Central Committee Leadership Biographies (2022)

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Red from Chicago (Frank Chapman) #

I became a communist in prison in 1965. Wrongfully convicted in 1961 and sentenced to life plus 50 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary, I had a lot of time to read. From the Communist Manifesto, I realized I was an oppressed person and a member of the working class.

My organizing began in prison, bringing together a collective to study Marxism Leninism, and then leading that collective to struggle against racist segregation, with worse food and conditions for Black prisoners.

I began to correspond with the Black liberation movement and reached out to the Missouri Communist Party. I started to submit articles to publications such as Freedom Ways.

When the Campaign to Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners won in court, they brought into existence the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. NAARPR helped win my freedom, and I became active with the organization in St. Louis. I went on to become the executive director.

After prison, I joined the CP-USA. I struggled for many years against the revisionist line of Gus Hall, eventually leaving. Moving to Chicago, I joined one of the two remaining chapters of NAARPR, and proposed to center organizing around the demand for community control of the police. I was elected Field Organizer, and we wrote legislation for an all elected, civilian police accountability council (CPAC).

In 2014, through the campaign for Justice for Rasmea, the icon of the Palestine liberation struggle in Chicago, I began working with comrades in FRSO. I joined the organization in 2015.

I became a member of the Central Committee in 2018 at the 8th Congress.

Through advances in CAARPR’s work in Chicago, and working with the Joint Nationality Commission of FRSO, we laid the foundation to re-found NAARPR, which we did in November 2019.

When George Floyd was murdered, NAARPR led 22 cities in protests with more than 100,000 people within a few days. All the marches NAARPR led included demands for community control of the police. With this, the campaign became truly national.

CAARPR was able to lead a united front of over 100 organizations, including 11 labor unions and 36 members of the Chicago City Council to compel Mayor Lori Lightfoot to align with the movement. In July 2021, the City Council passed into law the Empowering Communities for Public Safety, which is the first step toward community control of the police.

The advances in our movement also led to theoretical clarity in our movement on the centrality of the Black liberation struggle and the struggle against racism for Marxist Leninists in the US. This is presented in the book, Marxist Leninist Perspectives on Black Liberation and Socialism.

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Tiburcio from Los Angeles (Carlos Montes) #

I was raised in Mexico. At the age of six my family moved to the US arriving to face the racist nightmare.

I self-joined FRSO in the late 1990’s, became a District Organizer after the 2001 split, and was elected to CC at last Congress. I maintain a district in Los Angeles: Working primarily with the Joint Nationalities Commission on immigration work, police crime work, and antiwar organizing in the Chicano community to be part of our national work through local organizing against US wars and part of the mass immigrants’ protests of the mid 2000’s. I initiated local annual May Day and Chicano Moratorium protests and events in the largest Chicano barrio in the US. Additionally, I am a regular contributor to Fight Back News. I am well known and respected in my community and city. I am currently a lead organizer with a local mass organization in a Chicano poor working-class community. I have contributed to building a strong active mass organization. We organize with families who have lost sons to police killings, with a campaign to fight for stronger civilian oversight of the local sheriff. Also, I organize with parents and teachers in fighting privatization of public schools.

I became a M/L during the early 1970’s while living underground due to political repression. I joined the August 29th Movement M/L, a Chicano org that grew out of the 1960s Chicano movement and the New Left movement in the US. I have traveled to Cuba and Colombia, and done solidarity work. I met Assata Shakur in 1996 in Havana, and was the keynote speaker at Bobby Seale’s 80th birthday celebration. Due to threats against my life by police, beatings, and constant arrests I went underground 1970-77 to Mexico and Texas. Later returned to Juarez in 1971 and continued activism with labor and community struggles. I worked on the Farah strike of 1972 and the Partido de La Raza Unida campaign for governor of Ramsey Muniz. I worked and organized as a carpenter in housing construction, maintenance mechanic at a general hospital, steel worker in a copper refinery, and union organizer in a large SEIU local.

As a co-founder of the original Brown Berets & Minister of Information, I was a leader and organizer in the historic 1968 ELA Walkouts, & indicted by the grand jury with the ELA 13 for conspiracy to disrupt the school system; won a case. Also, I participated in the first National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, Denver 1968, where the Plan Espiritual de Aztlan was formulated, calling for self determination for Chicano Nation. The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Later participated in organizing the first Chicano Moratorium in 1969 against the war in Vietnam. For the 20th commemoration of the National Chicano Moratorium (1990), I was a leader organizing and reestablishing it. In 2006 I helped organize the historic marches against the criminalization of Mexican immigrants. In May 2011 I was arrested at home in an FBI Sheriff’s Swat team on investigation for anti war work on Iraq and Afghanistan, and solidarity work with Colombia and Palestine struggles. The arrest warrant said: “for providing material support to the PFLP and FARC!” This was part of the FBI attack on FRSO. I have been arrested many times due to my activism and targeted by the FBI for my anti-war and solidarity work. I enjoy Latin dancing, traveling, art shows, mural tours, swimming, and the beach. I have the energy and positive attitude to continue expanding and leading the organization into the future.

