Building Party Clubs: An Interview with Elena Mora, CPUSA Organization Secretary

An interview of Elena Mora by Judith Le Blanc, CPUSA Vice-Chair. Elena Mora discusses challenges of building the CPUSA clubs which were tackled Friday, Jan 11th, 2002, in a meeting of various Club, District and National leaders of the CPUSA.

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EXCERPTS

Although the clubs of the Party are involved in many different struggles, the Peace movement, fighting for labor rights, union organizing, all kinds of issues, there's also problems with the clubs, and that's why we had this meeting. When people join, they are usually asked to be a member of a club, depending on where they live or where they work. We are starting a process today of looking at the club so that we can improve them, so that they're more interesting, so that they're exciting, so that they're organizing centers, so they're more attractive to people who either will join the Party or work with us.

[Similar to the aims of the AFL-CIO], the Party also fights for working people's agenda, for working families, for many of the same issues: social justice, equality, against racism. The Party's involved in those. We see ourselves, although we want to build our own organization, our organization plays a role in organizing others and helping build these movements that include broader groups of people that are coalitions that include many different organizations. So when we talk about organizing, both we are talking about improving our own internal structure, our size, our own organizational ability as well as our ability to help organize people into struggle.

Tomorrow we have a meeting of our National Board, which is kind of our, one of the top leading bodies of the Party, and one of the things I know we are going to talk about is what's different about this post-9/11 political situation. And I think there is a little bit of a debate or some discussion: is it different? is it the same? how different is it? And so of course we would say, well, on the one hand some things, of course, are not different at all. You know, for instance, the economic crisis, the recession. Some are saying, "I think it's the Bush administration," others are trying to blame it all on what happened after September 11th, but there was a recession before that and even before that there were many people facing huge economic problems. So, certain things, the problems that capitalism creates of job insecurity and poverty, and lack of child care, and all those issues, are still there.

But, obviously, a lot of things did change after September 11th. I think the war is the main thing, and the Bush drive for war and the attempt to use that to knock off the agendas of the labor movement and the people's movements. That has made it harder to struggle, but it's also made it so that a lot of people are thinking about the big questions of the day. They're thinking about war and peace, they're thinking about what's right. And, those issues are still there, and so organizing still has to go on. And I think we're in a period, along with all the people's movements, in figuring out how do we go ahead with the fight for this agenda against the right, against the Ultra Right and the Bush administration, given that there is the war and the new challenges of ending the war present while also recognizing the importance of the fight against terrorism, the danger and threat that terrorism poses to the world and to the peace.