Ends and Means: The History and Consequences of Anticommunism in the United States

Speaker 1: With its 50-year history, no one today can doubt the power of television to influence audiences and change public opinion. Therefore, it is not surprising, given 30 years of hostile relations, that the United States government wants to export television to Cuba. The U.S. government's television broadcast into Cuba is called TV Martí, and it uses telecommunications frequencies which have been allocated by international convention for Cuba's domestic use. TV Martí raises serious legal, political and technical These are difficult questions which go far beyond the relations between these 2 countries. There are serious international implications. For example, is it feasible and desirable for a foreign government to intentionally broadcast into another nation? Does it violate international norms? What right does a country, a sovereign nation, have to protect its own borders, be they land, sea or air? In an effort to unravel these and other issues, we have spoken to According to the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act, Congress finds and declares it is the policy of the United States government to support the right of the Cuban people to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any medium, regardless of frontiers.

Speaker 2: The idea is to hang a balloon, 10,000 feet over Key West and to broadcast television signals to Cuba. Now, this is a clear violation of the 1982 International Telecommunications Convention, to which we are a signatory, and it is also technically extremely dubious. You can transmit a TV signal 100 miles, to be sure, but it will only be received if the receiving party wishes to receive it. The International Telecommunications Union regulations does in fact designate AM broadcasting, medium wave radio broadcasting, and television broadcasting as domestic broadcasting media. So from a reading of that principle, broadcasting of a television signal across a border unilaterally, as this would be, is on the face of it, and at least violates the spirit of that regulation, if not the letter of that regulation. Cuban position, as has been stated in different international organizations, is that This project of TV Martí is completely illegal. It's contrary to the Nairobi Convention of 1982 of the International Telecommunications Union. And it's also illegal in terms of bilateral agreements that exist between Cuba and the United States. We believe that by international standards, and also by the standards of relations between nations, this is a completely illegal project that violates also Cuba's sovereignty and Cuba's independence. Follow the flag.

Speaker 1: The U.S. government, through its international radio network, Voice of America, has been broadcasting to Cuba for decades. In 1985, under pressure from a vocal, small sector of the Cuban-American community, the Reagan administration began broadcasting short- and medium-wave radio to Cuba, known as Radio Martí.

Speaker 2: In 1989, Congress approved $7.5 million for a 120-day The proposal that TV Martí incorporates is a proposal that necessitates a very peculiar and highly vulnerable technical system. The plans call for a balloon to be tethered somewhere in the Florida Keys at a height of about 2 miles. And then the balloon would be attached to a cable that would In order to be above the horizon sufficiently for it to be able to reach its target, which is supposed to be Havana, Cuba. Proponents of TV Martí argue that this is something that's very necessary, and it would, it would provide the Cubans with more information than they are now receiving. And of course, opponents of TV Martí argue that, as they did for Radio Martí, that it's not necessary, that in the case of TV Martí, there are technical problems affecting U.S. broadcasters, and that it would be better if the programming didn't go on. If you look at us the way we look at it, that this is an electronic aggression, The matter is not of contents. The matter is that not accept what you're forced to accept. And the matter is not of contents, but because if you analyze the program of the Cuban television, we have 70% of our programs are made in Cuba and 30% is foreign. This 30% Is, uh, we use programs from 26 countries in last year, 1989. If we analyze, like, the films we put in our programs of television, uh, 42% of the films come from the United States. So it's not a matter of content. Hello, I'm Ralph Wenge, host of CNN World Report. On behalf of my colleagues, we're delighted to learn that the Cuban Television Network will air a weekly version of our program.

Speaker 1: In general, everything, because, you know, our television is very integral. We have political programs. We have educational programs. We have recreational programs. It is as a whole. I love it.

Speaker 2: We have American movies being shown on our TV channels every Saturday, Sunday. I think we have over 6 new films every week. So, I don't see the point of doing that, exactly. We have radio waves, FM, shortwaves. Miami is just 90 miles away from here. So, anyone who wants to listen to American stations, they just turn on the radio and have it. 11:30 at the Florida Keys, hottest radio station on Market and D with Madonna on Whale 99.

Speaker 1: Bonita.

