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Stay-At-Home organizing: Voters hear candidates at “virtual house parties”

By Tim Wheeler

SEQUIM, Wash.—Confined to their homes by COVID-19, Olympic Peninsula voters were able to hear—and see—two candidates for the Sixth Congressional District of Washington State. Speaking in two separate ZOOM “virtual house parties,” the electronic gatherings broke new ground—two Democratic candidates for high office who both gave up all face-to-face gatherings, observing the “Stay-At-Home” order imposed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

But it was also the first time incumbent Congressman Derek Kilmer, chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition in the House, has faced such a determined, skilled, articulate challenger from the left, Rebecca Parson, a young woman community activist from Tacoma. The district has elected Democrats to the U.S. Congress without fail for the past 55 years.

The difference between the two candidates was stark and convinced many that it is time to embrace Parson, a bold grassroots challenger to stick-in-the-mud, stand-pat politics.

The first ZOOM session featured Parson, a first-time office seeker, a tireless community organizer, a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, a lesbian active in the struggle for LGBTQ equal rights. Parson accepts no corporate campaign contributions. She is also a Democratic Party Precinct Committee Officer in her home district in Tacoma, endorsed by the Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party of Washington State.

In her socially distant crowd were movers and shakers, members of... 

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Is it time to think about Unemployed Councils?

By Bruce Bostick

Unemployed Councils cropped up across the country in the 1930s during the Great Depression and again in the 1980s after the mass layoffs in the steel industry. I was a part of the effort to start up such a council in Lorain, Ohio.

Our Lorain Communist Party club played the key role in establishing and running a storefront coalition grouping, the Unemployed Crisis Center, that won benefits for workers and positively affected how organized labor and public officials treated the unemployed. We were able to concretely help thousands of unemployed workers and, as a side benefit, we recruited new folks to the CPUSA.

We also suffered some major setbacks. Hopefully, I’m able to pass on here some lessons we learned.

We had re-established our CP club in Lorain as a steel club, in 1970, with some younger workers on the one hand and George Edwards, the only veteran member left from an earlier period of glory.... 

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Progressive lawmakers push people first in coronavirus relief

By Mark Gruenberg

WASHINGTON—With events moving quickly towards yet another economic stimulus bill hitting Capitol Hill, progressive lawmakers and groups have banded together and are lobbying hard to ensure the measure puts people, not corporate interests, first.

But they have one big obstacle to overcome: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is determined the next economic relief bill contains $250 billion for so-called “small businesses,” and smaller sums sent to hurting hospitals and to states and cities who have seen their revenues disappear – and nothing at all for workers.

The measure is expected to hit Congress by the end of the week of April 24, following behind three earlier laws, notably, the $2.2 trillion economic relief bill solons passed and GOP President Donald Trump grumbled about, then signed on March 18. He then took credit for it in big letters and a photo splashed on the White House website.

That measure was designed to blunt the economic crash resulting from massive closures ordered to cure or halt the “community spread” of the coronavirus pandemic. As of the morning of April 20, the coronavirus had sickened 749,666 people in the U.S., and 35,012 had died.

The closures also threw 22 million people out of jobs so far, shooting the U.S. jobless rate up over 10 percent, the Economic Policy Institute calculates. That hit led to... 

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