In my last post I wrote about the dangerous political climate developing right now, six weeks before the election.  That hasn't changed.  In fact, the story today of the Obama administration yielding to the military on an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, along with the story of a former military man attempting to break into the White House(and an individual recently arrested in Virginia for weapons possession) should worry everyone.

But the Peoples March to the United Nations in opposition to  global danger of climate change was  an example that masses of people are in motion in opposition to the corporate polluters and their political servants everywhere.

My experience with the March was especially invigorating because I marched with the CPUSA contingent, which has more militant and more warmly received than any CPUSA contingent in any demonstration that I have seen over the last four decades.  And I bought a T-Shirt and put it on, with the CPUSA logo on the back and Big Oil, too Big to Fail on the front.

Although we were at the back of the march, meeting at 80th street by the Museum of Natural History(been in one of the forward groups, especially the solutions group further down town), and some wanted me to march with the Rutgers student contingent or the contingent of those who had suffered through Hurricane Sandy(I was one, living on the Jersey Shore), I made the choice of being packed into a subway to join the CPUSA contingent--the right choice. 

 First, our group really was young and old, African American and European American, male and female.  I am not saying other groups weren't but I saw no group which was to the extent that we were.  As we marchd  our chants were louder and more militant and more understandable than  the others.  No one was "hiding the face of the party"  as we chanted  "What does Democracy look like, this is what Democracy looks like" and "What does a Communist Look Like, This is what a Communist looks like."  And of Course "CPUSA" over and over again.  And there were the chants for Green Jobs, against Big Oil.  And there were small children marching with their parents and joining in, at one point a child speaking into  the bull horn.  Along the way many people smiled and cheered.  Some came to take our pictures.  One women told me she didn't know that the CPUSA existed any more but she was very happy that it did and its demonstration was the best she had seen.  Another man, an Italian tourist here with his family, smiled and gave me  back the clench fist salure when I said "Avanti Poppolo" (forward people),  He also said "Bandera Rosa(under the red flag) the two phrases coming from the best known song of the Socialist and Communist movement in Italy over the generations. 

 I thought that it was ashame that J.Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy, Senator Tom Dodd of the Senate Internal Security Committee(he would especially have been upset by the militant Connecticut contingent) and other  political policemen and Red Scare politician had not lived to see our contingent.  They would have died all over again!

Party leaders were present also, although this was the march of the members, of both the CPUSA and the YCL.    There were some other ultra left groups shouting about revolution at the top of their longs, and some others who, I suspect, saw the event as a "cultural happening."  But the overwhelming majority(and this was the largest mass demonstration in New York in a very logn time) were what I call the "honest left" and "honest liberals" the people out in the trenches fighting the battles for labor's rights, civil rights, peace among nations and peace with the planet(battles that are all interconnected)  As we passed the CPUSA table at 65th Street Cental Park West, a saw many people gathered around.  Later I spoke to Lee Dlugin, District Organizer for NJ, who helped man the table and told me that the response of the people who stopped by was like the people we saw along the march, very positive, very interested, and( I guess to the chagrin of some capitalists) they also bought a lot of T-Shirts

This was a movement in action.  But if the movement is to really achieve even its minimal goals it must  see the march as a beginning to organized mass struggle, in the communities, the cities and states, and the nation.  From there we can begin to reclaim the nation from its exploiters and oppressors and join with others to reclaim the planet .