Communist Party USA held its 27th National Convention July 6-8, 2001 at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Here’s the view from the Texas table
Texans Attended Communist Convention
I arrived in Milwaukee a few days early and helped with PR work. Local and national coverage was pretty good. The local Milwaukee paper went to the trouble to scrounge the world for a credible anti-communist to write their headline. They finally found somebody in Atlanta, Georgia, who would testify that we are all dead. They used that for their headline, but the text of the article was good. They noted that Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was spinning in his grave to see so many lively Communists who outlived his witch-hunt!
Everybody I talked to agreed that the convention was better organized and more enjoyable than any in recent memory. There were 512 folks. 45% were union members. 79% have e-mail! The temperatures topped out at 80! We had “coffee shop” entertainment every night, at least two major parties in the dorm, and we had cultural presentations like music and videos every now and then all through the convention.
Everything came off well. We got seriously behind when the international delegates began to be presented. I guess there were around 20 of them. None spoke very long, but there was a wealth of information about their own countries and their observations about their areas. I think the Brazilians and the Middle-Easterners struck me the most because so much is changing in their areas.
I didn’t get to go to much of the night life because of my PR duties, but I was able to attend 3 of the 20-30 workshops presented: culture, seniors, and educating activists. Attendance was good and everybody was eager to share ideas. Part of the success of the thing was that cpusa had just gone through a pre-convention discussion period that was probably the largest and most extensive in history. Internet use made that easier. I think everything is still up at www.cpusa.org. They’ll also put some of the presentations there.
I was pretty excited to hear about plans to enlarge the web site. I think that districts like Texas will be able to move onto the national site, so people can find us all together.
Everybody, including me, was charged up and eager to get to work on making America a better place to live. I’m looking for feedback from people who want to get active and/or people who want to learn more about how to work for change.
With Love & Solidarity
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We held our Texas Convention on June 3