• Does Communist Affiliation In Connecticut Matter?

    August 5, 2024
    Screenshot, Communist Party USA; Fishman, second from left.

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    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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    Author

    Don Pesci

    Don Pesci is a political columnist of long standing, about 40 years, who has written for various state newspapers, among them The Journal Inquirer, the Waterbury Republican American, the New London Day, the Litchfield County Times, the Torrington Register Citizen and other Register Citizen papers. He maintains a blog, among the oldest of its kind in Connecticut, which serves as a repository and archive, for his columns; there are approximately 3,000 entrees in Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State, virtually all of them political columns stretching back to 2004. He also appears once a week Wednesdays on 1080 WTIC Newstalk radio with Will Marotti.

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    Bob MacGuffie

    Jim Himes can be added to the list. He spent two months living among the Communist Sandinistas during their Nicaraguan revolution. Daniel Ortega still has his boot on the neck of the people. See Himes thesis on it all: http://www.RealHimes.com

    Paul A

    Our weak imbedded politicians turned Connecticut from the CONSTITUTION STATE, to the communist manifesto state. Being a politician for that long reeks of autocracy. We could have done better here without decades of Blumenthal. Is that really democracy. Is that really saving democracy or is it saving his cushy life because all he knows how to do is pander and virtue signal towards the demise of a capitalistic society, because he’s never been a part of society. Get lost and take Jr. With you.

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