Communist Party USA
Cassie Lopez, a Communist Party organizer and resident of Oakland, CA, fights for prison abolition. She began a life of struggle in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and the campaign to Free Angela Davis in the 1960s and 1970s. She visited Davis in jail every day, demanding bail for the falsely accused activist.Lopez recently told a group of prison abolitionists, “I always thought I had to fight injustice. I joined my first picket line at ten years old, and today, I’m still joining picket lines and organizing. Capitalism is not working for us, and it never was working for us.” Communists, like Cassie, fight racist oppression and capitalist exploitation for the dignity of all people. We fought to defeat Donald Trump and his fascistic politics. We support the fullest democratic expansion of voting rights. But the struggle for Black freedom and working-class power can’t stop at the ballot box. We share the demand for a “Third Reconstruction,” a revolutionary program based on what W. E. B. Du Bois called “advanced democracy” to address white supremacy and lay the basis for defeating it once and for all. In this pamphlet, we explain our Party’s views as an anti-racist, anti-fascist, working-class organization that seeks to replace the capitalist-imperialist system of domination with a new society, one in which the masses democratically control their communities, workplaces, and the political system. Together we can make a society in which the people and planet, not profits, shape the world. This is the mission of the Communist Party USA. We struggle for the full power and unity of the multi-national, multi-gendered working-class that fights against the special exploitation and oppression of Black, Brown and Asian peoples; for the right to full equality and against patriarchy and transphobia], We fight for democratic rights: the full equality of nationally, racially oppressed communities; all genders and gender identities; all sexualities; all religious preferences. Party militants believe that the struggle for these democratic rights is integral to the class struggle and central to achievement of the end goal. Democratic struggles help the working-class build power for longer-term fights. As a Party, we recognize the influence of patriarchal white supremacy and settler-colonialism along with the exploitation of labor as among the bases of the development of U.S. capitalism.Therefore, the Party remains committed to educating our membership, and the American people as a whole, on the contradictions of monopoly capitalism, white supremacy, and their impact on working-class solidarity and our planet. White supremacy and class collaboration Following the huge growth of basic industry in the 20th century, cities across the country became important zones for economic activity. Compared to the Jim Crow South, these cities with their better-paying jobs were a beacon for Black workers. Because of the demand for labor during the wars, the industrial capitalists increasingly employed African Americans. Because the white-supremacist pillar of U.S. capitalism remained, Black and Brown workers were marginalized and super-exploited as workers of all nationalities were pitted against each other. But Black, Brown, and Asian labor were singled out for special treatment. The capitalists reaped huge profits by exploiting a divided industrial working class by race and “skill.” Many white workers believed they benefited from the super-exploitation and oppression of Black and Brown communities. Racist ideas lingered in the minds of the more backward sections of workers. Black workers in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Memphis, St. Louis, Gary, Cleveland, and Birmingham refused to accept this situation and fought racial inequality in the economic, institutional, and political life of these cities. They fought mob violence and recurring day-to-day assaults. Their…
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An invitation to African Americans