New York Police Department, with the students at UCLA that were attacked by Zionist terrorists with chemical and biological weapons, and with the students of Cal Poly Humboldt which were also brutalized and swept by the SFPD among local departments.

A May Pole was erected in front of the encampment and the students spun the ribbons around the pole as speakers explained the symbolism of the May Pole, and how all of these struggles are tied together in the fight against imperialism: Palestine, labor, civil rights, housing, healthcare, etc. Hundreds of students and passersby stood and watched the speeches and the May Pole spinning as a clear historical moment was unfolding in front of them. Eugene had a May Day event on April 28th, but this event was special. It was a May Day event on May 1st at the encampment with both the community and the students.

In the encampment itself, much creativity has emerged. Sign- and shirt-making activities have been held, Jewish and Muslim prayers have been led, educationals have been held, discussions have been had and of course lunch and dinner have been served. Activities end and the lights go out by midnight every day.

The encampment includes dozens of tents now, as well as Palestinian flags and chalked messages and art on the sidewalks which cross through the middle of the encampment. Part of the chalked messages are the names of many martyrs, including journalists, that have been killed by the IOF in Gaza.

The camp also calls back to the Vietnam war protests, with a sign designating the encampment as a “liberated zone”.

Today, the President of UO, Karl Scholz, made a very measly response to the encampment, centering “free speech” and using it to outright reject the students demands, saying,

“Academic boycotts are antithetical to the free exchange of ideas and creation of scholarship, which is the core purpose of the university… The ability to sanction sovereign nations, states, or governments does not lie with universities, but with our country’s government… Divestment, like academic boycotts, run counter to our obligations to our students, our state, and to some degree, our country. The responsibility of stewarding our investments lies with the UO Foundation, who we charge with meeting the needs of the university… I support this vital work and will not ask the UO Foundation to deviate from their responsibilities and approach.”

This statement is incorrect, dismissive and shameful and will certainly mean the encampment will continue. Karl Scholz still has the ability to end the encampment without harm to anyone by meeting the very reasonable demands set forth by the students, but the more probable method he will resort to to end this encampment will be through police violence and institutional repression. History will not forget his actions. History did not forget those that stood in the way of the student movement protesting the war in Vietnam, and as the students at UO have chanted “Just like during Vietnam, students say ‘stop the bombs’”.

The Party of Communists USA will continue to support this encampment and others around the country however we can. We will continue reporting on them for the Daily Worker USA as they develop and change, and we reiterate our solidarity with the Palestinian people and our steadfast opposition to the genocide unfolding in Palestine at the hands of the Zionist Israeli government.

¡No Pasarán!

UPDATE – May 2, 2024: After students communicated closely with the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO), the ASUO Senate passed a resolution that stands with the protesters’ First Amendment rights to protest and express themselves. The resolution states that there would be no conflict between the ASUO Street Faire and the encampment and called on President Scholz to meet with the students and have an honest discussion with the students about their demands. It also clearly condemned any attempts that might be made to use UO police or Eugene police to break up the encampment. This clears up concerns that the encampment could be swept to make way for the ASUO Street Faire and rebukes President Scholz’s shameful statements from yesterday.

2022 video documenting the crimes of the Ukrainian Nazis in the Odessa Trade Union Massacre of 2014.

On May 2nd, 2014, Ukrainian Nazis surrounded the Odessa House of Trade Unions and set it on fire, while people were barricaded inside on the ground floor and had to jump out of the second story windows to escape. When they fell, many hurt themselves or broke their legs, and members of the fascist Right Sektor finished them off with clubs, bats, knives, and other weapons. The Odessa Trade Union House was one of the central locations for political activity against the Maidan coup which installed the current fascist regime in Kiev, and this is why it was targeted by the Nazis. Trade unionists, Communists, and those opposed to the fascist regime were slain, and the perpetrators have since been promoted from rag-tag right-wing paramilitary units to the full-fledged special forces and police units of the fascist government of Ukraine.