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Lexi from Twin Cities (Steff Yorek) #

After 22 years of serving this organization as Political Chair on the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, I am not running for the Standing Committee this term and ask for your support as a member of the Central Committee.

I grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota within a large and insular Catholic family. My class background is middle to upper working class. I was the first person in my family to go to college, though many of my 52 cousins have AA degrees, a few have four year degrees and one has a professional degree.

My first political activism was as a student. I was involved in the campaign against the Persian Gulf War. Working shoulder to shoulder with Freedom Road Socialist Organization comrades deepened my understanding of politics, ideology and practical organizing in life changing ways. That included dropping out of college and never completing a degree.

I joined Freedom Road Socialist Organization in 1992 and continued to do student work until 1996. I am a Queer-identified Bi-sexual. I have been married to [redacted] since 2001 and that marriage has been recognized by the state since 2013. I personally look forward to the abolition of marriage as an institution. I am also a mom to an 18 year-old kid.

I am a member of a clerical workers union. My primary role for the last decade has been in national leadership. I have served on leadership bodies of this organization since 1997.

I am a Marxist-Leninist. I also value the contributions of all those upon whose shoulders we stand from this country and around the world who have sought to liberate themselves from the chains of imperialism and national oppression. My theoretical background leans heavily toward Lenin, Stalin and Mao. When I want to read theory for pleasure or as a vehicle to ponder a practical question, Mao is usually my first choice. I was first drawn to socialism by the Sandinista and Vietnamese revolutions.

We are in the struggle to build a different world in our own time place and conditions. The struggle to build a party that can lead us through to socialism is never and easy one, in the current context of a declining imperialist power it is also an uncomfortable one. I think our principle challenge in this moment is to continue our current growth trajectory while maintaining our firm grounding in Marxism Leninism. I hope to assist in the ideological development as an active member the Central Committee.

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Liz from Twin Cities #

I grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota and come from a working class family. My grandpa and great-grandpa were a part of the 1934 truckers strike. Like them, my father was a Teamster. All three shared a deep hatred for the boss and a distrust of organization – other than the union. I learned from my dad that you never, ever cross a picket line. I learned the importance of community and social justice from my mom.

I worked a factory job weekends and summers during high school and absolutely did not want to be working class. I went to college on a scholarship from my dad’s union. The first few years I was in college, I focused on academics. I attended a few rallies for divestment from apartheid South Africa, but didn’t join any groups until my junior year when I met people in CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. I quickly dove in to supporting the revolutionary movement in El Salvador and opposing US intervention. I joined Freedom Road Socialist Organization in 1990 because people I deeply respected were in the group and I wanted to be like them.

Shortly after, I went on a student delegation to El Salvador. The day I arrived, we went to a movement office where we saw the bloody ropes and pillar where death squads had tied up, tortured and raped an organizer the night before. We slept overnights in a union office because the government was less likely to bomb it if Americans were there. We traveled to a village where we saw undetonated bombs that had USA stamped on them. Then we had the opportunity to travel to territory liberated by the guerillas of the FMLN, and I saw the difference between living under terror and truly living free. It was then that I truly understood the nature of imperialism. I realized that being a revolutionary was serious business and had to be based on your own convictions, not just wanting to be like your friends. I became a socialist because of my comrades in El Salvador. I became a communist because of my comrades of FRSO.

For the next 13 years, my primary political work was international solidarity and anti intervention, though I also did a lot of queer activism, primarily with ACT-UP. I moved to New York and was national director of CISPES for 10 years. I had incredible opportunities and adventures. I drove a 13-ton box truck from NYC to San Salvador, leading a humanitarian aid caravan of 84 drivers and 40 vehicles. I coordinated a 2-week election observer delegation of 400 people. I was on the tactical team for a 100,000 person antiwar rally during the second gulf war and was on the national steering committee that organized the Stonewall 25th anniversary march. I was part of an ACT-UP protest that shut down every bridge and tunnel into and out of Manhattan during rush hour. I served on the board of the NY Marxist School/Brecht Forum.

My political work since returning home in 2003 has been as a labor activist. As much fun and amazing all of my solidarity work was, nothing has been as rewarding as organizing in the working class. I led a three-week strike of 3000 university workers. I saw people grasp the power they truly have as workers, and saw their politics advance each day. I am the principal officer of my 1200-member public sector union. I work every day to build a militant class struggle oriented labor movement. I am the chair of Freedom Road’s Labor Commission and am proud of the work we have done to build our labor work. I am also a member of our district committee.

I am a Marxist Leninist who particularly appreciates the practical guidance provided by Lenin and Mao, and the contributions William Z. Foster, Harry Haywood and Claudia Jones have made to US communism and working class struggles.

