First Published: The 80’s, Vol. II, No 1, January-February 1981.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
Editor’s Note: This speech was delivered on the first anniversary of the November 3, 1979 murder of the CWP 5.
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When millions witnessed the incredible bravery of Jim Waller, Cesar Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson and Sandy Smith charging into withering submachine gun and shotgun fire, the most conscious sensed that things were getting serious. That it would mark the entrance to the 80’s and quantum changes on the U.S. political scene, an epoch in which days equaled years, was understood by perhaps a handful. Few, however, in those dark days following November 3rd, could have foretold the biggest change in the American political scene, one of the most significant in the history of this country–the rise of the Communist Workers Party on the horizon, the sole effective opposition to the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
It is a well-known truth that history’s significant turning points can only be fully interpreted and appreciated in hindsight. As Lenin said, “History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and ’subtle’ than even the best parties and the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes imagine.” Yet precisely because the proletariat, the last and greatest class in history, with the monumental task of ending class exploitation and classes themselves, is rising yet a young class historically, we must grasp the significance of what we have accomplished (and what still needs to be accomplished) to forge ahead with full energy and confidence. We cannot, like revolutions of past classes, as Marx said, evoke past world history to drug themselves concerning their own content. “...There the phrase went beyond the content; here the content goes beyond the phrase.” (Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p.18)
Thus it is with the events of November 3, 1979 and the momentous year since.
You cannot fully understand why the bourgeoisie was forced into this desperate act of terror unless you grasp how fundamentally weak they are entering the decade of the 80’s. Only weeks before November 3rd, the Party had completed its Founding Congress. The founding of the Communist Workers Party, U.S.A. was in itself an historic event for the workers and oppressed of America. Yet beyond this, the significance of the Congress was the line on the end of capitalist stabilization and the pre-revolutionary period we are in, formulated and synthesized by General Secretary Jerry Tung. He showed how excellent the situation was internationally, nationally and within the Party. And most of all the historic opportunity and great dangers in the 80’s in preparing for workers’ rule. It was the line of the Central Committee of the Communist Workers Party led by the General Secretary, Jerry Tung, that Jim Waller, Cesar Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson and Sandy Smith grasped deeply and carried with them that day into battle, inspiring their bravery and self-sacrifice in the face of the government, Klan and Nazi assassins.
Because of their unprecedented weakness, as the leading edge of their attack against the American people and especially their leaders, the ruling class must try to destroy the CWP. We are the bourgeoisie’s most dangerous adversary in African liberation support work–as the Brzezinski Memo revealed–as well as in the trade union movement. Most important, we are the greatest threat to the capitalists’ very rule in this most critical period in history.
To understand this we must return to the line put out by Jerry Tung, General Secretary of the CWP and head of the Central Committee, at the CWP’s Founding Congress weeks before November 3rd. There he pointed out that U.S. capitalism was heading into a period of rapid destabilization. The working class, which for the previous three decades had been put half to sleep by the revisionism of the “Communist” Party, U.S.A. and the false prosperity of the capitalists’ temporary stabilization, would be jarred awake by the permanent economic crisis. Because of this, the working class would open up (and in fact was opening up) to communist politics and leadership in a way unseen since World War II.
General Secretary Jerry Tung also pointed out how this economic crisis would make the Great Depression look like a picnic. He pointed out how much deeper and more extensive the crisis is, with pillars of the economy like auto, steel and construction going under, reflecting the fundamentally deeper stagnation of the U.S. economy. The Keynesian tricks of deficit financing are played out. Moreover, because of the economy’s vastly greater vulnerability to collapse, the bourgeoisie was not willing to invest in these basic industries and instead have gone on a spree of speculation, speculating on everything from real estate to gold and antiques, driving the crisis deeper.
General Secretary Jerry Tung also pointed out that for the workers and poor in the country, the social consequences of the economic crisis were taking a far greater toll on their lives than the Great Depression. Workers in the dying basic industries, in auto plants like Dodge Main then in the process of shutting down, would face losing the last steady job they would ever have under capitalism. Families would break up at an unprecedented rate under the onslaught of nose-diving impoverishment. Youth would be forced into the ranks of the permanently unemployed, a post-Depression phenomenon in the U.S. And because of the mass disorientation caused by the crisis mental illness and crimes like Son of Sam would skyrocket. Although workers were absorbing the crisis, with no massive resistance evident, they were open to communist ideas and leadership as never before. The main thing was the lack of stable, authoritative and recognized leaders. The labor aristocrats were decisively losing their grip over the workers and the same thing could be seen among the traditional leaders in the Afro-American masses. General Secretary Jerry Tung laid out that the CWP, in this period of capitalist destabilization, had to win the majority and to build up the Party beyond defeat in what was then the next five years. This was called the five-year framework.
The point of the five-year framework was that the capitalists, to hold onto their rule, had about five years in which to get out of the crisis. In that time, they had to decide on and unite politically on a plan. And the only way they could do that would be to pull together a coalition and use state monopoly capitalism as Roosevelt did in the 30’s Great Depression to try to pull the country out. Their problem was that because of the depth of the crisis, some monopolies would have to be swallowed up by others and there was already a life-and-death fight among them to avoid that fate. Because of this inter-monopoly contradiction, the ability of the bourgeoisie to pull out of the crisis was a gargantuan, if not impossible, task.
