ROSLYN, Wash.—Communist Party USA members gathered here from every corner of the Evergreen State on October 3 and 4 and vowed to turn out votes in the midterm elections to defeat I-645, a right-wing ballot measure to repeal the “Millionaire Tax.”
Members of the Spokane Club and Seattle’s Irene Hull Club spoke of their coalition partnership with local branches of nationwide Indivisible and promised to join the “Get-Out-the-Vote” demonstrations on “No Kings Day,” October 17. By then, Washington State voters will have received their ballots in the mail for the November 3 midterm elections. The slogan was “Vote Early! If you have not put your ballot in the mail in the first week, do not mail it. Put it in a ballot drop box!”
It was a perfect, sunny October weekend in this picturesque former coal-mining town in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains, famous as the setting for the long-running TV series “Northern Exposure.”
Communist Party members, many of them youthful new recruits to the organization, came from Spokane, the Tri-Cities, Sequim, and Seattle to meet at the home of Washington State CP Chair Marc Brodine and his wife Janine for this weekend retreat.
First on the agenda was the recently published new edition of the CPUSA Program that explains the necessity of growing the Communist Party, its role in coalition with organized labor, the anti-war movement, the mass organizations of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, all the left and center forces struggling to defend democracy, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights from the fascist menace posed by President Donald Trump.
Brodine explained that unity of these broad, multiracial mass coalitions is the essential first step in the long-range worker-led fight for socialism.
The program focuses on the deepening economic crisis, growing income inequality, the escalating ranks of poor and homeless people, and Trump’s war on immigrants. One speaker reminded the attendees of the impact of Trump’s drive to arrest and deport farmworkers in Washington so vicious that farmers and orchardists across the state lack the labor power to pick their crops.
The last section of the program is devoted to the defense and expansion of democracy. The first paragraphs speak of the centrality of defending voting rights, repelling Trump’s drive to strip millions of people of their right to cast a ballot, including his war on “mail-in” ballots. Washington and seven other states have mail ballots, and Trump is waging a multifaceted campaign to strip these voters of their right to vote by mail.
Some may describe “voting rights” as a “bourgeois democratic” right, said one speaker. “There’s nothing bourgeois about it. The right to vote is just plain a working class right,” he said.
Elections were the second point on the agenda. Speakers stressed that the midterm elections are the heart of the class struggle, with tens of millions, including organized labor, mobilizing across the nation to turn out the votes to terminate MAGA-Republican majority control of the House and Senate on November 3. That applies here in Washington State, where the Communist Party and its allies are working to defeat local MAGA Republicans, many of them now hiding their true identities by running as “independents.”
“If Brian Heywood succeeds in winning passage of I-645, repealing the ‘Millionaire Tax,’ the MAGA Republicans will celebrate this as an election victory regardless of anything else in the election,” one speaker warned. Heywood is the hedge-fund multi-millionaire who hired signature gatherers to put I-645 on the ballot. “The Millionaire Tax is a class issue. Defending this tax should be at the top of our agenda.”
The Washington State Legislature passed the Millionaire Tax in the waning moments of the last session, a measure desperately needed because Washington State has the nation’s most regressive tax structure. A speaker at the retreat pointed out that Washington State struggles with chronic deficits in all programs to assist the working class—public education, health care, food for the hungry, affordable housing.
The Millionaire Tax, a 9.9% levy on all income above a million dollars, will generate as much as $3 billion annually and will provide revenues to help replace enormous cutbacks that will strip many thousands of low-income people in Washington State now covered by Medicaid. It will also strip schoolchildren of free school breakfasts and lunches—for many, their only nutritious meal of the day.
Distributed to all the participants at the CP Party retreat was the Washington statewide CP newsletter, “Statewide Solidarity, Local Action.” Dated September 2026, it is the first edition.
Included are reports from local CP clubs. The Spokane Club (also known as the Eastern Washington Club) reported, “From a small group of newly radicalized revolutionaries to a fast-growing organization, CPUSA Spokane has become involved in coalition building, mutual aid, union organizing, political campaigning, political education and journalism.”
Present was a leader of the Spokane Club who plans to run for the Spokane City Council next year. He was asked about the neo-Nazis in the Spokane area and also about the wildfire that engulfed the city this past summer. “The neo-Nazis and other ultra-rightists are a constant danger. We must always be on our guard against them,” he said. “And yes, that wildfire destroyed 700 homes in Spokane, the second worst fire in an urban community in history. There was no fire station in that community.”
The Irene Hull Club of Seattle, well represented at the retreat, is also growing steadily, more than doubling in membership since it was founded a couple of years ago. “There has been a significant upswing in new online member sign-ups since ICE enforcement operations expanded,” the article reports. “This influx has created several areas with multiple members, including Aberdeen, Bellingham and Vancouver (Washington). Both Aberdeen and Bellingham had CPUSA contingents in their respective “No Kings” events on March 28. Work is underway to build new clubs in all three areas…”
The newsletter reports that the CPUSA is active in defense of immigrants fighting arrest and accelerated deportation by ICE. It features an article about the arrest of Dr. Robert Sidhe, originally from Kenya, a member of the Washington Federation of State Employees who was abducted by ICE on August 26, 2026. The solidarity movement sprang into action demanding his release, and a judge ordered his release on September 11, 2026. The article stresses the continuing danger of deportation facing Dr. Sidhe, a certified nursing assistant at the University of Washington. The article reports that Sidhe, rising with his wheelchair-bound fiancée, was pulled over by ICE agents and arrested. The agents pushed Sidhe into their vehicle and drove off, leaving his fiancée marooned without assistance.
A neighbor of Marc Brodine said Roslyn, like many coal mining communities, was company-owned by an absentee corporate owner. Years ago, the owner suddenly decided he was going into “development.” His plan was to cut down every tree in town and build an expensive house where oaks and pines once stood. “We got together and decided to defend the trees,” the Roslyn resident told the crowd. They ran for office in the non-partisan City Council races and won in a landslide. They waged a bitter grassroots campaign to defend Roslyn’s forest lands and the surrounding mountainous square miles. They forced the owner to negotiate—and ultimately they won. Pines and cedar trees still stand in every other block of Roslyn, higher even than the steeples of the tallest churches.
The Sunday morning session on organizing ended with members standing around the dining room table and singing “The Internationale”—an international anthem adopted by various communist, socialist, and social democratic movements around the world.
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