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The DeSantis Education Agenda, subtitled Putting Parents First, Protecting Parents Rights, presents a policy agenda that focuses on student success, parental rights and curriculum transparency.

The DeSantis Education Agenda is a student-first, parent-centered initiative focused on setting Floridas children up for success, ensuring parental rights in education, and combatting the woke agenda from infiltrating public schools, the website contends, setting up a survey for candidates who may want the Governors backing. This statewide agenda is for school board candidates and school board members who are committed to advancing these priorities at the local school board level.

Completing the survey in itself is not tantamount to a coveted endorsement, the websitesays.

Among the questions for survey respondents: Whether they support workforce education, the Governors increases in teacher compensation, or the concept of students being locked out of school or subject to forced masking.

What should your school district do to better prepare students as citizens? another prompt asks.

Another question regards protecting dissent: How will you protect a parents right to publicly disagree with their school board?

Respondents are also probed on critical race theory and the horrors of communism.

DeSantis has put limitations on School Boards with regularity thus far, battling with numerous local bodies about COVID-19 precautions for much of the pandemic.

He signed legislation that puts term limits on School Board members, but lamented the three terms required were one too many, and criticized School Boards and the White House for not listening to parents.

DeSantis said parents asked tough questions of School Boards during the pandemic, and were discouraged from doing so by a Joe Biden administration that likened parents to domestic terrorists.

The Governor said he would politicize School Board races last summer. During a cable television interview, DeSantis vowed to turn his political apparatus against Republican School Board candidates who oppose his educational reforms.

Were not going to support any Republican candidate for School Board who supports critical race theory in all 67 counties or supports mandatory masking of school children, DeSantis told Fox News Dan Bongino.

School Board races in Florida are nonpartisan.

Local elections matter. We are going to get the Florida political apparatus involved so we can make sure theres not a single School Board member who supports critical race theory, DeSantis added.

This post first appeared at Florida Politics.

Originally posted here:
CRT and 'the horrors of communism' among topics in DeSantis' new school board survey - Creative Loafing Tampa

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

A senior Chinese Communist Party official this week repeated Beijings demand that the United States not seek to overthrow the communist system.

Yang Jiechi, dubbed Tiger Yang for his virulent anti-U.S. positions, made the comment during a lengthy meeting with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Luxembourg on Monday.

The White House provided few public details on the conversation other than to say in a statement the exchange between the two officials was candid, substantive and productive. Candid is often diplomatic code for a harsh verbal exchange.

U.S. secrecy surrounding the discussion reflects what analysts see as increasingly conciliatory policies by the Biden administration toward China. Critics say that the administration has sought to pursue a sporting-like competition with Beijing rather than confronting the Chinese over such contentious issues as Chinas aggressive nuclear buildup, its increasingly threatening military activities toward Taiwan and its continued theft of U.S. data and technology.

The White House statement said the meeting was a follow-up to a telephone call between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Yang in May. The Luxembourg meeting also touched on regional and global security and U.S.-China relations.

Mr. Sullivan underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries, the statement said.

By contrast, Chinese state media provided much greater detail on Mr. Yangs presentation to the United States, including his admonition that the U.S. change its policies to support Chinese goals, including preservation of the communist system.

Maos Communists came to power in China in 1949 and have used deception and quasi-capitalist means to develop the country. Under President Xi Jinping, communism ideology has been revived and is now being exported as an alternative to the U.S.-led democratic system.

Mr. Yang is a member of the political bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and director of the panels foreign affairs commission.

Both are party positions, reflecting the fact that under Mr. Xi, the formal government has taken a back seat to the party in dealings with the United States, even as bilateral relations have grown increasingly tense in recent years.

The official party outlet Xinhua stated in its report on the meeting that Mr. Yang pressed Mr. Sullivan on a reported promise made by President Biden to Mr. Xi that the United States does not seek a new Cold War or aim to change Chinas system.

Communist Party leaders in recent years have adopted an almost paranoid fear of being overthrown and have accused the CIA and other U.S. institutions of seeking to subvert and ultimately defeat the communist system.

Xinhua said Mr. Yang also pressed Mr. Sullivan on other reported pledges from Mr. Biden, such as that the United States will not oppose China through strengthened regional alliances or by backing Taiwan independence, and will not seek a direct conflict with China.

