No Sale - In East Liberty, an African-American Muslim alleges discrimination over her faith (Pittsburgh City Paper)

https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/no-sale/Content?oid=1338209

No Sale

In East Liberty, an African-American Muslim alleges discrimination over her faith.

By Brentin Mock

Dana Harris won't quit.

Ever since she began working at the East Liberty Shop N' Save grocery store, she believes she's been discriminated against by store management because of her religion. As a Sunni Muslim, she must pray at certain hours of the day, she can't be touched by a man other than her husband and she must dress so as not to draw attention to her body's dimensions.

However, since working at Shop N' Save, Harris says she's not been allowed to take breaks to pray, has been touched disrespectfully by male employees and has been forced to tuck her shirt into her pants, which would accentuate her body in a way that violates her religious code.

As one of the first persons hired at the grocery store when it opened in March, Harris says problems began at her interview, when she was asked if she were Muslim and would have to wear her head garb while working. Harris had worked as a cashier for several weeks when she began training to become a front-end manager. When she asked her training supervisor if she could break during one day to prepare for her prayer, she says the supervisor declined and made a scene by raising her voice in front of customers.

After reporting the incident to the store's human-resources office, Harris says, the male security guards began touching her disrespectfully - "rubbing my shoulder and arm," she claims.

Her manager training was not resumed, although she has been allowed to wear her head garb. When she asked human-resource personnel about the training, Harris says, she was told it had been stopped because they didn't want her religion or prayers to interfere with her work.

Harris has filed complaints with Shop N' Save's in-store and corporate human-resources departments as well as the local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filed on Aug. 10, the complaint says the manager was "screaming" at Harris in front of the store's customer-service office about her desire to take a break to pray. "I was pulled from training because of my religion," Harris also wrote.

Shop N' Save staff approached for comment or eyewitness testimony about the alleged incidents say they are not allowed to talk to the press. More than half a dozen requests for comment from Shop N' Save's local corporate offices, made over most of a week, were not returned. The final request was forwarded by the company to Lynn High in Minnesota, a spokesperson for the regional headquarters of Supervalu, the grocery chain's parent company, on Sept. 26. High did not return calls to CP before press time.

The Islamic Council of Greater Pittsburgh Anti-Discrimination Committee (IPAD), on whose executive committee Harris serves, has collected almost 300 signatures for a petition decrying alleged discrimination and harassment on the part of the grocery store. It asks for "a written assurance that Dana Harris or any other employees associated with her will not be harassed or retaliated against for bringing her complaint to the management." The petition was delivered on Sept. 17 to the store's manager.

Harris has never stopped working as a cashier there. "You can't be in the fight if you're not in the fight," she says. Her lawyers and IPAD staff also advised her to remain on the job.

Quitting her job wouldn't allow her to address the root of the problem, says Harris. Her continued presence "shows people that she's still going to keep struggling every day and stand up for her rights," says Saleh Waziruddin, IPAD chair. "People at Shop N' Save and people in the community need to see that."

Proper resolution of the incident, says Harris, would mean a written and public apology. Meanwhile, Harris says she still has not been given break time to pray and is scheduled to work on days her religion would prevent her from working, even though she says she has informed the store of this stricture.

Harris performs as a spoken-word artist under the name Souljourner Truth. Her 17-year-old daughter, Bianca, and her mother, Rose Luster, also work at the store. Following Dana Harris' complaint, Bianca was fired after being accused of having a register short of cash. That action has since been reversed, Harris says, and the accusation withdrawn. Bianca filed a complaint with EEOC on Aug. 10, the same day as her mother's complaint, alleging that she was discriminated against in part "after management was informed I was related to Dana Harris, who is a Muslim." The Shop N' Save corporate manager alleged by Harris to have led the investigation into her daughter's case did not return calls to CP.

These allegations come as Supervalu announced, on Sept. 6, that it would be selling the East Liberty grocery store, along with 19 other Pittsburgh-area Shop N' Saves, due to sales slumps.

Waziruddin and Harris say they have had meetings with Shop N' Save executives in which store personnel reportedly promised to address the Muslims' concerns. In May, they say, the pair met with Nicole March, the human-resources manager for Shop N' Save, after which Harris says she was led to expect an apology and the resumption of her manager training. Four months later, she says, the only apology she's gotten was from a manager on behalf of the security guards.

