Should Texans Be Afraid?
//I'll try to answer each point embedded in your questions
On Wed, 19 Sep 2001 18:47:10 -0500 “Anonymous” writes:
IF A PERSON JOINS CPUSA, DOES HE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HIS
ASSOCIATION WITH THE ORGANIZATION BECOMING PUBLIC?
//I don't know of that happening since the 1950s. But it's a legitimate
question. It certainly happened in the 1920s and the 1950s.
DOES HE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE FBI VISITING HIS PLACE OF
EMPLOYMENT AND JEOPARDIZING HIS EMPLOYMENT?
//Again, not for decades. I don't know if they might start that
again or not.
ARE THERE PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS WHO SURREPTICIOUSLY OBTAIN
MEMEBERSHIP
LISTS AND TRY TO HARM MEMBERS?
//I don’t know. If there are such groups, I don't think they
ever succeeded in getting a list.
MAYBE I SOUND PARANOID,
//Not at all
BUT I WAS BORN IN TEXAS, AND IN THIS STATE EVEN HAVING LIBERAL
TENDENCIES CAN
JEOPARDIZE YOUR JOB.
//Up until September 11, everybody I talked to said it was a
"new world" and that the old days of vicious anti-communism were
over. But most folks in Texas are cautious like you. Maybe we shouldn't be, I
don't know. I still follow the old Party rule in that I never tell people if
someone is a member, and I expect my friends to not tell about me. Every person
makes up their own mind whom they tell. Lots of people know about me, but very
few of them know my employers.
//With the internet, you can check up on us lots of ways without
ever telling your name. Go to www.cpusa.org. Check out the newspaper while
you're there.
//Read up and think it over. Then subscribe to the newspaper
($20 to 233 W 11th, NY 10011) and check it out for a while.
//The only folks I know of who just join and start telling
everybody they joined are retirees or students who aren't that worried about
their jobs. The rest of us are usually cautious to one degree or another; but I
think a lot of people in the Party wish we weren't so cautious.
//Some really cautious people never join. They just open post office boxes. They subscribe to the
People’s Weekly World, they send money, they send encouragement, they even
write letters to the paper. We appreciate everything.
In solidarity
Jim Lane, People's Weekly World local correspondent in Dallas