Iain's Blog: Barack Obama and the communist party

44^th President of the United States

Assumed office: January 20, 2009

Born	August 4, 1961
Birth name	Barack Hussein Obama II
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse	Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
Political party	Democratic Party
Religion	Christian Liberation Theology
Signature

This article is part of a series about
Barack Obama

Biography • Political Career • Controversial and Radical Associates • Radical Appointments • Ties to Islam • Presidency

Invovlement with: Democratic Socialists of America • New Party/Progressive Chicago • Communist Party • Committees of Correspondence • Labor Movement • ACORN & Project Vote • more...

Barack Obama's involvement with the Communist Party USA

Communist leader on "friend" Barack Obama

On November 15, 2008, Sam Webb, National Chair of the Communist Party USA delivered an address to the Communist Party USA National Committee. During his address, he noted the following concerning the party's relationship with Obama,

"The left can and should advance its own views and disagree with the Obama administration without being disagreeable. Its tone should be respectful. We are speaking to a friend."

Marable on Obama and Chicago communists

The late marxist academic Manning Marable claimed that Barack Obama has read some of his books and "understands what socialism is."
Marable, writing in the December 2008 issue of British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review, also claimed that Obama worked in Chicago with socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party.^[1]

What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...

Frank Marshall Davis

Barack Obama's first known connection with a Communist Party USA supporter was his boyhood relationship with communist poet Frank Marshall Davis in Hawaii.
Barack Obama's relationship to Frank Marshall Davis, first came to light through a March 2007 speech^[2] at New York University's Tamiment Library by Communist Party USA supporter and historian Gerald Horne.
Commenting on the alleged leftist sympathies of Hawaiians, Horne said;

When these sources are explored, I think scholars of the future will be struck by, for example, the response in Honolulu when tens of thousands of workers went on strike when labor and CP leaders were convicted of Smith Act violations in 1953 – a response totally unlike the response on the mainland. Of course 98% of these workers were of Asian-Pacific ancestry, which suggests that scholars have also been derelict in analyzing why these workers were less anti-communist than their Euro-American counterparts.

In any case, deploring these convictions in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson.

Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago.

In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation

Frank Marshall Davis' communism

Information from Davis' 601 page FBI file reveals that Davis (born 1905) became interested in the Communist Party USA as far back as 1931.
Certainly from the mid/late '30s to the early '40s Davis was involved in several Communist Party fronts including the the National Negro Congress, the League of American Writers, the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties and the Civil Rights Congress.
The FBI first began tracking Davis in 1944 when they identified him as member of the Communist Party's Dorie Miller Club in Chicago-card number 47544.
Davis taught courses at the party controlled Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago and attended meetings of the party's Cultural Club until he left for Hawaii in 1948.

Hawaiian activism

Frank Marshall Davis' move to Hawaii was influenced by two secret Communist Party USA members Harry Bridges and Paul Robeson.
When contemplating moving to Hawaii, Davis "wrote to Harry Bridges, whom I had met at Lincoln School. Bridges suggested I get in touch with Koji Ariyoshi, editor of the Honolulu Record..."
The Lincoln School was run by the Communist Party USA. Koji Ariyoshi was a leader of the Hawaiian Communist Party which controlled the ILWU affiliated Honolulu Record- which Davis went to work for.
Before going underground in 1950, the Hawaiian Communist Party was one of the most dynamic in the U.S. at the time. The mainland put huge resources into the Hawaiian party because the Soviets wanted the U.S. military presence on the islands shut down. The Hawaiian communists were charged with agitating against the U.S. military bases at every opportunity. Several times the FBI observed Davis photographing obscure Hawaiian beaches-possibly for espionage purposes.
Through its control of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) the Hawaiian Communist Party USA had considerable influence on the local Democratic Party. In the mid '50s, while still a confirmed communist, Davis like many of his comrades, became an official in the local Democratic Party.
At the time the underground Communist Party was divided into two or three person independent cells. Davis led one such cell "Group 10" with his wife Helen Canwell and one other comrade.
An extensive Senate Security Investigation in 1956 shattered the Hawaiian Party, driving the remnants completely underground .
The FBI continued to monitor Davis into the 1960s and he was marked down for immediate arrest should war break out between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Still a communist?

ACPFB letterhead April 12, 1973

Frank Marshall Davis met Barack Obama in 1970 or 1971 when Obama was about 10 years old. The relationship lasted until Obama left Hawaii for Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1978.
As late as 1973, Frank Marshall Davis was still listed as an endorser of a major Communist Party USA front organization, American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.
Known Communist Party USA members listed with Frank Marshall Davis at right include Richard Criley, Abe Feinglass, Hugh DeLacy, Stanley Faulkner and James Dombrowski.