Waziruddin says IPAD has been unable to meet again with Shop N' Save or Supervalu.

"We haven't been able to get anything in writing from them, not even to acknowledge that they met with us," he says.

Waziruddin and IPAD first came to prominence defending Getu Berhanu Tewolde, an Ethiopian Christian who was arrested in 2002, during a period of post-9/11 paranoia, when Tewolde's fellow passengers on a Greyhound bus boarding Downtown couldn't understand his accented speech and apparently mistook him for a Muslim worthy of suspicion.

Concludes Waziruddin: "The feedback we've [had] from people, especially in the African-American Muslim community, is that they've been through this kind of discrimination before and didn't know that they could do anything about it, and now they're thinking they should come out about this as well."

Blame Occupation (Letter to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Letters to the Editor, 8/19/05

August 19, 2005 12:00 AM

Blame occupation

The writer of the Aug. 14 letter "Stop Teaching Hate" exposes his own hypocrisy when he turns the killing of Palestinian civilians by an Israeli soldier upside-down to vilify Muslim and Arab cultures instead of the occupation. The writer recognizes that Jewish cultural values are not responsible for the killing of the innocent civilians but refuses to treat Muslims and Arabs with the same sobriety.

If the writer truly wishes to see an end to the violence, he should be against the occupations of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the ghettos and reservations right here in the United States. Occupation, not culture, is the engine of violence.

Let's hope that the author is at least correct about the shanda (embarrassment), so that Israel will be dismantled from within in the face of the Palestinian resistance, just like it happened in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and French Algeria. Racism and hypocrisy about Muslims, Arabs and people of color are an excuse for more occupation and violence, not a solution for conflicts.

S. SALEH WAZIRUDDIN
Shadyside

Fact Sheet - Stop Discrimination and Harassment at Supervalu Shop 'N Save

IPAD: Anti-Discrimination Committee of the Islamic Council of Greater Pittsburgh

STOP DISCRIMINATION AND HARASSMENT AT SUPERVALU SHOP ‘N SAVE

FACT SHEET

In March, 2005 Dana Harris, and African-American Muslim woman employee of SUPERVALU Shop ‘n Save in the corporate store in Pittsburgh, was told “we don’t tolerate any religions here” while she was being trained for a Customer Service position. Her training was then stopped. Until that point she had been given rewards for being a good employee.

Dana reported this to the Shop ‘n Save management at the store and they repeatedly assured Dana she would get an apology and the problem would be corrected, but there was never an apology and her training was not continued even though she was told she would be great for Customer Service. From that point the store management started to interfere with her timing breaks for prayer (which she was allowed to do before). In April Dana was also told by a Human Resource employee that her training was stopped because of a manager’s objection to her religion and prayer, which was heard by other employees.

In May a male employee started harassing Dana by slightly touching her and then saying sarcastically that she could not be touched by men as a Muslim woman.

On May 20^th senior human resources staff from SUPERVALU met Dana and her advocates. Nicole March lead the meeting for SUPERVALU, who in 2004 was a finalist for the Food Marketing Institute’s MAXX (Maximizing People Potential) Award for Human Resources. The following is comparison of what was promised to Dana in the meeting and what happened:

   SUPERVALU’s promise                              SUPERVALU’s actions

Problems are supposed to be addressed immediately and on site	Dana was told her complaints would be addressed but they never were
Contents of the meeting would be kept confidential	Immediately after meeting with Dana management spoke to other employees about the meeting in public
Retaliation towards Dana will not be accepted or tolerated	After the meeting Dana suddenly started being scheduled for days she was clear she was not available at, resulting in being labeled a “no call no show”.
SUPERVALU would acknowledge the meeting in writing	Nothing has been provided to Dana in writing
SUPERVALU will “look into everything”	Neither a confirmation nor a denial of Dana’s claims have ever been given

As of June her mother and daughter who also work at the same store were harassed as well, and other employees who associated with Dana felt pressured to leave the store in various ways.

Please join with us to tell SUPERVALU Shop ‘n Save to formally apologize to Dana in writing and to assure her and other employees in writing that they will not be retaliated against or harassed any further.

