The Sacramento homeless-services charities Loaves & Fishes; Safe Ground; and SHOC are involved in political activities associated with a group called the League of Revolutionaries for a New America [aka: LRNA. Former name: The Communist League]. At functions of L&F, SG & SHOC I have attended, there has always been a pile of copies of LRNA’s monthly newspaper the People’s Tribune1. [The group's other publication -- that is about deeper issues of ideology and strategy is Rally!, Comrades.]
If there is a more-vile political organization in our country, it would be surprising. LRNA is cited as Stalinist Communist and opposed to democratic institutions. According to three indoctrination sessions I have attended (and a little from what I know today), should it get its way, LRNA would re-form America according to principles that would end private property; install a totalitarian dictatorship; require a cessation of technological advancement; and assign work to everyone.
At the defunct website American Red Groups the League of Revolutionaries for a New America is depicted as follows as of the year 2002:
Cathleen Williams [SHOC leader, unofficially; the host and leading voice at each of the indoctrination sessions I attended; attorney who has made hundreds-of-thousands in the last years suing the city in class actions suit for homeless Sacramento clients]: 61 hits for article and poetry bylines and urging readers to buy a People's Tribune subscription.
Paula Lomazzi [Only official SHOC staffer]: seven hits for article bylines and use of photos.
Tracie Rice [Extreme Safe Ground advocate; often see in company of John Kraintz]: four article bylines.
John Kraintz [President of Safe Ground]: Mentioned in article by Paula Lomazzi where he is identified as being part of SHOC.
Libby Fernandez [CEO of Loaves; on the Board of SafeGround] Two hits. Mentioned for being named in one article that was both in html and pdf format.
Loaves & Fishes: Six hits
SHOC: 18 hits
Safe Ground: 38 hits
My point is not to 'out people.' Folks in our free-as-of-now country can believe anything they must (because they see something to be the truth) or choose to (because it is advantageous for them). [Also, certainly, writing for a publication or being named in a publication is usually indicative of little. Many articles in People's Tribune are benign enough.] The problem is the directed effort to indoctrinate homeless people in an ideology and then to confer benefits to people who cursorily accept the ideology in what is a plot or process to stealthily grow a cadre of low-level dependent followers. THAT I am asserting to be something that happened (and likely continues to happen, more quietly nowadays) in Homeless World Sacramento. It exists as a cancer. It determines who gets a hotel stay for the winter or faster/better medical treatment or other perks or honor or attention.
This is particularly offensive and pernicious in the greater homeless community because many people are desperate for basic necessities. The homeless are vulnerable to being used and they get used. Many homeless people, as well, are not worldly -- they do not have enough in the way of "how the world works" information stored away in their brain to sniff out fraud and efforts at abusing them; they are gullible. Many homeless people are unskilled or have failed repeatedly as employees. Working doesn't work for them. Basically, a large percentage of homeless people are not experiencing a meaningful life. You've-been-victimized comfort-words ideology, that LRNA provides, and Christian religion are what's readily offered to homeless people to address their feelings of being insignificant. Absent something in their lives, homeless people are vulnerable to continuing or beginning addictive substance abuse, and thus staying stuck in their Big Muddy Muddy of misery.
The reason the Ideology Monster is a big issue right now is because a speech/essay given/written by Nelson Peery, the big muck-a-muck of the League -- who founded it; was for a longtime its leader; and now, in old age, remains on its Board -- was released onto the Internet from where it was hidden away on the University of Utah's intranet, and it is the height of offensive. The speech justifies the horror and carnage of Joseph Stalin during the years he was a despot, from the 30's until the happy day of his death from a stroke in 1953. The document is here: "Nelson Peery on Stalin and Revolution."
Joseph Stalin -- and not Hitler -- is the consensus Worst Person who Ever Lived.
List 25 names him as the second worst, writing: "To start with, he actually managed to starve an entire country (The Ukraine). But as bad as that is, it falls far short of showcasing the level of badness this man was capable of. In classic dictator fashion, he had many of his closest friends and confidants executed. Total kill count: around 60 million." Sixty million, btw, is one-fifth the current population of the United States.
The website naming the Most Evil People who Ever Lived, puts Stalin #2, nosed out by Vlad the Impaler. There, a good bit of text explains Stalin's evil. This quote from Stalin is provided: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is simply a statistic.”
Questions that come up for me are centrally these: How do the Stalinist Communists of today [that is, the principals in the League of Revolutionaries for a New America think? These are intelligent people. How can they not seem to know that the 20th Century acted as a proving ground, showing without doubt that Communism always fails, miserably.
The answer I find is that they think they can do it better; they can succeed where others have failed. Marxism, you see, believes [citing György Lukács] the highest duty in communist ethics is to accept the necessity of acting immorally -- knowing however that the evil that will result will be made glorious through the dialectics of historical development. Like Christians (and like ME, a Buddhist), the extreme Communists believe that "Good is the goal of history." For Communists [citing Lukács, again] the end vindicates all actions. This is very much Machiavelli's earlier "The end justifies the means." I would say that only by way of the good can a Great Good be achieved, otherwise the stench of evil would undermine the effort. Most Christians believe that the course of the future is set with great evil expected and accepted, but on the journey to an assured heavenly future for the few, the believers.
