It has been a busy year for the Missouri/Kansas District of the Communist Party and next year will be no different!

While most of the Party’s work is done through the numerous unions, community groups and coalitions that members are leaders in, two specific Party events stand out.

First is the day-long Annual District Leadership Retreat in March attended by about 50 members and 6 elected officials, as well as Party national chair, John Bachtell. The Annual Retreat brings leaders together from all over the District to discuss, plan and prioritize work for the year.

Members came from St. Louis, Columbia, Springfield and West Plains, MO, as well as Kansas City and Wichita, KS.

The first half of the day, comrades reflected on the work of the prior year, and heard remarks from Bachtell. After lunch, elected officials thanked the Party for all of its hard work and up-dated members on the challenges of legislating a progressive agenda. Afterwards, members made plans and prioritized their work for 2017.

The second, was the 25th Annual Hershel Walker ‘Peace & Justice’ Awards Breakfast keynoted by Bhaskar Sunkara, founder and editor of the Jacobin magazine. The Breakfast was attended by over 170 people, and about a dozen elected officials.

The Awards Breakfast is named after life-long St. Louis Communist, labor and community leader Hershel Walker. Awards are given to leaders who have gone above and beyond in the struggle for economic and social justice; awardees reflect work done in the community, labor and legislative arena.

The bulk of the MO/KS District’s roughly 150 members is centered in St. Louis, with smaller pockets in the cities listed above.

Moving forward, members are spending the summer collecting petition signatures to help stop so-called right-to-work and take big money out of politics through the ballot initiative process. Then, we’ll be focused on organizing for the AFL-CIO National Convention to be held in St. Louis in October.