The Chinese side attaches high importance to these statements, Mr. Yang was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

As for the candid part of the exchange, Xinhua revealed that Mr. Yang criticized the United States for allegedly containing and suppressing China in an all-around way.

Such acts, instead of helping the United States solve its own problems, have plunged China-U.S. relations into a very difficult situation and severely damaged the exchanges and cooperation in bilateral areas, Yang said, the news agency reported.

A senior Biden administration official said Mr. Sullivan did not press China on its military buildup or military provocations near Taiwan, but instead called for China to release Americans detained illegally in China.

The national security advisor pressed for progress on key issues of concern to the United States, in particular, underscoring the need for the release of American citizens wrongfully detained and subjected to exit bans in China, the official said. On this issue, in particular, he stressed this as a personal priority for both himself and for the president.

Asked if Mr. Biden will meet with Mr. Xi in the future, the senior official said, Id expect to see additional potential meetings in the months ahead, but nothing specific [is] planned at this time.

Mr. Sullivan asked Mr. Yang to help address increasingly belligerent behavior by North Korea, including missile launches and a potential nuclear test, the official said.

The official would not say if Mr. Sullivan questioned Mr. Yang on Chinas large-scale buildup of nuclear forces.

According to Xinhua, Mr. Yang told Mr. Sullivan that bilateral relations are at a critical juncture and demanded the United States observe Mr. Xis three demands for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and what Beijing calls win-win cooperation. Mr. Yang also said China is prepared to work with the United States if it agrees to Mr. Xis demands, but that China firmly opposes using competition to define bilateral ties.

The CCP official told Mr. Sullivan that the United States must correct its strategic perception of China and translate Mr. Bidens commitments about not overthrowing the communist system into concrete actions.

Mr. Yang in particular denounced U.S. support for Taiwan, noting China considers the Taiwan issue an internal affair and that any attempt to undermine national unity would fail. Taiwan is an issue that is the political foundation of U.S.-China ties and, unless handled properly, will have a subversive impact, Mr. Yang said.

Mr. Yang also reportedly hammered Mr. Sullivan on U.S. criticism of China for its crackdown in Xinjiang, repression in Tibet, repression of democracy in Hong Kong and military activities in the South China Sea.

The CCP-controlled outlet Global Times said Mr. Yang demanded the United States follow the advice of pro-China experts like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ease bilateral tensions. The outlet said that U.S. arrogance and disregardingChinese demands were to blame for tense relations.

Crazily suppressing China on one hand, and expecting China to cooperate on the other, [is] an extremely selfish idea that has not been realized by the U.S. in the past and will never be realized in the future, the Global Times said.

Russian nuclear threats limit Wests support for Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putins threat to use nuclear weapons against the West in response to the Ukraine war has limited some U.S. and NATO actions toward the conflict, according to a report by a national security think tank.

Russian nuclear threats preceded the Ukraine war but have not abated, said Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and author of the study. These threats influence Western responses to the war since they build upon earlier threats and exercises showing that Russia will use nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict to force acceptance of its terms.

The report by the National Institute for Public Policy argues that the nuclear danger has produced pervasive anxiety that inhibited Western relief efforts in Ukraine, such as derailing calls for a NATO-enforced air exclusion zone over Ukraine or sending advanced warplanes to Kyiv.

Western restraint has encouraged repeated and unrestrained Russian threats of nuclear use that are taken as inherently credible ones, even as Western deterrence is not seen as credible, the report said. This trend destabilizes the balance of deterrence.

Russias nuclear weapons strategy in the Ukraine war seeks to intimidate and deter NATO from reacting, providing Moscow with escalation dominance and thus the strategic initiative and freedom of action throughout all stages of a crisis, the report says.

The overall goal is the creation of a seamless web of threats to Russian enemies from both conventional and nuclear weapons to retain that escalation control.

Nuclear forces exercises and saber-rattling regarding the use of nuclear arms have provided a window on Moscows concept of strategic deterrence in action.

Meanwhile Russia will continue to use its remaining nuclear trump card and other kinetic and non-kinetic instruments to undermine Ukraine, the report states.