Two Strategies for Defeating The Ultra-Right: Vacillating vs. Secure Victory for the Working Class

Jose X, from a Rust Belt District

July 12, 2005

Two Strategies for Defeating The Ultra-Right: Vacillating vs. Secure Victory for the Working Class

How the left wing of the CPUSA can win the party for the working class and why this is necessary for establishing a dictatorship of the working class

(The less-commonly expressed ideas are from point #5 onwards, points 5-10 lay the basis for the solution described in points 11-13)

Outline:

• The current situation in the CPUSA: on the road to social-democracy – Lenin turned on his head - 1

• The danger ahead: the program of liquidating the CPUSA – its organs and ideas – 2

• The necessity of fighting social-democracy: quitting is not an option, mistakes are not affordable – the stakes are too high - 3

• Three pillars to making a decisive difference in the 29^th convention by doing the communist work we should be doing - 4

• Outline for a conference of the hard left-wing (as opposed to the vacillating left-wing) to organize concrete ideas and establish responsibility for work – 5

• Notes – 8

The current situation in the CPUSA: on the road to social-democracy – Lenin turned on his head

1. Given the intensifying exploitation of unskilled labor and oppressed nationalities in the US and the role of the US working class as a reserve for imperialism, communists in the USA should be organizing and educating unskilled laborers and people of oppressed nations so that they can gather a coalition of class forces around a revolutionary program to end the ruling class’s reign and establish a dictatorship of the working class.

2. Instead, the leadership of the Communist Party USA wants the current labor and oppressed nationality cadres to subordinate themselves to the program of middle class forces to overthrow the ultra-right, after which a peaceful campaign for socialism will be waged under the rule of the liberal section of the bourgeoisie. The leadership’s strategy is explicitly social-democratic. Sam Webb says it “boggles his mind” (28^th Convention) that anyone thinks they can win people in the US to socialism without (social) democracy, which underestimates the working class of the USA and overestimates the domination of bourgeoisie ideology. The idea that (social) democracy has to be at the “core of the struggle” in order to win “millions” to socialism (28^th Convention) is the idea of American Exceptionalism, which holds that it may be possible in other countries to win workers to the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat but not in the United States because the founding (Anglo-Saxon national) traditions of the country make for an exceptionally stable bourgeois rule. The leadership said at the 28^th convention that the ideas in the draft program are from the practices of the last 20 years – actually, they are even older. American Exceptionalism is a problem in the CPUSA that Stalin pointed out in 1929 when the Lovestone faction was in the leadership. Stalin pointed out that the work of communists should be based on general features of world capitalism, accounting for special features of local capitalism afterwards, whereas Sam Webb in his 2001 article in PWW “How best to describe socialism USA?” says the work should be based on specific features of US capitalism, and if this is American exceptionalism than he is an American exceptionalist.

3. Lenin’s attacks on social democracy are being turned on their head and quoted out of context to support a social-democratic program. Sam Webb often (mis)quotes Lenin from Two Tactics of Social Democracy to show that the fight for democracy is inseparable from the fight for socialism, but cuts out from the middle of an oft-quoted passage the key phrase “hence the temporary nature of our tactics of ‘striking jointly’ with the bourgeoisie and the duty of keeping a strict watch ‘over our ally, as over an enemy’”, to obfuscate the fact that Lenin was talking about an immediate confrontation with the liberal bourgeoisie during the fight for democracy, not the reformist fight for democracy as a goal of the working class movement. In the same work Lenin also says that the democratic struggle will strengthen the rule of the bourgeoisie, which will inevitably try to take away the gains of the revolutionary period from the working class (“Resolution on a Provisional Revolutionary Government”, from Lenin’s preface of Two Tactics of Social Democracy). Further exposing the social-democratic nature of the leadership’s direction, in a January 2004 PA interview Sam Webb classically distorts Lenin’s retreat of the New Economic Policy to say it was the basis of the alliance with the peasantry. Stalin thoroughly explained these two distortions as classic social-democratic deviations in “Foundations of Leninism”. These criticisms are characterized by Sam Webb as ultra-leftist, isolated, bitter recriminations, stuck in personal animosity and irrational archaism, and unsuited for current conditions (e.g. 28^th Convention).

