Federation For Progress

From KeyWiki

Federation For Progress was a front for the Communist Workers Party.

History

The Federation For Progress self-described what it was in an undated brochure/leaflet that came out in either late 1983 or early 1984, as is quoted in its entirety below. However, the FFP was just another attempt to create a new Marxist united front organization, much like similar efforts of the People's Alliance and the National Committee for Independent Political Action NCIPA.

"We've been fighting our own separate battles as our very survival is at stake in the 80's. It's time for greater unity. Formed in August, 1982, the Federation For Progress has brought people together of all races and from all movements, working for a brighter future. The linking of movements and a multi-issue focus are this decade's organizing agenda. The August 27th March on Washington for Jobs, Peace and Freedom was an historic confirmation of that. Our goal is to help create a people's movement for progress and a program that, together with your efforts and organization, we can actually implement."

"We are a democratic membership organization whose talents range across generations, nationalities, and geography. We stand on the frontlines for human rights and oppose U.S. militarization and intervention. The Federation For Progress is a farsighted leadership organization. Our members come from the movement streams of Equality, Peace, Freedom, and Justice. Tomorrow, these thousands of grassroots streams will become a mighty river in the struggle for human liberation. Be a part of making history today. Build the Federation For Progress."

"Our time is now. We the people speak as one. We need your voice. We want your hands. Now! Help us to create, to organize. Through our movement today, we insure our future. Together we will forge a powerful united group able to resist today's atrocities --boat people and homeless; soup lines and unemployed persons; unwelcome immigrants; frozen corpses of senior citizens; glazed, alienated, stone young people; evictions; layoffs; foreclosures; nuclear build-up; 007; El Salvador; Beirut; Grenada; Apartheid; young marine corpses returned home dead. Brothers and sisters, there is no separation by gender, race, ethnicity or class. There is no distance between these issues. There is a common cause, a common source. The voices of our elders cry out to us. Our children's eyes plead to us. Our pained frightened hearts speak to us. We have the courage, the committment to move forward. The Federation demands there be a future. Join us to shape it.!"

Frances Hubbard, National President

[NB: typos are from the original text of this message]

The address of the FFP was: 225 Park Avenue, So., Room 746 New York, New York, 10003 (212) 228-8011

Among the FFP's stated accomplishments were the following from the front page, reproduced en toto, here:

"Join the Movement for Jobs, Peace & Equality"

"Join The Movement That":

• Worked to free Tchula, Mississippi Mayor Eddie James Carthan.
• Helped force Ohio Governor Rhodes to declare a state-wide moratorium of utility shutoffs and turn the heat back on for theose already shutoff.
• Prevented home foreclosures and evictions of unemployed steel workers in Gary, Indiana.
• Initiated People Against Racism and the Klan, a coalition in Washington D.C.'s Afro-American community to oppose the KKK's march in D.C., November 6, 1982.
• Helped initiate the Mexico-USA Border Commission in Solidarity with the Salvadorean People.
• Worked to mobilize thousands for the August 27th March for Jobs, Peace and Freedom
• Worked to stop the test launching of the MX Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
• Initiated the Toxic Free America Campaign.
• Initiated the March and Rally for Peace and Justice at the '84 Summer Olympics.
• Worked to prevent the dumping of PCB's in rural Warren County, N.C.

Front for Communist Workers Party

The Federation for Progress, appears to have been an organ of the Communist Workers Party. Meg Anderson, A CWP member from Indiana wrote a letter to The Expert Red, February 1985, which dealt with the practicalities of the Party's new Gramsci inspired program of infiltrating civil society. References to FFP, showed how important its role was to the party.

The main thing being understood about Gramsci's ideas is that we have to be able to take part in life as other people do, thus moving ourselves beyond a limited world of our own making to the world that exists. The question still remains about what party visibility will mean...For example in the church there are progressive organizations whose program is even higher than our transitional demands in some ways. What shall I propose to their members? That they all joint he Party? Or should I ask the key movers to join, and we meet secretly to act in director's role? It seems to be be the same role as FFP would play. Does that mean we virtually turn the FFP into the party, or vice a versa?

In These Times ad for a National Conference July 30-August 1, 1982 of the FFP

The FFP put a half-page ad in the "socialist" oriented weekly newspaper, In These Times in the July 14-27, 1982 issue, p. 8, entitled: "A natural follow-up to June 12: A national conference July 30-August 1 at Columbia Un., in New York City".

It was a follow-up conference to the major "anti-defense lobby" march and protest in New York on June relating to the U.N. Second Special Session on Disarmament.