The Stalinist Communists are the extreme case because, while Lukács and other communists at least see that much of what they do is immoral, the Stalinists are steely and, well, purely evil: Quoting Getty and Naumov in The Road to Terror: "No awareness [of immorality] comes into play among the Central Committee under Stalin, for whom historical progress overshadowed all moral considerations. Then, again, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that historical progress was their sole moral consideration. Some followers believed so strongly in this ideal that they even accepted it as necessary when they themselves fell victim to the most egregious injustices." The individual was meaningless; it was all about the collective being carried, somehow, through the purifying sewer of evil, to glory and splendor and happiness. Utopia, achieved!
The other question for me is: How much do Kraintz and Lomazzi and other homeless people caught up in LRNA ideology know about what is believed and what is expected to be the homeless contribution? In Homeward Street Journal, Lomazzi gets into economics that can sound Keynesian, but then speaking of the rich or about capitalists, it can sound dismissive of a class of people and be, perhaps, very much something else. I mean, you can't know. And you can't ask because if people have accepted the Machiavellian notion that the end justifies the means, then they have accepted for themselves a complete justification to lie whenever it serves their purposes.
And the curious thing is that in the initiation meetings, people were told that leaders were being sought. [It was called the Sacramento Homeless Leadership Project.] To feel like a leader, you need to know some secrets and accept the higher, undisclosed goals. Homeless leaders have been taken to a big USSF [United States Social Forum] meeting in Detroit, which from what I can tell was a gathering of American Communists -- and perhaps, centrally, Soviet-leaning ones, since USSF was obviously used as its name because it is so similar to USSR. SafeGrounders also went to a party in San Francisco with perhaps America's most famous Communist, Jack Hirschman. See frame at right, shows Mark Merin to the left of the 666. Tracie Rice and Paula Lomazzi to the right. This was in San Francisco to protest the Obama Administration with a parade in the streets and other events. John Kraintz gave a speech out on the street at one point where he railed against government workers.
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Footnotes
1. Self-contradictorily, in its "About us" statement in its Aug 2013 issue, it is written "The People’s Tribune, formerly published by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, is now an independent newspaper with an editorial board based in Chicago." However, the Board for the paper are mainly LRNA people, and it includes central figure Nelson Peery. It's mission and vision statements are clearly LRNA objectives [their usual blather] and not, say, typical liberal or progressive goals or political positions.
If there is a more-vile political organization in our country, it would be surprising. LRNA is cited as Stalinist Communist and opposed to democratic institutions. According to three indoctrination sessions I have attended (and a little from what I know today), should it get its way, LRNA would re-form America according to principles that would end private property; install a totalitarian dictatorship; require a cessation of technological advancement; and assign work to everyone.
At the defunct website American Red Groups the League of Revolutionaries for a New America is depicted as follows as of the year 2002:
League of Revolutionaries for a New America: Founded in 1968 as the California Communist League by Nelson Peery and his supporters (former members of the Communist Party USA). In 1974, the CCL had a national convention and created the "Communist Labor Party" (CLP). The CLP considered themselves traditional Stalinists and Maoists, and opposed the direction that the Communist Party USA was taking by supporting "revisionism" in Russia. Peery claimed that the millions killed in Stalin's purges were "counter-revolutionaries," and that the purges were the "most humane industrialization" of a nation in history. Nelson Peery blasted the Communist Party for being "anarchists" and "syndicalists." Peery's writings also seem to illustrate a deep-seated fear of automation and machinization. Shortly after the CLP's formation, it was one of the few Maoist organizations to move back toward the CP-USA — serving as a sort of orthodox opposition. Due to the fall of the Soviet Union and a near consensus of the international Left that Stalin was responsible for its demise, the Communist Labor Party dissolved in January of 1993 and reformed into the "League of Revolutionaries for a New America" (LRNA). Today, they try to downplay their Stalinist ideology, but that doesn't mean they no longer follow it. In 2000, the LRNA supported the Presidential campaign of the Green Party's Ralph Nader. They are mostly located in Chicago, and have been rarely seen there since the days they were called the CLP.Leaders at SHOC and Safe Ground have been involved with the LRNA publication People’s Tribune in recent years. An advanced Google search of the People’s Tribune reveals ‘hits’ for the following people and groups [click on the names to do the advance search, yourself]:
 |
| Above: An emotional appeal for subscribers to People's Tribune. |
Paula Lomazzi [Only official SHOC staffer]: seven hits for article bylines and use of photos.
Tracie Rice [Extreme Safe Ground advocate; often see in company of John Kraintz]: four article bylines.
John Kraintz [President of Safe Ground]: Mentioned in article by Paula Lomazzi where he is identified as being part of SHOC.
Libby Fernandez [CEO of Loaves; on the Board of SafeGround] Two hits. Mentioned for being named in one article that was both in html and pdf format.
