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| Fishman, second from left |
It’s fair to say that much of the Northeast and California, the nation’s neo-progressive crescent, is no longer fearful of the international communist beast. Presently, the communist stigma has largely disappeared in reliably blue Connecticut.
A little more than three years past, U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal received an Amistad Award from the Connecticut Communist Party in
New Haven. Someone made a stink, and Blumenthal, his back to the wall, was
forced to lament that he never knew the state union connected communist party
in New Haven was a vibrant part of the Communist International.
Blumenthal amusingly said he thought he had been attending a
union event. Immediately following the Amistad Awards ceremony, the Hartford
Courant reported, “U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal says he would not have attended
a recent awards ceremony in New Haven if he knew it was tied to the Communist
Party.”
There were two responses to Blumenthal’s fraudulent disclaimer.
Of course Blumenthal knew he was associating with New Haven’s highly
active and justly celebrated communist party. He also knew of the intimate association
of Connecticut’s Communist Party and various state unions. The political lives
of Blumenthal, in politics for 47 years, and Fishman, a member of the communist
party for at least 40 years, are roughly coterminous.
Fishman’s Communist Party USA bio reads:
“Joelle Fishman chairs the Connecticut Communist Party USA. She is a
Commissioner on the City of New Haven Peace Commission, serves on the executive
board of the Alliance of Retired Americans in Connecticut and is an active
member of many economic rights and social justice organizations. She was a
candidate for Congress from 1973 to 1982, maintaining minor-party ballot status
for the Communist Party in Connecticut's Third Congressional District. As chair
of the CPUSA Political Action Commission, she has played an active role in the
broad labor and people's alliance that defeated the ultra-right in the 2008
elections and continues to mobilize for health care, worker rights and peace.”
The second more convenient reaction was a cold indifference
to Blumenthal’s indifference.
That frigid indifference is not shared in all quarters of
Connecticut.
In a December 2020 posting in the Yankee Institute, “Connecticut Communist Party and state
representatives present union leaders with awards,” Yankee noted: “The
Connecticut Communist Party held its annual People’s World Amistad Awards on
Saturday, December 12, the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party
USA. The awards were presented to SEIU 1199 NE President Rob Baril, President
of the Connecticut chapter of the American Federation of Teachers Jan Hochadel,
Hartford City Councilwoman Wildaliz Bermudez and Barbara Vereen, staff director
of Unite Here Local 34, the union representing clerical and technical workers
at Yale University.”
The Amistad award was presented to Hochadel – currently a
State Senator in Connecticut’s 13th District covering Meriden and parts of
Cheshire, Middletown, and Middlefield – by Shellye Davis, co-president of the
Hartford Federation of Paraprofessionals.
In her acceptance remarks, “Hochadel called for an end to
for-profit healthcare, taxing nonprofits with large endowments and raising
taxes on corporations to avoid an ‘austerity budget’ in the upcoming session.”
A July 2022 posting from CTMirror – “CT budget surplus shatters the $4B mark:
$4.1 billion from $4.3 billion fiscal cushion will reduce state’s massive
pension debt” – suggests that Hochadel’s remarks upon accepting the
state Communist Party’s Amistad award were highly overblown.
Indirectly referencing Yale University’s endowment and
Connecticut’s insufficiently taxed large non-profits, Hochadel soothingly scratched
the ever present anti-capitalist pro-statist itch of her hosts: “How about
instead we have those large non-profits with huge endowments pay their fair
share of taxes instead? How about we ask those corporations that are sucking
money away in offshore bank accounts to pay their fair share of taxes? How about
asking for progressive tax structure to return to a level we haven’t seen in
decades so that the lowest paid workers are keeping the economy of Connecticut
going?”
In a more recent Yankee posting, Unity and Justice? Union Boss’ Campaign
Ethics Raises Eyebrows in the 2nd District portfolio – we discover that “Shellye Davis, the
secretary-treasurer of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and a contender to unseat Sen.
Doug McCrory (D-Hartford) in the upcoming August primary, has already raised
eyebrows by blatantly ignoring a ban on accepting campaign donations from
registered lobbyists during the General Assembly session. This move allowed
Davis to rake in over $100,000 in public funds handed out by the government for
her campaign.”
Political association always indicates mutual commitment to
common goals. Pro-abortion advocates generally are not found taking tea and
crumpets with pro-life advocates. Just so, the leaders of state worker unions
and card-carrying members of the Connecticut Communist Party USA, while both share certain interests, are at
loggerheads with each other concerning primary goals.
The primary goal of the Communist International is to
subvert national identity, install agents within democratic governments the
world over to subvert democracy – the chief ambition, just now, of Venezuelan
communist leader Nicolás Maduro – and to establish in captured states “the terror” of Joseph
Stalin, so that the resistance of timid democrats and republicans may permanently
be shattered. It is doubtful, to say the least, that union rank and file
members would embrace such subversive means of seizing power and subverting
democracy.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to the friends of
democracy everywhere that extremist neo-progressivism is little more than
Stalinism-in-waiting. Certainly, Connecticut’s forward looking neo-progressives
have far more in common with Maduro than the valiant Venezuelan democratic
opposition.
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