The WEB Du Bois Club

A young blond man picked me up at my parent’s house. We had had a long conversation the night before on the phone.. “Dorothy said to take care of you.” He smiled. He was to facilitate my membership in the WEB Du Bois club that day per Dorothy’s instructions. It was an organization dedicated to fight against racism and imperialistic wars. The Club was the youth and ethnic segment - New Left outreach of the Communist Party USA. The Club was staffed by the young and wonderfully idealistic. I was the youngest member and sort of a Club poster child of the New Left. It was at the WEB Du Bois Club that I met the big love of my life, a UCLA student from Guatemala and he was a Communist. But that is another story: (See: REDS in California Boomer: Keeper of the Story) For the most part I rarely saw Dorothy at Du Bois Club meetings in Venice where I was a member. She would call me weekly and hold informal “salons” for young radicals from the New Left. I fell into Dorothy’s wide circle of New Left young people. She often challenged our ideas and analysis with at times biting quips, and viral critique. She did not always suffer political fools with a smile. She knew how to turn information into political action.

Dorothy started to embrace the passive civil disobedience strategies of Sol Alinsky. We would sit and laugh over the possibilities; in 1966 “possibilities” turned into a plot.

National Liberation Front Comes to LA

During the imperialist “Vietnam War” American troops would occupy a Vietnamese village by force and then “Pacify it”. The Americans built moats, high fences and detection towers around the villages supposedly so after the people went to sleep they were “safe”. Oddly people living in the villages were not free to move in and out of the village at will except to and from work in the fields. Yes! “Just like a chain-gang prison.”

We Comrades were eager for some kind of action beyond just protesting. Some WEB Du Bois Comrades and I met with Dorothy one early summer night. Dorothy had hatched a plan that if it worked would help bring attention to US Marine “Vietnamaztion = pacification.” The US Marines as part of their on-going selling of the War had built a model of a “Pacified” Vietnamese village, wall and all in Century City. They took families on tours showing how wonderful these villages were.

It was about 12 am in the morning. We all loaded in an old green Dodge and headed to Century City. Dorothy was in the back seat laughing at what we were about to do. We slowly drove by the Marine built village. No guards, no goddamn Marines anywhere! The US flag was on the flag post rather than the South Vietnamese regimes’ fascist flag. Dorothy gave out a little cheer. We parked right in front of the village. Dorothy kept the car going, we “Bois’ boyz” poured out of the car quickly running up the slope to the village. We climbed the wall and went directly to the flagpole and ran up the flag of The National Liberation Front. We posted Communist slogans everywhere but the last thing we did made me cry, we broke open the gates. It was a symbolic but powerful action of liberation. We all ran back to the car and drove east on Olympic Blvd. We were laughing, crying and singing the “International” over and over again. That night Dorothy gave me a hug and said for the first time, “Goodnight Comrade.” “Comrade” over and over again I replayed her words in my head “…Comrade.”

The papers ran a piece on the “Vietnamese village invasion by local Radicals.” Of course it was all over the counter-culture newspapers. After our “Liberation” of the village the Marines stationed 5 guards there every night and a lock was installed on the flagpole and the front gate had a special security lock with an alarm. A year later “Vietnamaztion” ended as a monumental failure to authoritarian Fascist control.

I like many kids joined Students for a Democratic Society and the Vietnam Day Committee. We were branching out. The years of organizing and protesting were just beginning.

1968: The Prague Spring

1968 was one of the most turbulent years in American history. The deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy shocked us. The brazenness of the Fascist murders was astounding. The protests in the streets grew and were more organized; most big city protests hit over 200 thousand. Throughout the world 1968 turned into a year of international protests by New Left radicals agitating for economic changes and an end to the imperialist wars of aggression and repression. One of the brightest hopes for us young Communists was the Prague Spring; an act of defiance by Czechoslovakia’s Young Turk Socialists against the undue influence and oppressive occupation by the Soviet Union. The leader of the movement was a brilliant Communist named Dubcek. After the illegal invasion of the country by the Soviet army the CPUSA sided with the Soviet Union’s actions. Almost every Communist and all the New Left young people I knew were sad and disillusioned with the CPUSA’s decision to support the Czechoslovakian invasion, among those was my mentor Dorothy. The Party under the aging leadership of Gus Hall committed itself to a “Dinosaur Communism”.  It seemed that there was no room for young people in the Party anymore. Along with other Struggles like the emerging Gay Liberation movement we were set to the side. None of us young guys related to the old struggles of the 1920’s through the 1950’s. We were not interested in what the Party had done in the past but rather what we were going to do in the following 40 years. We thought we had captured our futures.

I walked into Dorothy’s little office space. She looked up at me without her usual smile. I could see her tight jaw and dejected look. On her desk were many international newspapers all running the story on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, her right hand was pressed down on one, her cigarette in the other hand.  She looked up at me and said, “It has gone all wrong.” She picked up a paper and ignoring me kept reading. I walked out of the Workers Center and went home.

I rarely saw Dorothy after that. She seemed lost and at times disoriented. She was short and curt with me on the phone. I could tell she was greatly stressed if not depressed. She was in New York a lot of the time too. In 1969 there were rumors that Dorothy was leaving the Party, which finally officially happened in 1972. At the time I had left Los Angeles and was in the Bay Area at University.

I spoke with Dorothy only one more time by phone. She said the most difficult thing she ever did was to leave the Party. Actually it was more that the Party had left Dorothy. “We need reforms Donnie maybe you’ll be part of that.” And that was all I ever heard from her.

Dorothy was not just a leader to us Young Communists but the voice of reason, of how to make Socialism work, of inclusiveness, and about building bridges to other struggles and other socialist traditions.

Dorothy’s years of activism and Party leadership was an amazing legacy for us younger Comrades. Her understanding and teaching about Marxism was always on target. She was a Party shining star. She was energy itself! Dorothy fully understood that the world had changed. She took every new young person in hand and knew our value and always told us so. Dorothy was an exceptional organizer and did not limit herself to staunchly “old school” Communist traditions and political analysis. She saw that the real future of Socialism was in our hands and to that end she equipped us and educated us every week.