Speaker 2: Astounding, but really no one in the Congress seems to care that this is a blatant violation of an international convention to which we are A signatory. But Congress has at least said that it must be technically feasible. Now, when you tether a balloon at that kind of height in an area that has severe weather conditions— winds, hurricanes, and the like— to think that there is sufficiently stable technology To keep that signal from wavering and thereby interfering with American broadcasters, domestic American broadcasters, is hard to envision. Moreover, the history of this kind of technology in that area does exist. Our understanding is that the Coast Guard uses tethered balloons for radar surveillance in In that same area, which we hear more than half of the year they have to pull down those balloons because of severe weather conditions. Well, it's highly implausible to think that a broadcasting program, which is supposed to be a daily broadcast, comes down every time there's severe weather. The alternative is that they might send an airplane to fly and circle on— in American Airspace, to do the same job as the balloon is designed to do. In that case, the stability of that signal is even more vulnerable. That is, we don't believe that you can technically keep that outgoing signal from interfering with domestic television broadcasting in the United States. The government has decided that it's going to conduct a test of this technology. That no funds can be expended until the president makes a determination to the Congress that, number one, the TV broadcasting to Cuba is feasible, and number two, that the radio— the signal from TV Martí itself does not interfere with U.S. broadcasters. Now, of course, the president's determination comes from the test period.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: We have said that this is a hostile project, hostile in its intention, because it tries to to subvert Cuba's society. It is a project that really— by which the U.S. government tries to impose its will on the Cuban people. But not only that. It's not only hostile. It's not only illegal. But it's even more. It's offensive to Cuba's history and to the spirit of Che Guevara.

Speaker 1: It's really sad and bitter to know that in the behalf of a man like José Martí, we are going to have this monstrosity of TV Martí, which is not going to talk about the American poets José Martí used to love, and the American poets Matti praised in his prose, as Walt Whitman and Emerson. I'm really revolted about that. We're not going to know nothing about the real United States, about the struggle of minorities, about the existence of an underground world of resistance, too, that we do need to know in Cuba. As American citizens, we have grown up believing in and cherishing the concepts of the freedom of expression, You talk about freedom of expression and free flow of information. But what constitutes the free flow of information between nations?

Speaker 2: Actually, this expresses the philosophy of free market, but it is also used for political aggression. This concept of the free flow is being used to substantiate this aggression against Cuba.

Speaker 1: While the Bush administration is explaining that Television Martí is, is The purpose behind it is to provide the Cubans with information, to give them freedom of information, which supposedly they don't have. United States policy with respect to Cuba has has been one in which our rights as U.S. citizens, our First Amendment rights to freedom of information, freedom of speech, freedom to travel have been violated continuously. From the very beginning, our right to travel to Cuba was restricted first by prohibiting the use of U.S. passports, and then when President Carter opened up travel, the Reagan administration closed it down again by saying that this was a violation. Of the blockade, so we can't travel to Cuba and spend money. Again, that's a violation of our First Amendment right, freedom to travel, freedom to gain information for ourselves. In addition, there have been restrictions on importation of Cuban publications into the United States, as well as restrictions on the export of U.S. publications to Cuba. So the blockade has all along violated principles of the First Amendment by prohibiting this kind of exchange of information. And even now, even after Congress has opened up a small space to Yes. —to allow the importation of Cuban publications into the United States, to adhere to some of the principles of the First Amendment, the Treasury Department is trying to make that as difficult as possible and providing regulations that make it almost impossible for someone to go to Cuba to actually buy these publications and import them into the United States. So First Amendment principles have been violated all along. In addition, I, as a professor of law, cannot go to Cuba to give a lecture on U.S. law, something which we would think would be very important in terms of information exchange, particularly Those of us who believe in justice. But I can't give a lecture because the blockade doesn't permit it. Access to information is just one of the concerns. Sovereignty is another central issue. Sovereignty is an easy word to define but a difficult one to understand in practice. Under international norms, a nation-state has the lawful authority to Control what happens within its air, land and sea space. Respect for a nation's sovereign borders is a basic premise of international order, and historically, violations of a nation's borders have led to regional conflicts and even world wars. Given that Cuba believes Television Martí is an electronic invasion of its sovereign borders, What What will Cuba do? What are its options?