Frank Marshall Davis and Obama

In an article by Toby Harnden published in the Telegraph on August 22, 2008, Communist Frank Marshall Davis's influence on the young Barack Obama was uncovered. Maya Soetoro-Ng, Barack Obama's half-sister, told the Associated Press that her grandfather had seen Davis as "a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother (Barack Obama)".
Dawna Weatherly-Williams, a close friend of Frank Davis stated that Obama's maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham and Davis were close friends, adding that they would spend evenings together, playing scrabble, drinking, cracking jokes and smoking marijuana. She said that Davis was first introduced to Obama in 1970 at the age of 10:

"Stan had been promising to bring Barry by because we all had that in common - Frank’s kids were half-white, Stan’s grandson was half-black and my son was half-black. We all had that in common and we all really enjoyed it. We got a real kick out of reality."^[3]

Chicago Communists first recorded interest in Obama

Peoples Weekly World, August 22, 1992 (view full article)

In an article entitled Voter enthusiasm on rise in Chicago by Judith M. Hochberg, published in the Communist Party USA paper People's Weekly World on August 22, 1992, Barack Obama, then Illinois State Director of Project VOTE! is quoted as saying:

"The main point is that awareness of the importance of voting, the excitement of voting this year is getting out there".^[4]

Addie Wyatt connection

According to the United States Department of Labor, Chicago activist Rev. Addie Wyatt worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott and later counseled a young community organizer named Barack Obama as he came up the ranks in Chicago. ^[5]
According to Chicago Attorney and broadcaster Lonna Saunders The Rev. Addie Wyatt, was a mentor to President Barack Obama in his community organizing as a young man. ^[6]
In a letter, read at her funeral in April 2004, from President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, Wyatt was called a “champion of equality and a fierce advocate for working Americans.”^[7]
Wyatt's home was used to carry out meetings with public figures such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, President Barack Obama, and US Rep. Bobby Rush.^[8]
Addie Wyatt was a long time affiliate of the Chicago Communist Party USA.

Vernon Jarrett and Barack Obama

Vernon Jarrett was a prominent Chicago journalist and was a family friend and later father-in-law of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
In the 1940s Jarrett worked in several communist influenced organizations in Chicago, including serving on the publicity committee of the communist controlled Packing House Workers Strike Committee, with Frank Marshall Davis.
He also ran a radio show with Communist Party USA member Oscar Brown, Jr.
Vernon Jarrett was also a fan of Barack Obama. He watched his career from its early stages and became an influential supporter.
In 1992 Obama worked for the ACORN offshoot, Project Vote to register black voters in aid of the Senate Campaign of Carol Moseley Braun-who had strong Communist Party USA ties and was Harold Washington's legislative floor leader.
Obama helped Carol Moseley Braun win her Senate seat, then took it over himself in 2004-backed by the same communist/socialist alliance that had elected Washington and Moseley Braun.
Commenting on the 1992 race, Vernon Jarrett wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times of August 11th 1992;

Good news! Good news! Project Vote, a collectivity of 10 church-based community organizations dedicated to black voter registration, is off and running. Project Vote is increasing its rolls at a 7,000-per-week clip...If Project Vote is to reach its goal of registering 150,000 out of an estimated 400,000 unregistered blacks statewide, "it must average 10,000 rather than 7,000 every week," says Barack Obama, the program's executive director...

Dee Myles, a Chicago based chair of the Education Commission of the Communist Party USA penned a tribute to Vernon Jarrett, for the People's Weekly World of June 5th, 2004.
Readers like me can be extremely selective of the journalists we read habitually... We are selective about the journalists to whom we become insatiably addicted, and once hooked we develop a constructive love affair without the romance...
Such was my experience with Vernon Jarrett, an African American journalist in Chicago who died at the age of 86 on May 23. I became a Vernon Jarrett addict, and I am proud of it!
Vernon Jarrett’s career as a journalist in Chicago began and ended at the Chicago Defender, the African American daily paper. In between, he was the first Black journalist at the Chicago Tribune, and I first began to read his articles during his tenure at the Chicago Sun-Times.
Jarrett’s claim to fame is that he was a partisan of the cause of African Americans in the broad democratic tradition of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois...
Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois were both Communist Party USA members. On April 9th, 1998 at Chicago's South Shore Cultural Center, Vernon Jarrett hosted a Paul Robeson Citywide Centennial Celebration event, with his old comrade and Party sympathiser Margaret Burroughs and former Communist Party USA members Studs Terkel and his old friend Oscar Brown, Jr.
Dee Myles went on to say;

Jarrett was fanatical about African Americans registering and voting in mass for socially conscious candidates. He championed Harold Washington like a great warrior, and this March, from his hospital bed, wrote an article appealing to Black Chicago to turn out to vote for Barack Obama in the Illinois primaries. Obama astounded everyone with an incredible landslide victory as the progressive, Black candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. From his sickbed, Vernon Jarrett issued a clarion call, and the people responded.