Today, we witness a new feature of the crisis in the destabilization of U.S. imperialism–the bulwark of western capitalism–on all fronts. The European imperialist countries are even farther down the road of destabilization. But today they can no longer look towards the U.S. as the stabilizer, as their savior and last refuge. U.S. imperialism is also disintegrating rapidly.
Politically, as can be seen in the United Nations, the U.S. is isolated. Time and again, third world countries have launched successful political offensives to expose U.S. imperialist crimes. For example, in the repeated denunciation of Israeli Zionist aggression, the only veto in the Security Council comes from the U.S.
Militarily, the U.S. cannot intervene at will because its name stinks around the world and because of the strong resistance of the American people to U.S. intervention abioad. The army is demoralized and in disarray. They can’t deal with Granada, much less Iran. Secondly, its stagnating industries have cut down their ability to go to war. Their last way out is the neo-colonialist method of economic control–such as massive loans to third world countries through the International Monetary Fund. This economic penetration must take on the form of loans and credit because third world countries are resisting direct control by U.S. monopolies. By lending inflated dollars to the third world, the U.S. tried to kill two birds with one stone–to export its inflation and control the third world through its debts. And as these countries become poorer every clay because of imperialist plunder, they must be continually propped up with loans^ust to carry on. Countries like Jamaica and Brazil are up to their necks in debts. Many borrow money just to pay off the interest, and never worry about the original loan. Jamaica, whose national economy has been raped by U.S. imperialism, is threatening to default on loans of $450 million that are due immediately. But the U.S. imperialists cannot allow default.
The U.S. is trapped. Unlike its eleventh hour pullout from Vietnam, the U.S. cannot drop its financial backing of these countries’ economies. If they do, the U.S. imperialist economy will itself collapse. In that sense this spells a strategic defeat much bigger than Vietnam. The era of the collapse of U.S. imperialism is officially open. The big chicken is indeed coming home to roost. A whole new era of national liberation, countries’ independence, and especially people’s revolution, is just beginning.
To get out of this crisis the capitalists have no hope but world war for a new redivision of the world. Chairman Mao pointed out in 1946, “To go to war, the U.S. reactionaries must first attack the U.S. people.” This is the meaning of the murders of the Communist Workers Party 5 on November 3, 1979–Comrades Jim Waller, Cesar Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson and Sandy Smith. The murders of our five beloved comrades were organized in the highest circles of the capitalist class and herald a new wave of repression against the people’s leadership that will make the Palmer Raids of the 20’s and the attacks against the Black Panther Party in the 60’s pale in comparison. To go to war, the capitalists must drop all pretense of democratic rights, as signalled by the FBI seizure of a newsman’s tapes in Boise, Idaho, and their storming of a Harlem apartment building in the middle of the night, only three days after the Supreme Court ruled that type of raid into home in pursuit of a suspect (in this case, allegedly Assata Shakur) to be illegal.
At a time when their rule is on the line, however, everything illegal becomes legal for the bourgeoisie. A doomed class, they race against time.
In this relatively short period of capitalist destabilization, for the CWP it is also a race against time. The task of the Party, to use the time given to us by the inter-monopoly contradiction to prepare for socialist revolution, is to make sure that the capitalists are not able to restabilize their rule with untold suffering inflicted on the masses.
History presented an opportunity and a demand. The Central Committed, headed by General Secretary Jerry Tung, put the call out for the CWP to take the political offensive, while preparing defensively militarily to win the majority of the American people. The November 3rd Greensboro massacre only weeks later and the year since have tested the Party’s ability to do this in an epoch-making way.
In those first few months after November 3rd, tremendous changes became visible among the American people.
Jerry Tung, the General Secretary of the Communist Workers Party, summed up the historic change among the masses which showed itself in stark contrast to the previous three decades. As he said,
... It is clear today, the masses are really being polarized. On November 3, 1979, after five of our comrades were killed, it suddenly appeared to many serious-minded revolutionary people around the country that this is a whole different scene altogether. This thing is getting serious. Then a day later was Iran–the Iranian people took the hostages because of CIA involvement in the U.S. embassy and the whole country went into a commotion. Then there was Soviet social-imperialism’s invasion of Afghanistan a couple of weeks later. Immediately after that, U.S. imperialism responded with a boycott of the Olympics and people started to take sides. Should we go to the Moscow Olympics or not? People took sides. Then Carter announced the registration for the draft and the students once more became involved.
