The Salt of America's Earth
The United States
at the beginning
of the eighties.
From the top floor of
this fifty-story building in
the middle of New York
City, on the rock
that is the island
of Manhattan,
the people on the street seem
small, and their problems
are indistinguishable.
But they do have
problems, and
they're difficult,
painful, and
perpetual problems.
In the United States today,
millions of
Americans struggle
in the vise-like grip of
these problems.
Of whose
making is this
vicious circle?
Is there a way to break it?
The answer is
sought in the offices
of politicians,
on the stock market, on
college campuses, and in
the homes of
ordinary Americans.
Those who've come on this
late autumn day to
the City College campus
in a working-class
neighborhood of
New York are determined
to help rescue the country
from the vicious circle
of economic strife,
the arms race and
racial inequality.
Gathered at this
campaign rally
are American communists.
They stand up to
the gigantic
two-party machine,
generously greased
with millions of
monopoly dollars; to
the corrupt mass media;
and to the brute
force of the capitalist
system.
Nevertheless,
communists are active
and fight back.
[speaking Russian]
At first glance,
what is happening
in this large New York
auditorium seems
quite ordinary.
But that's just the first glance.
To come here and
call yourself
a communist, under
the vigilant eye of
uniformed and
plainclothes policemen,
requires more
than courage.
It takes an unshakable
faith in the ideals
of communism.
[speaking Russian]
[speaking Russian]
The salt of the earth.
Neither wealth, ancestry,
nor official title,
can put a person
in this category.
Those who are the nation's
best people,
they are the salt of the earth.
Those who gathered in
this hall today can rightly
be called that the
salt of America's earth.
The country's best
sons and daughters, those
in whom lie the hope
of future generations
of Americans.
We talked to one of
the people for
whom this rally
was one step forward in the
long and difficult
struggle.
May I ask you, how long have 
you been in the party?
About 45 years.
As we know, the work
of a communist,
is not only a
noble one but a hard one.
Can you elaborate
a little bit about
the conditions of working
communists
in this country?
Well, we had periods,
we had periods, where in 
every industry during
the McCarthy period
when they found out that
one is a communist,
two workers came along
and kicked the worker...
Despite threats
and harassment,
even the most
sophisticated and
cruel, these Americans—
both those are young
and those who
have a lifetime
of struggle and sacrifice
behind them—workers,
students, men and women,
whites and Blacks,
have come to
take part in
the election rally
of the communists.
They've come to hear
their candidates
for president and
vice-president.
General Secretary Gus Hall
and Angela Davis,
a living legend,
outline the party program.
Never in our
electoral history have
so many candidates talked so 
much and said so little
of so many
critical issues.
The candidates of
the bourgeois parties
broke all record than the
1980 election campaign
in the number of artificial
smiles, ritual handshake, and
empty words with
no real commitment
behind them.
Apparently these
smiles can be
gauged in direct
proportion to the seriousness
of the problems the 
country is facing.
The more
complicated the problem,
the more dazzling the
smiles, and the greater
the forced optimism.
Those are the
rules of the game
that are strictly followed
in American bourgeois
politics.
Well-paid extras also
play in this
superproduction.
Their rehearsed 
enthusiasm is
rewarded piecemeal
from campaign funds
made possible by
generous donations
from the wealthy.
It is strictly business.
So many smiles,
so much applause, per dollar.
This has nothing to do
with the real mood
of the voters.
The empty talk of
candidates from the
bourgeois parties,
the unfulfilled promises
of Mr. Carter
and his team, created
mass dissatisfaction
and resulted for one,
in the open challenge to the
Democratic president
within his own party.
A rare case in United
States politics.
Senator Edward Kennedy,
the heir of an influential
dynasty, tried to exploit this
discontent to snatch the leadership
away from Mr. Carter.
Although in the end
Mr. Kennedy was forced
to back down,
the rebellion within
the party in power—
a rebellion that reflected
the voters
disillusionment—was
a harbinger of the
Democrats' defeat
at the polls.
Another unusual situation
in the well-regulated
election process
in the United
States was the break
John Anderson made with
the Republican party, and
his candidacy as
an independent.
