First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 25, June 27, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Within days after the Founding Congress of the Communist Party (M-L) June 4, the new Party’s banner was unfurled in the midst of some of the most significant current struggles of the people.
Everywhere that the news of the Congress reached, workers enthusiastically greeted it. Last week’s Call, which carried the first report on the Congress, sold more copies than any previous issue.
In New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade June 12, the banner of the new Party stood proudly at the forefront of the Lolita Lebron Contingent. More than 150 people took part in the contingent, which demanded freedom for the five Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners, including Lebron. The contingent also called for independence for Puerto Rico. The New York marchers also pledged their full solidarity with the rebellion of Puerto Ricans in Chicago’s Humboldt Park community a week earlier.
In the Humboldt Park struggle itself, the Party’s first leaflets were distributed within 24 hours after the Congress had concluded. The immediate mobilization of the CP (M-L) in support of the Puerto Rican community’s struggle reflected the line of building the Party in the heat of class struggle and in the closest connection with the broad masses of people. It also provided a clear example of the Party’s stand against all national oppression and for the unity of the multi-national working class.
Elsewhere around the country, Party cadres returned from the Congress to lead and participate in many other important class battles. In San Francisco, the Party’s first local leaflet condemned the capitalists’ attempt to evict retired Filipino and Chinese workers who live in the International Hotel, a target of “urban renewal.” The Party fully supported the demonstration of 3,000 people on June 12 against the evictions.
In Colorado, the CP (M-L) helped build a march of striking workers at the mansion of beer baron Joseph Coors. This militant activity threw the union bureaucrats into panic. They immediately began a slanderous redbaiting campaign, trying to drive a wedge between the Party and the workers. Although the bureaucrats succeeded to some extent, many workers rallied to support the Party, pointing out that it was the communists who stood for class struggle unionism, while the bureaucrats preached class collaboration.
In the factories, mines, mills, communities and schools across the country where the Party is working, the general response of the people to the news of the Congress was one of great excitement and militant support. Many workers have begun to get organized to study the Party’s Program and the other documents of the Congress which will be available for distribution next month.
The birth of the new Party represents the first time since the revisionist takeover of the Communist Party U.S.A. in the 1950s that the working class has had a revolutionary party to guide its struggle. This is why there is excitement in the air. A party has finally been built which will lead the fight for the complete overthrow of this capitalist system with all its injustices and oppression, replacing it with a socialist society run under the rule of the working class.
Although the CP (M-L) is a young party, still small in size and not yet known to many workers, this situation will soon change. Pursuing a Marxist-Leninist line and always building and strengthening itself in the storms of the people’s struggles, the CP (M-L) will earn the name of the vanguard party of the working class.