Communist Party support in Obama's 2004 Senate race

The Communist Party USA was supportive of several candidates in the 2004 election cycle including Frank Barbaro, Cynthia McKinney, Barack Obama, Betty Castor, Nancy Farmer and Inez Tenenbaum^[9];

It would be helpful for each district to single out House seats that can be swung from Republican to Democrat to develop our list of key races, which includes progressive Frank Barbaro in New York and Cynthia McKinney in Georgia.

A number of exciting candidates are emerging in the Senate, in the first place Barak Obama in Illinois, and also several progressive women including Betty Castor seeking to retain retiring Bob Graham's seat as Democrat; Nancy Farmer seeking to defeat Kit Bond in Missouri; Inez Tenenbaum seeking to retain retiring Fritz Hollings seat as Democrat.

The Communist Party USA actively campaigned for Obama during his successful 2004 Illinois Senate race^[10].

Activists from Illinois were immersed in the campaign to elect Barak Obama to the U.S. Senate. Obama won a landslide victory in the March 16 Democratic primary. If Obama wins in November, he would be only the third African American senator since Reconstruction.

“This was a historic victory. It was a victory for political independence and grassroots, coalition, and issue oriented politics over the machine and money,” said John Bachtell, Illinois CP district organizer.

From a November 21 2004 report to the Communist Party USA National Committee - "The Communist Party USA and the 2004 Elections: Build the Party, Build the Coalitions".^[11]

MO: State Rep. During the campaign to elect a worker as State Representative: A new club in St. Louis, with another in formation. A new YCL club and another by the end of the year. A total of 19 new members in the YCL and Party. An increase from 2 to 12 bundles of PWW/NM a week. MI: A new club in Saginaw emerged from a national/district team that helped on a local campaign which elected a township trustee. A new club in the Upper Peninsula formed after a visit by Sam. New clubs in Lansing and Ann Arbor will be formed by the end of the year. ILL: 27 new members and an increase in PWW/NM bundles to 2500 a week. This in the process of participating in the movement from Illinois to Wisconsin to put that state over the top for Kerry, participating in the historic election of Barak Obama to the US Senate, and the successful campaign of Melissa Bean, defeating incumbent Republican Congressman Philip Crane.

In an October 23 2007 report to a Chicago Special District Meeting on African American Equality, Communist Party USA National Board member John Bachtell wrote:^[12]

The historic election of {Harold} Washington was the culmination of many years of struggle. It reflected a high degree of unity of the African American community and the alliance with a section of labor, the Latino community and progressive minded whites. This legacy of political independence also endures...

This was also reflected in the historic election of Barack Obama. Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election. Once again Obama’s campaign reflected the electoral voting unity of the African American community, but also the alliances built with several key trade unions, and forces in the Latino and white communities.

It also reflected a breakthrough among white voters. In the primary, Obama won 35% of the white vote and 7 north side wards, in a crowded field. During the general election he won every ward in the city and all the collar counties. This appeal has continued in his presidential run.

Young Communist League backing

According to a November 20 2004, election report^[13] from Young Communist League USA national coordinator Jessica Marshall confirms Young Communist League USA support for Obama's campaign through Youth for Obama.

In New York YCLers were delegates and founders of the local organizing committees of the National Hip Hop Political Convention. In Providence, Miami and Chicago YCLers helped head up the League of Pissed Off Voters efforts. YCLers staffed Democratic Party operations and headed up precincts in Ohio and Florida. A YCLer from Virginia was a canvas director for a progressive young candidate in a tight race in Ohio. In Miami, the newly formed club helped ACT organizing efforts at Miami Dade Community College.

In Chicago YCL members were very active in the Youth for Obama efforts and one member worked with the United States Student Association and his student government to register over 1,000 new voters.

From a 2006 Young Communist League USA report by Jessica Marshall.^[14]

Young people are up to the challenge. In 2004 youth-run organizations helped to organize and register 4.6 million new young people to get out and vote… the majority of them voted against Bush and more than half were young people of color. The YCL was there and present for those experiences - we learned alongside them through our Midwest Project.