Regardless of 
Mr. Anderson's
personal motives,
and of Mr. Kennedy's
for that matter,
the rift in the
two party system
objectively
reflected the
dissatisfaction
of millions of
American's with what
Vladimir Lenin
described as the
spectacular,
but meaningless,
duel between
the two bourgeois parties.
The Communist Party's
campaign was
directed from a
modest rented office.
Whereas the
bourgeois parties
poured endless money into
their campaigns, the
communists had to work
with a relatively
small budget
made up of donations from
the working people.
And only
enthusiastic volunteers
the Party's office.
Communists conducted
their campaign
in conditions of
intimidation,
slander, and
the most sophisticated
kinds of pressure.
This ordinary map
hanging on one of
the office walls
reflected the truly
outstanding struggle and
heroic efforts required to
put the Communist Party
on the ballot in 24 states
and the District
of Columbia
an unprecedented
victory for the party.
"But why all that
effort, self-sacrifice,
and nerve-snapping tension?"
ask the self-satisfied conformists.
After all, the
Communist Party
cannot hope to elect
its candidates to such high 
office.  True, conditions
in the United States
are not ripe for
such a victory,
but Communists don't
live just for today.
They worked the election for
tomorrow, in hopes of
penetrating the wall of
lies that surrounds
their party,
and the ignorance
regarding its goals.
They wanted the
truth to reach
the working people of
the United States.
It takes a special kind
of selfless heroism
and tremendous faith 
in the justice of
your cause to work for
tomorrow without
hope for any reward
today.
To be the leader
of a party
against which is aimed
the might of the entire
state and political
machine of the world's
major capitalist country,
you have to be a special
kind of individual.
It takes an unbending
will, unlimited
determination,
despite the hardships
and obstacles in defending
your cause.
Comrade Gus Hall,
a party member for
more than half a
century and its General
Secretary for the last 22 years, 
possesses those qualities.
Numerous American who
are not in the party
see Comrade Hall as
the only political
figure in
the United States who
truly supports the
interests of the United States's
working class, of all
working people. This is the
national office of
the United States
Communist Party,
where I talked to Comrade
Gus Hall.
Comrade Hall, 
why did you decide to
become a member of
the Communist Party?
Well, I think in my case
seeds were planted
in the atmosphere at
home because both of
my parents came through
the revolutionary movement.
But of course, the
conviction is hammered
out through the
brutality of capitalism,
and especially
working in industries
that are especially 
brutal like
the timber industry
and iron mining industry
and the steel industry.
And in a sense I had an
advantage through my father
because sometime
before many
of the works of
Marx and Engels,
and especially of
Comrade Lenin were
published in English,
they were published
and Finnish, and
my father read Finnish,
so that I, I got
an early start
as far as Leninist conflicts
were concerned.
Would the most difficult day in your 
life and [indecipherable]
Well, of course the more difficult period
of life, of course,
is for anybody who, you know, serves
time in prison... and the 
American prisons are,
again, brutal kind of prison,
the... so that prison life is
of course, in many ways,
the more difficult part.
Well, the happiest part of life
of course is the struggle itself, and 
the victories,
and there are many including some
 very important strikes.
Just a few words,
what entire book could be,
have been, and will
be written about.
Comrade Hall's life is not
simply the biography
of one fighter,
it's a page in the
over 50 year
history of the struggle
of the working class:
its great victories,
and bitter defeats.
The ups and downs.
The battle with the
most powerful, the richest,
the cruelest, and
sophisticated
capitalist society.
That's why
Comrade Hall's life
is so interesting
and so significant.
Gus Hall's father
was a miner.
In 1904, this
Finnish immigrant
was put on the mine
owner's blacklist.
From the age of
fourteen, young Hall
had to work at the
lumberjack and
construction worker. His
revolutionary school
was books and life itself.
In 1926, he participated
in organizing a union
for timber workers,
and at the age of seventeen,
he led us strike a
construction workers.
A leader
at the age of seventeen.
Those were years of upsurge
in the American
working class
struggle. Inspired by the
revolutionary example
of the Russian proletariat,
the American working class
would no longer
resign itself
to the conditions in
the United States.