The report urges NATO leaders to move faster and more broadly at the conventional force level to undermine the force of Moscows nuclear threats: Otherwise Russia may continue to delude itself into believing that it has actually salvaged something from the debacle it has unleashed upon Ukraine and Russia itself.

Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter at @BillGertz.

See the rest here:
Inside the Ring: China to U.S.: Leave communist system alone - Washington Times

Hong Kongs arrest of 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen in May signals Beijings growing oppression of religious freedom in Hong Kong amid its widening clamp down on freedoms in the financial hub, according to Andrew Bremberg, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Hong Kong police on May 11 arrested 90-year-old Zen, former head of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, along with four other pro-democracy figures allegedly linked to a fund supporting Hong Kong protesters. The arrests were made under the citys national security law, which was imposed by Beijing in June 2020 and has been used to quash dissent in the city.

In several months leading up to his arrest we saw in state media outlets repeated, increased mentions of the [Chinese Communist] Partys concern about the influence that religion was having, Bremberg said in an interview on NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

This was laying the groundwork for greater crackdowns and arrests, he added.

Zen has long been an advocate of religious and civic freedoms in Hong Kong and mainland China and has spoken out against the communist regimes growing authoritarianism, including its imposition of the national security law and the persecution of Roman Catholics in China.

Bremberg, president of the Washington-based advocacy group Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said the allegations against Zen were an excuse used by the Chinese regime to detain him.

The Chinese Communist Party can create whatever pretext it wants, as an excuse for any individuals arrest. Weve seen this across the board, he said.

Beijings religious oppression in Hong Kong today was an inevitability, according to Bremberg.

As part of the CCPs broader crackdown on Hong Kong, the destruction of democracy and self-governance in Hong Kong, it obviously now leads to greater religious oppression, he said.

Bremberg noted that communist regimes have a history of arresting and harassing prominent religious leaders.

Throughout the last 100 years of communist regimes weve seen religion, churches and other religious figures have always been viewed as a threat to communism, he said.

The advocate pointed to historical examples of prominent religious leaders arrested by the Soviet regime in Central and Eastern Europe.

He singled out the case of Cardinal Jzsef Mindszenty, the highest Catholic official in Hungary, who was arrested in 1948 and then sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1956, Mindszenty was released during the Hungarian Revolution. The cardinal later fled to the U.S. embassy in Budapest as Soviet troops entered Hungary to crush anti-communist protests. He stayed inside the embassy grounds until 1971 before being exiled to Vienna.

Americans should be concerned about Zens arrest, Bremberg said.

Religious liberty has always been a bedrock of the American way of life, he said, pointing out that the founding of the United States stems from immigrants coming to the United States from Europe seeking the freedom of belief.

Crackdowns on religious liberty are frequently the first sign of increasing persecution and totalitarianism and violations of human rights across the board by any regime, he added.

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Hannah Ng is a reporter covering U.S. and China news.

Originally posted here:
Arrest of 90-Year-Old Catholic Cardinal in Hong Kong Signals Beijing's Increasing Persecution: Former US Ambassador - The Epoch Times

HUAC Chairman Harold Velde left Philadelphia in 1953 with an admission of defeat.

The witnesses refused to talk, Velde said in his closing monologue. Instead, they say nothing. One can only draw the conclusion that, though many witnesses have emphasized that they are not today members of the Communist Party, they do not wish to help destroy the Communist conspiracy.

With that, Velde gaveled the hearings to a close.

HUAC may not have achieved its stated goals in Philadelphia. But it had done something. It upended the lives of the teachers in its crosshairs.

The temptation here is to essentialize to draw a clean narrative from the aftermath.

Did HUAC and the subsequent firings destroy these people? Did it stiffen their resolve?

The answer, as always, falls somewhere in between.

Life was certainly different after HUAC at times uncomfortable or worse. Children of the fired teachers recalled play dates canceled and friendships severed in the wake of the hearings.

I didnt feel people hated me, but its clear they were very scared, said David Drasin, whose father, Sam, was among those fired.

Davids mother, Sylvia, wouldve likely been fired, too, but she died of cancer shortly before the hearings began. The family pressed on because it had to.

For John Ehrenreichs parents, Joe and Freda, the firings were a bump in an already bumpy road.