Vadim Papura, 17 year old Communist killed in the Odessa House of Trade Unions Massacre

Today, we honor the memory of the victims of this politically-motivated violence directed by the United States government!

We honor the fallen – never forget!
Defend and stop the desecration of Soviet monuments and cemeteries!
Defend the legacy of Soviet Ukraine!

By Max Reed.

This past Sunday, members of the Nearing-Marshall-Meyers Cell of the Party of Communists USA went to Arlington National Cemetery to identify and honor the fourteen veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who are buried there. Those buried are the following: Charles A. Barr, Theodore Cogswell, Gerald Cook, Edithe M. Dyer, Irving Goff, Louis Gordon, Burt E. Jackson, Vincent Lossowski, Harry Schoenberg, Kenneth Shaker, Robert G. Thompson, Vincent Usera, Harry Haywood, Edward A. Carter. These men sailed across the Atlantic to risk their lives in defense of the Spanish Republic against fascism. They also served in other wars such as World War I and World War II. Notably, this is marked on their graves, while their service in the Spanish Civil War is not. This is outrageous, as thousands of Americans were killed or wounded in defense of the Spanish Republic.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the first fully racially-integrated American combat unit with Black and White officers, long before the Army was finally desegregated in the 1950s. The Party of Communists USA remembers our history as we come out of the tradition of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the old Communist Party. To honor and mark the service of these men, members of the Nearing-Marshall-Meyers Cell laid both American and Spanish Republican flags at their graves.

Beyond the men buried in Arlington, we must remember the men who did not live through the war and who lie underneath Spanish soil. At Jarama, Brunete, Belchite, Teruel, the Ebro, and the Retreats, many sons of liberty lie, having shed their blood for the freedom of the people of Spain. Although bourgeois historians and military authorities have forgotten, we remember.

The anti-fascist tradition of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade will not be forgotten!

partyofcommunistsusa.net

Demonstrate in the Streets; For the Unity of Action by All Working People in Defense of Their Living Standards, Their Civil Liberties, and in Defense of World Peace

TO ALL PEOPLE:

On May First, people of the entire world will celebrate the one hundred thirty-eighth anniversary of that day which was born out of the struggle of the American working class for the eight-hour day.

May Day is the day when the workers of the world demonstrate their international solidarity. On this day they close ranks and press forward to new struggles.

Let us reclaim our history on May 1. Let us go out into the streets and demonstrate that, in this time of crises, we refuse to stay silent. Let the rulers in Wall Street and Washington hear that we will fight for bread for our families, for peace and against the forces of reaction. Let the unity of labor defeat the menace of international fascism. Let unity of workers blaze the way to social justice. Let us make this the May Day one of the Popular Front, of a united working class against the war machine.

PEOPLES UNITY TO SMASH FASCISM

The riders of reaction are abroad in the land. Neocons, the war mongers, the deep state, and all the reactionary forces of Wall Street, have launched a bitter attack against our democratic rights, our civil liberties, against our working class organizations. The anti-union forces of Wall Street aim to make the United States one vast sweatshop, to make of the workers the serfs of the open-shoppers.

Let the people demonstrate in the streets on May Day against these reactionary forces. Let the whole country ring with the giant voice of labor. Let the bankers and industrialists and their puppets in the Supreme Court and Congress know that under no circumstances will the American working class permit them to establish fascism in this country.

TO FIGHT FOR OUR LIVING STANDARDS IS TO FIGHT THE BANKERS

Our demonstrations must be a living defiance against reaction. We must serve notice that we will not yield an inch to the pressure of reaction. We must show through the Popular Front that all Americans can and will prevent the victory of fascism.

President Biden tells us the economy is booming while American people starve in the street. Meanwhile, the bankers, employers, and war profiteers have become fat under continued government handouts. Their profits have multiplied by hundreds of percent. While they hoard their millions, the children of the workers are deprived of food and housing by the high cost of living.