So in the last few months, you can see the wild swings in the mood of the American people. And this kind of swing, from one day to another, is something rarely seen in the last 30 years. In fact, in the 70’s and 60’s, there were issues which affected people and divided people up–with members of families coming down on two different sides–such as the civil rights struggle and the war in Vietnam. People sided, polarized by the issues. But what you see today is more than siding on one or two issues. It’s siding on many, many issues. In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, people took sides, but knew fundamentally their lives would not necessarily change. Even if their kids got killed in Vietnam, somehow or another they thought their lives could continue as usual. They did not face the difficulties they face today. So it’s clear today people are being affected. People know that they can no longer be indifferent towards the whole thing. Like the housewife in Love Canal said, ’I wish to be just a housewife, but they won’t leave me alone!’ The pollution, and all those things. Today even the backward strata of people, the people who have been totally indifferent before, they are drawn into politics. Like in California, they have proposition 9, proposition 13, proposition this, proposition that. At the same time people get into the proposition thing. Why is that? The reason is because those propositions are not just a question of voting for a president and no matter who you voted for, basically the outcome is the same. They carry out the same policies. But those propositions affect your lives directly. Your social programs will be cut off. Your house taxes will increase. As a result, people become polarized around those things. So people cannot afford to be indifferent any more. The historic lever of the economic crisis and the polarization, issue after issue, are hitting them so hard and so fast that they begin to have to take sides. This is independent of their will, whether they’re interested in politics or not. And it’s affecting them so close, in their families, in their homes that they have to take positions.
That’s one of the laws of Marxism which says, ’There are masses and masses.’ In a period of relative stabilization of capitalism, the masses who are open to us, who are open to the class struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat, to overthrow the U.S. government, is limited. Those people who are open to us (then) are limited to tens of thousands. But today because the historic lever of the economic crisis is acting up in such a thorough-going way, and people are getting hit and forced to take a stand on the Olympics, Iran, on this and on that in such a forceful way, the masses, in millions of people, not in tens of thousands, but in terms of hundreds of millions, are becoming political. They are becoming political. They are becoming open. They’re disoriented, and they’re starting to question...
But at the end of the 70’s and the beginning of the 80’s, without recognized and respected leadership, there is a vacuum of moral authority. No longer able to look to traditional leaders and with the old moral authority shattered, the American people are disoriented as never before. Most unions today are like empty shells. And though they have the basis to be genuine fighting, democratic unions, they are strangled by the labor aristocrats. Yet even the labor aristocrats are decisively losing control. Some frustrated workers have tuned out and turned off to their unions, even in this unprecedented crisis. The number of economic strikes is actually nearly the lowest in the last two decades. Stunned, disoriented and leaderless, the vast majority of workers are still absorbing the full brunt of the capitalist crisis.
Thus, in those first few months after November 3rd, the masses were awakening to political life as never before in the three previous decades, and yet there was a vacuum of moral authority, of leadership to guide them in the momentous decade of the 80’s.
It was in these historical conditions, this unprecedentedly critical and at the same time ripe situation, that General Secretary Jerry Tung put out his historic call for a nation-wide political offensive days after November 3rd. He put out the slogans, “Seize the Time, Avenge the CWP 5!” And repeating the declaration of war against the bourgeoisie made in the Founding Congress, he stated, “We are going to leave no stone unturned to turn this country upside down… We vow to make this attack the most costly mistake the U.S. bourgeoisie has ever made.”
This was not an idle threat. Like a people’s army, the CWP immediately charged forward to do political battle with the bourgeoisie. Its will and unity were galvanized by the hatred for the U.S. government’s murderous conspiracy and their Klan and Nazi henchmen. CWP members and supporters fearlessly, yet methodically, threw themselves into the campaign to avenge the CWP 5.
The campaign to Avenge the CWP 5 would be not only national in scope, it would also use and combine all forms of struggle against the bourgeoisie. In an advanced capitalist country like the U.S., it could not be otherwise in preparing for proletarian revolution. Lenin has pointed out that one of the fundamental reasons for the success of the Bolshevik Revolution was that they went through 15 years of tremendous struggle in many varied forms of revolutionary work. He went on to say, “In order to fulfill its task, the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms, or aspects, or social activity without any exception (completing, after the capture of political power, sometimes at great risk and very great danger, what it did not complete before the capture of power)...” (“Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder, p. 101) Under the leadership of Jerry Tung, General Secretary of the CWP, the Central Committee had put out this line from Lenin in May 1978. It said, “We must learn to work in old (parliamentary and legal) and new (violent and illegal) forms in a new way, because we are carrying out a new type of preparation …So comrades who become, say, union officials, cannot know just how every other union official carries out their tasks, but we must use this form in a new way to serve all-rounded and systematic preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat...” Armed with this line, the CWP would achieve a quantum leap in putting it into practice, reaching the American people and further building up the Party, “beyond defeat” so to speak, in the year since November 3rd.
A short recap of the events in the last year’s political offensive and military defensive will show this.
That the assassination of our beloved comrades and leaders Jim Waller, a Central Committee member, and Cesar Cauce, Mike Nathan, Sandy Smith, and Bill Sampson, not only failed to drive the CWP underground into the hole of reformism or to the frenzy of a terrorist sect, became clear on a cold, rainy November 11th. It was that day the Party and the masses buried our five comrades, defying a thousand guns of the government, the local and state police, and the National Guard.
In one of the most trying and dangerous periods of its history, the Party had to overcome monumental difficulties that day and, it would turn out, throughout the year. Filled with a deep grief, the Party was faced with the tragic task of burying its first comrades to give their lives under the Party’s banner. On days’ notice, innumerable seemingly impossible tasks had to be completed, from raising enough money to get buses to Greensboro, to preparing politically and militarily, to negotiating with the government which at all times hurled obstacles in our path.