The danger ahead: the program of liquidating the CPUSA – its organs and ideas

4. The social-democratic road quickly leads to liquidation and a betrayal of the working class, as seen in the examples of Euro-communism, Browderism, and other forms of revisionism. We cannot allow this situation to continue through the next convention, the international working class cannot afford it. In revolutionary times this road leads to the betrayal of the working class to liberal sections of the bourgeoisie. The social-democratic political program within the party is to liquidate the program of organizing revolutionaries (e.g. shop clubs, the right to full self-determination for oppressed nationalities as an anti-imperialist demand) and to divert revolutionaries to the program of the liberal section of the bourgeoisie. Instead of expelling opportunists and revisionists who have truly been factionalists, the leadership has welcomed back Committees of Correspondence leaders and in the case of Danny Rubin displaced a rank-and-file worker from the National Committee. Instead of seeing educational work as the way to raise socialist consciousness the leadership favors opportunistically limiting consolidation to recruitment alone (“we need more reds” as the answer to raising socialist consciousness that action alone does not raise, at the 28^th convention).

5. The social-democratic program of liquidation has been in place for a long time in the CPUSA, where organizations such as shop clubs and the Young Pioneers were liquidated under Browder. Ideas such as the self-determination of African-Americans were dropped, overestimating the petit-bourgeois tendency and underestimating the proletarian tendency in the national liberation movement, under the leadership of Foster who himself fought the revisionism of Lovestone, Browder, Gates, and others. Gus Hall introduced the revisionist and exceptionalist idea of Bill of Rights Socialism while at the same time he fought revisionists, namely the Committees of Correspondence. Even if the social-democratic tendency is defeated, comrades should keep in mind that there will always be social-democratic tendencies re-emerging in the communist party until there is a class-less society, and the work of the party includes constantly re-educating and re-molding the petty-bourgeoisies (see Stalin’s “Foundations of Leninism”). Developing the proper social base and consolidation through education are the keys to fighting revisionism.

The necessity of fighting social-democracy: quitting is not an option, mistakes are not affordable – the stakes are too high

6. Lenin and Stalin believed a working class revolution is not possible without first fighting social democracy in the working class party. Giving up on the party and leaving to form a new party is not an option. Revisionism is an ever-present and always-renewing force within Marxism as long as classes exist because it has a class basis (see Lenin’s “Marxism and Revisionism”). It cannot be escaped but it must be fought resolutely and decisively. In the past, attempts by the left wing to correct revisionism by leaving the party or by anti-revisionist agitation only has resulted in failure (e.g. POC, William Dunne respectively).

7. The biggest grouping in the party is not the revisionists or the left wing but the vacillating majority, which, because they are a petty-bourgeois strata from the upper layers of the working class (including some from the fallen middle class), adapts itself to whatever leadership is in the party and wavers at key moments. This group can never be relied upon ideologically or politically, the base of the party must be changed through expansion/recruitment of the social classes that will not vacillate, and these new elements must be consolidated through education. Calculations should include support of the vacillating members only when the left is strong on the basis of its work in organizing and educating the revolutionary layers of the working class.

8. As done by Lenin and Stalin, social democracy can only be defeated by a well-organized faction – this CAN be done within the framework of the 28^th national convention. Factionalism is condemnable when there is a communist party with communist, not social-democratic principles (see Stalin’s 1929 speeches on the CPUSA). The Iraqi communist leader Fahad, when fighting social democracy within the Iraqi party in the 1940s, said Leninist discipline is not binding on a non-Leninist program (from the pamphlet “A Party That’s Communist not Social-Democratic”, quoted in Hannah Batatu’s Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq). This calls for organizing the left wing in the party to scientifically change the composition and work of the party, to educate the party about Marxism-Leninism, and to change the leadership as soon as possible.

9. Factionalism that is harmful to the party, such as by causing disunity in the party and diversions from its revolutionary spirit and meeting the needs of the working class, must be avoided at all costs however. Caution must be used to avoid expulsions and alienating the vacillating membership. The class basis for social democracy must not be underestimated: the opportunism of the revisionists is the source of the real on-going factionalism that is liquidating the left, and revisionists will be ruthless in preserving their leadership of the party. The international working class cannot afford for the left wing of the CPUSA to make careless mistakes or to be ineffective through unscientific, disorganized approaches.