The YCL has to be at the table this fall too. Every club and every member needs to be out there and involved. And we need to bring everyone we work with out too! This is a national campaign to change the Congress and we are gonna be a part of that!

We don’t have to be millions to have an impact! Just think about what a small group of YCLers have done in less than four years since our last convention!

We organized dozens of young people to head to the battleground states in 2004

In Ohio our YCLers were asked to lead up get out the vote teams because of our experience and hard work.

In Cincinatti we helped defeat an anti-gay ballot initiative.

In New York we worked on a campaign to elect Frank Barbaro defeat a Bush Republican and elect a real progressive

In Chicago we helped to form a youth vote operation to elect Barak Obama.

In St. Louis we were instrumental in electing John L. Bowman a progressive state representative. Bowman publicly acknowledged the key role the YCL and Communist Party played in his election.

Bea Lumpkin on Obama

Senior Chicago Communist Party USA member Bea Lumpkin, and her husband and comrade Frank Lumpkin were longtime supporters and a fans of Barack Obama.
As a friend, supporter and campaigner for pro communist Chicago mayor Harold Washington, Lumpkin credits the Washington campaigns with blazing the way for Barack Obama.^[15]

Sadly, when Washington died in office, the Democratic Party hacks crept back into power. The movement around Harold had not had time to jell into an organization with staying power. Still, the lessons of that campaign, with its spirit of African American, Latino and labor unity, took deep root in Chicago. Those roots nourished the spectacular rise of a new voice for people's unity, Barack Obama. Since then, Obama's strong voice has brought the message of unity to every corner of the country.

From her book "Joy in the Struggle", pages 244, to 248;

I am sure that Frank and I met Obama in the '80s. That's when he was working on pollution problems at the Altgeld Gardens public housing. The site was close to the steel mills, and Frank was active on similar pollution issues. We certainly knew the community people with whom Obama was working. But I cannot say that we knew the Obama name then. There were two reasons for that. Both Frank and I have a hard time remembering names. More important, was Obama's style. He pushed the community people forward and stayed out of the limelight himself. After Obama became our state senator in 1996, we knew his name, and I am sure he knew ours.

We were also friends with Alice Palmer, a progressive state senator. When she ran for Congress, Barack Obama won the vacated state senatorial seat.

During Obama's years in the Illinois Senate, we heard many good things about him. I helped organize steel worker retirees to visit Obama about health care legislation. He made us happy by telling us he was a sponsor of the legislation we wanted. And we liked his stand against a U.S. invasion of Iraq. He told us he was thinking of running for the US Senate.

Electing Obama to the U.S. Senate was a must-win election for us... The hardest part of the senatorial campaign was winning the Democratic primary...

About that time in the campaign, I heard Michelle Obama for the first time. Barack Obama introduced her in a way that really appealed to me. It showed not only his love for his wife but also his respect for women. "I want to introduce my wife, Michelle. She is taller than I am, smarter, and better looking." Michelle Obama then took the podium and gave a good, progressive review of the issues we care about.

The stakes were high. To win, each one of us had to do more than we could. But Frank was 88 and I was 86. Sure, we were in good shape "for our age." But how good was that? Well we found out. We worked and we worked and worked. And we did a lot of worrying, too. The polls kept teetering back and forth...As it was, he won the nomination in a landslide, 29 percent higher than his nearest Democratic opponent.

With Obama safely nominated, we relaxed just a little. We no longer had to dream the impossible dream. But nobody knew how much racism might cut into Obama's vote. It takes a huge supermajority in Chicago to offset the Republican counties in southern Illinois. So once more we needed to work on voter registration. But Frank and I could not continue the pace of the primary election. We did not have to. Many new activists came forward.

That August, at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Obama gave the speech that became his "trademark," the call for people to unite to benefit the whole country. In November 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate with 70 percent of the vote...

As an 18-year old, I served as a poll watcher in 1936.1 was not yet 21, not old enough to vote. In fact I served as poll watcher in more local elections than I can remember. But it was not until 1948 that I really threw myself into an election, heart and soul and body, too. That was the Progressive Party campaign to elect Henry Wallace for president. Fast forward to 1983 for Harold Washington, as described above. And then we come to 2008, for Barack Obama. That was like nothing I had ever seen. There had been a high level of enthusiasm when Washington ran for mayor. But nothing equaled the Obama campaign for president.