The entire
country was swept
up by an
unprecedented wave of
strikes. Conveyor belts
stopped, furnaces were
extinguished, hundreds
of thousands of
workers took to the
streets with militant slogans
and red banners,
demanding their rights.
The trade unions,
which were then
not reformist, were
gaining in strength,
and the Communist Party had
a growing membership
and influence.
In September 1919,
labor leaders
gathered in
Chicago declared
the founding of the
Communist Party.
Well I can't say I joined
the Communist Party, because I helped 
to organize the Communist Party.
Narrator: Comrade Bolson [?], 
a charter member
recalled those days
and noted that
such great men and
outstanding Leninists
as John Reed, Charles
Ruthenberg,
and William Foster, stood
at the movement's source.
Well, I don't want
to say that they
carried on either as successfully
or not as successfully,
but they are
carrying on the
same kind of
a struggle in which I 
had been engaged.
And they, as I, look upon
the Communist Party and
its movement and
activities as the future.
The avaricious bourgeoisie
worthy of the New World,
although frightened by
the socialist revolution in
Russia and the growing
class struggle at home,
had not yet developed
the guile and
resourcefulness that
helped it later, and
continues to help it to
this very day, to
hold the working
class in rein.
In those times, the
ruling class had
only one instrument
to hold down
the working
class: brute force.
Not only the police,
but army units were set
against the workers,
cavalry units
and tank thundered
and clanked along city streets
stained with blood.
Prisoners packed
the nation's jails,
and leaders of
the Labor Movement
were sentenced to death.
Today in the United States,
those engaged in the
high-flown verbiage
about human rights
and freedom of unions
seem not to recall the
events of those days,
events captured
forever in these films
found in American archives.
But all that happened
not so very long ago.
Even today, many veterans
of those labor battles
are still fighting
in the ranks.
Among them is
Comrade Gus Hall.
He went to jail for the
first time in 1929,
and recalls how one
of the prison guards
one morning
sarcastically inquired
what you wanted
for breakfast.
"The Communist Manifesto!"
was the prisoner's response.
That was the beginning
of Gus Hall's life
as a professional
revolutionary.
The Party sent him to Ohio,
where he helped organize
the steel workers' union.
That's when he took
the name by which
he's known around the world:
Gus Hall.
But his real name was
Arvo Gus Halberg.
This is what Gus Hall explained:
"You see my name,
like my father's
name, was blacklisted,
and I lost my job. Once
when I was looking for work
at an unemployment office,
I learnt of a job opening.
'What's your name?'
I was asked,
the Party had registered
me as its candidate
for city councilman
under the name Halberg,
but I knew that
a candidate of
the Communist Party wasn't
somewhat likely
to be hired,
so I decided to
change my name.
I dropped the 'Arvo' and
the 'berg' and called
myself 'Gus Hall.'"
Meanwhile, revolutionary
events in
the United States
were building up.
The Great Depression
was well under way,
and the most devastating
depression in
the history of capitalist
society had begun.
Millions of people
lost their jobs,
homes, and all means of existence.
Families were destroyed,
lives were shattered,
and the jobless
camped out under
the open sky or makeshift
clapboard shanties,
ironically called
"Hoovervilles."
People went hungry while
milk was poured
on the ground, and
grain was burned to
keep prices high.
By the early thirties,
a revolutionary
situation was
developing in the
United States.
The edifice of
United States
capitalism was swaying.
The bourgeois, while
continuing mass repression,
had to resort to
political maneuvering.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt
came to the White House,
he declared the New
Deal: a program of
social measures aimed
at stopping the
dangerous wave of
revolutionary sentiment.
Roosevelt:
Let me assert my firm belief
that's the only thing
we have to fear is fear itself.
Nameless, unreasoning,
unjustified terror,
which paralyzes needed
efforts to convert
retreat into advance.
In the event that the 
national emergency
is still critical,
I shall not evade the
clear course of duty
that will then confront me.
I shall ask the Congress for
the one remaining instrument
to meet the crisis.  Broad...
Narrator:
Unemployment insurance,
which enough to live on, but
didn't let you die
of starvation;
limited social insurance;
and public employment
programs under
the New Deal were a kind
of protection money with
which the monopolies
hoped to buy off
the dangerous
political tension.
