Sunday, June 15, 2014

Communist Party USA gathers in Chicago

Chicago Tribune ^ | 15 june 2014 | Ron Grossman
A cheerleader for the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century and a leader in the labor movement during the Depression; hounded during the McCarthy era and orphaned after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party USA on Friday returned to Chicago, the city of its birth. Given the movement's history, some might wonder why anyone would want to be a communist. But the more than 300 adherents who came to celebrate the party's 95th anniversary at the University of Illinois at Chicago see it the other way around: Who wouldn't want to be a member? Among them was Susan Gosman, who on the opening day of the convention stood in front of sign-in sheets divided by decades. Delegates were asked to mark the one during which they were radicalized. "For me, it would be 1944," she said. "The year I was born." Gosman is a "red-diaper baby," as a communist born to communist parents is known. Her father took part in the 1930s sit-down strikes in automobile plants that won autoworkers a union. But it also got him in trouble during the 1950s. That meant tough times when she was growing up, and her parents cautioned her about the perils of following their political path.
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