I was ecstatic when Barack Obama put his name forward as a candidate for the nomination for U.S. president. There were other good candidates, with Kucinich the clearest progressive voice. But my hopes went through the ceiling when Obama spoke. A progressive African American for president? About time and more! With Obama, we could not only reject "W's" years of right-wing destruction, we could move the country forward. Then something I had never seen before happened. People surged forward and took ownership of the campaign. The candidate himself encouraged them to do that. He kept talking about "we" and "you" and repeated "It's not about me." People took him at his word. They believed him, and let their imaginations flow. Soon there was a flowering of people's Obama art and music that flooded "You Tube," kept artists busy and printing presses running. Tee-shirts by the millions were silk screened or whatever method is now used.

My favorite tee-shirt was the one that said, "We Are the Ones We Were Waiting For." This was the feeling of empowerment that was taking root in working class neighborhoods and communities of color. The coffee shop in my neighborhood, the family restaurant two miles away, friend after friend, were inviting me to forums, phone call parties, debate watching, pizza feasts, most with a television hookup to the national campaign. Strangers visited strangers, and all at once we were not strangers anymore. We were sisters and brothers united in the greatest cause of all—saving our people and our country from the Bush disaster and to rebuild America.

Soon after Obama opened a volunteer center in Chicago, I went down to help. They were making phone calls into battleground states. The large office was crowded. All the seats were taken. All the phones were in use. And every inch of floor space was occupied by 16 to 25 year olds, sprawled in various teenage positions. They had thought to bring their chargers for their cell phones and were calling away. The young people were a perfect cross-section of multiracial Chicago, a total blend of purpose and dedication. My heart sang, and I had the rare feeling that I was not needed. My replacements had arrived!

By primary time 2008,1 was nearing my 90th birthday. Did I have one more campaign left in my arthritic legs? "Yes," my heart told me, and my legs kindly cooperated. Of course, I could have spared my knees, sat in a chair, and made telephone calls for the campaign.

When the votes were counted, Indiana came through for Obama-Biden! It was close. The steel retirees felt that they had made a difference, all of us. We are still celebrating our huge victory. Things have never moved so fast. At this writing, it is only six weeks since Obama took office. We are being swallowed up by the biggest economic disaster since the '30s. And it is beginning to look as though nothing smaller than a new New Deal can help us. How good it is that we have a president who has made job creation a plank of his crisis program. Had we not worked so hard and elected Obama, we'd be under a president who would let the people drown.

Meanwhile, Frank spent the campaign in the nursing home. I talked to him about Obama every day. I knew he wanted to know. But I could not tell if the news was getting through to him. The day after the election, the first page of the New York Times carried Obama's picture and his name in three-inch letters. I showed it to Frank. He looked at it, hard. Then he drew his right arm out from under the covers, bent it at the elbow, and raised his clenched fist high!

"Revolutionary mole" letter

Frank Chapman is a long time Communist Party USA supporter. In the early 1980s he chaired a party front National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. In the mid '80s he served on the board of another communist front, the U.S. Peace Council, alongside two future Obama colleagues and supporters Alice Palmer and Barbara Lee.
Just after Obama won the pivotal Iowa primary Chapman wrote a letter to the January 12, 2008 edition of the CPUSA's Peoples Weekly World;^[16]

Now, beyond all the optimism I was capable of mustering, Mr. Obama won Iowa! He won in a political arena 95 percent white. It was a resounding defeat for the manipulations of the ultra-right and their right-liberal fellow travelers. Also it was a hard lesson for liberals who underestimated the political fury of the masses in these troubled times.

Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary “mole,” not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through.

The old pattern of politics as usual has been broken. It may not have happened as we expected it to happen but what matters is that it happened. The message is clear: we can and must defeat the ultra-right, by uniting the broadest possible coalition that will represent an overwhelming majority of the people in a new political dynamic. We must quickly shed yesterday’s political perspective and get in step with the march of events.

Message of support to a Communist Party "front"

In March 2008, Barack Obama sent a message of support to the Communist Party USA controlled Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday organization.

April 1, 2008 Washington DC--Evelina Alarcon, Executive Director of Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday welcomed the backing for a Cesar Chavez national holiday from Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama who issued a statement on Cesar Chavez’s birthday Monday, March 31, 2008. “We at Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday appreciate the backing of a national holiday for Cesar Chavez from presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. That support is crucial because it takes the signature of a President to establish the holiday along with the Congress’s approval,” stated Evelina Alarcon. “It is also encouraging that Senator Hillary Clinton who is a great admirer of Cesar Chavez acknowledged him on his birthday. We hope that she too will soon state her support for a Cesar Chavez national holiday.”
Alarcon’s remarks were part of a statement made at a press conference at our nation’s Capitol on April 1st called by Chair of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) in support of HR 76, a resolution he authored with 62 Co-Sponsors that encourages the establishment of a Cesar Chavez national holiday by the Congress^[17].
Barack Obama’s statement for a Cesar Chavez national holiday:

"Chavez left a legacy as an educator, environmentalist, and a civil rights leader. And his cause lives on. As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago. And we should honor him for what he's taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation. That's why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez's birthday a national holiday. It's time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union."