10. The left wing has representation in the nominal party leadership and organs as well as district and club leadership, and these positions must be used as part of the organization of the left wing rather than establishing parallel organs. Parallel organs and breaks with party organs should only be carried out when communist organization and publication of communist views is impossible and when/if the party actually betrays the working class (see History of the CPSU(B) by the CPSU CC, 1939, on when and how the Bolsheviks actually broke with the Mensheviks). The leadership must be pressured to accommodate the left wing rather than bypassed completely in the struggle to change the party.

Three pillars to making a decisive difference in the 29^th convention by doing the communist work we should be doing

11. The social base of the party should be non-vacillating in favor of communism. No change can be made without changing the social base of the party, the vacillating majority which has always been in the party is the way it is because it can socially afford to make social-democratic errors. The base of the party that will be uncompromising in communism after sufficient Marxist-Leninist education is the very lowest strata of the decisive section of the working class engaged in production (e.g. people who move from motel to motel working temporary jobs as unskilled laborers in factories) as well as the lowest strata of oppressed nationalities (e.g. people who change homes and phone numbers every six months). These strata can uncompromisingly gather the other strata of the working class and even the middle class around their left demands, with the support of the communist party which is supposed to be party of their advanced detachment (vanguard). These strata should be recruited through initiating mass work (e.g. shop clubs whether in a union or not and anti-police brutality/anti-discrimination committees) and should be consolidated through Marxist-Leninist schools. In particular the youth and women section of these strata should be recruited as the most reliable. Structurally the YCL is the most appropriate form for anchoring the recruitment and consolidation of the new social base for the party, the YCL is part mass-movement and is formally independent of the party. Members recruited into these YCL clubs who are of age should also join the party, although their party life may be through YCL clubs only depending on the local organizational situation. Where interference is less likely (such as in left-lead districts or in unchartered districts) new Party clubs should be chartered.

12. Once this recruitment and consolidation has been started there will be a directly resulting political struggle in the party organs because this base will make demands that are not in the program and that the leadership has been trying to liquidate. The expression of this political struggle will be in the Party organs (i.e. PWW, PA, commissions) and will be public. A fight must be waged in the party organs whenever a reliable base is established with the targeted strata to demonstrate the success of the communist program and the left-lead demands.

13. There are two convention end-games with this strategy. The introduction of a new, revolutionary non-vacillating social base into the party along with the resulting political struggles in the party organs will put tremendous pressure on the leadership, and there are historical reasons to believe this may possibly be enough to force the leadership to accommodate the left decisively (this happened in the Canadian Party in the 1920s, for example). If the pressure is not enough, raw conventioneering (which the social-democrats have been using successfully) will need to be applied at the next convention with this new social base. This means there will need to be campaigns for delegate elections well in advance, coordinated pre-convention discussion in party organs, collectively planned speeches in plenums coordinated with a floor campaign to take the pulse of the membership and to campaign for left positions, a coordinated set of resolutions and the fight for them, the preparation of a partial slate for the national committee and a campaign for the slate, as well as pre-convention preparations on parliamentary procedure. With the proper organization of the new social base and pressure on the vacillating sections enough national committee seats should be won to enable an alliance with some of the vacillating committee members. This will need to be a well-coordinated campaign that is launched well in advance of the convention. This kind of convention campaign can be done within party rules and must be done, the point is not to seize power in the party but to make way for a communist program under attack by social-democrats. There can be no petty-bourgeois moral hand-wringing about this important work.

Outline for a conference of the hard left-wing (as opposed to the vacillating left-wing) to organize concrete ideas and establish responsibility for work

1. Recruitment program by district/clubs/individual activists:

   1. Unskilled labor/shop clubs

   2. Youth

   3. Oppressed nationalities

   4. Emphasis on recruiting women

2. Education program:

   1. Establishing/developing left-wing schools within mass work

   2. Studying the classics in the clubs

   3. Studying anti-revisionism specifically

3. Political program: the 1997 economic census data should be studied to identify the economically and politically decisive sections of the economy to target for recruitment (e.g. construction, the chemical industry, the food industry, etc.). Each district and region should look at the role its area plays in the economic base of imperialism (biggest production industries as well as politically decisive industries such as transport, petroleum, etc.) and identify social groups to recruit from these areas. This will give the party a decisive role in a revolutionary situation.