The Biden administration boasts of recovery, but this recovery has only brought increased profits for the speculators and bankers. Our government officials use their position to engage in corrupt acts such as insider trading, as opposed to representing the interests of their constituents. For the workers it has brought back-breaking speed-ups, wages have been cut, and food and rent have soared sky-high. Two-thirds of Americans still cannot afford a $400 emergency.

In this, the richest country in the world, millions are living below the poverty line. Yet the reactionaries through the capitalist-controlled media are demanding that all relief be cut off, that nothing should be done to aid the distress of the working population. Unfortunately, Biden has given in to their demands. Instead, our government has passed H. R. 815, which provides military aid, both money and weapons, to Taiwan, Israel, and fascist Ukraine.

EVERY CITY A UNION TOWN

Let us honor our history and make of May Day a day of struggle for higher wages, for the six-hour day, for the five-day week without reduction in pay, end of “right-to-work”, for the end of company unions and yellow dog contracts. On that day the organized workers must extend their hands in fraternal greetings to the unorganized. We must pledge that we will help to bring millions of unorganized workers into the trade unions and build a powerful class-oriented trade union movement, based on industrial unionism. Make every city a union city.

We must demand that the unemployed receive adequate relief, that wherever a factory is closed, the government must open it up and put men back to work at union wages. The demands of the workers for the repeal by Congress of the Taft-Hartley Act must be echoed by all labor. The interests of the unemployed and the employed are the same. A blow against one is a defeat for the other. Let all workers, employed and unemployed, young and old, black and white, immigrant and native born, demand genuine social insurance, demand that the aged be well taken care of, and that the youth shall be given jobs and the right to education.

May Day is not just labor’s day. It is also the day of all those oppressed by reaction, of all deprived of jobs and homes. The bulk of small farmers and family-owned businesses have been driven to bankruptcy, unable to repair their own equipment. Labor must join hands on May Day with migrant workers and demand security and the right to organize.

SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES

Labor must extend its hand to the African American community and other minorities, doubly oppressed and exploited by the capitalist rulers. The life of the African American people has been turned into one big horrible Scottsboro case, which was an historic case from the 1930s in which nine African American boys, were unjustly accused of raping two white women in a moment of racist hysteria. The boys were defended by American Communists, among others. White labor cannot be free as long as black labor is enslaved. May Day must become a day of struggle against discrimination, and a day of struggle for the full political, social and economic equality of all oppressed communities.

We must resist the efforts of the bosses to profit from child labor. No child should have their life warped and stunted by back-breaking work in the factory or slaughterhouse. We must fight for the abolition of all child labor.

On May Day we must have in our ranks all working women and all the wives of workers and farmers. We must defend them against the attacks of the reactionaries who wish to reduce them to beasts of burden, to make them mere breeding animals for the warmongers. We must fight for their special interests and needs. Let us demand full social and economic equality for women.

NEEDS OF THE YOUTH

The youth of America, the flower of the country, has less and less prospects for jobs or a future. Let us demonstrate on May Day for the vital needs of American youth. Let us demand the immediate adoption of the program of the American Student Union which calls for a federally funded youth program.

AGAINST NATO’S WARS

May Day comes this year when the peace of the world is threatened more than at any time since the end of the last World War. NATO’s aggressive encirclement of Russia and China and the encouragement of fascism in the Ukraine have brought us to the brink of World War 3. The capitalist warhawks seek to Balkanize Russia then move the conflict towards China. U.S. hegemony wants to stifle out any movement towards a multi-polar world. The fascist warmongers are striving to form an alliance of all the capitalist powers for a “crusade” against the memory of the U.S.S.R. – citadel of socialism and the hope of the working class of the world. Soviet monuments and cemeteries are being destroyed, meanwhile the Waffen SS collaborator organizations openly parade in Europe and North America, like the Ukrainian organization led by Stepan Bandera.