This time was especially trying for the widows, family and close comrades of the five fallen comrades and for those whose relatives and friends were still lying wounded in pain. The widows in particular had to courageously play their full part in the storm of activity around them, and yet live with the deep and searing pain and the sense of irreplaceable loss that seemed never to leave.
And above others that day hovered the ever-present threat of arrest. The question stayed with us throughout–would we be called upon to make the supreme sacrifice for the people–to die that day in Greensboro?
Trying in vain to intimidate the Party, the government cut bushes along the march route days in advance to clear the field for their sharpshooters and snipers. The Party dealt with this head-on. Prepared to defend ourselves, we told the state to keep their sniper rifles pointed up at all times. Lowering them would be taken by the Party as a provocation and the state would have to take the consequences of being gunned down. It was tit for tat, we took no chances. Our snipers versus theirs. The state agreed.
Our comrades and friends there were ready to lay down their lives to give our five comrades a fitting burial. Personally led by General Secretary Jerry Tung, such an armed communist demonstration–a direct confrontation between communists and the government–was unprecedented in U.S. history. It was one of the CWP’s hardest and finest hours. Refusing to back down in the face of a declared state of emergency, refusing to be panicked neither by the arrest of 26 of our comrades hours before the mark on trumped-up charges nor by government tanks, helicopters, and sharpshooters, nothing would be allowed to stop the march a thousand strong. At all times, armed to the teeth, we stood our ground defiantly as formations of National Guards charged with fixed bayonets. That day, the bourgeoisie stood morally and politically defenseless. Through sharp political and military tactics, the Party gained moral ascendancy. This was glaringly clear to the masses of Greensboro who braved the government blockades and actual physical intimidation and the cold, rainy weather to greet the Party’s march along the route. Many slipped through the police encirclement to join the march. Others stood by the sidewalks and porches with raised fists and shouts of solidarity. The masses of Greensboro saluted the Party on November 11th. All this reached across the country and throughout the world as reporters and newsmen pushed and shoved their way through the police barricades to record history in the making despite the state’s repeated attempts to turn them away.
On that bitterly cold and rain-swept day in the city of Greensboro, under these extremely dangerous, unprecedentedly difficult and trying conditions, a glorious chapter in the history of the American people’s struggle was written. An historic victory had been won by the Communist Workers Party. The whole world was watching the CWP bury its fallen comrades. The CWP and its supporters had confronted the full armed might of the government. Steel against steel, nerve against nerve, the CWP had forced the government to kneel this one day to the moral and political authority of the CWP in front of the American people. It was, in a very real sense, the Communist Workers Party’s Long March.
The bourgeoisie and their henchmen, however, were not satisfied with the cold-blooded murders on November 3rd. They stepped up their vicious attacks on the Party nation-wide. Like criminals returning to the scene of the crime, Carter sent a hundred FBI agents to North Carolina to destroy evidence and harass the CWP and our supporters. A wave of redbaitings and firings swept through our ranks, fanned by the labor bureaucrats like International Association of Machinists president William Winpisinger in concert with the companies and the government. It was not mere coincidence that the attacks were directed primarily at CWP members and supporters who were mass leaders or leaders in trade unions and workplaces.
The most recent attack came at the NASSCO shipyards in San Diego, California. Three workers, two of the members of the CWP, were framed by the NASSCO bosses and the FBI. The yards have been a hotbed of struggle around dangerous working conditions. When two workers were gassed to death, the yards were ready to erupt.
In a cold sweat, the bosses called in the FBI and SWAT teams who dragged the three workers (the NASSCO 3) from their homes. They were set up by a scab low-life FBI informer. On top of this, IAM’s Winpisinger, an FBI stoolie himself, fingered them, other supporters, including union officials who came to their defense. Turning the attacks around, in California, people from all walks of life are organizing to “Indict NASSCO for the murders of Beebe and King,” “Stop FBI/NASSCO frameup,” and “Free the NASSCO 3”!
Respected and recognized mass leader Jose Calderon, a leading CWP member in Colorado and a folk-hero in the region, was arrested and charged with a felony for serving notice to John Anderson.
John Spearman, IAM Local 774 shop steward in a Wichita, Kansas Cessna plant, was the target of a redbaiting campaign personally orchestrated by self-proclaimed “socialist” Winpisinger.
Cathy Scolieri, president of International Union of Electrical Workers Local 853 in Oakland, California, was threatened with expulsion from the union for her support of the Communist Workers Party.
In cooperation with the government and the Budd Company bosses, union misleaders of Teamsters Local 22 in Martinsville, Virginia tried to pass a resolution removing Dori Blitz, a CWP supporter, from her position as shop steward.
In a sense as vicious as the murders, these were another form of assassination, another way for the criminal monopoly class to snatch leaders from among he workers. In its savageness, scope-and intensity, the nationwide attack on the CWP was dwarfing the McCarthy Era and was approaching the attack on the Panthers in the late 60’s.
In the bourgeoisie’s campaign to isolate and destroy the CWP, the attack came from yet another sphere. If the bourgeoisie used the government, Klan and Nazis as assassins, and the trade union misleaders as hatchetmen, it found its voice in hand-picked high-level hacks in the mass media. Under the system of bourgeois democracy, where the rule of the bourgeoisie rests so much on the illusions created by the constant bombardment from the tightly controlled mass media, it could not be otherwise.