As later studies
showed, this strategy—
to concede a bit
rather than to lose
all in a repetition of
the Russian Revolution—
was successful.
And so The New
Deal program were
an attempt to patch up
the capitalist system.
World War II
finally rescued the
United States economy
from its profound crisis.
For the United States
the war began in
December 1941
with the bombing
of Pearl Harbor.
Thousands of
American communists
joined the fight
against fascism. Among them
were the party's current
leaders: its National
Chairman, Henry Winston,
and General
Secretary Gus Hall.
Both of them
volunteered for action.
But this did not stop
the judges several
years later from
questioning the
patriotism of
these two men, and
sentencing them
to prison terms.
Gus Hall was with the
Marines on Guam
where the atom bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima.
He said that
helped him realize that
the new threat to humanity
came from the
same kind of mad dogs
he'd come up against
when he was walking
picket lines during
the steel workers'
strikes in Ohio.
For American communists,
the fight against
fascism and
reaction did not end
with the last gunshots
of World War II.
One of the mode
grim periods
in United States history
began after the war:
the McCarthy period.
But Senator
Joseph McCarthy
was not the real
initiator of those dark days.
He was simply
something brought
to the surface by the
turbid current
of reaction, a vehicle
for reactionaries
frightened by the
consequences of fascism's
defeat, who planned to block
any new upsurge
in the labor and
progressive movement
by launching a nationwide witchhunt.
Senator McCarthy declared 
that communists
had infiltrated
the government,
even the highest
levels of government.
He instigated the
Inquisition-like
Congressional investigation
that dishonored individuals,
robbed them of their jobs,
drove them to suicide,
and sent them to prison.
Witness:
I can't say that, sir, I was with him,
I worked with them on a
good many of those occasions,
and other staff members worked 
with him on other occasions.
Narrator:
The main blow was aimed at communists.
That of course was a very special period 
in the life of our party,
and [unintelligible] we were
convicted, and I myself and 
others served long
prison sentences for
the specific charge
of thinking.
In other words, it's just one of those
crazy things, and that is that 
the indictment was for thinking of
course wrong...
Narrator:
In August 1954,
a law was passed banning
the Communist Party.
Its leaders, including
Eugene Dennis,
Henry Winston, Gus Hall, and
other fine sons and
daughters of the
American working class,
after a disgraceful
trial, were put
behind bars.
This is what present-day
Washington prefers
to forget
as it poses as
the champion of
democracy and human
rights around the world.
Even the New York jail
where the leaders of
the Communist Party were
imprisoned was remodeled
so it could not
be recognized,
either into a
bank or a hotel.
But on Capitol Hill
the cronies and followers of
Joseph McCarthy still
have their say,
and there has been
no change in their outlooks
or the policies they
espouse.
Fourteen long years,
nearly one and a half decades
of persistent struggle, was
waged by the
Communist Party to
force the
government to back
down and to reinstate
the party right
to legal status.
Yes, the party
came out from underground,
but its leaders and
rank-and-file members
are still followed,
harassed, blackmailed.
and persecuted.
And the party's offices
continued to be attacked.
It's not difficult
to figure out
who is organizing
the assaults.
This is how the old
Communist Party Central
Committee Building
in New York looked
after a bomb exploded inside.
And this sequence was filmed in
August 1980 in Los Angeles,
where a fire broke out
in the party's local office.
The police say the
arsonists are unknown,
but are they really
unknown?
Interviewer:
You just mentioned the conditions under
which you are working.
Could you
elaborate a little bit more on
that from this point?
Gus Hall:
Well, for instance the, the FBI,
which is the police state apparatus,
it publicly announced that it
is not following or
surveilling any of
the other left organizations,
but the idea is
[unintelligible] continues
as far as the Communist Party
was concerned.
And they harass, and do all
kinds of dirty tricks,
like they were in the past, and
that remains a... that remains a
big problem.
Narrator: This huge building on 
Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington is
called the Edgar
Hoover Building,
in honor of the former
director of the FBI,
whose name is
connected with
the cruelest period
of repression of
progressive forces in the
United States.
Here are the offices of
the Federal Bureau
of Investigation,
which today, as it
did during the
McCarthy era,
keeps millions of files
on so-called subversive Americans,
members of the Communist
Party first and foremost.