Speaker 2: This is one of the options we have to block the signal coming to Cuba. We know, concerning the feasibility studies on the project of TV Martí, that Havana City is the main target. But anyway, we are taking some steps to block the signal in neighboring provinces. Secondly, we have in mind to use very powerful AM transmitters to knock out hundreds of radio stations all over the territory of the United States. In the third place, In this case, we have in mind to jam Radio Martí's signal, something which is done very easily. This is Radio Taíno. We have expressed our right to counteract this project by all means that will be available to us. Particularly, I think this will create a serious obstacle in relations or in improving the climate of current relations between Cuba and the United States. It will prevent any kind of progress in different bilateral issues that are pending between our countries, and we will take all measures and all steps If we think we have the right to broadcast to them in violation of their sovereignty and without consultations, they will retaliate. The Reagan administration, when faced with this prospect at the time it established Radio Martí, said that it would go in with surgical airstrikes to take out those antennae. What will the Bush administration do? Well, I think that the Bush administration Are they going to go in with surgical airstrikes? Are they going to back down? What will they do? We are in violation of the international convention, not the Cubans. So this has the potential to be a major international incident, a major international problem, possibly even leading to an armed conflict. And certainly it will have a very deleterious effect Well, this project doesn't even represent the Cuban-American community in the United States, not even less in Miami. It represents a very vocal sector of the community, but not the majority of the community, principally because the Cuban-American community in the United States is in favor, majority-wise, of solving the problems that exist between the United States and Cuba through negotiations and not through confrontation. And this project, TV Martí, is a project that is in favor of confrontation. It's a confrontational project. It's not a project that will solve problems. It is a problem— it's a project that will create more problems and more tensions. Look, the basic situation is this. Of course we have all kinds of disagreements with the Cubans and conflicts of interest. And under the best of circumstances, we would be in something of an adversarial relationship, sure. There's no reason that adversaries can't advance their interests more through dialogue and negotiations than through confrontation. The idea that we must do this to try to pressure Cuba to negotiate with us or to adopt a different posture is utterly absurd. Cuba has for some time now made it clear that it is ready, it is perfectly ready to sit down with us to discuss all disagreements, all problems between us, and to negotiate most. We are a country which should believe in the rule of international law and international norms, and we are a country which should resort to negotiations, diplomacy, consultations first. In this case, we most certainly have not. The act itself is illegal and is a violation of international law. And although it is not physical terrorism, I believe it is psychological terrorism. And since our country is opposed to terrorism— Y ya que nuestro país And believes in the law, it has violated both. I don't believe that escalating animosities between peoples is a way to resolve problems. I would hope that the American people would come to understand that the idea of T.D. Martí, just by the very nature that it is an illegal act. We protest the fact that our country is doing yet another thing that is illegal. We're not only striving and struggling for our rights, but we believe we are also struggling and striving for the rights of the Third World. This could be done to Cuba, and it could be done tomorrow to any other nation that has not the possibility and the strength and the economical and —and technological strength of the United States.

Speaker 1: We live in a world whose future depends upon negotiation to resolve conflict and communications to further peace. Television Martí could place the global telecommunications order in chaos and could further conflict in a world where peace is already too scarce. Can a television broadcast be worth all that? Here's the unabridged explanation of how Deep Dish TV gets to you. It starts with thousands of producers making programs within their communities nationwide. They send their shows to coordinating producers, each in a different region working on a different show. All the edited shows are sent to Deep Dish Central in New York, where we coordinate the network. We take it to an uplink, which sends it to a satellite, which sends its beam back down to this hemisphere in a pattern called a footprint. Cable systems receive the signal in a dish and send it out to their subscribers on a public access channel. Through the cable system to your house, to your TV, to your eyes. Deep Dish is a unique network because it isn't driven by profit or religion. We won't try to sell you anything. Public access is a vital component of our First Amendment rights. Stay tuned to Deep Dish and see Fearless TV.

