Greetings delivered to the 30th National Convention in Chicago, June 15, 2014 by Pat Fry, National Co-Chair CCDS. A Communist Party delegation attended the last two Conventions of CCDS as a reflection of our cooperation in the mass movement.

Good afternoon everyone.

I am pleased to be here with you this weekend representing the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Also joining me are Mildred Williamson and Jerry Harris from Chicago CCDS.

We bring warm greetings to the Communist Party USA and the international guests here this weekend.

This is a most important political moment — for the working class movement and the struggle against austerity, war and climate disaster. We share a common understanding of the challenges that confront us and we have a common view of the essential ingredients for advance — the interwoven struggles of class, race and gender.

CCDS considers the need for greater unity on the left to be an all-important, essential task. We first began discussing the building of left unity at the CCDS national convention and symposium in San Francisco in 2009. It was a particularly important time, pregnant with possibility on the heels of the election of the country’s first African American president. Both that election in 2008 and the tremendous multi-sector coalition that came together to make it happen showed us and the world that it was possible to unite and defeat racism and stop the most reactionary sectors of U.S. capital.

What we discussed in 2009 remains a challenge for us today — we need unified, common initiatives in the mass movement based on shared assessments of what is needed and what it takes to win. Yes, there has been progress — we work together in the peace movement on programs to move the money from military spending to social programs and transition to a new green jobs economy. We work together in New York City’s unique Left Labor Project that has brought the labor movement back to May Day marches for “Jobs, Labor Rights and Immigrant Rights.”

We are working together in building for the UN Climate Summit in New York City September 20/21 to insure a million people are in the streets.  We have a common understanding of the need to build unity of the multi-racial, multi-national working class that must be at the heart of it.

We can do more. The Committees has launched the Online University of the Left which now reaches some 40,000 people with more than 50 Marxist scholars supplying hundreds of video classes and other resources. We need greater participation of activists that can strengthen the project as a useful educational tool for the movement. The People’s World is a very fine online news and opinion publication – the left and CCDS should be utilizing it more widely.  There are other ways to share educational tools and projects.

As we all know, building unity doesn’t happen spontaneously. Common efforts to strengthen the democratic movements, requires that deliberate steps be undertaken. That’s what we hope we can do better in the coming period.

I congratulate you on this convention and the wide ranging discussion that preceded it.  Your success bodes well for the further development of a left in the U.S. that is organically connected with the working class and mass democratic movements and the struggle for a socialist future.

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