In the late 1940s, Joe, stricken with tuberculosis, left teaching temporarily and moved to a sanitorium. To make up for the lost income, Freda got a job as a school counselor.

Fredas job was a lifeline for the family, but soon after the HUAC hearings she suffered a serious heart attack and had to quit. Within a year, Joe had been fired and Freda sidelined by ill health.

We were pretty poor, said John. We did continue to get some help from my uncles and from some of the family friends. But things were tight.

The scramble for jobs led the teachers in all sorts of unpredictable directions. Herman Beilan became a traveling salesman. A former teacher named William Soler worked at a dental supply firm. Another, Solomon Haas, became an exterminator. Isadore Reivich got into the dry cleaning business.

For some teachers, the events set off by the HUAC interrogation seemed to throw their lives completely off axis.

English teacher Sophie Elfont lived alone in a small apartment in Philadelphias Germantown neighborhood. She never married or had children. Relatives described her as exceptionally bright and caring, but not well-suited to withstand the attention that came with her firing.

Afterward, her world seemed to narrow.

It was devastating for her, said nephew Mark Elfont.

Another relative told me she scratched out a living working for a clipping service. Shed scour the newspaper every day, cutting out articles for a coterie of clients.

She was able to maintain our independence, but it wasnt easy, her nephew said. She certainly did not have an easy life.

Sophie died in 1987. She was alone, Mark Elfont said so alone that it took about two days before anyone discovered her body.

She had dedicated her body to science, so there was no funeral, said Mark Elfont.

Theres a pull toward the tragic here perhaps as a way to indict the government, to prove how reckless it was in its pursuit of these teachers.

But to leave you with just those stories would be misleading. Because many of the fired teachers had rich, varied lives in the decades that followed.

Nathan Margoliss wife, Adele, wrote several beloved books on sewing.

John Ehrenrichs dad, Joe, had a long career as a technical writer.

The unions last president, Francis Fritz Jennings, became a lauded historian.

Perhaps the most interesting post-HUAC life belongs to one of the few Black teachers fired, Goldie Watson. In the years after, Watson hosted a radio show for homemakers and owned an apparel store.

She also kept a defiant foot in the political world, and worked her way back into the mainstream. In 1967, Philadelphia Mayor James Tate appointed Watson deputy commissioner of records. Shortly afterward, she became the administrator of a prominent urban revitalization program.

In the early 1970s, her political ascent culminated with an ideological twist. Conservative Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, a persistent foe of political and cultural outsiders, appointed Watson as one of his top deputies.

Its hard to imagine that a Black former Communist would get and take a high-profile job in the Rizzo administration. But professor Nicholas Toloudis thinks Watson saw Rizzo much the same way she saw the Communist Party: a means to an end.

She saw the Communist Party as being a toolbox, said Toloudis. The crowbars and the things in that toolbox were things she would use to pry open the segregated institutions of the United States.

Rizzo was a very different type of toolbox, but one Watson thought she could use in her singular pursuit a pursuit she explained to The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1974:

If youre trying to find out what Im all about its that I decided early on in my life that I was going to use whatever talents I had to help other Black people, Watson said.

Somewhere between the lives of Goldie Watson and Sophie Elfont, youll find the story of the Intille family.

Angelina Intille grew up in South Philadelphia one of 10 children in an immigrant family from Italy. She was also the only one of those 10 to continue her education beyond high school, according to her son, Joe.

The studious Angelina fell in with a mostly Jewish group of kids from the neighborhood. Many of them went on to become teachers, Angelina included. Joe, her son, does not think his mom was an active member of the Communist Party just that she was part of the same crowd.

Joes dad was decidedly not part of that crowd. He was a refinery worker with a tendency to gamble away his paycheck, Joe said. He also physically abused Angelina, according to Joe.

One day in the mid-1940s 1946 or 1947, Joe thinks Angelina gathered up her three boys and moved out while her husband was at work. She moved in with Bessie Stensky, another one of the Philadelphia teachers who ended up testifying before HUAC.

Joe, about 8 years old at the time, suddenly found himself in a world of school-teacher-activists.

The names splashed across the front page of the newspapers in 1953 were the people who helped raise him. People like fired teacher Eleanor Fleet and her husband, Irv a kind of male role model for Joe who got him interested in science and technology.