Speaker 2: Today, most of the information you get from films, from television, from magazines or newspapers are controlled by only 29 corporations. With so many millions of dollars driving these corporations, How can you or I or any other individual be fairly represented in the media? But there is an alternative. Public access offers a unique opportunity to express yourself and explore important issues in your community. There are over 1,500 public access systems nationwide. You're probably watching this show on one right now. It's available on a first-come, first-served basis, so call your local cable system to find out how you can get involved. It's a vital component of our First Amendment rights in the information age.

Speaker 1: So, use it or lose it.

Speaker 2: What do you think, guys?

Speaker 1: You flubbed it there. One more.

Speaker 2: No, you're supposed to say, stay tuned to Deep Dish TV! Oh, there we go. Yeah. Speed is power. No, it's power. I said, stop.

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Speaker 2: No way. Opinionated? Yeah.

Speaker 1: Deep Dish Television. It ain't no pie in the sky. Coming your way soon.

Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more. Deep Dish TV. The United States don't give a damn about means and ends. I mean, means are ends and vice versa. It's a big problem for people who come from a different philosophical concept. I think one of the problems in America is what they call being pragmatic, is that here they justify anything when it's convenient. And because there are no principles. And on the other hand, it's good not to have absolute principles because that leads to other consequences. So I don't want to go into that thing, you know, but that's what I was reflecting, you know, my fear of this confusion of use of means and ends, that some people still make distinction in America, others don't. I would say the CIA is totally in confusing the means are used for ends. The end justifies the means. Speak English, comrade. Remember, that is about the only freedom you do not have in this country. This American town. Americans, they have too many freedoms. That is another thing you must remember, comrade, for one day it will be your mission to destroy those bourgeois capitalist freedoms.

Speaker 1: Good evening, friends, visitors, Bostonians, Democrats, Communists, revolutionaries, all those who struggle for peace and justice. Welcome to this historic conference.

Speaker 2: I'm proud to say I'm still an anti-communist. In the year 1948, a series of pamphlets were distributed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities entitled 100 Things You 100 Things You Should Know About Communism. I came across this in my files. I keep files on them. It's only fair. I was impressed by the thought that the committee knew 100 things about communism. The pamphlets had 100 questions and answers. Question 1: What is communism? See, the idea is to start with something easy, something that requires a brief answer. Answer: A system by which one small group seeks to rule the world. The answer was probably drawn up by the people who later founded the Trilateral Commission. Hi, my name is Hana Shram.

Speaker 1: I'm a student at Edmonds Middle School, and I'm in the 6th grade.

Speaker 2: What is communism?

Speaker 1: I have no idea.

Speaker 2: Can I skip to question 76? Where can a communist be found in everyday life? Well, this question particularly interested me, because there have been times when I was in need of a communist and didn't know where to find one. Answer: Look for him in your school, your labor union, your church, or your civic club. Making her home in Oakland, California, please welcome the author of Women, Culture, and Politics, Ms. Angela Davis. Maybe I don't understand what a communist is. I've just been taught to hate the word.

Speaker 1: What does that Well, a communist is someone who wants a society that's free of the injustices like racism and like the treatment of working-class people.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: Personally, I would like to see a United States of America where everyone has the right to a job, where everyone has the constitutional right to That would be— thank you, thank you. Healthcare should be an absolute human right.

Speaker 2: Question 86: Is the YMCA a This really worried me. I always wondered why there was so much chlorine in the YMCA swimming pool. Answer: yes, so is the YWCA.

Speaker 1: It's a loaded word because it's a— you can't talk about it without I'm thinking about it historically, and it begins really thousands of years ago with an idea that people could live communally and share the goods of this earth. And so what it's come to mean at different times, at different historical times, is perhaps something else. But that really is its first meaning for me.

Speaker 2: Comrade Donovan, you are accused of treason. You've been accused of the following crimes against the state: subversion, deviationism, and treason. You've been given this opportunity to make a public confession of your treacherous violation. Just a minute. This is supposed to be a trial. Who says I'm guilty of anything? Where's your proof?

Speaker 1: Have you ever read Karl Marx? What do you think of Henry Wallace's third-party Have you ever had Negroes in your home? There is a suspicion in the record that you are in sympathy with the underprivileged. Is this true?

