This article is the opening report given by Noah Williams, the District Secretary of the Oregon CPUSA at their District Convention.

Good afternoon comrades and welcome to the third (modern) annual Oregon CPUSA District Convention. We say modern because our Party has a long history, some of that being across Oregon — we just don’t know a lot of that history and the Party re-formed here in just the past few years. We’ve grown considerably and we’re excited for the discussion and debate we’ll have today about our path forward.

We must go over the broader political situation in Oregon and then discuss how we as the CPUSA have been doing.

Oregon politics

In 2022 our governor election was 47% for Democrat Tina Kotek, 43.5% for Republican Christine Drazen, and 8.5% for independent Betsy Johnson. There was a serious risk that the Oregon governor seat would flip red. This year we have Kotek and Drazen running again, but without a third candidate. MAGA is on the ballot outside of the major Oregon cities — and this seat is the one they have the highest chance to win. However, being the governor race, it is also the one that we as the Party currently have the least impact on due to the scope of the race. The directive from the National Committee is to build the party and at the same time defeat MAGA wherever we can — today we can discuss further what that looks like in Oregon.

Oregon is often under the watch of MAGA, primarily Portland. We saw their attempts to send the National Guard in earlier this year and all of the lies that came with it. ICE has been active across the state. If the governor is in danger of flipping red then it is also possible for the Senate to — and Oregon flipping red would be dangerous to continue a MAGA majority. Capitalists as a whole are interested in Oregon for data centers. People have been organizing actively against both ICE and the data centers, doing what they can and already various elections have ousted pro-data center and pro-ICE candidates.

The National Committee described the current time as a socialist moment. We see numerous organizations taking advantage of this, and of course our Party is too. DSA has taken advantage of the moment in Portland, winning 25% of the City Council and multiple state representatives. The Working Families Party has also seen a resurgence here, as they have in many states around the country. These are both our allies in the broad socialist and anti-MAGA struggle and we welcome the success of the progressive movement. Their victories make ours easier, and ours make theirs easier.

Outside of major cities, the political situation is very right wing — enough to the point of being able to flip the state MAGA red. The organizing situation in these areas is also totally different from what may work in Portland, Salem, or Corvallis — as we have heard from our members in Southern Oregon.

CPUSA in Oregon

Let’s talk more about the Communist Party. We have grown considerably over the past few years. From just a handful of members on a Zoom call in early 2022, we now have multiple active clubs — all growing and active in their communities.

In 2025 we primarily had two clubs, Portland and Salem — with a few others trying to find their footing. Those had been our only clubs since we got restarted in 2022. Now, in 2026, we are happy to say that we have four active clubs — Portland, Salem, Corvallis, and Washington County. Corvallis is doubling as our first YCL and a CPUSA club, with some members in both while others are just in one or the other. We also have a few clubs in formation: Vancouver Washington and Southern Oregon, as well as many active at-large members across the state without a club in their city yet.

Many members are stepping up to the challenge of leading the Party — taking on roles in their clubs, with the District, or both. There was a time when we started that some District leadership were wearing far too many “leadership hats.” Those numbers have been severely reduced — in a good way. The roles are spread among more members now, bringing in creativity, energy, and a better balance of Party work.

Educating our members in Marxism-Leninism and the CPUSA program is always important and we want to highlight that in 2025, we sent 2 members to the Little Red Schoolhouse (LRS), both from Corvallis. Today, Corvallis is an extremely active club and YCL — and that is in part due to the LRS. Just last week, our contingent from the 2026 LRS returned and we can report that we had 5 members there — 3 from Corvallis and 2 from Portland. Sending Comrades to the LRS and other National Education initiatives is an investment in the future of our organization. We continue to look for ways to train our members to lead, to apply Marxism-Leninism in creative ways, and to organize the working class — and we hope to hear from what our LRS attendees learned during their week in NYC at the National Headquarters.

While we have been doing well and we can congratulate ourselves on growth and successes over the past year, we should want to challenge ourselves to continue and do even more. There are numerous areas we can do better in:

• The National Committee is urging all clubs and Districts to run comrades for office when there is a viable chance of victory. Our Corvallis comrades are stepping up to the plate and running for City Council this year. We want to see our other clubs work toward a run in the next few years — and being involved with the 2026 elections is a great way to make alliances, learn strategies, and engage our membership to take the first steps in a 2027 or 2028 run.
• One advantage that CPUSA has over many other organizations is the local, state, and national connection to our broader organization. Since we have been rebuilding our District from scratch, we have had a relatively weak District. While we have been meeting regularly and maintaining organization, the focus was first on building up our clubs — without strong local roots then our state organization would have no hope of flourishing. Many of the resolutions put forth this year seek to strengthen our District organizing and we believe comrades are correct in identifying us as able to do so as at least two of our resolutions today address. Our Clubs have been consistently growing for years, establishing connections, and educating members. It is time that we take the next step and raise the organizational ability of our District — uniting on political campaigns, education, messaging, and more.
• While having a stronger District is important, we also need to consider our Club building efforts. There are areas of Oregon where we have failed in starting a club — despite having enough members on paper to form one, we have not had a comrade able to anchor and take on a leadership role. We need to better consider how to train and support new clubs as they are first starting. In a similar vein, we have numerous cities where we have an at-large member and no club. We need to take online applicants to the Party and turn them into leaders — many of them are already Marxists, or friendly to the ideas, if they’re joining our organization without any local connection. While not something that can be successful 100% of the time, it is a challenge we set forth for us nonetheless. If we want to first make sure Oregon doesn’t flip MAGA red, and then ensure Oregon flips CPUSA red, then we need to form new clubs — including in primarily Republican areas.

Let’s detail a brief story about how our Party has directly impacted someone’s life this year. In mid/late 2025 we got an email from someone possibly interested in joining and wanted to learn more. We talked on the phone and discovered he is a military veteran and was looking for a way to be involved and contribute to something productive. He had recently come to understand the negative effects of U.S. imperialism and domestic policy — and the primary catalyst was the possibility that ICE could take his kids or wife simply because they weren’t white. He joined, came to many of our events, and a few months later we had No Kings 3 in the fall. He came up to me at our table to tell me that by recruiting him we had changed his life — he felt that he had never understood more about how the world works.

We were a little shocked to hear this, thinking it just doing the part by calling an interested applicant and answering questions about how we organize and what our goals are. Upon reflection of his comment, it motivates us to want to change more lives — and how many other times we heard a comment like that or saw a similar interaction. We saw a woman that we canvassed for a City Council race testifying at a city budget hearing in favor of a city program (Portland Street Response) that helped her directly — the same program that got her to vote for a candidate who supported funding it. We knocked on a woman’s door in far east Portland and she told us that no one had ever brought a petition like that to her door, a petition to call out the massive CEO pay at Portland General Electric and insane price increases of her utilities. She happily signed it and got her husband to as well. These are just a few of personal stories — We know so many of our comrades here today would have similar interactions. Our work touches so many people already, and it is only going to expand.

We’re proud of how far our District has come over the past few years, from virtually not existing before 2023 to numerous active Clubs, members across the state, and directly impacting people’s lives. The discussion and debate we have today will set us up for the next year of growth. Let’s take advantage of this socialist moment, let’s grow the Party, and let’s organize the broadest mass of workers we can for socialism!

Images: Oregon CPUSA