The computer memories for
information on
anyone who was ever
connected with the
Communist Party, or who
has ever been a
sympathizer. This is the
building where
lies are fabricated,
and subversive
operations are
engineered against
the Party's
most important instrument,
its newspaper.
Voiceover: We have... we have 
constant harassment in many ways...
The government, and the FBI 
particularly, is very
careful not to be too open in their 
harassment, and they do harass and 
try to destroy the paper in many
ways. I just have files here that, you 
know, because you had mentioned
you wanna ask me about
it, of old documents of
the FBI's related to
the earlier paper,
before The Daily World,
which was our predecessor, 
The Daily Worker.
And these files are
from 1965 and
they discuss the destruction of
subscription lists to FBI,
attacks, and programs
to disrupt fundraising
activities... programs to harass
readers of the
paper, and so on.
And these programs
actually continue today.
This building, at 
235 West 23rd Street
in New York, houses
the Communist Party's
national headquarters
and the Daily World office.
The people who work here
say that they feel
like they're under siege.
The guests never change
in one of the rooms of
the Chelsea Hotel,
across the street.
They are FBI agents
who photograph
everyone who enters the
party's national office.
Observation is conducted from
several other
nearby buildings,
too. Often the door on top of
this building opens to
allow people to look for
lengthy periods
through binoculars
at the window of
the Party office.
And what are these numbers
written on the roof?
If you look closely,
you will see they
corresponds to those of
the building right next
to the Party headquarters.
But what's the purpose?
The American
comrades believe
that they're meant to help
helicopters identify
the headquarters if need be.
Under those conditions,
it is not surprising that
the party leadership
must take decisive
measures to protect
its offices,
to ensure the safety
of its members.
There's a steel
grill on the doors of
the building to prevent
any unwanted guests
from entering. It stays
closed all night.
At the entrance there are always 
guards. They're former Marines
who know just what to
do in case of trouble.
Here we are inside
the building, where we
talk to the office manager.
For obvious
reasons, we cannot
mention her name.
Manager:
... so it's not like us, and it is important 
to protect our leaders and their work,
and there are many ways
in which they would
try to gain access to this office.
One would be to get the files,
the other might be to disrupt our work.
They... sometimes we have bomb
threats. Well, any mail that
we're not familiar
with the return address...
These are the conditions
under which the
American Communists have
to work.
The waves of reaction
roll on, one
after the other.
At the beginning of the seventies
their victims were 
civil rights fighters,
among them was the young Marxist
scholar, Angela Davis.
Arrested on false charges,
she was put on trial.
Courageously, facing
the racist bourgeois
judicial system,
the young communist
carried on
the revolutionary traditions
of previous generations.
A campaign for
her freedom was
launched across the nation.
Among the demonstrators
was Gus Hall,
unflinching and
inspiring others
by his example.
In the fall of 1980,
Gus Hall and Angela Davis ran for
president and
vice president
on the Communist
Party ticket.
Interviewer:
Comrade Hall, let me ask you,
how does the Party see
the main problems of
modern America?
What are these problems?
Well of course they are related in
different fields, and uh...
in many ways the most difficult
problems that the people of the
United States [unintelligible] are in the field
of the economics, and
economic development.
Amongst them, the fact that
we are still in
the midst of
an economic crisis like
we have been and
now for a year,
and with ten million unemployed,
and it looks like it's going 
to stay with us
for some time. There's no question 
that the United States
continues to be
the main obstacle
towards detente and
peace in the world,
and this remains a very
serious problem.
Speaker:
This is Robin Hood reversed, to take from 
the poor and give it to the rich.
These are the problems that the
American communists
raised in the election
campaign of 1980.
They were discussed,
among others,
by a Communist candidate
for Senator from New York:
Bill Scott, an auto worker.
On his invitation
we went to Spring Valley,
near New York City,
famous for its
auto assembly plant
owned by the Ford family.
We were struck by
a grim picture.
We so often hear about
mass unemployment in
the United States,
about closed factories
and thousands of jobless,
that we sometimes
become inured to
the terrible human
tragedy of unemployment,
unknown in the
socialist countries.
