QUIZ: WHO SAID IT, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OR THE COMMUNIST PARTY?

Below are direct quotes from either from the Democrat Party or from the Communist Party USA. The challenge is to read each comment, categorized by topic, then decide if the quote came from the Democrats or the Communists. This should be easy as there are significant differences between the two parties. Be sure to share this quiz with your Democrat friends, who should have no problem acing it. To improve readability, I've highlighted key words and phrases.

To improve your chances, please read the quotes completely and carefully.

To calculate your results: please answer "D" for Democrat Party, and "C" for Communist Party. There are 25 questions. Each question is worth one point, except #25, the "bonus question," is three points. When you're done, please follow highlighted instructions at bottom.

ON OUR ECONOMIC CRISIS:

1) Our country is facing its greatest crisis since the 1930s. At the same time, the moment is filled with great hope and possibility. The crisis was caused by capitalism and Wall Street greed. The solution to it is being born in today's unprecedented mass movement for change.

ON 'GOING GREEN,' GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE

AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

2) An economy powered by two toxic pollutants: oil and corporate greed. Misplaced priorities that send more than half of our tax dollars to military spending that kills people, ruins lives, pollutes the planet and wrecks our economy. Damaging foreign policy driven by a quest to secure oil. Workers’ lives lost and health destroyed because of corporate greed. A system that puts profit before people and ravages the earth along the way. And the need for workers and people of the world to unite, to love and preserve our planet and to build a better world.

3) Isn’t it possible in the Obama era to create millions of green jobs in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy in tandem with an attack on global warming?

4) Turning this around means getting our economic system in sync with Mother Nature — greening our economy. It means a massive national undertaking to invest in sustainable, non-polluting energy, industry and transportation systems; in well-planned, vibrant and sustainable “green” cities, towns and rural communities; in education, health care and culture to produce an informed and involved citizenry. Of course, that means putting people, and nature, before profits. This won’t happen without a fight.

5) Climate change is not the only threatening environmental problem: others include the collapse of important fisheries due to over-harvesting, degradation of the soil, increased water stresses, depletion of non-renewable resources, extinction threats to many species, worldwide spread of persistent organic pollutants which harm the human reproductive and immune systems, rapidly accelerating desertification, increasing air and water pollution.

ON THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN AND ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA:

6) The election of Barack Obama was indeed historic. While many of the pundits and other candidates rejected the idea, it was clear that the majority of voters were ready to elect our nation’s first African American President. The over 66 million votes cast for Obama represent a major blow against racism.

7) We hail the tens of millions who came to the polls and registered an historic defeat of the ultra right. These voters saw through the direct and indirect appeals to racism and voted for Obama. Their votes represent the highest expression of patriotism.

8) Throughout the campaign at his record-breaking rallies, Sen. Obama constantly emphasized that his all-people’s movement was built from the bottom up. We are very mindful of what the President-elect said in his acceptance speech, “This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.”

9) As one union supporter said just days after the election, “Now is the time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. There is legislation to be drafted, there is organizing to be done. Obama can’t do it by himself.”

If you’re outraged by the direction the right-wing corporate Bush administration is taking the country, there is something you can do!

10) In 2008 the elections for President and Congress could change the political map in our country. Shatter right-wing Republican political control of the South, end right-wing political dominance of rural America, create big new possibilities for workers to join and organize unions and give new voice to the disenfranchised. The 2008 elections could usher in a new grass roots people’s politics in our nation.

11) For nearly three decades, since Ronald Reagan was president, the ultra-right has dominated the political scene. They enabled a rampage by big business and transnationals to destroy unions and dismantle public services.

12) Unionized industrial jobs left. Profits soared. Wealth has consolidated in a few hands creating poverty and insecurity for the rest of us. African American and Latino workers have been hardest hit by loss of good union jobs.

13) The agenda under Clinton was dictated by compromise with the right-wing Republican controlled Congress. Working people were hit with job loss under NAFTA and loss of safety net protection under welfare reform.

14) But even this was not enough for the ultra-right. George Bush was installed as President in 2000 to accelerate the corporate imperial agenda and consolidate its power.

15) The “American Dream” has turned into a nightmare for millions of families. Economic security, healthcare, affordable housing and higher education seem a thing of the past. More African American men are in prison than in college, reflecting the growth of structural racism. The pursuit of profits has resulted in a lack of action to address global warming.