4. Conventioneering

   1. Fight within districts and clubs:

      1. Strategy for sending left delegates and blocking revisionist delegates: delegate election campaigns, influencing delegation formula

      2. Identify members to consolidate towards the left, estimate strength district-by-district

      3. Identify strategies to get majorities in the clubs: recruitment + education

      4. Identify strategies to get majorities in the district by organizing new clubs (whether party or YCL)

      5. Identify strategies to get majorities in the party by projects to organize new districts (esp. in the south), organize recruitment and education projects on a national level for the left wing

   2. National committee elections: prepare slate of candidates and nomination strategy: candidate campaigning, left alliances with current committee members, build pressure to include more left candidates in the nominated slate

   3. Start brainstorming/strategizing content for next convention discussion

   4. Strategy for convention committee positions, security, etc. – being involved in the next convention: security, parliamentarians, Roberts rules workshop for the left, study past conventions to disseminate experiences

   5. Brainstorm and discuss current convention, predict ideas coming up and how to fight them

   6. Formulate floor strategy, floor-walking assignments to scientifically engage the full organization of the party’s activists, floor committee to manage plenary and resolution speeches

5. Fight in the party organs

   1. PWW strategy

   2. PA strategy

   3. Internet sites strategy, including mltoday

   4. Strategy for the labor commission

   5. Strategy for the nationality commissions

   6. Strategy for the education commission

   7. Strategy for other commissions

   8. Strategy for the YCL

   9. Strategy for national committee meetings (e.g. 2 year review of work in 2007)

   10. Strategy for national board meetings?

   11. Strategy for working with the staff in the national/regional offices

   12. Party press strategy (books)

   13. Continuation of discussion bulletins

   14. Strategy for interim conferences and public events

6. Fight in the mass organizations against revisionism: peace movement, nationality, organizations, etc.

7. Ideology:

   1. Agree on a focused document outlining the left program and the objections to revisionism

   2. Agree on common language and points

   3. Coordinate ideological attacks on revisionism

   4. Organize best set of activists (e.g. representation by veterans/new people, labor, people of color, women, etc.) to present specific points (in letters, at meetings, etc.)

   5. Editorial/ideology committee to make attacks on revisionism collective

8. Accountability

   1. Setup structure to ensure implementation of collective strategies and plans

   2. Establish control commission to identify revisionists as well as to control for ultra-leftism and factionalism (harming unity of the party, attacks on the party), and to ensure discipline to commitments

9. International connections with anti-revisionist parties and tendencies

   1. Exchange articles for press organs

   2. Exchange educational materials

   3. Express solidarity for anti-revisionism

   4. Ideological discussions on revisionism and fighting it

10. left-wing infrastructure:

    1. Conference calls

    2. Conventions/regional conferences for the left-wing on a regular basis

    3. Internet discussion list

    4. Committees:

       1. Editorial (assist with left-wing articles)

       2. Educational (develop Marxist-Leninist anti-revisionist education)

       3. National committee slate and campaign committee

       4. Convention committee: parliamentarians, delegate campaigns, resolutions committee, floor committee, plenum speakers, discussion campaign

       5. Control committee (ensure work is being done, guard for ultra-leftism and other errors)

       6. Fractions (within districts/clubs, commissions, press organs)

       7. International committee

       8. Communications committee (phone conferences, etc.)

       9. Others?

Notes:

• The ideas about the lowest strata of the working class and oppressed nationalities are based on my real experiences and are achievable locally with my current local mass contacts, I expect the ideas are achievable in other areas as well and I have seen success in the YCL with these strata. They are also the ideas shared by others in the rank-and-file labor movement in the US and have been developed further by them in other fora.

• At the 28^th convention I have made left-wing contacts in 15 districts (about 50% of the party’s districts, 10 of the left-wing district contacts are YCL). I intend to disseminate the ideas, work, and plans of this document to them and would like the advice and cooperation of others on the hard (as opposed to vacillating) left of the party. This work can be done within party rules and the 28^th convention decisions, although we are in an international situation where there is no communist international and where the communist parties are being liquidated by social-democrats.

• Utmost caution must be used in this work as without the proper grounding in the correct social base the left-wing will be exposed to credible attacks of disruptiveness and being isolated.