END THE GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE

For decades the Palestinian people have been under the occupation of the Israeli Zionist apartheid regime. This genocide has severely escalated ever since the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7^th. Now, as has been said by the Defense Minister of Israel, the Gaza Strip has been held for six months in a state of complete siege – no electricity, no food, and no fuel are being allowed into the region. This behavior from Israel mirrors that of Nazi Germany in the ghettos which they formed in Eastern Europe. These ghettos were areas in which Jewish people were concentrated in small areas without access to sufficient resources for life. Just as the Jewish people rose up in one of these ghettos during World War II in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Palestinians have now chosen to fight back as well. We throw our full support behind the Palestinian people for a just resolution that includes their own sovereign state with 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. As Comrade Nelson Mandela said, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

THE FIGHT FOR PEACE

Let us on May Day show our unbreakable determination to fight for peace. Let us unmask the diplomacy of the Biden government, which preaches the policy of “spreading democracy”, but forces countries to pay tribute to Wall Street. In the name of defending so-called “democracies”, Biden is carrying out a jingoist war in the Ukraine, on China’s borders, in the Middle East, and on the Korean Peninsula. Nazis in the Ukrainian government are being given $100 million dollars every 24 hours.

Under the guise of “spreading democracy” the Biden administration sends shipments of materials for war to puppet regimes – Taiwan, Ukraine, South Korea, Japan, and Poland. Our own reactionaries and capitalist media – CNN, MSNBC, FOX, Washington Post, New York Times, etc.– encourage fascist militarism to attack countries that threaten U.S. economic and military hegemony. Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua, Belarus and Iran are just a few of Washington’s targets. Let us press onward and build a real working class blockade against all munitions shipments and the shipment of all war materials to the fascist war machines.

We cannot trust Biden’s stumbling words about “spreading democracy”. His policy is helping to pave the way so that the bankers can drag the United States into the next world war, just as his predecessors went to war to protect the profits of finance capital.

DEFENSE OF THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE

We must demonstrate our determination to join hands with all workers throughout the world in the fight for peace, in the fight against the instigators of a new world war. Let us unite with all working people, both inside our country and around the globe, to keep America out of war, to save humanity from the horrors of a new world slaughter. Let us on May First, the traditional day of socialism, pledge ourselves to defend the legacy of the first country of socialism – the Soviet Union. Let American working people show that they stand solidly behind the peace policy of the Soviet experience, which planned no aggressive action, which enslaved no people, which had no capitalists trying to coin money out of death and destruction.

On May First, the day on which the working class demonstrates for its own class interests, let us raise high the banner of struggle for independent working class political action. The three years of the Biden regime have shown the workers that they cannot depend on the two old capitalist parties to fight for their interests. The Democratic and Republican Parties may have differences as to how to divide the stolen monies taken from working people. They are the parties of Wall Street, owned and directed by the banks and monopolies.

AGAINST THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM!

We should not rely upon politicians like Biden or Trump, who pay lip service to working people as they carry out the dictates of finance capital. Do not believe those labor leaders who ask you to line up behind Biden and to abandon the class struggle. This is the road to disaster for America’s working people. This will keep people chained to the Democratic and Republican Parties, the parties of Wall Street. This will weaken the independent force of labor and its alliance with the people. This leaves us completely at the mercy of Biden, Trump and the Party Bosses.

If we are to make the rich pay the cost of the crisis, if we are to relieve working people of the unbearable burden of taxation and inflation, if we are to give work to the unemployed and hope to the youth, if we are to prevent the victory of fascism in the United States, if we want to defend and preserve peace, then we must build a united people’s front against war and fascism.

RELEASE POLITICAL PRISONERS!

As we march through the streets and raise our voices in protest against fascism, let us extend the hand of solidarity to the victims of class war in the United States and throughout the capitalist world. Let us demand the freedom of Julian Assange, the Uhuru Three, Leonard Peltier, and all those framed and imprisoned by the capitalists for their struggle against reaction and their efforts in behalf of the working class.

On May First, let the Ukrainian pro-fascist rulers hear our demands to release the Ukrainian anti-fascist Kononovich brothers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Steve Donzinger, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the tens of thousands of other anti-fascist victims, and the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by the Israeli government. Let us support the struggle of the Nicaraguan, Cuban and Venezuelan peoples for their national independence from Washington’s economic and military threats.

