Obama-file 9 US Communists Explain Backing For Barack Obama

Obama-file 8 here

The Communist Party USA has abandoned it's pretense of neutrality .

It is throwing all its energies behind Barack Obama in the race for the Deomocratic Party presidential nomination.

Why?

I'll let three top US Communists explain;

According to Terrie Albano, editor of the CPUSA's People's Weekly World;


The movement that has exploded around Obama is so important. It's antiracist in essence. It's deep and broad and multiracial and multigenerational. It has insightful and sophisticated everyday people active in it. It's the cream rising to the top after the long horrendous period of the Bush administration and ultra right rule since Reagan.

But even if Obama doesn't win and Hillary Clinton does, getting rid of any ultra rightist will take this country forward. And the movement around Obama will influence Clinton.

This kind of upsurge comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives - each of us - get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don't let history pass you by.

Pepe Lozano is a leader of the Chicago Young Communist League and is a People’s Weekly World editorial board member.


Pepe Lozano's late father, Rudy Lozano, was a leading Chicago activist until his murder in 1983. Shortly before Lozano's death, newly elected Chicago Mayor, Harold Washington enlisted him as his liaison to the Latino community.

Rudy Lozano played a big role in building the white "progressive"/Black/Latino coalition that elected Washington, the first black mayor of a major US city.

This coalition was organised by the CPUSA and Chicago's socialist community that would later coalesce into the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Washington was a longtime supporter of both groups and a probable secret member of the CPUSA. On taking office he proceeded to stack City Hall with communists, socialists and "progressives."

This socialist "golden age" ended with Washington's death in office in 1987, but the alliance that elected him went on to elect Carol Moseley Braun to the US Senate in 1992.

It has also supported Barack Obama at least since his successful State Senate race in 1996.

According to Pepe Lozano;

African Americans and Mexican Americans — and really all Latinos — have much to gain in the 2008 elections. There are opportunities for both communities to work together and lead the growing movement for political change in Washington.

The Black-Latino alliance is a major force that brings our communities closer in a world where racism, economic injustice and inequalities are deeply rooted throughout every aspect of our past and present.

One example of how such unity brought progress for everyone was the campaign to elect Harold Washington mayor of Chicago...

Washington made history that year and put Chicago on the map due to the coalition of Black, Latino and white progressive forces that culminated in a record turnout of voters...

The multiracial coalition for political unity that put Washington in office was in large part due to the Latino vote, which by itself had a record turnout of 62 percent, 82 percent of whom voted for Washington.

Like Harold Washington, Sen. Barack Obama, on a much larger scale, could make political history by becoming the first African American president. And if it wasn’t for Washington’s example and the coalition forces in Chicago at that time, Obama might not be in the position he is in today.

While modern Latino's lean heavily towards Hillary Clinton, Lozano believes they can and should be turned Obama's way.

There have been some talk that Mexican Americans and other Latinos aren’t going to vote for Obama, that we “aren’t ready” to vote for a Black man or we have nothing in common.

It is false to assume that Latinos are not prepared to vote for Obama. Or by extension that Latinos and Blacks have nothing in common.

Latinos of all nationalities, U.S. born or immigrant, men and women, younger and older, have to be agents of change too and reach out to others. That’s what was done during the historic Washington election — and the whole city won with that victory.

In order to do that we must continue to fight for multiracial unity, and the African American and Latino communities together have to be in the forefront pushing a pro-people agenda.

So let the reactionaries tremble at our unity in action. Together we have nothing to lose but our common oppression. And we have an election to win!

Contributing editor to the CPUSA's Political Affairs, Norman Markowitz, hopes that Obama will change the course of US politics.


Progressives seeking to build a national majority coalition that would both end and dismantle nearly thirty years of right-wing political power in the United States suffered a setback (that is all, I think, it can be called) with the apparent announcement that John Edwards is withdrawing his candidacy.

Some, myself included, had hoped that Edwards would stay in, continue to win delegates, and form a coalition with Senator Obama's delegates at the convention to develop both a program and a presidential slate that would decisively defeat the right-wing Republicans and begin to enact in the 21st century programs like national public health care, substantial increases in minimum wages and other labor and social programs, funded through progressive taxation...

Markowitz believes that Obama will repeat the 1930's. At that time the CPUSA flooded into Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" and pushed the USA far to the left.

Senator Obama has attracted people of progressive views, many of whom have been alienated from politics or are having their first experience with political activities, in a way that few candidates have for a very long time...

He is far less of a known commodity, far more likely to bring into government independents and progressives from the mass organizations and the communities along with the traditional Democratic organization politicians, as Franklin Roosevelt did during the depression...

But he can, I think, turn his status as an African American, a member of the minority group most stigmatized in U.S. history, into a very positive force, becoming in effect a real unifying leader for working class and progressive people of all colors, ethnicities and sexual orientations...

All of these conjectures may be meaningless if Clinton wins a large victory in next week's "Super Tuesday," which is a good reason for progressives to both vote for and get out the vote for Obama...

Obama-file 10 here