The murders of the CWP 5 by the government and their Klan/Nazi assassins gained world-wide coverage in the press. But it demanded that the press take a position on its significance. The British Economist, the authoritative bourgeois business magazine, picked up the line from the U.S. bourgeoisie that the CWP provoked it. The Soviet Tass news agency, to cover the Soviet’s own ruthless oppression of the Soviet workers under the capitalist new tsars, and to score a point against their superpower rival, cynically condemned it.
In the U.S. leading the attack on the CWP was the nationally and internationally influential New York Times. In one article, they hinted in a sinister way that the CWP fired the first shot. In their editorial and in an article by Zionist liberal Anthony Lewis, they openly flaunted their glee at seeing the blood of communists flow in the streets, criminally portraying the five slain comrades as members of a “fringe” shot by the “violent fringe.” Even more desperately, they tried to shift the blame for the murders from the U.S. government to the Party, claiming the Party “provoked” the violence through its “violent rhetoric.”
The New York Times was not alone in the attacks; the chauvinist, anti-communist social democrats in certain circles and their like in the civil rights movement, along with assorted political speculators and so-called “socialists” and “communists” ran interference for the bourgeoisie. Totally incompetent and isolated from the masses, but fearful of the strength of the CWP, they mouthed the monopoly capitalists’ lie that the CWP provoked the assassinations through its “violent rhetoric” and anti-Klan activities. They became, in fact, better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie themselves.
But throughout this period of stepped-up attacks by the bourgeoisie, the CWP was stepping up its political offensive, blow for blow. On the one hand, we boldly went out to build broad united fronts from above and below under our policy of unity and struggle. Thousands of people from all walks of life wanted to know the real story behind the assassinations and what they could do to help. It was clear that the struggle to Avenge the CWP 5 was to go and had to go far beyond the CWP to reach the majority of the American people. The Party’s task, as formulated by General Secretary Jerry Tung, was to reach out to all who would listen, and proceeding from a spirit of uniting with them around this question, to struggle to ’ provide direction and organization for all who were being drawn into the struggle. Within thirty days of November 3rd, we began a national tour of the widows of the CWP 5, Party speakers like Central Committee member Philip Thompson, and prominent friends. In New York, for instance, attorney William Kunstler and anti-nuke activist Dr. Michio Kaku spoke at the forum. General Secretary Jerry Tung personally attended the event.
In the historic march of 7,000 against Klan and Nazi terror in Greensboro on February 2, 1980, the CWP showed how skillfully we could utilize the united front tactic to win over the masses and isolate the opportunists and government agents. Sparked by the murders of the CWP 5 and organized by the February 2nd Coalition, the march united hundreds of organizations and individuals of vastly different philosophies. For nearly a decade such unity was unprecedented. The government and its agents were forced to try to destroy ft. First they tried to stop the march altogether. The Party along with the Coalition was able to use the legal forces within the united front to file a suit against the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation for them to allow the Coalition to get a permit and a coliseum for the rally. Next the government started a centrally-coordinated campaign to isolate the CWP and kill the spirit of the demonstration. Rumors of the CWP provoking violence was part of it. Police and city harassment was part of it. And the government sent in some of the most experienced misleaders and agents to Greensboro.
Andy Young, Carter’s ex-ambassador to the U.N. and the capitalists’ trusted servant, showed up the day before the demonstration to give a speech at N.C. A&T University in Greensboro. To disarm the masses and in concert with the attempts of agents and misleaders within the coalition to portray the CWP as “violence prone,” he made a notorious statement. He said that as the great Afro-American masses protested in the 60’s, vicious police dogs lowered their heads and wagged their tails and that all policemen wept as they confronted the protestors.
The bourgeoisie also had their willing servants inside the Coalition. Breaking the coalition agreement not to raise the question of self-defense or to hold separate news conferences, Joseph Lowery of the SCLC, C.T. Vivian and Lucius Walker did both, to the delight of the cops and the government. Because of the CWP’s principle of armed self-defense, these so-called leaders publicly tried to force the CWP to state it would be disarmed and to disarm the masses. The aim of this was to isolate the CWP and find a reason to ban the Party from the march. But these political speculators didn’t understand who they were dealing with. Because of their careerist self-interest, they were tangled in their own petty narrowness, and they did not have the force and organization to back up their words. The Party refused to knuckle under to the handful of misleaders and agents and to their illegal and sinister decision to expel the CWP from the Coalition’s Executive Committee. With the Party’s sharp tactics and strong organization, we out-maneuvered them and out-muscled them at every turn. These political pimps fell headlong into the hole they dug for themselves with our help. Not only did the CWP play a full and active role, our militant chants and banners prevented the misleaders from turning it into a picnic. Both Lowery’s and Vivian’s opportunism were stripped bare by their crude slips under pressure with the whole house thundering down on them: “The whole world is watching, which side are you on?” This won the hearts and minds of the thousands of masses who had turned out for the demonstration. We can say that in a sense, we out-maneuvered the best of the bourgeoisie’s maneuverers. Since February 2nd, our united front work has become even broader as more and more people open up to us. And in this period, when the attacks by the bourgeoisie are becoming ever more fierce, our united front work will, like our other work, especially among the workers, increase tremendously.