Scheduled speakers at Columbia University included:

• Julian Bond
• Frances Hubbard
• Arthur Kinoy
• Philip Berrigan
• Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias
• Kitty Tucker
• Michio Kaku - Professor but not listed as such
• Rev. Herbert Daughtry - Reverend
• Rev. William Jones - Reverend
• Dr. George Wald - (also a Professor, not listed as such)

Interim Executive Committee (FFP):

• Judy Chu - Professor Asian-American Studies, Los Angeles
• Michio Kaku- nuclear physicist
• Frances Hubbard - teacher of community health and social medicine, City University of New York CUNY
• Dr. Arjun Makijani - nuclear disarmament activist
• Manning Marable - Professor of Political Economy
• Musheer Robinson - Executive Director, Black and Latin Workers Health & Safety Resource Center, Newark, NJ
• Tony To - Federation For Progress National Staff
• Kitty Tucker - Non-Nuclear World, Supporters of Silkwood Karen Silkwood

Partial List of Endorsers:

• Anne Braden - Southern civil rights and peace activist - id. CPUSA member
• Brett Bursey - Grassroots Organizing Workshop, Columbia, S.C.
• Ben Chavis - Benjamin Chavis activist
• Noam Chomsky
• Molly Coyle - Workers Clinic San Francisco
• Ronald Dellums - Representative U.S. Congress
• Bernard Demczuk - Legislative Representative, American Federation of Government Employees AFGE, AFL-CIO (also later a member of the DSA)
• Peter Fisher - Coordinator Trade Unions for Democratic ActionTUDA
• Donald Freed - author
• Richard Hatcher - Mayor of Gary, Indiana
• Nelson Johnson - Organizing Committee of Coalition Against Black Genocide
• Florence Kennedy - attorney
• Yuri Kochiyama - Asian-American Caucus for Disarmament
• William Kunstler - attorney
• Winona LaDuke - Anishinabbe Nation - White Earth Reservation
• Sidney Lens - author (and former leader of the old Revolutionary Workers League^[1] (as listed on P. 144 of "The Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications, and Appendixes", HCUA, Dec. 1, 1961)

Lens and his communist affiliations were also described in "The New Mobe Staff Study", HISC, 1970^[2]

• Don Luce - Southeast Asia Resource Center , one of the leading members of the Hanoi Lobby section composed of his Indochina Mobile Education Project, the Indochina Resource Center of Gary Porter, Guy Gran, George Hildebrand, David Marr, etc.; and Coalition to Stop Funding the War CSFW
• Jim McNamara- Those United to Fight Fascism, Columbus, Ohio
• Elizabeth McAlister - activist, and former nun affiliated with the Berrigans and the draft resistance movement
• Russell Means American Indian Movement AIM
• Rafael Miranda -
• Arthur Mitchell
• Parren Mitchell - Representative D-MD, associated with several keep CPUSA and Soviet frontsincluding the U.S. Peace Council USPC, the World Peace Council WPC, and the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship NCASF

(see Keywiki sites for each of these for congressional and FBI/CIA citations, as well as Mitchell's involvement)

• Graham Nash - musician
• Michael Parenti - author, IPS fellow and writer for the CPUSA's theoretical journal "Political Affairs"
• Samuel Paz - President of Board of Directors So. Cal. ACLU ACLU
• Wilson Riles, Jr. - Oakland City Council
• Dean Dillard Robinson - Trinity Cathedral (Episcopal)
• Diane Romero - SAMRAF
• Elaine Schmidt - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF
• Pete Seeger - musician (admitted member of the CPUSA and longtime identified member of the CPUSA)
• Dan Sheehan - Christic Institute Washington, D.C. - (a wacko attorney who gained fame during the Karen Silkwood case; associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights CCR, and progenitor of the La Penca bombing disinformation program of Tony Avirgan. Lead attorney in the dismissed harassment law suit against Gen. John Singlaub re the freedom-fighters of Nicaragua

Eventually he was abandoned by many members of his own group, the pro-communist Christic Institute because of he weird behavior and unpredictability). The Institute collapsed after Singlaub and others won court costs from it for filing a frivilous lawsuit against him on charges that he was illegally supporting the "Contras".

• Benjamin Spock - author (and presidential candidate in the early 1980's for the marxist "Peoples Party"
• Brenda Sunoo - UCLA FFP
• Bill Wahpenpah - International Indian Treaty Council, a front group of the American Indian Movement AIM^[3]
• Leonard Weinglass - attorney (and one of the best of the communist/marxist Left). Associated with the CCR, the late William Kunstler, and has been an attorney for terrorists and their supporters, esp. among the Islamic extremists).
• Frank Wilkinson - Executive Director, National Committee Against Repressive LegislationNCARL and its predecessor organization, the National Committee to Abolish HUAC/HISC. Longtime identified CPUSA member and security operative, along with Frank Donner(See the HCUA series of hearings and reports on Operation Abolition for details).
• Mamie Williams - Pastor, Calvary United Methodist Church (Washington, D.C.)

Officials

Circa 1984, Dan Siegel, a co-leader of the Communist Workers Party served on the Executive Committee, Federation For Progress.^[4]

References