ON THE GREAT DEPRESSION:

16) Our parents and grandparents were such bottom-up change agents in the Depression years. Unhappy with the pace and substance of change, they sat down in plants and in the fields, marched for veteran benefits, petitioned local relief agencies, lobbied for a social safety net, established unemployed groups, organized industrial workers into the CIO, opposed discrimination and racism, turned multi-racial unity into an organizing principle, and, we should note, re-elected Roosevelt and a New Deal Congress in a landslide in the 1936 elections.

ON HEALTH CARE REFORM:

17) As the historic fight for health care reform passes to the Senate next week, and then to conference committee before final vote, a continued and expanded push is needed to prevent blockage of this key legislation, to insure a strong public option with no taxation of health benefits, inclusion of immigrants, and to eliminate measures that restrict coverage for women's reproductive rights. Messages to the Senate are needed in favor of health care reform that is affordable, accessible, portable and universal.

18) President Obama’s speech to Congress last night reset the debate and struggle for real health care reform. No one thought that the reform of our nation’s health care system would be easy to begin with, but what transpired recently – the fierce counter attack by the right-wing extremists, the letting loose of the demagogues of hatred, fear, racism, and division, and the digging in of private insurance companies and other sections of corporate America – proved to be a sobering reminder that the political terrain and initiative can shift in the direction of one’s foes, as it did this summer.

19) As for the supporters of health care reform, we have to be every bit as tenacious as right-wing reaction. Justice, morality, and truth are on our side, but they are not enough. Only when combined with persistence, united action, and struggle over the bill’s content, including a public option, will real health care reform see the light of day.

ON A SECOND "STIMULUS" BILL:

20) Much the same can be said about winning a second stimulus bill, and we sure need one, given the still-rising rate, and likely long term persistence, of unemployment.

ON EQUALITY AND RACISM:

21) Can’t we envision taking new strides in the long journey for racial and gender equality in this new era, marked at its beginning by the election of the first African American to the presidency?

And isn’t the overhaul of the criminal justice and prison system – a system steeped in racism – no longer pie-in-the sky, but something that can be done in the foreseeable future?

22) We can help re-bend the arc of history in the direction of justice, equality, and peace. But only if we, and millions like us, pursue a sound strategy that unifies broad sections of the American people and looks for alliances no matter how temporary and conditional. Majorities make history, not militant minorities.

ON LABOR UNIONS:

23) Talk about a sea change. A President-Elect who actually walks on picketlines rather than busts unions. Unprecedented independent labor political action that arguably made the difference in changing the direction of our country. Stunning victories at Smithfield Foods in Tar Heel, North Carolina, at Republic Windows in Chicago, and Boeing in Seattle. New higher levels of labor unity - its been a long time since the whole labor movement has been so united on a presidential candidate. The most unifying and far-reaching discussion in labor of racism as a central block to working class and trade union unity since the 1930's. And important new steps towards a truly international labor movement.

24) That we have spurned such an approach too is to our credit. (Read the outstanding speech of AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka to the national convention of CBTU, in which he speaks of labor’s positive view of the new administration and the new openings for class and democratic struggles that now exist.)

ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S AGENDA (EXTRA BONUS POINTS!!):

25) Millions of people have responded to the Obama campaign’s request for input on what the priorities of the new administration should be. Labor, the women’s movement, and other people’s organizations are already making proposals that include the following:

-- A stimulus package of a half trillion dollars or more, to create millions of jobs, including a public works program.

-- Emergency help for the jobless and the victims of the sub prime mortgage crisis.

-- Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, so more workers can have unions.

-- A concrete timetable for pulling out our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as rapidly as possible.

-- Step up the campaign for universal healthcare through such means as passing HR676; preserve and improve Medicare and Medicaid; extend children’s health care plans and unemployment compensation.

-- Emergency aid to cities and states.

In addition, there are calls to review and where necessary repeal Bush’s executive orders, as well as the Patriot Act. United action is called for, against California’s Proposition 8 (gay marriage ban), against racist violence and to end the ICE raids and deportations of immigrant workers, and for comprehensive, democratic immigration reform including a path towards citizenship.

For answers to the quiz, please locate the graphic of President Obama located at the bottom of the right sidebar of the site.

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