Creation of the Muslim Equality Commission and Other Resolutions Submitted to the 28th (2005) CPUSA Convention (Chicago, Illinois) via Western Pennsylvania District

Title: Creation of the Muslim Equality Commission

Introduced by: Asad Ali, Western Pennsylvania District

WHEREAS, the direction and strategy of monopoly capitalism is targeting nations with large segments of Muslims both abroad and within the United States; and

WHEREAS, Muslims have a capacity and potential to take up mass political activity against monopoly capitalism in an anti-monopoly coalition; and

WHEREAS, disseminating racist ideas about Muslims is part of the strategy of monopoly capitalism to divide the US and International working class and to win the US working class to accept the wars and restrictions in civil rights necessitated by monopoly capitalism; and

WHEREAS, the international working class communist movement has deep roots in predominantly Muslim nations in the form of Communist Parties as well as in the form of key active participation by Muslim Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution; and

WHEREAS, the Communist Party of the United States of America has activists who have a Muslim background and social connections with Muslim communities; and

WHEREAS, Islam is spreading in the United States at over 100,000 converts a year, the majority of whom are African-American and women, and although Muslims do form some stable communities of language and territory within the United States these communities are still in formation; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that the Communist Party of the United States of America shall form a Muslim Equality Commission of its leading Muslim activists to inform and advise the Party on matters relating to Muslim communities and affairs, as well as to make recommendations to Party activists in Muslim communities; and be it further

RESOLVED, that the Muslim Equality Commission is not an equal or counterpart of nationality commissions such as the African American Equality Commission or the Mexican American Equality Commission because Muslims are not a nation but a layer within nations.

 

Title: The Leadership of Nationally and Racially Oppressed People in the Fight Against Racism

Introduced by: Asad Ali, Western Pennsylvania District

WHEREAS, the leadership of nationally and racially oppressed people in the mass activity of nationally and racially oppressed people is indispensable to an anti-monopoly coalition and a multiracial coalition against racism; and

WHEREAS, nationally and racially oppressed people being in a position to defend gains against racism achieved by a multiracial coalition will leave nationally and racially oppressed people in the least vulnerable social position; and

WHEREAS, the leadership of nationally and racially oppressed people in the fight against racism and national oppression does not negate the fact that there do exist and have always existed white people who are against national oppression and racism, and that fighting national oppression and racism is in the interest of all workers; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that in the section of the Draft Program “Multiracial Unity for Full Equality and Against Racism” the last paragraph shall be changed to begin with “Nationally and racially oppressed people, supported by white people, should take the lead in combating all instances of racism and national oppression wherever and whenever they occur” ; and be it further

RESOLVED, that nationally and racially oppressed people should be allowed every opportunity to lead the mass activity of the nationally and racially oppressed people.

Title: The Leadership of Women in the Fight Against Sexism

Introduced by: Asad Ali, Western Pennsylvania District

WHEREAS, the leadership of women in the mass activity of women is indispensable to an anti-monopoly coalition and unity against sexism and male supremacy; and

WHEREAS, women being in a position to defend gains against sexism and male supremacy achieved by a united coalition will leave women in the least vulnerable social position; and

WHEREAS, the leadership of women in the fight against sexism and male supremacy does not negate the fact that there do exist and have always existed men who are against sexism male supremacy, and that fighting sexism and male supremacy is in the interest of all workers; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that in the section of the Draft Program “United Against Sexism: The Struggle for Full Equality for Women” the last paragraph shall be changed to begin with “Women, with the support of men, should take the lead in combating all instances of sexism and male supremacy in the labor and people’s movements as well as in the family”; and be it further

RESOLVED, that women should be allowed every opportunity to lead the mass activity of women.

Title: The Relative Advanced Consciousness of Women and Men

Introduced by: Asad Ali, Western Pennsylvania District

WHEREAS, in each socio-economic and national layer of the working class women face sex oppression; and

WHEREAS, sex oppression is not limited to issues of war and peace and social welfare programs; and

WHEREAS, to say that women are generally more advanced than men in some specific fields of political work is an ambiguity in rejecting sexism and full equality for women, and may imply that women are not more advanced than men in other fields of political work; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that in the section of the Draft Program “United Against Sexism: The Struggle for Full Equality for Women” the second to last paragraph shall be changed to end with “Generally, women are more evenly advanced than men in social consciousness”; and be it further

RESOLVED, that the concept that women are more advanced than men only in some fields of political work and not others is rejected.