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