Loaves & Fishes: Six hits
SHOC: 18 hits
Safe Ground: 38 hits
My point is not to 'out people.' Folks in our free-as-of-now country can believe anything they must (because they see something to be the truth) or choose to (because it is advantageous for them). [Also, certainly, writing for a publication or being named in a publication is usually indicative of little. Many articles in People's Tribune are benign enough.] The problem is the directed effort to indoctrinate homeless people in an ideology and then to confer benefits to people who cursorily accept the ideology in what is a plot or process to stealthily grow a cadre of low-level dependent followers. THAT I am asserting to be something that happened (and likely continues to happen, more quietly nowadays) in Homeless World Sacramento. It exists as a cancer. It determines who gets a hotel stay for the winter or faster/better medical treatment or other perks or honor or attention.
This is particularly offensive and pernicious in the greater homeless community because many people are desperate for basic necessities. The homeless are vulnerable to being used and they get used. Many homeless people, as well, are not worldly -- they do not have enough in the way of "how the world works" information stored away in their brain to sniff out fraud and efforts at abusing them; they are gullible. Many homeless people are unskilled or have failed repeatedly as employees. Working doesn't work for them. Basically, a large percentage of homeless people are not experiencing a meaningful life. You've-been-victimized comfort-words ideology, that LRNA provides, and Christian religion are what's readily offered to homeless people to address their feelings of being insignificant. Absent something in their lives, homeless people are vulnerable to continuing or beginning addictive substance abuse, and thus staying stuck in their Big Muddy Muddy of misery.
The reason the Ideology Monster is a big issue right now is because a speech/essay given/written by Nelson Peery, the big muck-a-muck of the League -- who founded it; was for a longtime its leader; and now, in old age, remains on its Board -- was released onto the Internet from where it was hidden away on the University of Utah's intranet, and it is the height of offensive. The speech justifies the horror and carnage of Joseph Stalin during the years he was a despot, from the 30's until the happy day of his death from a stroke in 1953. The document is here: "Nelson Peery on Stalin and Revolution."
 |
| Stalin |
List 25 names him as the second worst, writing: "To start with, he actually managed to starve an entire country (The Ukraine). But as bad as that is, it falls far short of showcasing the level of badness this man was capable of. In classic dictator fashion, he had many of his closest friends and confidants executed. Total kill count: around 60 million." Sixty million, btw, is one-fifth the current population of the United States.
The website naming the Most Evil People who Ever Lived, puts Stalin #2, nosed out by Vlad the Impaler. There, a good bit of text explains Stalin's evil. This quote from Stalin is provided: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is simply a statistic.”
Questions that come up for me are centrally these: How do the Stalinist Communists of today [that is, the principals in the League of Revolutionaries for a New America think? These are intelligent people. How can they not seem to know that the 20th Century acted as a proving ground, showing without doubt that Communism always fails, miserably.
The answer I find is that they think they can do it better; they can succeed where others have failed. Marxism, you see, believes [citing György Lukács] the highest duty in communist ethics is to accept the necessity of acting immorally -- knowing however that the evil that will result will be made glorious through the dialectics of historical development. Like Christians (and like ME, a Buddhist), the extreme Communists believe that "Good is the goal of history." For Communists [citing Lukács, again] the end vindicates all actions. This is very much Machiavelli's earlier "The end justifies the means." I would say that only by way of the good can a Great Good be achieved, otherwise the stench of evil would undermine the effort. Most Christians believe that the course of the future is set with great evil expected and accepted, but on the journey to an assured heavenly future for the few, the believers.
The Stalinist Communists are the extreme case because, while Lukács and other communists at least see that much of what they do is immoral, the Stalinists are steely and, well, purely evil: Quoting Getty and Naumov in The Road to Terror: "No awareness [of immorality] comes into play among the Central Committee under Stalin, for whom historical progress overshadowed all moral considerations. Then, again, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that historical progress was their sole moral consideration. Some followers believed so strongly in this ideal that they even accepted it as necessary when they themselves fell victim to the most egregious injustices." The individual was meaningless; it was all about the collective being carried, somehow, through the purifying sewer of evil, to glory and splendor and happiness. Utopia, achieved!
The other question for me is: How much do Kraintz and Lomazzi and other homeless people caught up in LRNA ideology know about what is believed and what is expected to be the homeless contribution? In Homeward Street Journal, Lomazzi gets into economics that can sound Keynesian, but then speaking of the rich or about capitalists, it can sound dismissive of a class of people and be, perhaps, very much something else. I mean, you can't know. And you can't ask because if people have accepted the Machiavellian notion that the end justifies the means, then they have accepted for themselves a complete justification to lie whenever it serves their purposes.
 |
| First frame of a Safe Ground movie. |
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Footnotes
1. Self-contradictorily, in its "About us" statement in its Aug 2013 issue, it is written "The People’s Tribune, formerly published by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, is now an independent newspaper with an editorial board based in Chicago." However, the Board for the paper are mainly LRNA people, and it includes central figure Nelson Peery. It's mission and vision statements are clearly LRNA objectives [their usual blather] and not, say, typical liberal or progressive goals or political positions.
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