Bella Abzug

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Bella Abzug
Bella Abzug

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Bella Abzug was a prominent and vociferous left-wing Representative from New York City from 1970 to 1976 but lost a close bid to return to Congress In 1978.

Communist line

Bella Abzug has a long history of pro-communist activities. Even in college she was notable for opposing American entry into World War II during the Hitler-Stalin pact, when Communists in the U.S. were denouncing the war against Hitler. As soon as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the Communist Party USA made an abrupt shift in policy to support the war, Bella Abzug, also flip-flopped to support it.

Legal fronts

Abzug was prominent in the National Lawyers Guild and served on its Board of Directors. She also joined the Soviet front International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

Women Strike for Peace

Bella Abzug and Women Strike for Peace
Bella Abzug and Women Strike for Peace

During the 1960s Abzug became a leader of Women Strike for Peace, which maintained close relations with the Communist North Vietnamese.

In 1972 she went with a WSP delegation to Paris to meet with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese representatives. In a subsequent Congressional hearing, 10 out of the 12 top officers of WSP took the Fifth Amendment when asked about Communist Party USA membership.[1]

Solidarity with purged communists

Bella Abzug opposed Hubert Humphrey's presidential nomination in 1968 because she said he had purged Communists in the Democratic - Farmer - Labor Party in Minnesota.[2]

National Women's Political Caucus

Betty Friedan joined other leading feminists, such as Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bella Abzug, and Myrlie Evers-Williams in founding the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.[3]

Cuba recognition drive

In 1972, a coalition of congressmen, radical activists and some communists spearheaded a drive to relax relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba.

Under, the auspices of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D.- Mass.) and Sen. Harold Hughes (D.-Iowa), a two day conference of liberal scholars assembled in April, in the New Senate Office Building to thrash out a fresh U.S. policy on Cùba.

Among congressional sponsors of the seminar were Sen. J. William Fulbright (D.-Ark.) and Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R.-N.Y.), both influential members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sen. George McGovern (D.-S.D.), Rep. Bella Abzug (D~-N.Y.) and Rep. Ron Dellums (D.-Calif.).

Other sponsors included Senators Alan Cranston (D-CA), Mike Gravel (D - Alaska), Fred Harris (D - OK), Philip Hart (D - MI), George McGovern (D - SD) and Frank Moss (D - UT)

Congressmen Joseph Addabo (D - NY), Herman Badillo ( D - NY), Alphonzo Bell (R -CA), Jonathan Bingham (D - NY), John Brademas (D -Indiana), Donald Fraser (D - Minn.), Seymour Halpern (R - NY), Lee Hamilton (D - Ind.), Michael J. Harrington (D - MA), Patsy Mink (D -HI), Parren Mitchell (D - MD), Charles Rangel (D - NY), Thomas Rees (D - CA), William Fitts Ryan (D - NY), Ogden Reid (D - NY), Benjamin Rosenthal ( D - NY), Morris Udall ( D - AZ).

Secretary of the New York State Communist Party USA, Michael Myerson was among the observers.

One panelist, John M. Cates, Jr., director of the , Center for Inter-American Relations, matter of factly remarked during the discussions: "So why are we here'? We're here so Sen. Kennedy can have a rationale to get our country to recognize Cuba."

The conference was financed by a New York-based organization called the Fund for the New Priorities in America, a coalition of groups clearly sympathetic to many pro-Communist causes.

The Fund was virtually the same group as the Committee for Peace and New Priorities, a pro-Hanoi group which bought an ad in November 1971 in the New York Times demanding Nixon set a Viet Nam withdrawal date. Both the Fund for the New Priorities and the Committee for Peace, were located at the same address in New York.[4]

No sanctuary

During a debate on the Viet Nam War Abzug declared that Vietnamese and Cambodian anti-communists should not be given sanctuary in the U.S. in the event of a Communist victory.[5]

National Conference for a drastic cutback in military spending

The Communist Party USA controlled Chicago Peace Council convened a "Nationall conference for a drastic cutback in military spending" in Chicaqo, April 5 & 6, 1975.

The purpose of the National Conference is to mount a national campaign and a vigorous program of action which will speak to the hundreds of thousands who were part of the inspiring resistance to the war in Indo- china. The people of the U.S. can and must turn this country around.

Congressmen Ralph Metcalfe, Bella Abzug and Les Aspin were invited.

Speakers at the Conference included Congressman Abner Mikva, Robert Johnston (regional Director, UAW), Richard Criley (Exec. Dir. Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights), Norman Roth (Fres. Local 6, UAW), Fr. Gerard Grant S.J. (Loyola University); Ed Sadlowski (Regional Director, United Steel Workers Union) and Frank Rosen (Intl. V-P, U.E.)[6].

DSOC support

In 1977, Paul DeBrul, issues director of Bella Abzug's campaign, was member of of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.

According to New York DSOC chairman Jim Devor, Abzug was due for most of the DSOC support.[7]

She is speaking to the issues we want to see...We want to extend democracy to the ecomonic sphere as well as the political sphere.