As we march on May Day let us remember that we live in the richest land in the world. There is wealth enough for everyone. Not a single man, woman or child would have to go hungry if the warehouses were opened, if the closed factories started to operate again, if human needs were put above the profit drive of a small infinitesimal minority.

FOR SOCIALISM, FOR A SOVIET AMERICA!

No capitalist country is so ripe for socialism as the United States, where the workers have built up the greatest, formerly productive plants in the world. Inspired by the great victories of socialism in the Soviet Union, where unemployment was abolished, where hundreds of nationalities lived in peace, where the greatest culture in the history of the world was built, let us resolve that we in the United States fight for the victory of socialism, for a Soviet America.

Workers, farmers, Socialists, Communists, trade unionists, unemployed, stand up on May Day. Demonstrate the power of the American working class. Make of labor’s May Day parades a mighty fist challenging the tyranny and greed of the bankers and open-shoppers. Let this May Day become the day from which the American working class will advance to new victories.

Stand up on May First!
All out into the streets! Build the mighty united front of working people on May First!
For the six-hour day, for the five-day week without reduction in pay! For higher wages, against the high cost of living! We cry out for a thirty hour work week at forty hour pay!
Make every city a union city! For a powerful class-oriented trade union movement based on industrial unionism!
For unemployment, old age and social insurance!
For full social, political and economic equality for all oppressed communities! Jobs and schools for American youth! Demand the program of the American Student Union!
For a People’s Front against war and fascism!
Keep America out of war! Against $100 million dollars every 24 hours to Ukraine! Use that money at home to build for improvement in the infrastructure!
End the genocide in Palestine! Implement the two-state solution of a de-Zionized and demilitarized Israel and full UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders!
Remember the peace policies of the former Soviet Union! Defend the socialist legacy of the Soviet Union – the first land run by peasants and workers!
Using the Soviet Union as our guiding light, we need to build real socialism in the United States!

PARTY OF COMMUNISTS, U.S.A.

Chris Bovet, National Chair,

Joe Morman, General Secretary

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The Last Days Of Ukranazistan CLI | Raghead The Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist (wordpress.com)

By K. A. Tyusha

This May Day comes at an incredible time for the Party of Communists USA (PCUSA). Earlier this month, we successfully held our 3rd Congress at Arrow Park in Monroe NY, celebrating 10 years since we formed from our pre-party formation, the National Council of Communists USA (NCCUSA).

What the PCUSA has accomplished in 10 years cannot be downplayed. The Party has attracted new members from almost all 50 states and has active cells in every region of the country. In the last few years, we even became a majority cadre party, meaning most our members have attained rank of cadre in our party rather than candidates and associates. We’ve been active in the labor movement, civil rights movement and anti-war movement since our founding and we’ve consistently shown our solidarity with the working-class of this country and all oppressed peoples. So what have we done? Why join the Party of Communists USA?

The Party of Communists USA strives to be the vanguard party of the proletariat, building off of the examples set by the Bolsheviks from the time of the October Revolution, as well as that of the old Communist Party USA before 2000. We are dedicated to continuing the legacy of the old Communist Party by embracing our Marxist-Leninist, pro-Soviet roots and rebuilding what the revisionists burned after the death of General Secretary of the CPUSA, Gus Hall.

In that vein, we’ve brought back famous publications we lost like The Worker and New Masses, digitized and archived old party publications to the American Archive of Marxism Leninism at leninists.org, established real brick-and-mortar party centers again in Seattle and Vermont, and are actively developing our connections with the international Communist movement. Many of our members came directly from the old CPUSA, like former General Secretary of the PCUSA, Angelo D’Angelo, who spent over 40 years in that party. He remained with the CPUSA until, as he says, “we didn’t leave them, they left us.” He and others then formed the NCCUSA , which became the PCUSA in 2014. Their experience is priceless and they have carefully guided our party on the ideological tightrope of Marxism-Leninism.

