WREE - Women for Racial and Economic Equality

From KeyWiki

WREE - Women for Racial and Economic Equality

This organization was one of several new issue fronts created by the Communist Party USA CPUSAin the 1970's to expand their areas/subjects of infiltration and propagandizing. WREE was a wholly CPUSA-created and controlled organization though it used not-yet-identified leftist women as front figures. However, a look at their CPUSA-front support records left no doubt that they were knowingly working for the Party even if they were not covert members.

WREE Organizational Structure and Leaders/Staff

Source: "The WREE-VIEW", "Bimonthly Bulletin of Women for Racial & Economic Equality 266 West 23 Street, New York, NY, 10011

WREE-View Staff, Jan.-Feb. 1979, Vol. 4, No. 1

• Carmen Teixidor - Editor
• Joan Cohen - Staff
• Dina Heisler - Staff
• America Trinidad - Staff
• Amelia Dolce - Staff

Writers/Contributors (often without further identification)other than those listed as Staff:

• Bay Area WREE
• Marge Nelson - works with Options for Women Over Forty, San Francisco, CA (looks like an excerpt from "Union W.A.G.E, Jan/Feb. 1979)
• Felicia George
• Joan Elbert - chairperson of the Chicago chapter of Clergy and Laity Concerned and on their National Interim Steering Committee; member of the Hanoi Lobby and the CPUSA's front on Chile NCSC
• Donna Walcavage - Peace & International Solidarity Task Force WREE
• Vinie Burrows - Permanent Representative to the United National NGO Commission, and WREE Vice President, photo, p. 5.
• Sally Chaffee
• Lois St. Aubin - Michigan coordinator WREE - rep. WREE at the 12th Convention of the Congress of Canadian Women last October
• Virginia Weitlauf - Detroit coordinator WREE - """"""
• LeAnna Ware - Madison, Wisconsin WREE
• Laurel Kailin - Madison, Wisc. WREE
• Terry Taylor - Madison, Wisc. WREE
• Candace Althoff - Manhattan, Kansas (most likely the wife of CPUSA member, DW writer Phillip Althoff

WREE-View Staff, April-June, 1979, Vol. 4, No. 2

• Carmen Teixidor - Editor
• Joan Cohen - Staff
• Sally Chaffee - Staff
• Dina Epstein Heisler - Staff
• Margo Nikitas - Staff, she was later to become an open member of the CPUSA
• America Trinidad - Staff

Writers/Contributors other than Staff:

• Nancy Polin
• Evelyn Sheen Murray - adapted article from "Peace & Freedom", May 1979, WILPF
• Carol Ankrum - Coordinator for the Parkesburg Organizing Committee of WREE
• Mimi Diamond - New York City
• Liz Wheaten - Southern Women's Rights Project
• Margie Akin - Riverside, CA.
• Lucy Curtis - "a Texan living in Brooklyn" - a poem
• Beth Baker - Washington, D.C., book review
• Debby Spector - translated a poem by Nicaraguan poet in exile Yoconda Giaconda Belli
• Debbie Albano - Arizona, wrote a poem

==WREE CHAPTERS/MEMBERS other than those mentioned as writers: WREE-VIEW, April-June, 1979 edition, "WREE on the move" section, p. 4

• CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINA: forum in February, 1979, "Women in the Labor Movement"

• Amy Newell - field organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America UE.She has a record of supporting communist fronts. The UE was expelled from the CIO as being the most CPUSA-dominated, hardcore union in it.
• Nancy Kremer - a teacher in Charlottesville, Executive Committee member of the city's Education Associations CEA, and representative of the Virginia Political Action Committee for Education
• Lois Felder - Vice President of the Washington, D.C. CLUW CLUW; Governmental and Community Affairs Representative of the Retail Clerks International Union, and active labor organizer for over 20 years

• RHODE ISLAND
• Jeannie Fiore - WREE R.I. Chairman
• Leonard Jefferson - exhibit of his jailhouse paintings
• Sharon Mazuck - singer

• PITTSBURGH, PA

"The Pittsburg chapters of WREE and CLUW co-sponsored an anti-Weber conference on June 9th.. at the Un. of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health." Speakers included:

• Cheryl Craig - Chairperson
• Duba Weinstein- Co-chair of WREE and CLUW member. Identified as a member of the CPUSA youth front, the Young Workers Liberation League YWLL and Associate Director of the CPUSA school, the Center for Marxist Education CME in the 1974 HISC report "The Communist Party Youth Program",^[1]
• Harvey Adams- president of the Pittsburgh NAACP
• Fred Gaboury - International Woodcutters Union, and id. CPUSA labor leader. Listed as the Labor Editor of the CPUSA newnpaper "People's Weekly World", issue of august 3, 1996, p. 9
• Steve Saltzman - National Treasurer of the National Lawyers Guild NLG, Affirmative Action Coordinator Council
• Oscar Sanchez - Civil Rights Department of the United Steelworkers of America USWA

• CHICAGO CHAPTER
• Sue Kling - wrote a poem about Fannie Lou Hamer. Kling has long been identified as a leading member of the Chicago Communist Party, and is the wife of CPUSA Chicago chapter leader, Jack Kling
• Peggy Lipschutz - WREE Chicago and veteran CPUSA fronts and fundraiser participant

WREE Sponsored Activities and Events

Source: "Daily World", Sept. 27, 1980, "Report on women's parley", New York, Sept. 26th.

"There will be a reportback, this Sunday, on the July United Nations Mid-Decade Women's Conference and Forum held in Copenhagen."

Reports were to be given by "six women who attended the conference."

• Dr.Erna Bryant - Director, Center for Racial Justice, Y.W.C.A. YWCA
• Vinie Burrows - U.N. representative Women's International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF and decades-long supporter of the CPUSA, its fundraising events, and fronts
• Kay Camp aka Katherine Camp - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom WILPF, a leader of the Hanoi Lobby and Anti-Defense Lobby, as well as long-time supporter of CPUSA fronts and causes.
• Walteen Grady - president, Washington D.C. area WREE] - WREE-DC
• Blanche Shaw - Coalition of Labor Union Women CLUW, a group created with significant input, if not outright dominating influence by the CPUSA
• Karen Talbot - World Peace Council WPC, longtime identified, then open CPUSA leader on the international scene, along with Sandy Pollack

The program will also feature a poetry reading by

• Bernadine
• Beti Garcia - "and dance performances by"
• Ruth Kornesaroff - "and dance performances by"