In February 1954, Angelina Intille and her housemate, Bessie Stensky, were among the second wave of Philadelphia teachers to testify before HUAC during hearings held in Washington. Intille, like the rest of the teachers, had already been suspended from the school district. Later that year, she and the others would permanently lose their jobs.

A single parent, Intille needed work, quickly. She and a few of the other fired teachers found jobs at the Sklar School, which served students with special needs. Another group landed at a progressive independent school in the suburbs called The Miquon School.

Joe, then in high school, made a little extra money working as an exterminator for fired teacher Solomon Haas.

That pattern repeated itself. The fired teachers got jobs together. The kids of fired teachers ended up working for each others parents, hanging out, or even, on one occasion, going to prom together.

HUAC hadnt blown them apart.

It bonded them, said Joe Intille.

Even though the union was in various states of decay, as a network of people, it remained intact well after the Supreme Court ruled against Herman Beilan in 1958.

To have a group like that 50 people, said Joe Intille. Whoever heard of such a thing?

As the next decade dawned, the groups legal luck began to turn.

Angelina Intille, Goldie Watson, and two other teachers had already launched a separate challenge based on the fact that their firings had come in a slightly different order than Beilans.

In 1960, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in their favor and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Angelina was free to teach again. And she did just that.

Seven years later, in 1967, the high court took up a case about a group of state university professors in New York who were fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. This time, the court reversed the precedent it had established in the early days of the Red Scare all the way back in 1952.

Invoking the concept of academic freedom, the majority said the Constitution did protect teachers like the ones fired in Philadelphia.

It was close. A 5-4 decision. But it meant the saga was over.

A few months later, a tiny article ran on page 17 of The Philadelphia Inquirer: Schools Rehire 4 Who Balked at Red Probe

Most of the teachers had moved on. But a handful applied for reinstatement and went back to work nearly 14 years after theyd been suspended

One of them was Judy Gandys father, Herman Beilan.

Why did he return to the school district that had so publicly fired him? Judy figures money was probably a factor. But her dad also loved teaching.

He was completely committed to teaching. Even when he was not in the classroom, said Judy Gandy. He would teach me at home.

Herman Beilan was in his late 50s by the time he resumed his public school teaching career.

Gandy remembers he would take the city bus to work every morning. And he would bring the newspaper along with him, folded up in quarters so that he could read without taking up too much room or inconveniencing the other riders.

He was trying to occupy his brain, which is kind of standard for him, said Gandy.

Herman Beilan and his friends were fired on the front page of the paper and rehired on page 17.

The world had moved on. In some ways, thats probably why they were re-hired.

By the late 1960s, there were new fronts in the culture war. As time passed, those fronts moved further and further from people like Herman Beilan.

When Beilan died in 1981, the Inquirer ran an obituary on page 31. It didnt mention his firing or the Supreme Court case that bears his name.

Angelina Intille also finished her career as a teacher in Philadelphias public schools. But just because she ended up back where she started, doesnt mean the family came through unscathed.

Her son, Joe, ended up in the Navy stationed, of all places, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where his assignments had a distinctly anti-Communist flavor. When he became a civilian, Joe worked as a technical writer. In the mid-1960s, he says he took a job that required a security clearance which the government then denied him because of his moms past.

The clearance denial cost Joe his job, and he ended up selling insurance for a couple of years to stay afloat. Finally, Joe says a government panel in D.C. agreed to review his case.

Theyre sitting up on this counter up there and Im sitting down on the chair and theyre grilling me about my mother and myself, Joe recalled. Why should I get a clearance?

To get his career back, he made a promise to the U.S. government.

I had to promise them that I would not associate with my mother, Joe said.

Joes older brother joined the Air Force and ended up with the same dilemma needing a security clearance to secure a promotion. For Joes brother, it was a breaking point.

It left a very bad taste in my brothers mouth about my mom, said Joe. He basically held it against my mom and never forgave her.

Even though Joe suffered the same consequences, he felt the opposite.

Im not ashamed of any of this, as a matter of fact, I brag about it because I was proud of my mom, said Joe. She stood by her principles.

As for that promise he made to the government about cutting his mom out of his life? He never intended to keep it.

No. No, Joe said. My mothers my best friend.