Senator Barack Obama March 31, 2008.

Obama's sister given communist "front" award

standing Evelina Alarcon left, Maya Soetoro-Ng, right

In June 2008, Communist Party USA leader and Executive Director of Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday, Evelina Alarcon presented an award from the organization to Barack Obama's younger sister Maya Soetoro-Ng at a gathering in East Los Angeles^[18].

Addressing a largely Latino audience in East Los Angeles yesterday, Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng shared stories about her childhood with her older brother, Barack Obama, and the effect he has had on her life. Held in El Sereno’s Hecho en Mexico restaurant, the event drew more than a hundred enthusiastic community activists, local elected officials, and regular citizens...

Evelina Alarcon, a notable Obama supporter and the sister of long-time Los Angeles politician Richard Alarcon, presented a poster to Obama’s sister commemorating the life of Cesar Chavez.

Alarcon recounted the accomplishments of the late Chicano leader and argued persuasively for honoring his accomplishments with a national holiday. Reminding those in attendance that Barack Obama supports the call to make Cesar Chavez’s birthday a national holiday. Alarcon trusts that if Obama is elected president the holiday will become a reality.

Obama has been quoted recently to say:“As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago and we should honor him for what he’s taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation. That’s why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez’s birthday a national holiday. It’s time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union.”

Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

From May 22-25, 2008, the Communist Party USA founded Coalition of Black Trade Unionists held their 37th International Convention in St. Louis, Missouri.
William Lucy, President, CBTU - Introduced Senator Barack Obama, who addressed the conference via phone.^[19]

Communist support in '08

The Communist Party USA and the Young Communist League USA, put in a huge effort to elect Barack Obama in 2008.
Individual party members who actively propagandized for Obama, or worked on the ground to get him elected include;

Communists alter history to protect Obama

Screenshot of article as it appeared as at Dec. 30, 2007

Screenshot of the article as it appeared as at Nov. 10, 2010

To the left is a screen shot an article entitled "Special District Meeting on African American Equality", taken as it appeared on the Communist Party USA website as at December 30, 2007. Note the reference to Communist Party support for Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate primaries.^[20]
To the right is a screen shot of the same article taken on Nov. 10, 2010. Note that the statement, "Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election" has been edited out.^[21]

CPUSA Extols Obama 2012 Victory at Int'l Communist Meeting

A report praising Barack Obama, and the changes wrought by him, was delivered at the 14th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, held in Beirut, Lebanon, November 22-25, by Erwin Marquit, member of the International Department, CPUSA.^[22]

We express our gratitude to the Lebanese Communist Party for hosting this important meeting under the present difficult conditions.

The Communist Party USA not only welcomes the reelection of President Barack Obama, but actively engaged in the electoral campaign for his reelection and for the election of many Democratic Party congressional candidates. We regarded the 2012 election as the most important in the United States since 1932, an election held in the midst of the Great Depression.

The election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 led to the legalization of the right of workers to organize labor unions and to bargain collectively with employers. It led to the establishment of a compulsory employer-worker funded pension system for retired workers. It also introduced measures that enabled unemployed families to survive the Great Depression, among which were employment in the public sector for the unemployed, work camps for youth, and food provisions for the poverty stricken. Except for the youth camps, which ended with the onset of World War II, all of these are measures that the 2012 Republican Party agenda would have eliminated or greatly weakened. We believed that if the Republican candidate for President were elected and if both houses of the Congress fell under the control of the far right, racist sector (calling itself the “Tea Party”) that now dominates the Republican Party, the nation’s return to pre-1932 conditions would be a real danger.

Because of this danger, we viewed our participation in mainstream electoral activity as obligatory, even though both major parties in the United States are dominated by capital, with no effective competition from a mass-scale social-democratic party, We are aware that some on the Left in the United States thought that the correct approach to the elections was either to boycott them, or as a protest, to run or support small-scale left-wing candidacies with no possible chance of winning. We Communists rejected this strategy because too much was at stake.

The most import success of the Obama Administration since its election in 2008 was the introduction of a major expansion of the people’s access to financing of their health care. As a result of this legislation, 25 million people now have access to health care who previously did not have it. The repeal of this health care law was one of the main points in the programs of the Republican Party presidential and Congressional candidates in the 2012 election. Even without a repeal, there is still the danger that it will be ruled unconstitutional by the present Supreme Court even though the lower courts have upheld it. Whatever the present Supreme Court might not rule, a Supreme Court loaded with right-wing justices appointed by a Republican president would still be able to do so.

