Workers World Party meet hails China statement
Workers World Vol. 7, No. 18
September 16, 1965
New York, Sept. 7 – The Labor Day weekend conference of Workers World Party, held at Cornish Arms Hotel here, concluded yesterday on a note of great optimism as the delegates sang the Workers’ Internationale. The sixth annual gathering of its kind, all agreed it was also the best.
Assembling here Saturday from east, Midwest, the south and the far west, as well as Canada, the participants reported the anti-war demonstrations, strikes, and Black Freedom actions which they have been involved in. And Sam Marcy, the party’s chairman, gave the political report that set the tone of the three-day meeting.
Praising the party cadres for their outstanding work, reaffirming the organization’s support for the freedom fighters of the National Liberation Front of South Viet Nam, Marcy made extensive comments on the statement of the Chinese Defense Ministry (Lin Piao’s article), excerpts of which had just been published in New York the same day.
“The statement of the Defense Ministry of People’s China calling for the isolation and defeat of U.S. imperialism has our enthusiastic and unqualified support,” he said.
“The statement can be understood more clearly,” he added, “in the light of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek’s call for invasion of the Chinese homeland. Mme. Chiang was brought over here by the U.S. war makers to provide an Asian fig leaf for their naked aggression.
“The New York Times headline over Defense Minister Lin Piao’s statement is of course a lie calculated to stir up national chauvinism in the reader,” Marcy went on. “It says that the Peking Declaration urges ‘World People’s War to Destroy U.S.’ Nowhere does Lin Piao say such a thing. On the contrary, he correctly supports the U.S. working class and opposes U.S. imperialism, which is the system of a tiny clique of millionaires and billionaires in mortal opposition to the vast majority of humanity.
“The statement is a brave and defiant answer to U.S. atomic blackmail. It is a reply to the Washington militarists, who talk openly of bombing China and who even now are trying to turn Viet Nam into a mass graveyard. It is an answer to the air attacks that have hit within 30 miles of China’s border and a clear statement that man will survive – even against the murder machines of Wall Street imperialism.
“People’s China has already endured a tremendous amount of war provocation from the United States. In this statement, China spells out the way the masses will defend themselves against the inevitable attack. This outrages imperialism as does also the theses that China’s self-defense and the world revolution are two sides of the same coin.”
Spiritedly endorsing the party chairman’s position on the Chinese statement, the delegates also solidarized themselves with the armed self-defense organizations, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, that have sprung up in several states of the South. They hailed the action of the Watts residents of Los Angeles as “an insurrection ... (which is) ... a sign of coming emancipation.” They planned assistance to the striking Freedom Unions in the South, and they demanded freedom for Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Extensive first-hand reports of the freedom struggle in Mississippi, North Carolina and Harlem featured the second session, and other national branch activities highlighted the third.
Among greetings read were those from the Socialist League of Puerto Rico, the Movement for Puerto Rico Independence and the Progressive Workers Movement of Canada.
Last updated: 11 May 2026