Speaker 2: To advocate equality between human beings in South Africa is a communist act that requires to be punished. To be suppressed. To be suppressed. No wonder the people of South Africa, for instance, feel that if, for instance, Botha is an anti-communist, Margaret Thatcher is an anti-communist, and Reagan is an anti-communist, that communism must stand for something that is worth fighting for. For anti-communists come in all sizes. There are violent reactionary anti-communists like Oliver North, and nice guy liberal anti-communists like Hubert Humphrey. There are gentleman anti-communists from Yale like George Bush, Nazi anti-communists in exile from Eastern Europe like Bush's anti-Semitic Committee on Minorities that we were asked to forget so quickly about during the election, and redneck anti-communist Communists from the deep woods, like the Ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 1: Anti-communism as ideology and practice fosters fear and hatred, which ultimately benefits only those whose power depends upon keeping us all down. Our task is to understand that racism is used to fight communism and that anti-communism is used to fight the struggle against equality.

Speaker 2: We again need an alternative critical perspective. Anti-communism, racism are the premises of ideological thought control which must be combated. I'd like to say something initially. I think anti-communism's taken a terrible pasting at this conference. And I'd like to say I might just say a couple of its achievements, because they've been a bit not mentioned, really. And I might point out in this connection Sputnik, which led to a great leap forward in funding for higher education, and more recently Star Wars, where, you know, if you really want to study almost anything, like the flight of the honeybee, as long as you say it's in connection with the Star Wars program, you'll get a wad of money from the Pentagon.

Speaker 1: I'm a member of the A conference like this makes you think about ways in which anti-communism affects— has affected your own life.

Speaker 2: I was called in and told that my commission was being held up because I was suspect in terms of patriotism. I received a formal letter from the U.S. Public Health Services saying that I was found unfit to hold a commission in the U.S. Public Health Services. The reasons were secret, but that terminated our correspondence, and we could assume that we'd have little to say to each other again.

Speaker 1: So I was fired from this incredibly stupid job.

Speaker 2: Well, I was fired from my first teaching job because I was involved with a student movement in Atlanta. The FBI then went to the administration, the dean in particular, and I was notified Within 2 weeks of that FBI visit, that because we were not cooperative with them, that I could not expect to return to Carleton.

Speaker 1: One year after I joined the Communist Party— this was in 1969— I was fired from my position in the Department of Philosophy at UCLA. My father lost one job because of being a communist.

Speaker 2: For us, it has not only been a matter of thought, since many of us served rather long prison terms for thinking so-called evil thoughts about socialism and communism.

Speaker 1: The message came back to me through another person, an adult, that my husband and I couldn't possibly be communists, because my daughter was the only one in the Brownie troop who Hello.

Speaker 2: In the traditional motion picture story, the villains are usually defeated. The ending is a happy one. I can make no such promise for the picture you're about to watch. The story isn't over. You and the audience are part of the conflict. How we meet the communist challenge depends on you. What has happened so far, what is happening now, is far from encouraging. The difference between a kind of reasonable criticism you could have of communism, socialism, of the Soviet Union, of governments, of states, whatever they call themselves, the difference between that kind of criticism or indignation and And the kind of murderous, indiscriminate hatred which leads us to threaten to drop bombs to kill all of the citizens of this country, presumably the citizens of governments where the citizens themselves are victims. We're prepared to kill all of them, presumably to save them, as we've always been ready to kill people to save them from communism.

Speaker 1: In my own country, Grenada, when the indomitable leader Maurice Bishop and the courageous Grenadian The Grenadian people began a search for self-determination using our indigenous cultural and ideological formation. Very simply, we call it participatory democracy. President Ronald Reagan assailed it, assailed the Grenada Revolution, identifying it, in his words, a communist threat to U.S. national security.