Carter committee

President Carter appointed her to head his National Advisory Committee for Women, but had to dismiss her six months later after she lectured him shrilly before 40 other people at a Committee meeting. Soon thereafter 23 other members of the Committee resigned in sympathy.[8]

Karen Silkwood Fund

Karen Silkwood was a young woman who was reportedly trying to expose safety hazards at the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation's plutonium production plant in Oklahoma. She was killed in a car crash that the Left claimed was a deliberate murder to prevent her from handing over internal safety documents to a New York Time's reporter. The Left rallied around her death and formed the Karen Silkwood Fund, a project of the far-left Youth Project.

A tax-exempt fund was set up entitled Karen Silkwood Fund, Youth Project, Box 10037, Washington, D.C., 20018 to investigate her death and alleged involvement of Kerr-McGee, the FBI, and other government agencies to cover up alleged safety violations at the Kerr-McGee plant. MORE TO FOLLOW.

Fundraising Letter of April 1979:

The Youth Project sent out "An Urgent Note From: Bella S. Abzug to a select mailing list in April, 1979 detailing their investigations into Silkwood's death, and explained a lot about it, the case, and related issued.

Among the groups that were involved in the case were:

Other individuals and organizations that would become involved in this case included:

  • Daniel Sheehan - a very radical and often irrational leftist attorney who did win a major financial settlement for the Silkwood family from this case. He would later be best known as the loose legal cannon of the Christic Institute, a religious far-left legal organization who tried to get charges brought against American supporters of the freedom-fighters of Nicaragua, a case that was totally thrown out of court after several years of legal harassment of the defendants.
  • Sara Nelson - Sheehan's wife, she was a leader of NOW who provided legal support to the Silkwood case
  • Rep.Bella Abzug Bella Savitsky - Abzug had one of the longest record of support of the Communist Party USA and its various fronts of any member of Congress in its history (only challenged by the records of Dellums, Conyers and Crockett, Jr). She was elected from what was known as the "Communist Party seat" of Lower Manhattan where the CPUSA had much of its strength in terms of members and sympathizers. She was active in CPUSA youth groups in the 1940's, jointed the cited CPUSA legal front, the National Lawyers Guild , and attended an international convention of the cited Soviet international legal front, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers in Czechoslovakia about 1947. She was also a financial contributor to the CPUSA front/publication Jewish Currents, which opposed the blatantly anti-semitic CPUSA faction, the Jewish Commission of the CPUSA and its publication "Jewish Affairs.

She was also a founder of the CPUSA-dominated Women Strike for Peace organization, being one of their representatives from New York. Another WSP leader was Pauline Rosen, who turned out to be a co-founder of the Communist Party USA, and the leader of their front, the National Center for a Drastic Cut in the Military Budget, among many others.

Abzug has never been publicly identified as a member of the CPUSA but internal security specialists have stated privately that they have seen documents proving it, and those proving that her husband, Martin Abzug, was also a secret member of the CPUSA.

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign

Circa early 1980s, Bella Abzug was an endorser of a US-Soviet Nuclear Weapons Freeze petition circulated by the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, National Clearinghouse, based in St. Louis, Missouri.

IVI-IPO

In 1981 Bella Abzug was a Vice President of Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization[9].

Communist rally

The Communist Party USA paper promoted a massive "peace" rally in New York on June 12 1982. The People's Daily World covered the rally under a huge caption extending over half the front page, "Name June 12 Peace Day."

According to reporter, Emily DeNitto, describes a meeting;

"Speakers representing a whole spectrum of New Yorkers came to voice their concern over the nuclear arms buildup."

Among those who spoke were actress Colleen Dewhurst, Jarvis Tyner, chairman of the New York District of the Communist Party USA, Balfour Brickner, senior rabbi at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, Bella Abzug of Women USA, the Reverend David Garcia of St. Marks Church and Richard Hoyen, chairman of the New York Young Workers Liberation League.[10]

All-Peoples Congress National Advisory Board

In 1983, the Workers World Party influenced All-Peoples Congress' National Advisory Board, icluded;

Communist front sponsor

In 1984 Bella Abzug was one of the "co-sponsors" of the Ninth Annual Banquet of the Labor Research Association . This organization was identified as a Communist Party USA front. It cooperated with the Soviet international front group, the World Federation of Trade Unions.

The banquet honored Democratic Congressman Charles Hayes. Other cosponsors included Howard Metzenbaum and actor Ed Asner.[12]

DNC run

Abzug ran for Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee's Women's Caucus, at the DNC's annual convention in September 1989, she lost to a moderate Democrat, Ruth Rudy of the Pennsylvania State Legislature, by a close vote of 81/80.[13]

References

  1. ↑ Communists in the Democratic Party, page 34
  2. ↑ Communists in the Democratic Party, page 34
  3. ↑ Obituary
  4. ↑ Human Events, April 29, 1972, page 3
  5. ↑ Communists in the Democratic Party, page 34
  6. ↑ The nationwide drive against law enforcement intelligence operations : hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, first session ..." page 179
  7. ↑ New York Magazine 22 Aug 1977, page 10
  8. ↑ Communists in the Democratic Party, page 35
  9. ↑ IVI-IPO Letterhead July 23 1981
  10. ↑ People's Daily World June 14 Page 3
  11. ↑ All-Peoples Congress press release, 1983
  12. ↑ Communists in the Democrat Party, page 33
  13. ↑ Communists in the democratic party, page 33
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