Obama has opposed Republican attempts to introduce austerity programs similar to those in the European Union. The Republicans have opposed his efforts to use government funds as economic stimuli to reduce unemployment, as well as his attempts to remove the special provisions of the income tax code that have allowed the rich to be taxed at a lower percentage of income than the average working person, and to eliminate of tax benefits that the corporations get when exporting of jobs abroad. The Occupy movement, with its slogan, “We are the 99 %,” that swept through the country in 2011, sharply drew attention to the power of the top 1%” of the population and stimulated support for Obama’s efforts to require higher taxes for the wealthy. The Republicans have blocked all proposals to reduce global warming, environment destruction, industrial pollution, and other actions arising from corporate greed that that threaten to destroy the biophysical basis of human existence. Republicans even want to privatize the FEMA, the federal agency for disaster mitigation.

Another important issue is that of justice for immigrant workers and their families. There are between 10 and 11 million irregular immigrants in the United States, mostly from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Our Party supports the regularization of their status, with full rights in the workplace and in the community, and access to U.S. citizenship. The Obama administration has moved too slowly on this issue (and the CPUSA has been sharply critical of this), but it is now taking some modest but real steps. The Republicans, on the other hand, have whipped up a racist frenzy against immigrants that has led to vigilante action and in some cases the murder of immigrant workers. Romney had promised to make life so hard for undocumented immigrants that they would all “self” deport.

Faced with a choice between the victory of either the Democratic Party or Republican Party, the Communist Party viewed a victory of the far-right Republican Party as an extreme disaster. In this situation, we saw the necessity of a policy of center-left alliances in order not to separate ourselves from the people’s struggles for dealing with the far right onslaught, The basis of such an alliance now includes the labor movement, organizations of African Americans and Latinos, the women’s movement, gay and lesbian civil rights groups, and organizations of the elderly and retirees. On some issues, these groups are joined by a few far-sighted elements of capital.

What do we mean by “far-sighted” elements of capital? As in all capitalist countries, big capital is not a monolith of common interest. Not only are elements of capital in competition with one another, but differences in their investment policies give rise to conflicting political interests. Corporations with investments in the oil, coal, and natural gas industries tend to have the most right-wing orientations. Corporations with heavy investments in China are somewhat wary of China bashing by the Republicans and even by Obama. Some corporations derive their superprofits by operations that do severe environmental damage and contribute heavily to global warming, while others depend on a relatively healthy environment for their maximum profits. That is why some elements of big capital support the Republican Party, while others support the Democratic Party because they can see a limited common interest some issues with the working-class base of support for the Democratic Party. Our present strategy is build alliances both inside and outside the Democratic Party to curtail the dominance of big capital over the lives of our people.

We are well aware that mass political activity on issues of social justice domestically and anti-imperialist solidarity internationally will not spring from within the Democratic Party. The Communist Party must continue to work with other components of this alliance to generate mass activity independently of the two parties to pressure the president and the Congress to act on its demands.

In our electoral policy, we seek to cooperate and strengthen our relationship with the more progressive elements in Democratic Party, such as the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. Congress, a group of seventy-six members of the Congress co-chaired by Raúl Grijalva, a Latino from Arizona, and Keith Ellison, an African American Muslim from Minnesota. We also will strengthen our relationship to the Congressional Black Caucus (formed by African Americans in the Congress), which has been the point of origin of innovative policies including an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, and with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In its domestic policy, for example, the Progressive Caucus has put forth a program for using the public sector to deal with unemployment. It has opposed the use of the so called “war on terror” to incarcerate U.S. citizens indefinitely without criminal charges. In its foreign policy, the Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus are outspoken in their opposition to U.S. imperialist policies abroad. The Progressive Caucus, now that Obama has been reelected, will be playing an important role in contributing to the mobilization of mass activity on critical issues to bring pressure on the Congress and administration to act on them.

In this year’s elections, the labor unions made vigorous efforts to involve their members and their retirees in phoning and door-to-door visits to campaign for Obama and the Democratic Party candidates for the Congress and state legislatures. In my state, our Party members preferentially participated in the election campaign through these labor-union channels.

