Forgive for not following your instructions. Citing a specific event from my Party membership over the past 30-40 years is not hard, but I may have misread your directions that it not be part of the publicly available record. I do not customarily accept assignments from anonymous people.

By the way, I never left the Party. I never joined the CCDS. I will not name names but if its specifics you desire, here goes: when I joined we had hundreds of Party clubs in the US. I will tell you where they were as far as my hometown is concerned, there were scores. I belonged to several, and led educationals at others. None of them exist today, every single one: gone:Brownsville; Crown Heights; Bay Ridge; Flatbush; Bensonhurst; Fort Greene; Bedford-Stuyvesant; Upper West Side; Harlem; East Harlem; Co-op City; Lower East Side; Artists Club (my uncle was in it) Garment club; Furriers club; Auto club (Rahway); East Side club; Astoria club; Staten Island club; Lawyers club; Doctors club; teachers club; college teachers club; Coney Island club; La Pasionaria club; Brighton club (another uncle); Manhattan Beach club; and others. Whether by neighborhood or industry, these clubs were steaming in activity. You ask for proof beyond documentary corroboration? You mean examples not in FBI records? Activities that I experienced, supported, and reconsidered? Blunders I witnessed? No problem.

Ok, one of my first petition campaigns was for a Party candidate for state assembly. This comrade is long gone but his name was Eddie P., a known figure, circa 1969. He ran once, and then we forgot about it. No follow/up, nothing. We did not continue any of the activities stemming from it.

Need another? A fellow named Sam ran for similar office, as an open Red, early 70s. I campaigned for him under the damn elevated subway. Where? You figure it out. Outstanding community leader, one of our own: we had a community center that sprung out of it. And then we didn’t. Gave it up. Pure surrender. More? We put together in 1983 five bus loads of people to the commemoration march of the original March on Washington. I spoke at several churches in this regard. I was not the only Communist to do so. I am speaking solely of my own club. On my bus, we recruited 40 people to the Party. Yes we did. And then? And then? Gone! Where were we? What happened? That a million people have come into and out of the CPUSA since the 30s is both noble and sad. Why’d they leave? Whose fault was it? Mind you, I did not join our Party of activists during the McCarthy period, when the Party’s legality was under attack and more than a hundred went to prison. The recruits to whom I refer came to our Party at a much better time, a period of genuine radicalization. And then quit.

The Party gave me the chance to campaign outside my hometown: New Haven, Philly, Chicago, Boston. Good days, good experiences, quick successes, and many mistakes. I wouldn’t surrender these experiences for anything. Let me recall what I saw in New Haven during the Panther trial there, that of Ericka Huggins, Bobby Seale, and others. I stayed at a comrade’s house that week. How much specifics do you need? Do you want the address, the title of the street, the names of my hosts? That week there was danger of both police and National Guard attacks upon the protesters. The head of the local Panthers came to the house. He met with the local head of the Party in the living room. Whatever the FBI had on these comrades, forget it: I was there. All of us were warned to stay away from the New Haven Green on the approaching Saturday.

The Party spurred the National Allisnce Against Racist and Political Repression, then abandoned it; Women for Racial and Economic Equality, then abandoned it; the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, then abandoned it; the great magazine Freedomways, then abandoned it. Lost chances, successes followed by emptiness: such is the pattern.

Anonymous, I do not have to account to you for anything in my Party membership. Your question as to non-publicly corroborated experience smacks to me as the query of an agent. The Party has blown thousands of chances, but of course you are correct, far far more than appear in published form.

Neither the beauty nor the frustration of my experience will leave me. I would rather not tell you which particular city blocks my club was assigned to, but can say with pride that I helped map them out with my comrades. I would rather not tell you for which local school boards my club ran candidates, but I was proud to contribute. And now? Moot!

Be careful whose specific personal observations you elicit. Have some respect.

Sorry Sarah, I’m a little skeptical of your story. I think all the information you shared is accessible publicly. Also your story is that you joined in 1967 but sided with CCDS in 1991 and didn’t leave the party like most who were? And you have a problem with the party today even though leadership is now controlled by CCDS aligned individuals? They presented greetings from Angela Davis at the convention.

You have raised a good question my anonymous comrade. For all the Party’s current lauding of members who quit, dead or alive, the fact that most never returned to the fold is too often glossed over. Let us cite the example of the late Charlene Mitchell, a Party leader for a good 50 years, who left and never went back after 1991. One may also point to Angela Davis in this light. They and others came to view the Party as the wrong place for them to be. Yet they never cast their lot with the class foe. Herbert Aptheker, who knew a thing or two about what it means to be a Communist, stated concisely: “this is no longer a Communist Party.” With few exceptions, the Party lost nearly all the members and clubs in Northern California back then. With few exceptions, nearly every member of the Teachers Club in New York quit the Party. With some exceptions, entire clubs withdrew from the Party in Southern California. Louis Weinstock, labor hero and militant trade unionist, could not get himself to stay in the Party. Forget the weak-kneed and faint of heart for a moment, the ones who fell pray to bourgeois illusion. I am speaking of some of the strongest Marxist-Leninists in the Party, who had defended its soundness and principles to the end. Every new turn in Party history yields devoted critics who believe that they are starting something from scratch, without precedence. As if history began on the day they joined the Party. As if history is a dead letter, rather than a continuous struggle.

Hi Sarah, Could you cite a specific example from 30-40 years ago or some detail that only someone in the party 57 years would know? It seems suspicious that you’re asking comrades fighting for democracy to give up as the struggle is just gaining momentum.

Hi Sarah, we agree with your position! This is why we have been encouraging members of the CPUSA to leave and take their entire clubs with them if they can (see, for instance, How to Leave a Rotten Party and our little mini-history of the CPUSA’s revisionism and anti-democratic manipulation).

We are urging this first and foremost because until the large revisionist organizations are discredit thoroughly in the eyes of the advanced workers, we won’t be able to form the basis of a new party that can actually advance the cause of revolution. To form this party, to conduct unification procedures with local organizations (like clubs that have departed other, revisionist parties), is one of our goals.

If you or your trusted comrades would like to submit anything to the Clarion we would love to carry it! And if you would like to be kept informed about unification procedures we would urge you to write us at USUEditorial@protonmail.com.