Angelina eventually remarried, retired, and moved to Florida.

She died in 2004.

Following a generational trend, many of the teachers retired to South Florida. But in their case, it was more than mere coincidence.

All of them all moved up to Lake Worth and they all moved into the same condo complex, said Joe. It was about 20 people.

The Pine Ridge Condominium Complexes sit just southwest of Palm Beach, a sprawling patchwork of two-story buildings and man-made ponds. Pine Ridge doesnt sound like the type of place where youd find a group of accused Communists from Philadelphia. But in the 1980s and 1990s, you could do just that.

Alan Soler the son of two fired teachers, William and Esther remembers visiting his parents and chuckling to himself as they sat around the pool with their friends reminiscing about the glory days of Communism. With near unanimity, the descendants of the fired teachers say their parents and grandparents remained dedicated to left-wing causes and ideology their entire lives.

Alan found the poolside chatter amusing and a bit hypocritical, given the material pleasures of a South Florida condo complex.

But its also a telling image.

Three or four decades after the government called them a threat to the nation, here they were, lounging in the Florida sun.

Theyd made it through. And theyd made it through together.

See the rest here:
Schooled: Revisiting the Philly school system's Communist purge - WHYY

The CPUSAs strategy at this moment, in this general point in time, is to strengthen the all-peoples front against the extreme right, at least some of which can be called fascist. When we use the terms people, peoples, and all-peoples front what we used to call popular we are saying this is a multi-class front. Not just the working class.

So our all-peoples front against the extreme right, against a developing fascist movement, is different from a united front against fascism that other left-wing parties call for. Historically, Marxist-Leninists used the term united front to mean the united working class. (Maoists use the term united front the way Leninists use the term popular front and peoples front. And for this reason, the Inside/Outside Project, because it unites some parties and movements from both traditions, uses the term broad democratic front.) We want a united working class to fight the extreme right, but we want much more than that.

We want the working class to lead the all-peoples front. Does it at present? That is debatable. Either way, if the working class does not lead the front, our task is to make it so. Regardless, the front already exists, and it involves or should involve all strata of the working class as well as other working peoples.

Unionized and nonunionized workers

In 2021, 14 million wage and salary workers belonged to unions, a drop of 241,000 from the prior year. The percent of that number in unions (the union membership rate) was 10.3% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Obviously, nonunionized workers far outnumber unionized ones.

Unemployed

They belong to the working class but are a special element of it. I personally know how easy it is to give up hope while unemployed. For a variety of reasons, white unemployed workers might be especially prone to extreme-right ideology.

Farmworkers

These are rural area wage-earning workers, too often neglected because social change movements are concentrated in urban areas. In a typical year, 2.5 million people are wage earners working on farms. About 2 million are employed on crop farms, and about 70% of these workers were born in Mexico (Wilson Center). Thus, the issues of farm workers and immigration rights are tightly interconnected. Farm workers are especially unprotected. Workers employed in agriculture are not eligible for time and a half their regular rates of pay when they work more than 40 hours per week (Department of Labor). (In New York State, the threshold is 60 hours.) So they face especially harsh exploitation.

All-class social movements

Examples are the African American equality movement, struggles for Latino/Hispanic equality, the womens equality organizations, LGBTQ struggles, the youth and student movements, and immigrant rights organizations. Every one of these social movements involves the working class and other classes. These movements are the greatest allies of the working class, and some hold positions more advanced than the programs of some unions. Included are organizations fighting on many fronts as well as single-issue groups.

Farmers and ranchers

In 2017, there were slightly more than 2 million farms and ranches. However, around 85,000 large farms owning 2,000 or more acres comprised nearly 60% of all farmland. There were only around 275,000 small farms owning 1 to 10 acres, and that represented just one-tenth of 1% of all farmland (CNBC).

Small business owners

The U.S. Small Business Administrations Office of Advocacy defines a small business as one employing fewer than 500 employees. There are nearly 32 million of them, but 81% (25.7 million) have no employees.

Given the level of development of socialist and progressive forces and the balance of forces, the all-peoples front also includes some elements of the capitalist class. After all, in this current period, we are attempting to stop the development of fascism; we are not launching an anti-monopoly coalition or attempting to overthrow capitalism. This does not mean that all the peoples victories are only defensive. It does mean that we are by no means in a general anti-capitalist phase.