Not only do we claim the legacy of the old party and the American communist movement, but we have been internationally recognized by countless communist parties, including ruling parties, such as Cuba, Laos, China etc. In the short time we’ve been around, we have forged international ties around the world and have shown our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, India, Eastern Ukraine and more. We’ve sent international delegations abroad to Latin America, Europe, East Asia and Africa. We’ve received hundreds of international greetings to our Party Congresses and our work has been recognized and praised by the parties internationally. We have played a key role in the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, which his drawn a line in the sand of the international communist movement in many international issues and made clear our stance on the current geopolitical realities. No other so-called communist or socialist party in the United States has the level of international relations as we do, nor do any put in the international work that we do.

We are also a party dedicated to fighting for all working-class people, and thus we are supportive of and try our best to be involved in the women’s struggles, the black struggles, the indigenous struggles, the Latino struggles, the LGBT+ struggles and many other struggles for the civil rights/civil liberties of all people in the United States. It is stated in our party pledge, which every member is required to recite and stand by in their party work:

“I solemnly pledge to take my place in the forefront of the struggle for the rights of all nationally oppressed people; against anti-Soviet sentiments and behavior, anti-Communism, racism, misogyny, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia, trans-phobia, police brutality, discrimination against the disabled, and to struggle against the chauvinist lies of the capitalist class.”

We have commissions established for many of these different oppressed groups and we are building mass organizations to fight on these issues as well. We also firmly defend the bourgeois-democratic civil liberties we are guaranteed in the US Constitution and stand with all government whistleblowers, political prisoners and anti-imperialist journalists that have been brutalized and repressed by the US government.

We expressly stand with the Uhuru movement against the FBI raids and charges they’ve received and call on all other progressive organizations to do the same. We reject all repressive legislation in the US and reiterate the 1st Amendment rights of every American to freedom of speech, expression, religion, protest and petition.

We also are committed to building our connections within the labor movement, and pursuing a policy of industrial concentration to build our forces in the shops and build the proletariat character of our party. Beyond this, we stand side by side with the trade union movement in the United States and we have many union members in our party that have been excelling at this work.

Furthermore, in the PCUSA labor plan of action in our party program, we unite to oppose all anti-worker, anti-union trade deals, support for low wage workers and the fight for $15 and a union campaign, build movement to repeal Taft-Hartley section 14 (b), campaign against right to work laws, support effort to overturn the CWA vs. Beck decision, build support for the anti-imperialist, principled trade union positions of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), and actively support and build the WFTU in North America. This working-class orientation sets us apart from petty-bourgeois radicals and right-wing opportunist forces that rely on the intelligentsia, lumpenproletariat or even sections of the bourgeois for change. There is no other party in the US more dedicated to the working-class than the PCUSA, and this positions our party well to become a vanguard of the working-class for a socialist revolution.

What also makes us significant is our firm, principled, Marxist-Leninist ideology. We trace our ideological roots to Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. We defend and learn from the great Soviet experience to this day, as well as the legacy of socialist states that have also suffered counter-revolutions such as the German Democratic Republic, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. This is our history, and unlike the New Left and many ultra-left currents like Maoism, Trotskyism and Anarchism, we don’t toss it away for what flaws there are. We see the world correctly through the lens of dialectical and historical materialism, and our analyses of the world are objective and can be proven/disproven by science and the fundamental laws of nature. We don’t delude ourselves with political daydreaming and outlandish, idealist perspectives. This is a great strength of ours, as it allows us to work with the material conditions of the working class and actually build a steady movement towards the establishment of scientific socialism.

We constantly study this theory and history both in the public, online Peoples School for Marxist-Leninist Studies 51 weeks a year every Tuesday, and in the private Jones Foster School for Party Education, our Party school aimed at building cadre in the party and informing our\ party work and ethic. You can check out the work of the PSMLS at peoplesschool.us and can join a class of ours to dip your toes in party-sponsored collective education before you decide whether or not to join the PCUSA. It’s a great place to start and we absolutely love getting new comrades at the school.

