March 28, 2003

Embedded Communists Update

National Review's Dave Shiflett is turning the national spotlight on communist connections to the anti-war protests .

Indeed, the state's most revered and self-congratulatory peace activists have been exposed, by talk radio, as being deeply in bed with the Communist party. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The fun began when local talk-radio sensation Phil Valentine (familiar to NRO readers for leading the anti-state income-tax movement in Tennessee) decided to have a look at the Nashville Peace and Justice Center's website. The group has been sponsoring peace rallies in the area, and is also trying to send a delegation to see Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Valentine wanted to find out exactly who's who in the center's pro-peace coalition. Many of the members were hardly a surprise. What caught Valentine's eye, however, was the acronym CPUSA - the Communist party. Holy cow. What are the commies doing there? After all, about the only peace they've provided is the peace of the grave. Valentine's antennae were twitching as he went to the CPUSA's main website, scrolled down to the "contact the CPUSA" section, and found the listing for the Middle Tennessee Chapter.

"I couldn't believe it," says Valentine. "The street address for the Tennessee chapter of the CPUSA is the exact same address as the Nashville Peace and Justice Center." Sensing his readers might benefit from this information, Valentine took the story on air last Friday. Not everyone was happy he did so. "Matt Leber, the peace center's director, called in," Valentine told me. "At first he denied any affiliation with the Communist party. He said they weren't any Communists within ten miles of him. I pointed out they have the same address as his organization. There was stunned silence. Then he admitted that the CPUSA is a member organization, but said that didn't mean anything."

I mentioned Valentine's work exposing the communist connections of the Nashville Peace and Justice Center here on Wednesday and provided a link to the Google cache version of the organization's old website, which clearly described the Communist Party USA's Nashville chapter as a "member organization" of the NPJC. Shiflett's article includes a link to the organization's current website, from which the organization erased CPUSA from its list of member organizations. And, as it turns out, the latest version of the organization's old website has not been altered to conceal the fact that the Communist Party USA's Nashville chapter is a "member organization" of the NPJC.

Keep up the good work, Phil