The Cold War may be over, but the New York-based Communist Party USA says it?s still red, not dead.
While he says he is not now -- nor has he ever been -- a member of the Communist Party, Rodriguez told the Daily News he got involved because ?there is still much to be done to eradicate racism from our society entirely."
Vestiges of the party of yesteryear live on: The CP USA logo incorporates the hammer and sickle. Party Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner says members still sometimes greet each other as ?comrade? and conclude meetings by singing ?The Internationale.?
But as for standing at rapt attention before portraits of Lenin, Stalin or Mao, ?You?re not going to see that around here,? Tyner chuckles.
The CP USA doesn't promote violence or civil war -- ?We?re not raising any army. We?re looking for a peaceful transition," Tyner says. The party's headquartered right on West 23rd Street, not concealed in some secret back-room location.
And the invite for the February gathering -- "suggested donation $5 or what you can afford" -- juxtaposes an appearance by Amiri Baraka with a ?wine-and-cheese reception? that a hard-liner might call downright bourgeois.
Tyner, who can throw around a few words in Russian himself, concedes the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union did put a serious crimp in party membership drives. (?But we?re rebuilding,? he adds.)
He also admits the 1919-founded CP USA movement,? which promotes economic, gender and ethnic equality, has to confront a history of the brutal totalitarian oppression that marked collectivist regimes in China, Russia and Cuba.
?We account for every mistake that was made,? Tyner says, while still maintaining that ?as a system, [communism] did things that capitalism only shuns: It did provide a full-employment economy, full health care, subsidized rents.
"Nobody went hungry,? he continues.
(Well-documented famines and food shortages suggest otherwise.)
As a loyal party official might well be expected to do, Tyner argues today's CP USA is about social justice, not show trials or state-imposed starvation.
"What we see is an America where all men and all women are created equal and happiness is the lot of all people," he says cheerfully.
He also notes next month's "We're Not Going Back!" event falls just after the birthday of the legendary W.E.B. DuBois, who officially joined the Communist Party at age 93 -- and suggests hostile portrayals and repression of the party, not by the party, might be deterring people from joining up.
Still, the CP USA's estimate, per Tyner, of having doubled its national membership online in the last few years -- albeit to only about 7 or 8,000 -- does raise the question of what Karl Marx might?ve been able to do with a Facebook page and a Twitter feed.?
Incidentally, Tyner, who ran for vice president on the CP ticket in 1972 and 1976, says he's registered to vote as a member of the Working Families Party (which, unlike the Communist Party, has ballot status in New York State).
While Tea Party fans may warn that ?all this democracy? will lead to socialism in an "evil" sense, Tyner muses, ?we mean it in a very beautiful way."
That said, ?It may not happen in a ?Great Leap,? as the Chinese argued.?
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