But here we could see
unemployment in
its stark reality.
This mammoth plant,
stretching for miles,
is completely empty.
Shops are closed down,
assembly line are motionless,
and there's not a
soul on the grounds.
Interviewer:
Tell us about this plant, why is it so empty?
Well the plant is shut down now,
nobody works in the plant. Some
five thousand workers
have been laid
off and they shut
down the plant forever.
Interviewer:
You have been working with the 
[unintelligible] plant also?
Yes, I, in fact when the
plant first came here
to this location,
I went to
work in a plant as
an open communist.
And I worked there
for a little
over a year and I
was fired because
of my political ideas.
Interviewer:
What... the workers
who were laid off are doing now?
The workers? The overwhelming
majority are doing
nothing but
collecting unemployment
insurance.
There's no work.
They tried to
find jobs, cannot find any,
so they are now
collecting unemployment
insurance.
But there aren't
any jobs elsewhere,
either. All over
the country,
people without work, are
besieging
unemployment offices.
They come here for months,
fill out all sorts
of job applications,
including jobs
that are not in
their field, that pay less.
They accept anything just
to get some
kind of a job,
But only a few
actually get one.
The unfortunate
job seekers just
keep coming and try to make
ends meet on their meager
unemployment insurance.
Unemployment pay is
the bourgeoisie's way
of avoiding class conflicts.
You get it for
a limited time,
but no more than 26 weeks.
It's just enough
to get by on,
not to mention the
humiliation of those
individuals who are forced to
live on social alms.
But those with jobs
are often not
much better off.
One of the most
painful problem in
American society is the
continually rising
cost of living.
Prices rise on everything:
housing, medical care,
public transportation, 
food, and clothing.
Not too long ago,
rent took up about
one fourth of a skilled
worker's monthly income;
today, it's one third,
and rents continue to rise.
A day in the hospital
costs $150,
not counting medicine, lab tests,
and doctors' fees. The cost to fill
one cavity can amount to
about 5% of a
worker's monthly earnings.
And in recent years
the cost of a
college education
has doubled, and averages
about $6,000 a year.
More and more often,
working Americans
have to deny
themselves a new pair
of shoes, or new clothing.
These aren't
luxuries, but normal,
basic needs.
We did a series
of random
interviews outside
a New York supermarket.
It's terrible. Look at this, I 
spent $70 for a few things.
Two pieces of meat, a couple of 
food, groceries... you know, not 
much at all.
Interviewer: And what do you think about it?
Man: I think it's terrible.
I think it's terrible, but what can 
you do about it? You gotta eat.
Interviewer: I see. And how has it 
influenced your family?
Well, we stick to the basics, more or less.
We don't... once in awhile 
we treat ourselves,
but not too often.
803
00:42:44,001 --> 00:42:44,000
... red mark, a lot of things are cheaper
and you can get
more for your money.
At the [unintelligible] store 
you can't get anything.
"Life's going downhill" is not 
just a catchphrase,
but a reality for
many Americans
in the eighties.
But there are already
Americans, and quite
a few of them at
that, whose lives are
already at the
bottom of the hill.
Comrade Hall had them
in mind when he talked
about racism as one
of the country's
main problems.
In the last decade,
there's been a lot of
talk in Washington,
that the United
States has finally
moved ahead in solving
its racial problem.
The names of Black mayors,
Black congressmen, and even
Black United States
representatives
in the United Nations
are cited as proof. Yes,
a couple of hundred
token Blacks
have been put into
public office.
But what has that changed?
You think nothing has been
changed in the years of
Carter administration?
Well, the changes that
are taking place have
been for the worse.
The housing has grown
worse, the unemployment
rate has gone up.
The schools,
they're closing
more and more
schools in our community.
And really, the Carter
Administration has
no sensitivity
to the problems
of the people in Harlem.
And right now, you know,
we are pressed with our 
backs against the wall...
Narrator: We're talking
to the head of
the Harlem section of
the Communist Party, 
Comrade Kevin.
Comrade Kevin: ... given to the 
hospitals in our community.
We cannot work, we are
overworked as it is,
we do not have
enough staff.
Well, I tell you, the
problems in Harlem
right now have
progressively
grown worse in the
past ten years,
especially in the
last four years
of the Carter
administration.