The strike waves of the last two years; the unprecedented Black Lives Matter demonstrations; progressive electoral victories here and there, especially in the Deep South and other deep red regions: these and other victories are part of the all-peoples front. From my vantage point, the danger is to misinterpret these actions as evidence that something more advanced has superseded the all-peoples front.

When writing about the 1905 Democratic Revolution and the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (which became the Communist Party of that country), Lenin wrote, a Social-Democratic Party which operates in a bourgeois society cannot take part in politics without marching, in certain cases, side by side with bourgeois democracy (Two Tactics). When he wrote that, Russia had revolutionary and republican capitalists on one side, and liberal and monarchist capitalists on the other. His Bolshevik wing of the Russian party sometimes marched in parallel with the first group but did not merge into it.

This necessity of sometimes working alongside some elements of the capitalist class but not becoming engulfed by it stands true even in countries with a long democratic history (however limited that democracy has been). This is especially so right now in the U.S. because of our currently very limited trade union movement and our small organized left.

The two-party system is an additional force throwing the organized left into the world of capitalist politics. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have ever challenged capitalist rule in America, though the Democrats have a progressive and socialist wing and the Republicans have become dangerously reactionary. Socialist parties that stand aloof have much more limited contact and influence with mass movements in our country. If we feel the pain of workers and oppressed people, then we must conclude that it is a position of privilege to merely stand on the sidelines and only bark about what is wrong. Workers and especially oppressed people deserve solutions, and we must be part of the movements to remedy our societys wrongs. Right now, not in the distant future.

Yes, the various elements of the front unite based on common issues. However, in our political system, this will always boil down to this or that candidate, since practically every election involves a single-member district. Which given candidate in a given electoral district supports most of the issues that progressives favor?

One cannot be a dialectical and historical materialist and ignore the two-party reality of today. Then theres the anti-democratic nature of the Senate, in which the Democratic Party represents 41.5 million more people than the Republican Party, yet holds the same number of seats. Add to this the filibuster, and we have a situation in which the country is ruled by a minority that routinely blocks popular legislation. Democratic Party Senators Joe Manchin (W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) were able to sabotage President Bidens plans for two reasons: 1) The Democrats control the Senate only via Vice President Kamala Harriss tiebreaker role, and 2) the Republican Party, including the Never Trumpers, has been the Party of No since President Obama.

Wishing we had a massive left-wing party in a parliamentary system, or something even better, is an idealist waste of time. We must look at where reality is today and strategize on how to make it much better. Some democratic reforms could make critical differences. Included on this list would be expanding voting rights, creating independent redistricting commissions, eliminating the Electoral College, and reversing Citizens United some of those demands are herculean and will require Democratic supermajorities in the Capitol and many state capitals. Standing to the side and lecturing people in struggle about how terrible the situation is, but refusing to help elect candidates who pledge to make better laws, does not begin to do enough.

It also ignores what the Party program correctly points out: The Democratic Party has been the main vehicle used by African American and Latino communities to gain representation, as well as the main mechanism used to elect labor, progressive, and even left activists to public office, especially at the local level. African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian people have more reason than any social group to give up. Yet their leaders and organizations have not done so and are still fighting like mad. How dare any left political party or movement tell them they are wrong.

Unions have not had the support of the federal government for several generations. And most states have been hostile, not supportive. Yet unions and their leaderships have also not given up. When I hear left-wing nonprofit organizations and leaders tell trade unionists that they are wasting their time by supporting less-than-socialist candidates in the Democratic Party, I get a visceral reaction, an instinctive repulsion.

Indeed, the all-class nature of the all-peoples front is especially evident in our electoral system. When most or all campaigns are non-ending, with essentially unlimited spending, many elections must involve at least some capitalist funding, especially on the level of governor, other state-wide offices, the U.S. Senate, and increasingly so members of the U.S. House. And without debate, capitalists are highly involved in our presidential elections.

The few socialist legislators serving in Washington, D.C., and Albany, NY, who refuse all capitalist contributions are the exception some capitalist funding goes to nearly every progressive legislator.