Speaker 2: The mightiest nation on the face of the Earth, the best armed, The most affluent attacks the smallest, poorest island in the Caribbean Sea, and the President of the United States gets up with that fatuous idiocy of his and says, this is our proudest moment. And I said, this is revolting. I said, it does injury to my sense of who we are, what we're all about. It's an outrageous thing. Cousin Ed Snodgrass got me. Oh, he jumped. He said, yeah, honey, you see, there you go. You don't know the facts. Ronnie knows the facts. He got his CIA, investigated all that, and give him the real facts on it. He had to do that. When he said, this is our proudest moment, what he is saying is that he saved the United States of America. That's what he was saving.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Do you realize that he got— they got a secret plan where that bunch of stinkpots was going to swing down into the Caribbean Sea, join them Nicaraguans, and pin us in between the Arctic Circle and the Gulf of Mexico? To make the American free enterprise capitalist system into a world system, a global strategy military, political, economic, diplomatic and psychological, was devised. An iron ring of military bases was established under treaties for different regions of the world: the Rio Treaty for Latin America and the Caribbean, NATO for the North Atlantic, the Baghdad Pact, later called CENTO after the Baghdad— The Baghdad— the Iraq Revolution of 1958, that for the Middle East; Seattle and the ANZUS Pact for the Far East. All this meant to contain communism, to roll back socialism and arrest national liberation worldwide. So, this anti-communism virus, which, of course, It has always been present in our culture in an anti-socialist, anti-radical, almost— it is almost the American religion, civic religion. But I think what I was saying and what Diana was saying, and really all of us, has been that it did take a new meaning with World War II when certain characteristics of Nazism were grafted onto our image of communism, and then we became like what we held to a considerable extent.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 2: That's where we are. Let me answer very finally, in a very— in a way that I hadn't mentioned. I was just looking through some notes, and I noticed that I gave my wife, Patricia Ellsberg, some of you know, Ed Herman's book, The Real Terror Network, about the activities not just of the CIA, but ultimately of the IMF, an institution we dominate, and the world economic system, the banks, and other things in Latin America and Central America, and the effect of that on quite specifically the methods of terrorism and death squads in Latin America. A quite stunning book which I recommend to all of you. And she woke up the next morning, I remember, next to me crying and saying, we are like the Nazis. We are acting like the Nazis. And I said to her, to my wife, whom I've known for 24 years now. I said, you know, that's a secret that I've been holding to my heart for a long time, since I was in the Pentagon. I was 14 when the war ended, and I really didn't want to join an organization that was like the Nazis. And that's what I did join by mistake. And that didn't start with George Bush, and it's going to take more than one administration to end it, but that is our task.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Now, is it the communists they have been after? No. They are after anti-imperialists. Look at the history of interventions in the Third World. If you look at the history of interventions in the Third World, you will notice yourself that perhaps, with the exception of Vietnam and Cuba, every other intervention has occurred against not only non-communist, but actually anti-communist nationalist regimes. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo. These were actually non-communist patriots whose only fault was that they were supplying to Third World nationalism an economic content. That is to say, we take control of our national resources, Resources. That was there. So in other words, anti-communism is not a serious matter. What it is, it's a sort of ideology of anti-imperialism, and those of us who are really anti-imperialist will have to face up to it. Bad times are again coming, and it's going to be more than the Palestinians who will be the victims of it, because it has been very easy for all of I began to ask myself at one point, why is it that social or popular revolution in an impoverished country is such a threat to the United States? I remember the Sandinistas from school. I mean, they were full of ideas. They could write papers. They were using ditto. They didn't get any money, but There were people who had a lot of ideas in their heads. I mean, a lot of ideas and paper writing and talking to people and grassroots everywhere, grassroots. Okay, but the Contras don't have anything. Do you have a political platform? Do you have a plan? Have you ever heard a Contra leader talking about political education, about schools once they take over? Have you heard of a Contra leader with an idea? And we live in a We are living in an era of political socialization where the country is facing and undergoing what seems to me to be nothing more, but also nothing less, than intellectual suicide. You have people who cannot tell you where the Persian Gulf is, but they are in favor of sending troops to the Persian Gulf.