In our foreign policy, U.S. Communists consistently oppose all U.S. imperialist activities abroad. We participate in the Cuban solidarity movement and demand the end of the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba and the freeing of the Cuban Five. We opposed the NATO intervention in Libya and oppose U.S. intervention in Syria. We support immediate withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and oppose the use of drones for assassination and bombing. We call for the end of sanctions against Iran. We oppose the intrusion of the United States militarily and politically in the affairs of Southeast Asia. We oppose the China-bashing policies of the U.S. government. We welcome the election of several progressive, anti-imperialist governments in Latin America and oppose U.S. attempts to undermine them. This leftward shift in Latin American, opening a path to possible socialist development, is of tremendous importance in the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle.

We call for the replacement of U.S. support of the apartheid regime in Israel by support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with the right of return of Palestinians to their native cities and villages. The day before the elections, the New York Times, in discussing the prospects of a Palestinian/Israel agreement, wrote: “Whatever chance exists of a new American peace initiative after the election is likely to vanish if Mitt Romney wins; at private fund-raising event, he said that the Arab-Israeli conflict was ‘going to remain an unsolved problem’ and seemed unconcerned about it.”

With the elections now over, there is a prospect that growing support in the United States for a just Middle East solution can induce President Obama once again to put pressure on the Israeli government to end the settlement expansion and resume negotiations leading to such a solution. An indication of such growing support is the letter on 19 October 2012 signed by fifteen leaders of the principal U.S. Christian churches calling upon the Congress to reconsider giving aid to Israel because of human rights violations. Reverend Gradye Parsons, the top official of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said, “We asked Congress to treat Israel like it would any other country, to make sure our military aid is going to a country espousing the values we would as Americans—that it is not being used to continually violate the human rights of other people.” The letter said that Israel had continued expanding settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem despite American calls to stop claiming territory that under international law and United States policy should belong to a future Palestinian state. This is a sharp contrast to the evangelical Christian churches, which have been part of the core of the far right support of the Republican candidates for president and the Congress. A Jewish-American organization called “J Street,” first organized six years ago as a “pro-Israel pro-peace” organization, has been gaining growing support among Jewish Americans for its advocacy of an end to the settlement expansion and a two- state solution based on the 1967 borders. In the 2012 elections, it contributed 1.8 million dollars to support the election of 72 candidates for the U.S. Congress, of which 71 were elected,

A key element of the Communist Party’s strategy of alliances is to imbue the struggles of these alliances with enhancement of the democratic rights, and to promote the increasing use of the public sector to extend the acceptance of a socialist consciousness. Obviously the Communist Party needs far more growth than it has been able to achieve. We are, however, effectively using our participation in people’s struggles and the Internet to recruit new members. We have an online daily news publication, People’s World, www.peoplesworld.org, a monthly online theoretical journal Political Affairs, www.politicalaffairs.net, as well as national and district Websites. As a result of our online activities, we have been forming Party clubs in states in which we previously had very few or even no members. This influx of new members led us to have a national Party school earlier this year to acquaint new members with the Marxist-Leninist orientation of the Party.

The reelection of Obama places before us the high-priority task of reversing the decline in labor-union membership by securing the enactment of the law requiring the recognition of labor unions when supported by the majority of workers of an enterprise and securing passage of other legislation that benefits the working people. The fact that the composition of the new Congress did not change ideologically enough to facilitate passage of this law still presents us with a difficult struggle. The fact that Republican Party still controls the lower house of the Congress and has enough votes in the upper house to block legislative changes of a highly progressive nature presents an obstacle that we will have to combat until it can be changed in the 2014 elections. We still have the task of strengthening the center-left alliance and enriching its anti-imperialist character.

While the victory of Obama is a welcome aid for us in our domestic struggles, we still face the challenge of mobilizing mass pressure on his administration to reverse the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy. The CPUSA will pursue this formidable task vigorously in alliance with domestic progressive forces and with our comrades in the Communist and Workers’ Parties and their allies throughout the world.

Bronx communists for Obama

In 2014, Bronx Communist Party USA member David Mirtz wrote;^[23]

On a local level, our Party's participation can matter. Prior to 2008 our club in the Bronx had little involvement in local politics and little relation with local activists, groups or elected officials. Through spear-heading work on the Obama campaigns and the subsequent healthcare fight, as well as leading local work of the WFP, that has changed. Now we are "in the loop" and part of the local political scene

Flynn Club support

In 2014, the New York based Communist Party USA Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Club wrote;^[24]

Sometimes, we must be free to disagree with Democrats on selected issues, even those whom we have supported, such as Obama on a national level, Jerrold Nadler, a progressive Congressman from Manhattan, and Bill De Blasio, who is New York City's new progressive mayor. For example, we should be free to advocate a general reduction of our country's military and to disagree with the Obama Administration's expansion of some sections of our military forces.