Our party sees fascism as the most grave threat to mankind, and it is visibly on the rise again in Ukraine, Israel, Italy, etc. In our very own country we’ve seen the rise of the far-right movement of American fascists who are largely connected by their christian-nationalism, white supremacy and American exceptionalism and who have marched with torch-lights in Charlottesville, Virginia, clashed with people on the streets of Portland, Oregon and stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC in 2021. We recall the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935 and the United Front policy as laid out by comrade Dimitrov. There, Dimitrov explained,

“Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

This is the definition we follow and we uphold the United Front policy of Dimitrov, as well as the Popular Front policy of the old CP during the late 1930s and 1940s, where we united with all anti-fascist, pro-democratic forces in a united and well-coordinated effort against war and fascism, and we made whatever necessary compromises at the time to achieve this goal. The imperialists have long kept the embers of fascism burning, and now the flames of fascism are rising again and the PCUSA is dedicated to helping extinguish it again, hopefully for good. We are dedicated to building a popular front against war and fascism in the present day, and so far we’ve had great success.

Our youth league, the League of Young Communists is also powerful and growing and dedicated to the education of its members and the immersing of our young comrades in the theory and praxis of our revolutionary movement. We believe the task of a young communist is not to try to change the party or lead it right off the bat, but rather to learn and familiarize themselves with the communist movement and our party. We have begun leading LYC Summer Camps to build camaraderie and skills within the league and we have quarterly campaigns that task our members with real in-person actions, as opposed to other organizations that just let in youth and then direct them to do nothing.

So why join the Party of Communists USA? In short, because we are serious about the tasks that lie before us, we are growing and building real legitimacy both internationally and domestically, we are bringing back that which was destroyed by imperialists and revisionists and lastly because we need YOU. If you are a working-class American, you belong in the Party of Communists USA. We aren’t a book club or a discord server. We are a communist party that will put you to work and make you into a disciplined, successful Bolshevik, and we pray that you will carry on the torch of our movement and bring about the fall of imperialism and fascism and the rise of socialism. So what are you waiting for? Join us today at https://partyofcommunistsusa.net/contact-join/ and we will reach out to you for an interview to join us! As Marx said “you have nothing to lose but your chains!”

Happy May Day 2024!

“HISTORY WILL NEVER FORGET THE CRIMES INFLICTED ON THE PEOPLES OF THE GHETTOS OF POLAND AND THE UKRAINE BY THE NAZIS AND THE SERVILE ORGANIZATION OF UKRAINIAN NATIONALIST POLICE”

So declares the front cover of Michael Hanusiak’s 1976 book Lest We Forget. Hanusiak uses extensive historical evidence to show the close link between Ukrainian nationalism and Nazism during the Great Patriotic War (World War II), a connection which persists to the present day, as exemplified by the fascist regime in Kiev.

As Victory Day approaches, we remember the immense sacrifices which the progressive people of the world, led by the Soviet Union, made to defeat the menace of fascism. Works such as Lest We Forget preserve this memory, and they provide an important warning to not underestimate the crimes of which present-day fascism is capable.

Lest We Forget is now available to read on the American Archive of Marxism-Leninism: https://leninists.org/index.php/Lest_We_Forget

By K. A. Tyusha

By Max Reed.

PEOPLES UNITY TO SMASH FASCISM

TO FIGHT FOR OUR LIVING STANDARDS IS TO FIGHT THE BANKERS

EVERY CITY A UNION TOWN

SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES

NEEDS OF THE YOUTH

AGAINST NATO’S WARS

END THE GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE

THE FIGHT FOR PEACE

DEFENSE OF THE SOVIET EXPERIENCE

AGAINST THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM!

RELEASE POLITICAL PRISONERS!

FOR SOCIALISM, FOR A SOVIET AMERICA!

By K. A. Tyusha

“HISTORY WILL NEVER FORGET THE CRIMES INFLICTED ON THE PEOPLES OF THE GHETTOS OF POLAND AND THE UKRAINE BY THE NAZIS AND THE SERVILE ORGANIZATION OF UKRAINIAN NATIONALIST POLICE”

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