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.