Speaker 1: Anti-communism has also provided the ideological climate here at home in which scapegoating and targeting and repressing certain sectors of our population is not only possible but condoned by some of the U.S. public. And that purpose has served to divide and weaken particularly the internal opposition to those wars and that intervention abroad. Many of us in a single action or protest have been labeled, have been hooted at in the streets and called bitch, whore, lesbian, Lesbian, nigger, commie, just as commie and Jew were epithets hurled in unison against male and female radicals of earlier struggles. What it meant to me as a person becoming active in the peace movement and Women Strike for Peace, the loss of a knowledge of how you could connect feminism with the struggle for peace, the loss of knowledge of a whole bunch of gallant women who were both radicals, some of them were communists, some of them were just liberals, who understood that all the social issues are connected with the issue of gender equality. So that was lost from historical memory. And the message that I want to bring at this point is that not only do we have to struggle now for the right to have alternative solutions to societal problems, but We have to reclaim our memory of radical organizations, of feminist organizations. It's really our duty. Otherwise, we start from nowhere. I can tell you that as an American growing up here, I was very proud of the fact that my father, who could hardly speak English, had Black friends, had Irish friends, had every— I mean, we had people coming to our house, which was a Jewish ghetto. Which meant that as a black man walked up to our house, everybody in the street would say, there's a communist. Now, is that bad? I thought that was good. I still think it's good.

Speaker 2: If you had to sum up what communism is all about, Chris, how would you sum it up? Well, I just don't like it. That's it. But what is it? Have you ever met a communist, Ann?

Speaker 1: No. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2: No, but they don't—

Speaker 1: what, communists don't believe in God?

Speaker 2: Uh, um, I think that's what I learned, yeah, is that, that they are atheists. Um, but I think—

Speaker 1: That's what I heard. I don't know nothing about them.

Speaker 2: Uh-huh.

Speaker 1: My grandmother had a mink coat. When she died, my cousin gave the eulogy, and He talked about the contradictions, and he talked about her mink coat, and he said it was sort of like bread and roses. I mean, everybody— you know what the revolution was about, or what all this— because I don't know if she really always believed there'd be a revolution, but maybe she did— that the revolution was really about, you know, having antiques and diamond rings and mink coats for everybody.

Speaker 2: I remember this phrase, you know, come the revolution, we'll You'll all eat strawberries. But I don't like strawberries. Come the revolution, you'll eat strawberries.

Speaker 1: When I think about communism, I think about the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That communism is basically the ultimate democracy. It's a society— I imagine a society in which everybody is concerned with the common good and willing to work towards the common Native American communities were often communist in that they were small and a lot of people had input into, into how the tribe operated and what decisions were made.

Speaker 2: It's everybody working and then putting their wages in a big pool and dishing out what everybody produces equally to all the people, as opposed to America where everybody just is Everybody's out to make as much as they can, and if you make more than the other guy, then that means you're doing well. Whereas in communism, if you theoretically— if you put it all more into the pot to help everyone else, then you're doing good for all your comrades, stuff like that.

Speaker 1: I don't know. So, I mean, I think that a lot of reasons why everybody's so angry is just out of, like, ignorance. I mean, like, I personally think it's like a utopia. It just doesn't work, you know.

Speaker 2: Radicals in American history— and by radicals I mean, oh, they've been communists, they've been socialists, they've been anarchists, they've been all sorts of people who are— who want things changed, who've been indignant at the way things are going. And these radicals, these anarchists, these socialists, these communists, Without them, we would not have had the kind of changes that took place in this country, which were good changes. Because very often these people, these agitators, these radicals, they were the ones who were needed to start things off.

Speaker 1: So I think it's important to explore the potential sources of power we hold within our hands, especially now during this period when it is so important to create United fronts against the official oppressions that are represented by those in power. There's a strong suggestion here that people talk to their children and their extended families about what went on here, because lots of kids don't know what parents or grandparents or uncles or aunts went through In terms of experiencing anti-communism. Along with that, we need more people, we need to support more people to come out from the old left and tell their stories of experiences of oppression via anti-communism. If you want media about this, what was suggested is giving talks, leading classes, and doing this kind of work.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 1: We're doing this kind of work in YMCAs, in union halls, in vets' organizations, at schools, at churches and synagogues. For the young people, it was really empowering to be here and see the sense of an understandable history and tradition that extend— that exists in the left that we just read about and we see in very small numbers on TV. Professors at our campuses and things like that, you know, in classes. Finally, that we are concerned that we not fall vulnerable to a potential trap of all sort of all becoming— all folding under the umbrella of anti-anti-communism. That we not— that it's important to be anti-anti-communist, but not in a way that we lose sight of our diversity and our differences and what makes us an integrated movement and a whole movement.