Membership and History
Membership in the party is by invitation, and invitation comes to volunteers in NATLFED entities as a revelation of the existence of the party, an explanation of the party's goals and strategy, and a brief "history" of the party, called the "genesis." This "genesis" is reportedly a narrative which includes claims that the party was part of a secret International including the Communist Party of Cuba, the Sandinistas and revolutionaries in Chile and El Salvador, and that members of the Weather Underground were among its founders.
In 2006 the CPUSA(PW) attained a small victory versus the state of California in Vega v. Mallory, when the State Legislature allocated $61,000 to settle the suit, which alleged that migrant laborers were overcharged for housing in a state-run program. The Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals and the Western Farmworkers Association, both NATLFED-linked groups, were instrumental in attaining a successful outcome for the plaintiffs.
In 2009 the party was reported to have been involved, again through some of its front groups, in a civic struggle around the proposed rebuilding of a hospital in a low-income area of San Francisco, USA.
Read more about this topic: Communist Party USA (Provisional)
Famous quotes containing the words membership and/or history:
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)