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NY-YCL State Committee Report, 1.29.2022

This Report was written and given by co-chairs P. S. and J. M., at the NY CPUSA State Committee Meeting on 1.29.2022. 

Brief Summary of Last Years Work

Last year we continued our work doing mutual aid at NYCHA's Chelsea Houses, we helped run a small City Council campaign for Marni Halasa in Chelsea, and also were a crucial part of Kristin Jordan's successful City Council campaign in Harlem. We started building student organization at NYU, BMCC, and Columbia, have supported the CUNY campaign for Free CUNY. We've continued tabling to recruit and get out information about CPUSA and community events. We were very active in protests, including in the movement for Black Lives and focused on anti-imperialist protests, leading rallies in support of socialist Cuba last summer and in the fall. We've also further developed our internal organization on subcommittees.

Committees

Our current active subcommittees are Onboarding, Communication, Prison Abolition, Education, Cultural (ie. the arts), Anti-imperialism, and Student organizing. More will be developed as concentrations emerge.

Recurring Activities, educationals

We have become more organized and have Regular coordinating committee and general membership meetings. We have very successful biweekly educationals on Marxism, and will be having more organizing trainings. We have regular onboarding and new member orientations.

Current Objectives

Current objectives of the New York YCL include:

(1) Getting involved with the mass struggle: participating in popular rallies, such as the women’s march, to build a base in the working class, tabling, etc., to spread knowledge of the CPUSA to the working class, build relationships with mass movements, and promote a Communist style of work in our cadre.

(2) Recruitment: focusing on drawing in more and more people into the organization and the struggle as a whole.

(3) Articulating our voice: organizing protests as open Communists, endorsing, etc., and promoting the Communist line even in cases where the masses are not already involved (i.e. the Cuba rally). Expanding our social media presence and voice.

(4) Deepening YCL/CPUSA cooperation: encouraging YCL members to join their local clubs and coordinating actions as much as possible between the YCL and the Party.

Coordinating Committee Growth & Formalization(s)

Building off of all the great work we’ve done over the last year, and to facilitate the many current objectives we have as the New York YCL, we recently brought new people onto the YCL Coordinating Committee, to replace a number of initial interim CC members who had since become inactive. Our Coordinating Committee growth also purposefully reflects the racial and gender diversity of our growing YCL, best representing the working class organization we want to be. New Committee Members include young leaders who have been taking on leadership in organizing their clubs, such as K. K. and T. R., leaders in developing our student activity, such as T. G. at Columbia, and leaders upstate, such as A. H. in Buffalo. The formalized Coordinating Committee has also allowed us to introduce more internal structure to our organization elsewhere, such as within our subcommittees, and with new membership guidelines to encourage YCL members to actively participate in Party work instead of solely getting caught up in online debates. It has also allowed us to focus on key areas of growth and in-person activity.

Beginning More Upstate/Downstate Collaboration

We have begun more upstate and downstate collaboration, so we are not just NYC-focused, and so our members feel less balkanized. We’ve seen new recruits upstate and have been connecting them with club leaders throughout Syracuse and Buffalo. We have been coordinating actively on labor issues with C.J. in Albany, who has been essential to our work with the Building Trades for Workers Democracy. Our biggest upstate-downstate collaboration among the Youth is on the new NY District Housing Committee, where we focus on ALL housing struggles members work on, from continued work in the Housing Justice for All coalition, to building community land trusts and organizing tenants eviction defense committee, and of course our crucial struggles supporting public housing tenants to defend NYCHA against privatization via the Blueprint and RAD. Youth are working together to figure out how to connect all these struggles via the Communist Plus.

Labor & Housing Struggles

One key Plus we are working on for the housing struggle is connecting Housing and Labor together, such as with the Building Trades members who also focus on defending section-9 Public Housing against privatization. This brings us to another main focus of YCL which is labor struggle. Members have been key in supporting the fight for Chipotle workers to have a union, were active on the Columbia University Picket during their long strike, and have been crucial support to the Amazon Labor Union struggle. We’ve also recruited new young members to the Party via the fight at Amazon. These struggles are, of course, only picking up.

Anti-War Work on the Horizon

Finally, a key focus point for the YCL has been anti-imperialism efforts, working to help rebuild the anti-war movement. With the Cuba Solidarity Rally we very successfully led last summer, we started building an anti-imperialist coalition. We are building off of that work, working with a broad coalition of community groups to start doing anti-military counter recruitment and anti-war protests, particularly focused in the Bronx. We are working with anti-war Veterans groups, religious groups like Pastors for Peace, groups like Move the Money, Public Housing tenants organizations, unions we’re connected to. Through this, we can show the workers and everyday people how all our struggles are connected. Republicans and Democrats claim there’s no money for healthcare, public housing, debt forgiveness, but spend $700 billion on defense and are drafting MORE money to go to senseless war as we speak. The money is there for people’s everyday needs, and through highlighting this, we can build a broad democratic front together and reignite the anti-war struggle when we need it most.

We look forward to all of these efforts and continuing to grow the Party. Solidarity, comrades.