RE: Size of US Left Groups (Re: Level of Debate: SLP

[Nathan Newman <newman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 6 Dec 1995 wdrb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Committee of Correspondence............
> what are they??
>
> Will Brown

The Committees of Correspondence came together in 1992 at a conference of
activists from around the country in Berkeley, CA.  The goal was a
regroupment of left and socialist activists after decades of division and
the create of a broad democratic organization of the Left.  Members came
from Trotskyist and Maoist groups, as independent activists and as
ex-members from the Communists Party.  The latter group came from the
split in the CPUSA in its late 1991 convention where about half the
organization, including almost all the black leadership of the Party, left
the CPUSA due its its lack of democracy and political reform. The other
major background to the founding of the Committees of Correspondence had
been a conference in 1990 in Northern California that had begun the
dialogue between a range of forces of the Left.

The CoC now has a membership of about 1500, with about a third of that
membership being the ex-CPUSAers.  Its top leadership includes members of
Solidarity, members who came out of Maoist groups like Freedom Road
Socialist Organizing Network and Line of March, independent politics
activists, left union leaders, and a range of others.

Its main work has been through its chapters in the last few years on work
ranging from union support to fighting for affirmative action and
immigrant rights to building support for independent politics.

Having held its "founding conference" in Chicago in 1994 to adopt a
formal constitution and a statement of goals and principles, it will be
meeting again in the summer of 1996 in New York City to develop a broad
national program of action.

I'll attach the adopted goals and principles statement: "For A Democratic
and Socialist Future."

--Nathan Newman



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