Women's Rights, Agriculture, American Indians, Gun Control, and High Stakes Testing

The five resolutions presented below were adopted unanimously in outline form at the Minnesota/Dakotas CPUSA District Convention June 9, 2001. They are not intended as texts to be adopted at the 27th National Convention, but as input on these topics to the Resolutions Committee.

1. Resolution on Women's Rights and Equality
In the United States today, women's rights are threatened, and women's equality endangered, both directly by the right-wing agenda and indirectly by lessening militancy in the defense of these rights. This is the worst time to take for granted the hard-won gains of the women's movement and other progressive movements of the sixties and seventies.

The CPUSA should ally itself with activist groups around issues such as reproductive rights, comparable pay. living wage, and lesbian and gay rights. We should insist on social responsibility for the education and welfare of children, and for care giving to the disabled and elderly as well as children. The gender wage gap continues; unionization of women workers is an imperative. With every political struggle we take up, we must be alert to particular impact on women.

Within our own ranks we must eliminate any vestiges of male supremacy and out-dated gender roles.

RESOLVED: That the CPUSA reaffirm its support of women's rights and equality, and increase its efforts to make women's struggles a major emphasis of its political work.

2. Resolution on Agricultural Policy.
The special feature of the farm crisis confronting family farmers in the United States is that the prices received by family farmers for their crops are lower than the cost of production. The agribusiness monopolies use their control over farm inputs such as seed, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, farm machinery, as well as their control over the farm commodities market to extract superprofits at the expense of the family farmers. The urban rural economies that serve the agricultural economy in one or another form involve populations that are many times larger than the actual farming population. With the elimination of the federal parity price support programs of the Roosevelt era, the survival of rural America, especially in the Midwest, depends deeply on the federal government subsidies for farm production of those crops and dairy products that are not profitable for corporate-type farming because their labor intensity (e.g., grain, corn, soybeans, peanuts, tobacco, sugar, dairy farming). Consequently, direct government payments to farmers constitute between one-third and two-thirds of the income of family farmers. In the case of a few commodities-sugar, tobacco, and peanuts-federal price support subsidies or import restrictions and duties maintain prices at or above the cost of production.

Recently, candy manufacturers in the Chicago area have begun lobbying for the removal of price support programs for sugar, arguing that they cannot compete in the global economy with candy produced in other countries because the price of sugar is too high. They have succeeded in gaining support for this effort from members of the Illinois congressional delegation. Unfortunately, this campaign has received support from some radical groups and unions in Illinois because of their concern that jobs in candy manufacturing were being threatened. Removal of price supports for sugar would bankrupt family farmers involved in sugar beet production in Minnesota and North Dakota and eliminate jobs in the large unionized workforce employed in processing the harvested sugar beets. The AFL-CIO and has a long-standing alliance with farmers of Minnesota and North Dakota and elsewhere. The CPUSA can contribute to cementing this alliance by exposing the machinations of the candy manufacturers against this alliance.

3. Resolution on American Indian Rights
The CPUSA should support the demands of the American Indians that the rights granted to them under treaties with the federal government not be abridged by the state governments.

The CPUSA should give support to the American Indian demand for the elimination of Indian mascots, names, and logos for sports teams.

4. Resolution on Gun Control
The longstanding gun culture in the United States makes it imperative the issue of gun control not be raised in a manner that will strengthen the far right forces in the United States. The position of the CPUSA should be directed toward the corporate abuse and circumvention of laws that are already in place, the closing of loopholes in the laws concerning the sale of guns at gun shows, and requirements for safety features such as locks that prevent accidental deaths.

5. High Stakes Testing
Whereas High Stakes Testing in the basic skill areas of math, reading and writing continue to be used in the public schools across the nation to determine if a student will be allowed to graduate from high school.

Whereas this is largely an effort by the corporate state to create the illusion that school reform can be achieved by blaming the victims of underfunded schools for their failure to pass these tests.

Be it resolved that the CPUSA take a position of opposing High Stakes Testing as a method of school reform.