On other fronts as well, the Party increased its work to meet the demand of winning over the majority of the American people. One sphere in which this was done was the media. After November 3rd, besides the outright attacks we talked of before, the bourgeois media blacked out developments around the FBI/Klan/Nazi murders of the CWP 5.
But through the Party’s offensive in the media and with the help of progressive friends working in the media, the blockade on the truth was broken. In city after city, through professional and consistent hard work, using every opportunity and every crack in the media, the truth about the Greensboro Massacre, the government’s role in it and about the CWP was getting through. The Village Voice carried a long front-page article by Blanche Boyd, which helped to bring the facts about Greensboro to the public eye. And the increasing impact of the CWP’s political offensive was forcing the bourgeois media to cover it. The Party’s ability to penetrate and utilize this most closely guarded and strategic preserve of the bourgeoisie–a major way they keep their ideological hold over the masses–has vastly broadened the Party’s impact on the American people.
At the same time that we were taking a media offensive, we also went on the offensive on the legal front. Significantly, many of the attacks after November 3rd were beaten back by a combination of our political offensive and the aid of progressive lawyers. They are helping us file a multi-million dollar civil rights suit against the government, Klan and Nazi murderers. With the increasing attacks on the Party today by the bourgeoisie, we will push out even more to those progressive and honest lawyers who see the significance of the Party’s work in this most critical period.
The scope of the work of the CWP in this last year, however, went far beyond the united fronts, media and legal fronts. Party members and supporters mobilized to carry out the task of reaching the American people. Days after the assassinations, postering and spray-painting teams put up the call to Avenge the CWP 5 with the pictures of our five fallen comrades. Hardhitting agitators explained to the American people why the government, Klan and Nazi assassins had killed our comrades and what it means for the 80’s. To meet the new demands of the stepped-up class struggle and the masses’ thirst for analysis and answers to the accelerating crisis and pace of events, the formerly biweekly Workers Viewpoint newspaper was stepped up to a weekly. With people wanting to know more about what happened in Greensboro and about what the CWP is, newspaper sales doubled and tripled. Within the year, The 80’s, the theoretical journal of the CWP, became a monthly, where it had come out hardly yearly before. All this stepped-up propaganda would be necessary for the CWP to grow beyond the core of highly trained professional revolutionaries into a mass communist party in the coming period. And to meet the demands of the increased propaganda work, the Party took the offensive in the financial sphere, where through the sacrifice of Party members and the generosity of friends of the Party, we easily over-achieved our goal of $150,000.
From the beginning of the campaign, the CWP vowed that it would go directly to the bourgeoisie’s doorstep. Just five days after the assassinations, the bourgeoisie and their politicians would find out that they would be the main target for the CWP’s wrath. It was an election year. The bourgeoisie’s political representatives would be forced to show themselves to the American people.
Stepping out into a cold Chicago day after a speech, recently-announced presidential candidate Ted Kennedy found himself greeting an egg thrown at him by a CWP supporter screaming “Avenge the CWP 5!” It would be the first of many. As the shook-up bourgeoisie summed up, we were everywhere. And this would continue all the way until the end of the campaign. Carter, Reagan, Anderson, Mondale, Rosalyn, Civiletti–all knew and feared the CWP.
At the same time, we were picking up the struggle against the surrogates of the bourgeoisie–the Klan and Nazis as well as hitting the secret supporters in the government. And we picked the struggles at our choosing, not just blindly reacting to them. We won an historic victory in a skirmish with the Klan and the government at our Kokomo demonstration. In a combination of political offense and military defense, with tight organization and centralized command, we beat both of them back. The picture of the CWP and others in the demonstration, with helmeted and stick-carrying CWP members and friends protecting the demonstration against the police attack was flashed across the country. It defined the class struggle of the 80’s for the American people.
And in the midst of the actions that we were taking, we put out to millions of the American people our propaganda posters, answering the burning questions on everyone’s mind. The CWP organized members and friends into postering and spray-painting teams. Playing cat-and-mouse with the police, we literally plastered the country with our posters, boldly saying “The 80’s Economic Crisis Will Make the 30’s Great Depression Look Like a Picnic” on our first poster, and “Serve Notice to the Politicians at the Democratic Convention” on the second.
It was this broad propaganda work reaching millions upon millions of people, that set the stage for the Democratic Convention, where through our agitation and actions around the country and in New York itself, the CWP changed the U.S. political scenery and sealed the verdict as the sole effective opposition to the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
In Greensboro, meanwhile, the government was clumsily and desperately trying to stop the CWP’s rising prestige and moral authority. First the government arrested the Greensboro 6, trying to blame the victims for the crime. Nelson Johnson’s bail went up to a staggering $200,000 when the Klan and Nazi killers were walking the streets on bail as low as $4,000. Then the government set up its kangaroo court to make sure it could cover up its crimes and at the same time let the assassins off free or at most with a slight slap on the wrist. The jury was hand-picked to make sure anti-communism was the issue of the trial, not the murderers themselves and their government bosses.
