April Smith, a leader in the Michigan District of the Communist Party, helped kick off the CPUSA’s $75,000 fund drive with a $1,000 check and pledge to reach their goal.
Smith’s comments were contained in a letter to the national fund drive committee. The drive starts May Day and ends July 4.
The $1,000 was from the estate of Helen Winter, a long-time Party leader who died in December. Winter had asked that the money be used in this way.
As CPUSA National Chairman Sam Webb noted in his appeal to friends of the Party, to be politically active requires money.
“Unlike the two parties of Big Business,” Webb said, “we can’t just pick up the phone and call the Enrons of this world to finance our work.”
Many Communist Party members from around the country were in Washington April 20 to demand “No War at Home or Abroad.” The CPUSA/Young Communist League contingent was loud, lively and well-received. Marchers carried CPUSA placards emblazoned with a dove and the words “No War” across the top, with room to create individual slogans.
Party activists staffed a table before the march with pamphlets on the overriding need for peace in this period of a new nuclear danger and another on solutions to the conflict in the Middle East. A button showing the Israeli and Palestinian flags with the words “Peace is the only way” was the most popular item at the table.
To raise the money for all this activity, Webb said in his fund appeal, “we depend on people like you who appreciate our role in fighting for the people’s immediate needs as well as our advocacy of a socialist future, something that is increasingly necessary if humanity is to survive capitalism’s destructive tendencies in this new century.”
“The task of Communists is not to observe these developing movements and make declarations as to what they should or should not do, but rather to be a part of and help give leadership to them,” Webb said.
“That is precisely what we have been doing. From Maine to California, from Michigan to Florida, Communists – young and old, Black, Brown and white, women and men – have been bringing our energy and initiative, our concepts of unity, and our creative understanding of revolutionary Marxism to bear on today’s struggles.”
A donation to the CPUSA is a sound investment strategy to help guarantee a more peaceful and just world.
For contributions, send checks payable to CPUSA or Esther Moroze, treasurer, to CPUSA, 235 W. 23 St., NY NY 10011.
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