Resolution submitted by the Political Action Commission, CPUSA

The highest priority task confronting the working class, the  people’s movement and the Communist Party in the next six months is defeat of the corporate, extreme right-wing Republicans on November 4.   With a massive voter turnout,  that victory is within reach.  We cannot afford another election like 2010 when millions of voters stayed home and the Republican extreme right-wing took majority control of the House of Representatives and many Governorships.

Republican voter suppression tactics — racist and anti-workingclass to the core — were a major factor in that defeat. The strategy of the Republican Party is to sow defeatism among the people, with the corporate media spreading the Big Lie that the GOP has already won. Meanwhile, Republican-majority legislatures in states across the nation have rammed through voter suppression measures in their drive to preserve majority Republican control in the House and win it in the Senate.

Yet the presidential elections of 2008 and again in 2012 prove that a clear majority rejects the GOP’s “reverse Robin Hood” agenda of stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. The people reject the sleaze, the racist, sexist, and homophobic hate that pours from the mouths of these rightwing, Republican demagogues.

We say that the best way to defeat the Koch Brothers, the Republican demagogues, is to stand and fight on basic issues that affect the vital self interests of the people:

• To insure the right to vote, to oppose every “dirty trick” aimed at suppressing the right to vote.
• To expose the corrupting influence of secret corporate money unleashed by the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling.
• To defend affirmative action from wholesale attack by the racist Republican right
• To uphold the vital role of government, at all levels, to meet the needs of the people, in the first place job creation.
• To restore tax justice by taxing the rich and providing tax relief for working people
• To restore cuts to food stamps and pass an extension of unemployment compensation.
• To pass the $10.10 federal minimum wage bill now before Congress as a start and raise it further to a living wage, at least $15 an hour.
• To enact a Federal Budget that provides full funding of vital social programs while cutting Pentagon boondoggles.
• To stop deportations and push through Congress immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented working people
• To strengthen and expand Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
• To strengthen and expand Obamacare as a first step toward Medicare for All.
• To rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, a program that would create millions of living-wage green jobs.
• To enact curbs on the consumption of fossil fuels, to curb greenhouse gas emissions that put at risk our global biosphere. ‘
• To pursue a foreign policy that upholds world peace and disarmament not superpower domination.

Republicans have used majority control of the House to block every one of these demands while enacting the so-called Ryan Budget that would slash hundreds of billions from human needs programs while lavishing billions more on the Pentagon. That budget not only preserves tax giveaways to wealthy individuals and corporations, it adds billions more, a vast Christmas tree paid for by over-taxation of working people.

Therefore be it resolved:

• That between now and Election Day, November 4, 2014, grassroots work with labor and allies to win that election will be the highest priority of every Communist Party collective and member.
• When we speak from the floor or write a slogan on a picket sign, we will say: “It is an election year…”
• That we will join with the labor movement and other mass organizations in voter registration and “Get-Out-The-Vote” efforts to insure the maximum voter turnout on Election Day, and  carry out that work in strategic areas so we can continue to organize on issues after election day.
• That we will seek out candidates who best reflect the peoples needs and aspirations, workers, African Americans, Latinos, Asian, Native American, women, and youth, and who speak out against GOP hate mongering and incitements to racist, sexist and homophobic violence.
• That we also encourage more Communist Party members to run for local office,  wherever possible running on “unity slates” with other progressive candidates.
• That we utilize the People’s World as “people’s campaign central” with an extensive share campaign; and that we prepare other literature to be available on-line for local printout to share with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and invite their participation with the Communist Party.

The views and opinions expressed in the Convention Discussion are those of the author alone. The Communist Party is publishing these views as a service to encourage discussion and debate. Those views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Communist Party, its leading bodies or staff members. The CPUSA Constitution, Program, and all its existing policies remain in effect during the Convention discussion period and during the Convention.

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