In the week before the Democratic Convention, the CWP unleashed a wave of actions that shook the country. Klan and Nazis turned like rats on their own masters and spilled their guts about the role of Bernard Butkovich, an agent of the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. And about paid FBI and Greensboro police informer Edward Dawson’s role in the November 3rd assassinations. In 15 cities across the country, CWP members and supporters served notice, from the occupation of the BATF’s World Trade Center offices in New York, to the tear-gassing of the Democratic Party headquarters in Miami. In Colorado, CWP member Jose Calderon egged John Anderson in front of a national TV audience. In Greensboro, CWP 5 widows Marty Nathan and Floris Cauce stood up in court at the opening day of the Klan/Nazi trial to denounce it as a sham–also reported on national network TV. The government, after first murdering their husbands, then put them in jail. And in New York, we again served notice to Carter in front of the National Urban League. And again it was reported on national TV. Thus using the conscious focus of the media on building up the politicians, through these actions the CWP was able to crystallize the growing sentiment of the people, and make its presence known. By the time the Democratic Convention started, the CWP had already made its presence felt to literally tens of millions of Americans.
The bourgeoisie’s hidden agenda at the Democratic Convention was not so much who was to be the Democratic candidate. That was decided by the first day of the Convention, when Kennedy lost the rules fight to Carter. The agenda after that was what the CWP was going to do. The Director of Security for the Convention stated outright that “the CWP is our main concern.” They had fenced in all the other demonstrators like cattle in a small space across the Garden, and they all drowned each other out–from the Yippies to the Right-to-Life types. It was clear that the CWP, in order to make a bigger impact and change the political scene, had to take extremely strong action.
The first few days of the convention, we started to do that. Putting agitation and action in the forefront, we deployed agitation teams to the communities in Bronx and Brooklyn, agitating around the concrete cases of police brutality there. And we had a field day, with the masses greeting us with open arms. The cops, spread thin since most were at the Garden–by the way, the largest concentration of cops at a single event in anyone’s memory–were unable to deal with us and those few there shook with fear. Several bank windows were shattered, and “Greensboro, Miami, Pyaback Time” spray-painted on them, signed by the CWP. Meanwhile, during those day, CWP 5 widows and friends were hitting event after event organized for the Convention delegates, agitating against the inevitable world war and to a Hitler-type U.S. the politicians were dragging us into.
The last day was to be our crowning achievement. We had planned to demonstrate and serve notice to Carter at a hotel speech that morning. Because of our lack of the necessary level of organization, however, the planned major action aborted. In the immediate aftermath, there was great disorientation among our comrades there, threatening to turn our this far successful campaign to serve notice into a rout. In this critical situation, General Secretary Jerry Tung stepped in and personally sized up the situation, reoriented the comrades and planned in detail the previously unplanned direct frontal demonstration on the Garden–all within the space of two hours. With military precision, our forces gathered at the action’s starting point exactly on time and were off and marching to the Garden, column by column and row upon row in 3 minutes, with our comrades and friends in helmets and with sticks for self-defense leading the way. General Secretary Jerry Tung, at great risk to his personal safety, personally came to orient the comrades and lead the final preparation. As an example of the highest level of communist dedication and leadership, Jerry Tung’s electrifying presence fired us all with the invincible spirit of daring to struggle and daring to win.
The cops outside and the bourgeoisie gathered inside never knew what hit them. As Carter was giving his acceptance speech, firecrackers ripped through his hypocrisy, creating his memorable “Hubert Horatio Hornblower” slip. Then Dale Sampson and Signe Waller unfurled the CWP banner and agitated right in front of him, in a section reserved for only the closest inner circles of Democratic Party. The whole nation watched as the Secret Service, FBI and police scrambled in confusion. Kennedy was visibly unnerved by the bold CWP action, an action that was done by the CWP the night before. We had penetrated their tight security and greatest concentration of forces not once, but time and time again.
At nearly the same time, our march in military formation had reached the Garden unopposed. The bourgeoisie was now on the edge of panic. Despite the largest domestic concentration of security forces since the 1968 Democratic Convention, they were defeated on the streets and the CWP roamed at will through the city. In an unprecedented move, they turned their Garden Party into a siege, shutting everyone in behind locked doors for two hours. Outside, press people chanted “Let us in!” We stood in front of the Garden with thunderous chants–“Greensboro, Miami, Payback Time.” The cops and agents were freaked out. With all the forces there, they were literally unprepared to deal with a frontal demonstration. Losing their heads, their chain of command broke down and individual cops charged us. That was their biggest mistake.
Our command and organization outstripped theirs and the 26 casualties they took proved it. When they tortured the 18 arrested comrades in backrooms of the police station, not one talked. Again the cops were dumbfounded and disoriented by the CWP’s display of strength.
And because of the CWP, Carter and the politicians had nowhere to celebrate his victory. They were forced to cancel the victory party after the Convention, planned for that night.
For the CWP and its comrades it was a sweet victory indeed. And let no one forget that it was a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat by the brilliant leadership of General Secretary Jerry Tung, the foremost Marxist-Leninist in the U.S. today.
It was General Secretary Jerry Tung, head of the Central Committee, who led the CWP throughout this unprecedentedly dangerous and trying year in overachieving its aim of the first year of its Five Year Framework to reach the majority of the American people set by the Founding Congress. It was he who every step of the way led the Party to gain victory in Avenging the CWP 5 and Serving Notice to the Politicians in this most critical year in the history of the Party and the American people.
