Speech given at the 27th National Convention of the CPUSA.

On the 225th
Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we affirm our commitment
to the revolutionary ideals which ring in so much of the original.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve the
political bands which subject our people to an exploitative, repressive,
racist, unjust economic system, a decent respect for the opinions of humankind
requires that we declare the causes which impel us.

We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all people, regardless of race, creed,
religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, age, or wealth, are
created equal, that we are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Among these
also are rights to a job, to health care, to education, to privacy, to
control our own bodies, to organize and assemble, to be free of racial,
national and gender oppression.

To secure
these rights, governments must derive their just powers from the consent
and participation of the governed. Whenever an economic system becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish
it, and to institute a new system, which places people and nature before
markets, before greed, and before profits.

The history
of the rule of gigantic and transnational corporations is a history of
repeated injuries, usurpations, and exploitations, all having in direct
object the establishment of tyranny over working people of all colors,
over all people not members of the monopoly owning class.

This tyranny
is now expressed by George W. Bush, he who would be a new King George.
We submit these facts to a candid world:

He has obstructed
and undermined the will of the people, ignoring our most valuable democratic
laws, subverting the forms of our government, yet again substituting the
rule of wealth for the rule of law.

He has refused
to pass laws to enable workers to freely exercise their rights to assemble
and organize into unions, rights inestimable to them and formidable only
to tyrants, reactionaries, and capitalists.

He has used
the powers of the office to which he was not elected to destroy the rights
of our female citizens to control their own bodies and lives, and to increase
the injustice and exploitation inflicted on African American, Mexican
American, Asian American, and Native American peoples and all other people
of color.

He claims
to be for the rights of people, but in actuality opposes all such rights
and benefits, attempting to capture Social Security for the vicious money-grubbing
stock market, opposing the establishment of a fair and just living wage,
opposing the extension of health care coverage for the millions now deprived
of such coverage.

He has combined
with others to subject us to unfair and exploitative though excessively
profitable trade, at the expense of the workers and peoples of our country
and of all the countries of the world.

He has endeavored
to obstruct the naturalization of immigrants, by so doing destroying families
and increasing economic injustice.

He has sent
hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance
through excessive taxation on the wages of workers, and yet create loopholes
to enable the wealthy and corporations to evade taxation.

He has encouraged
corporations to ravage and plunder our coasts, rivers, air, water and
all natural resources which are by right the property of the whole people.

He has affected
to render the military-industrial complex, the national security complex,
and the police forces and agencies, independent of and superior to the
civil power.

He has increased
aggressive military forces to threaten the peoples of the world, promoting
space weaponry to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny
already begun, with a cruelty and perfidy totally unworthy of a civilized
nation.

In every stage of these oppressions, we the people have
petitioned for redress of our grievances. Our repeated petitions have
been answered only by repeated injury. A system whose character is marked
by every act as tyrannical, corrupt and false is unfit and unable to be
a system of, by, and for a free people. We have used strikes, picket lines,
elections, demonstrations, non-violent civil disobedience and all other
available means, and will continue to do so until this system has been
replaced with one more just, more equitable, more human.

We have appealed to our unelected economic rulers, and
have conjured them by the ties of our common humanity to disavow these
usurpations, which inevitably corrupt our democratic institutions and
traditions. They have been deaf to the voices crying for justice and equality,
granting only such concessions as have been forced upon them by the united
will and action of an angry and aroused citizenry.

We, the working peoples of these United States of America,
solemnly declare that we are, and of right ought to be, free and independent;
that we are absolved from all allegiance to the rule of corporations and
reaction, and that all political connection requiring such rule is and
ought to be totally dissolved.

We shall complete the unfinished tasks of our revolutionary
heritage: for democracy, justice, equality, peace and dignity for all
people and peoples. We shall create a government of, by and for the people.
We shall develop a system-socialism-based on both political and economic
democracy. For the support of this Declaration we mutually pledge our
lives, our ideals and our sacred honor.

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