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The speeches in this pamphlet were delivered at the National Nominating Convention of the Communist Party held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, June 28, 1936.

WHO ADVOCATES FORCE?

"The Communist Party must use the opportunity of this election campaign to smash once and for all the superstition, which has been embodied in a maze of court decisions having the force of law, that our Party is an advocate of force and violence, that it is subject to laws (Federal immigration laws, state 'criminal syndicalism' laws) directed against such advocacy. The Communist Party is not a conspirative organization, it is an open revolutionary party, continuing the traditions of 1776 and 1861; it is the only organization that is really entitled by its program and work to designate itself as 'sons and daughters of the American revolution.' Communists are not anarchists, not terrorists. The Communist Party is a legal party and defends its legality. Prohibition of advocacy of force and violence does not apply to the Communist Party; it is properly applied only to the Black Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, and other fascist groupings, and to the strikebreaking agencies and the open-shop employers who use them against the working class, who are responsible for the terrible toll of violence which shames our country."——(Democracy or Fascism, Earl Browder's Report to the Ninth Convention of the Communist Party. Price 5 cents.)

PUBLISHED FOR THE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY BY [[page torn]] INC., P. O. BOX 148, STA D, [[page torn]] 1936.   209


NOMINATING SPEECH BY ROBERT MINOR PROPOSING

Earl Browder

FOR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

COMRADE chairman and fellow delegates, the Ninth Convention of the Communist Party boldly, clearly and with a unity that astonishes all who do not know the Communist Party, has formed judgments and made decisions that will favorably affect the history of our country for years to come. The people of America, the workers, the farmers, the intellectuals, the hard-pressed middle class, are facing problems now that can be compared to those that were solved by the Fathers of the Republic, or by its savior Lincoln. Leaders are needed today who can light the way and organize the march out of a chaos of dislocation, ruin, and suffering greater than was ever faced before. Four times as many men and women are unemployed in America as the total population of the United States at the time the Republic was founded; eight times as many men, women, and children are out of all means of livelihood as the full number of the Negro slaves emancipated by Lincoln in 1864.

Those who have seen the development of this crisis, and see its growth toward greater ruin, and have observed the selfish, the futile efforts to arrest its growth by those who had the power but lacked the guiding will, are coming in large numbers to believe that the leaders who will replace today the Washingtons and the Lincolns of the past, will be found as they were found, among the ranks of the revolutionists.  

We must bear this in mind when we chose our candidate for President.

We must choose a man fit to be the leader of a nation, and he

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