06/7/16

Weekly Featured Profile – Thomas Pearce

Thomas Pearce

Thomas Pearce, based in the Louisville area, is Co-Chair of the American Indian Movement of Indiana and Kentucky. He has been organizing solidarity rallies for the trans-national Indian movement Idle No More.

He has been closely associated with the Maoist leaningFreedom Road Socialist Organization since his leadership of the Progressive Student League, the Louisville Kentuckyaffiliate of Freedom Road’s Progressive Student Network, in the late 1980’s.

Thomas Pearce helped design the “Columbus was Lost” button, back in 1992:

It became a big fat hit among young anti-racist activists. It (and a companion tee-shirt) were designed and produced locally in Louisville, KY by Average Tom Pearce, a young American Indian Movement activist (who is still at it today, almost a quarter century later). Those buttons and shirts, along with the Columbus Discovered America—NOT tee-shirts designed by graphix ace ERK were mainstays on the Freedom Road and Progressive Student Network lit tables that year.

Thomas Pearce contributed an article to Freedom Road Socialist Organization‘s Forward Motion, January/February issue 1993, “Thinking about dynamite: at war against the lies.”

As a leader of the state Sierra Club affiliate Thomas Pearce has been an effective enemy of Kentucky’s vital coal industry. In 2011, he helped shut down a proposed coal terminal near the Ohio River in West Paducah.

“We turned out 200 people, and everyone was given signs that said NO in big letters,” says Sierra Club organizer Thomas Pearce.

“We’re organizing with area residents, who are circulating petitions,” says Pearce, who has helped create a new Beyond Coal team in the Sierra Club‘s Great Rivers Group.

Thomas Pearce is also a co-chair of the radical/union controlled Kentucky Jobs with Justice.

(Thomas Pearce|more…)

04/18/16

Weekly Featured Profile – Brad Sigal

KeyWiki.org

Brad Sigal

Brad Sigal is a rank-and-file union activist and writes forFightBack! Newspaper on labor issues and is a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack! inMinnesota.

Sigal was a CUNY student activist from 1996-2000. He was a member of Student Liberation Action Movement, editor of the CCNY Messenger newspaper and a member of the CCNY Graduate Student Council. He was also a member of the Love and Rage Anarchist Federation, which later dissolved in Freedom Road.

A group of us in Love @ Rage were transformed by our work in the CUNY movement. Out of our experiences we gained an appreciation for Mao’s writings on the mass line, and for some of the foundations of Marxism like dialectical and historical materialism, that helped us make sense of what we were experiencing and give us practical guidance in building the mass movement.

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03/30/16

Weekly Featured Profile – Christian (Ateo) Peruyero

KeyWiki.org

Christian (Ateo) Peruyero

Christian (Ateo) Peruyero is a construction worker and former CUNY student organizer for 8 years and founder/creator of the Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee, a Maoist group active in the CUNY system and at colleges in New Jersey and Philadelphia.

A member of the Maoist wing of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Peruyero set up the Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee in 2011 and has succeeded in bringing several hundred students into the Maoist movement.

He is also working with the Kansas City, Missouri based Progressive Youth Organizationand the Los Angeles based Red Guards in the Liaison Committee for a New Communist Party – an attempt to unite radical youth into a new, nationwide Maoist revolutionary political party.

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01/26/16

Weekly Featured Profile – Tim Wheeler

KeyWiki.org

Tim Wheeler, center

Tim Wheeler is a prominent Communist Party USAmember and the son of the late Soviet spy Don Wheeler.

Tim Wheeler is the national political correspondent of the People’s World. He has been a reporter and an editor for the working-class press for more than 40 years. He lives in Baltimore, MD and in Sequim, WA with his wife Joyce Wheeler.

In January 2008, Tim Wheeler and Rev. Pierre L. Williams of the Communist Party’s Religion Commission, canvassed for Barack Obama in South Carolina:

I have been canvassing with a friend, Rev. Pierre L. Williams, a United Methodist minister in Baltimore. We got a vivid feel for just how deeply Obama’s message is resonating here going door-to-door in a working class neighborhood yesterday.

In early 2008, Tim Wheeler, his wife Joyce Wheeler and another Communist Party USAcouple, Jim Baldridge and Margaret Baldridge, were all active members of Obama’s Baltimore operation – organizing, canvassing, phone banking and general campaign work.

Tim Wheeler, center

In 2010, Tim Wheeler and Joyce Wheeler worked in Democratic Senator Patty Murray‘s campaign in Sequim, Washington State.

Tim Wheeler wrote in the Peoples World:

The highest profile election victory here Nov. 2 was the reelection of Sen. Patty Murray…I was asked to coordinate street-corner “waves” for Murray here in my hometown…Washington State voters helped put up a firewall against the ultra-right in reelecting Murray, blocking a GOP majority takeover of the Senate. Victory was won when the coalition of unions and other progressive organizations succeeded in getting out the vote.

Tim Wheeler, his wife, and communist sister ”Honeybee Burns” are all active in the Clallam County (Washington) Democratic Party.

(Tim Wheeler|more…)

06/27/15

Weekly Featured Profile – Rev. David Carl Olson

KeyWiki

Rev. David Carl Olson

David Carl Olson is Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, Maryland. Previously he served in churches in Flint, Michigan and Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1991, David Olson, while in Massachusetts, was one of several hundred Communist Party USA members to sign the a paper: “An initiative to Unite and Renew the Party” – most signatories left the Party after the December 1991 conference to found Committees of Correspondence.

At the Committees of Correspondence Conference on July 19th,1992, David Carl Olson was an unsuccessful candidate for the CoC National Coordinating Committee.

Rev. Olson apparently returned to the Communist Party soon after.

In May of 1995, the Communist Party USA newspaper Peoples Weekly World published a May Day supplement. Included was a page offering May Day greetings to Massachusetts’ Communists Lew Johnson, Laura Ross and Anne Timpson. Endorsers of the greeting included David Carl Olson.

The Anne Burlak Timpson Labor Forum is a creation of the Massachusetts’ Communist Party. It was established in honor of party member Anne Timpson, who died in 2002. Founding Committee members included Rev. David Carl Olson.

In 2004, Olson wrote an article for the Communist Party USA‘s Political Affairs on the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts.

He later moved to Maryland where he worked with Rep. Elijah Cummings on “jobs” issues in 2011.

In 2014, Rev. David Carl Olson served on the Steering Committee of the Maryland Coalition for Trans Equality.

(more…)