Communist candidates cannot accept money from billionaires and monopolies. But we cant impose our position on every progressive and left-of-center liberal candidate. If we do, we will end up with only a few candidates to support. The task of halting the extreme right requires a much broader electoral front. How does our Party march side by side with antiextreme-right elected officials from a capitalist party? Primarily through the mass movements, nearly all of which are involved in every election we have.

Our tactics must jibe with our strategy. What exactly do we mean by tactics? Lenin answered, By the Partys tactics we mean the Partys political conduct, or the character, direction, and methods of its political activity (Two Tactics). At the least, we must not be sectarian. Instead, we should be broad in our approach. We should not hammer on the shortcomings of elements of the all-peoples front. Many forces of the front do that already; there is no need for us to pile on. Communists, more than any other political force, must work to build up the coalitions involved.

This is true especially after primary elections are over and voters face the choice of a decent liberal candidate or an extreme rightist. Harsh criticism of a Democratic candidate, who will either defeat or lose to an extreme-right Republican, serves no positive purpose. Some on the left think they must cleanse their brains and souls by telling the masses how flawed the better candidate is. In an age of rampant misinformation, which hits people from many sides, this is an especially poor tactic. Nearly half of the population gets its news sometimes or often from social media (most likely Facebook) (Pew Research). Watch segments from the three cable news networks Fox, Newsmax, and One America News. See which stories they pound on and which they ignore, and you will learn why some voters have no idea of where progressives truly stand. In such a world of misinformation, we must keep things straightforward when talking to voters.

Avoiding harsh criticism of Democrats in general election time periods is particularly difficult for parties and movements that back social democratic/democratic socialist candidates and the most progressive of the rest. These candidates are winning primaries nearly exclusively in the darkest blue districts. So during their campaigns, there are contrasts only with other Democrats and not the extreme-right Republicans. Sometimes, there seems to be an inability to turn off such criticism after primary season has ended. On a federal level are the examples of Bernie Sanderss voters who couldnt bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020.

That objective situation produces an ironic outcome: corporate Democrats take all the heat, and Republicans, regardless of party faction, are rarely mentioned. I am on email lists of several social change organizations working to elect democratic socialist and progressive legislators. I have yet to see a critique of Republicans from two of them. I am guessing these two organizations are in large company with other social change movements.

Leftists who tell people to not bother voting, that voting is a waste of time, are committing terrible errors. The extreme right is expending vast amounts of time, energy, and money trying to limit voting rights, to minimize or eliminate democracy. That alone should tell progressives and leftists to fight like hell to expand the electorate, to never counsel people to not vote. Electoral struggle is a necessary path of struggle.

We must avoid getting a contact high by surrounding ourselves with only like-minded activists. Instead, I prescribe sobriety tests by working with the people. Some of the general mass of voters are deeply confused by primary elections. I know this because when I do mass work for general elections, I sometimes hear, But I already voted this year. And the statements are not coming from early voters. We must accept the reality that many voters do not understand the basic civics of the primary versus the general.

In my mass work for the Working Families Party, when attempting to gather signatures to place candidates on the WFP line, some WFP-registered voters tell me they are registered with the Democrats and not the WFP. They are wrong, and I know it, because my information is from the Board of Elections. Meaning, these people have never voted in a primary. Otherwise, they would have learned at their polling sites that they were not eligible to vote in the Democratic Party primary since they were registered with the WFP. This is not, by any means, to pick on the WFP. I think the mass movements especially need to clarify this to Democratic Party voters, elements of which constitute the major pillars of the future anti-monopoly coalition.

This is the reality of where things stand. Lenin told us that scientific thinking demands that account should be taken of all the forces, groups, parties, classes and masses operating in a country. He added that policy should not be determined by mere desires and views, and by the degree of class consciousness and readiness of the most advanced group or party (Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder). We must heed his advice. The all-peoples front against the extreme right is the strategy to bring us forward.

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA.

Images: Top, Indivisible (Facebook); Farmworker, United Farm Workers (Facebook); Rev. Raphael Warnock campaigning for Senate (Facebook); Amazon Labor Union activists, ALU (Facebook); Poor Peoples Campaign march, PPC (Facebook); I voted, Daniel Parks (CC BY-NC 2.0).

The rest is here:
As the far right grows, so should the all-people's front - Communist Party USA