And what you see right,
right before us, abandoned
housing, we had 800
units, 800 apartment houses
in Harlem right now
that are empty, that have
been abandoned by
landlords who had
milked the tenants, and 
milked them for rents,
exorbitant rents, don't
provide heat and hot water.
And now we have
800 apartment
places that could have
a 100,000 people
if they were rehabilitated.
And this is only one of the
many problems that 
we face in Harlem.
The situation in
Black ghettos in other
cities is no better.
The biggest concern
is over the fate
of youth: the future of 
the Black community.
Lacking any opportunity for
a decent education,
Black youth
are unlikely to be hired
and have little
hope with no skills.
The Black ghettos of
America are seething,
here and there, the anger boils
over. Then the authorities
resort to time-tested
tactics. A fist
of iron crushes
helpless citizens.
These recent
documentary scenes
show human rights as they're
understood in
the United States.
No, the problems of
the 25 million Blacks
in America have not been solved.
On the contrary,
they're growing
sharper and increasingly
more volatile.
In the autumn of 1980,
on the eve of the
presidential election,
another ethnic group called
attention to
its predicament.
The Long March for Survival was
what representatives
of several dozen
Native American
tribes called
their trek across
the country. An
attempt to stir the conscience 
of fellow Americans,
since there can
be no question of
relying on the conscience
of the powers that be.
When Comrade
Hall talked about
critical problems in
the United States
today, he mentioned
the government's
anti-detente policies.
Unable to cope with
growing domestic problems,
Washington has
turned its efforts
to generating
war hysteria.
After all, it's easier to
deal with increasing
discontent at home
when war drums beat out
the message of
outside threats.
Billions of dollars of
tax money are
being fed to the
insatiable God of War.
One weapons system
after another,
increasingly more
expensive, goes
into production.
It is estimated that
the MX missile program
alone will cause no less
than a $120 billion.
Such is the price of
each new spiral in
the arms race.
In the Black ghetto
we were told that because
of lack of money,
dozens of schools and hospitals
are being closed down.
The money to produce
just one modern
tank would provide
520 classrooms, or around
a 150 hospital rooms.
However the men
entrenched in
the Pentagon couldn't care
less about the needs of
the American people.
It's more profitable
for the military
industrial corporations
to foment
fear and to bury
money underground; to
build bomb shelters stocked 
with years' supplies of canned food,
rather than to build homes.
It's more profitable
to generate
international tensions,
bloat military programs,
and organize
notorious rapid
deployment forces
that menace peace
and world security.
The United State faces
many critical problems.
The future of the
American people
and the world hinges to a
great extent on how
those problems will
be dealt with.
Therein lies the importance
of the struggle
of communists
against the combined
forces of reaction.
A struggle that is being
waged them extremely
difficult conditions.
Directing, organizing,
and guiding
that struggle is the Party's
Central Committee,
and its highest body,
the Political Bureau.
The Political Bureau
includes the most
courageous,
worthy, and experienced
communists.
Along with Gus Hall in
the Political Bureau,
is his comrade and longtime
friend, Henry Winston,
whose biography has much
in common with Comrade Hall's.
Henry Winston also comes
from a working
class family.
And like Gus Hall,
he survived the hard
school of underground
work, arrest, and prison.
After joining the party
in 1933, Comrade Winston was
one of the organizers of
the youth and labor movement.
Like Gus Hall, he fought against
fascism in World War II.
And after the war, during
the McCarthy period.
Henry Winston
was once again,
put in jail.  In prison, 
he lost his eyesight.
In 1966 Henry Winston
was elected the Party's
National Chairman.
The Central Committee has
a big and complicated
job to do.
The national
office receives
numerous letters
from Party member
and non-Party people. From
workers, farmers,
students, and office workers
wanting to find out
as much as they
can about the Party's
program and activities,
and seeking advice.
The Central Committee's work
takes on numerous forms,
but perhaps the most
powerful instrument
it has in winning
the minds and
convictions of fellow
Americans is its newspaper,
through which the
Party tells the
working people about
the real situation
in the country, exposes
the policies of
the ruling classes,
and tell the truth
about the
socialist countries.