The rule of the monopoly capitalist class is more fragile than ever before. Corruption is rampant, the courts are jammed up, their ruling apparatus tied down by inter-monopoly contradictions, incompetence and wasteful bureaucracy. They are cleaning house, as indicated by the recent removal of a congressman in the ABSCAM case. They are stepping up the use of their reactionary surrogates–in Greensboro, in Buffalo, in Atlanta, in Birmingham. Trying to start a race war, the bourgeoisie is promoting the growing right wing. They are in a race against time.
The destabilization of Western imperialism, especially its bulwark, the U.S. is undercutting the bourgeoisie’s rule. The chicken is coming home to roost. The labor aristocracy, a whole layer of union bureaucrats fattened by the payoff from the superprofits of imperialist plunder are getting choked as the U.S. is getting thrown back by the tidal wave of struggles for national liberation, countries’ independence, and especially people’s revolution in the third world. The Frasers, the Fitzsimmons, the McBrides are rapidly crumbling fossils, losing their grip on the workers.
The multinational working class is being jarred awake by the permanent economic crisis. The illusions fueled by the false prosperity of three decades of temporary capitalist stabilization are breaking down. The treacherous corruption of the union hacks and the politicians turn the stomach of workers fighting to survive, to hold on to the little that is left for their families.
In the face of rising, double digit inflation and unemployment, the union bureaucrats are swallowing wage cuts and plant shutdowns. Sam Church, president of the United Mine Workers, is calling for work without a contract in 1981, the first time in the militant history of the union.
The tremendous disorientation among the masses, the most fragile state of the bourgeoisie’s rule presents us with an excellent situation with great opportunities and great dangers. It is the best of times and the worst of times. This is the dialectics that history has created for us. Who will lead us? Who will lead the multinational working class–this is the life and death question in the 80’s.
We are in a race against time. The Party must step up our preparations now for the coming revolutionary situation.
General Secretary Jerry Tung has summed up the developments of this period and synthesized four general tasks for the Party.
l) We must reach out to the majority of the American people. The Party will continue to broaden out on all fronts. The weekly WV and the monthly 80’s established in the past year, along with the forthcoming works of General Secretary Jerry Tung are the basic propaganda weapons to be distributed broadly. Our organization has enabled us to kick off a broad range of fundraising activities and to help launch a film and a book on the Greensboro Massacre to be released in the near future. Party members must break new paths by engaging in pacesetting struggles within and outside of existing areas of work to reach out to new fighters across the country. Along with our independent work, the Party will participate in united fronts, and through the policy of unity and struggle, reach out to all strata of the American people. We will continue to pursue our work among our friends in the media as a means to use part of the bourgeoisie’s own superstructure and independent sources to create public opinion for the Party. In the course of broadening out, we will meet new friends and new supporters who will serve the class struggle by taking up the new tasks in the ever growing and expanding Party organization, and the complex political struggles. Like the past year, we will continue to define new tasks and to organize the new forces who are emerging in growing numbers which shows the maturity of the Party, our capacity to master all forms of struggle, and to orchestrate the expanding fronts of the Party’s work in order to build a mass communist party.
2) We must participate in local and national struggles, and through agitation, swing the mood of the majority and change the political scenery. Organization, persistence, and never are decisive for bold actions. The Party’s proven record in the past year, i.e. 11/11, 2/2, the Serve Notice campaign, the assault on the Democratic National Convention unnerved the bourgeoisie and their scurrying henchmen time and time again. It strengthened the fighting confidence of the American people and bared the fragile rule of the bourgeoisie for all to see.
3) We must build our existing cadre core into a vanguard mass communist party through constant propaganda. In the course of fighting the bourgeoisie in the most effective way, we must recruit boldly and broadly, at the same time strengthening the Party’s unity around the political line and the leadership of the Central Committee headed by General Secretary Jerry Tung.
4) We must effect all around military preparations for the coming revolutionary situation ahead.
In the coming year, 1981, the Party must lead pacesetting and hardhitting struggles among the industrial proletariat as well as lead broad united front campaigns among all strata of the American people.
The Party will beat back the frameup of the NASSCO 3 to rally the multinational working class against the bourgeoisie’s attack on trade unions with leadership who fight.
We will help to build, along with other progressive forces, a national anti-fascist coalition to beat back government repression and the bourgeoisie’s scapegoat politics to forge the unity of the American people.
We will broaden our recruitment. Party members should pay particular attention to networks and circles, most of whom are not developed Marxists. To win their respect and influence their political direction, we must win their leadership to our political line in the course of actual struggles building the Party from above and from below.
Yes, comrades, we are in a race against time. The bright future of a new revolutionary socialist U.S.A. and the new leadership for the American people exemplified by the deeds and the spirit of the CWP 5 is rising before us while the hell hole of dying capitalism, turning more desperate and more reactionary as it nears its inevitable doom. Under the leadership of the Central Committee headed by General Secretary Jerry Tung–we can and we will seize state power. The assassinations of our five beloved and heroic comrades will be the costliest mistake the bourgeoisie has ever made.