Committees of Correspondence (U.S.)

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw, within the Communist Party of the USA (aka CP or CPUSA), the growth of an informal dissident "Gorbachevite" current, centered around the respected veteran communist and former leading CP official, Gil Green (1906-1997). Prepatory to the CP’s November 1991 national convention in Cleveland, this group coalesced under the name "Initiative" to dispute the policies and leadership of CP head Gus Hall. After their defeat, which included an acrimonious credentials struggle that saw the Cleveland police called to enforce the rulings of the Gus Hall-dominated convention, the reformers withdrew from the CP and established the Committees of Correspondence in 1992 as a non-Leninist, democratic socialist organization. The new group, while composed principally of ex-Communists, sought to reach out to others on the left, and held a conference in San Francisco in July 1992, to formally establishing a new organization, which did not occur until the July 1994 convention in Chicago. The organization’s name was changed, circa 2000, to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

From the guide to the Committees of Correspondence (U.S.) Records, 1991-1997, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)

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