That newspaper is
the Daily World,
which comes out daily in
two languages,
English and Spanish.
The paper has a small staff,
tiny compared to those
of such gurus of
the bourgeois press as
the New York Times or
the Washington Post.
But beads are a
special brand
of people, truly militant
and enthusiastic,
communist journalists
dedicated to the noble
cause that they serve.
There are people
on the staff.
who've given many
years of their lives to
the paper. Talented
and erudite,
they could've
become prominent
news analysts on
any American newspaper, with
a high social status and
good pay. But they chose the
difficult and sometimes
dangerous job
of a communist journalist,
putting their talents,
minds, and experience
at the party's service.
The paper also has
young people on its staff,
people who are fresh from
communist and progressive
youth organizations.
The future of the paper
rests with them. Not
long ago, Michael
Zagarell, who is an organizer
of the Young Workers'
Liberation League,
became the editor of
the Daily World.
Zagarell: ... for communists
and all progressives
in the world today is 
the fight for peace,
and you can't have peace 
without detente.
That's the central
question, and our paper
carries on a constant 
campaign for detente.
And I would say beyond
that, working class
internationals...
Narrator: It is indeed the only
newspaper of its kind,
and so it's not
surprising that
the Daily World is highly
appreciated in the
progressive movement.
Despite all the
obstacles to its
publication and
distribution,
the Daily World subscription
list keeps growing.
The paper is
well-known in working
class neighborhoods
of New York
and Chicago, Los Angeles and
Detroit, Cleveland
and Pittsburgh,
and many other American cities
where it's popularity
is on the rise.
Capital by Karl Marx, the works
of Vladimir Lenin, Leonid
Brezhnev—The Little Lamb,
The Resurrection, and
The Virgin Land—
these books can all be
found in the
Communist Party's bookstore.
Those who study
Marxist-Leninist works, and
are interested in Russian
and Soviet literature,
are frequent customers.
Many of the books are
published in New York
in English and Spanish
by International Publishers,
closely associated with the
Communist Party.
We... We're about
fifty-seven years old,
we have published all the
Marxist classics—
Marx, Engels, Lenin—writing
for all these years.
And we have sold hundreds
of thousands of
copies over the
last half century
on all these works.
And in the last
number of years
we've also paid
attention to leaders of
the international
communist movement.
For example,
we're coming out
with the trilogy by
Comrade Brezhnev, which is 
a magnificent work.
In the last year, we've
published this work by
Ponomarev. In many campuses
throughout the
country and trade...
certain trade
union circles,
certain Black
peoples' movements,
we are very
highly respected.
And when our
books come out,
people want to see them,
eager to see
them, to read them.
On this overcast
November day in 1980,
the man who occupied
the White House for
the next four years was chosen.
President Carter's
administration
was bankrupt.
Not having kept any of
his main campaign promises,
he only exacerbated
the nation's
critical problems.
The voters rejected
the policies
of those who've
demonstrated
total neglect for the
people's real needs, and
who refused to respond
to their concerns
and aspirations.
For the first time
in many years,
the Democratic party,
democratic only in name,
lost its majority
in the Senate.
Various explanations
are given in
the United States as to
why the Republicans
won the election.
Some would have
you believe
the victory is a mandate
for going on with
the arms race.
But the American
people will not forget
the promises that
economic problems
will be solved,
inflation stopped,
and unemployment eased.
New outlays to
the Pentagon are
incompatible
with efforts to
solve the nation's
economic problems.
Further infringement on
the hard-won rights 
of the working
people can only
aggravate the
already critical
social problems.
Gus Hall:
And therefore, what is 
emerging in the United States
is a broad movement of people
who aren't necessarily yet,
in many cases are
not for socialism, but
they are against
the pressure of
the big monopolies, and 
therefore it's a kind of
anti-monopoly kind of a
movement, and again
there is a movement for... against 
racism, there's a movement for peace.
Narrator: American communists who face 
the gigantic and powerful machine of
the hostile American
government have
as yet not been able to
put their candidates
to high government
office. But they're
coming out of
the isolation,
the isolation they were 
forced into in the past.
Their voices are
heard louder,
and the seeds
that they planted
are sure to grow powerful shoots.