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Sam from Chicago #

Sam was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996 and his family moved to Johannesburg, South Africa when he was 2 years old. He grew up in both South African and African American cultures, and was influenced in his youth by the histories of anti imperialist struggle in both nations. Sam started reading Steve Biko and Malcolm X in high school. He went to the university of Chicago in 2015 to study biology and English. While in college, Sam read some works from Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx, although he was disappointed in the way liberal academics handled discussions of revolutionary concepts. He started studying Marxism on his own through the work of revolutionaries such as Lenin, Mao, Assata Shakur, and Harry Haywood. Sam joined the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression in February 2019, and became a co chair of the organization in the summer of 2020. During the George Floyd rebellion, Sam organized dozens of protests with CAARPR, among other work such as tabling and writing statements. In 2021, Sam was a part of the parliamentary struggle to win ECPS in Chicago, and he remains committed to the fight for full community control of the police in Chicago and all over the country.

Sam is currently in the last month of a teaching residency, and he plans to become a classroom teacher and Chicago Teachers Union member in the next academic year. His hobbies include poetry, chess, and boxing. After his residency ends, Sam plans to do more creative, journalistic, and ideological writing. He looks forward to playing a role in party building and eventually building socialism from the ruins of the declining capitalist system.

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Gray from New York City (Michela Martinazzi) #

Gray (she/her) began organizing in 2010 when she read an op-ed in the university newspaper calling for students to protest a pastor who was going to burn Quorans on 9/11. The protest was organized by Students for a Democratic Society. She joined FRSO the following year. While active in Florida, she worked on campaigns against Tuition Hikes, Drones off Campus, In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students, Justice for Trayvon Martin, Fair ATU Contract Negotiations, and against political repression.

She moved to New York in 2016 where she has been the D.O. since. While in New York, she has organized successful marches for May Day, Hands Off Syria, Against Friends of the IDF, and so on. She was elected with the slate to the Central Committee in 2018. She is also on the U.S. Steering Committee for the International League of People’s Struggle and helps head the prop/education committee. She also helps the with the FRSO Media/Prop Team.

When she’s not organizing, she works as an Art Fair organizer and enjoys deep-dives into the nerdier parts of pop culture. She enjoys watching movies, reading queer fiction, the occasional photography, and telling anyone who will listen about her favorite nail polish. If you ever have some free time, hit her up for an OBS or photoshop tutorial, or just the promise of a good conversation over a cup of coffee.

Candidate for CC Leadership – Bio for Lola from Twin Cities #

Lola joined FRSO in 2003 shortly after being on strike as a clerical worker at the U of MN. She started her political career as an anti-imperialist organizer. Within a few years was moved to student organizing to help re-build student organizing in the Twin Cities and became part of the student commission at the time. She was one of the comrades whose home (apartment) was raided in 2010 and had the additional honor of refusing a 2nd subpoena. She played a large role in building a general membership grouping in the Twin Cities, and believes this experience will serve her well on the Central Committee. Currently, Lola is the unit chair of an environmental unit and is excited to develop this work and hopes to use it as a model to develop environment/climate work around the country.

She is an avid knitter, works at an auto garage, and has a partner who’s an electrician. She has 3 rescue dogs and would like to say hi to your dog.

Candidate for SC Leadership – Bio for Kaya from Tampa (Chrisley Carpio) #

Kaya was born in the Philippines, Cebu City, and moved to Florida in the US at the age of three. She met members of this group in her freshman year at the University of Florida in Gainesville in 2010, upon joining Students for a Democratic Society. Her first campaign was the fight against tuition hikes (tuition being raised to cost 15 credits regardless of actual enrollment), though she joined SDS because of their victory in the campaign to raise the pay of immigrant farmers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. She was recruited the following year and has been in the organization for 11 years, since Spring 2011. She moved to Tampa, FL, in 2015 and has lived there ever since.

Since then, she has organized in the student commission and was elected as its national chair in 2015, a role which she still fulfills. She attended the protest on NATO in 2012 in Chicago, which numbered tens of thousands; helped shut down the police station of Sanford, FL, after they covered up the killing of Trayvon Martin; co-MC’ed the March on the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL in 2012; been in fights for tuition equity for undocumented immigrants across the state of Florida in 2014; attended the first national march for CPAC in Chicago in 2015; organized with students against a no-fly zone in Syria, rallied students in a national campaign against Trump’s agenda; and more.

Apart from leading the student commission, she also has the privilege of leading national study groups from which we are able to recruit people from all walks of life. It’s been a pleasure to read with people from Tennessee, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Santa Ana, California, and more. She is thrilled to have been able to witness the growing militancy of the peoples’ movements and a surge of interest in the ideas of revolution, play out not in the abstract but in stone-cold reality.

She has been a clerical worker at the University of South Florida in Tampa for 6 years and is a member of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) local 3342. For fun, she hangs out with her beloved partner and plays hide-and-seek with their new kitten, Merlin. She likes to watch television, read, cook, bake, knit, and has recently taken up sewing.

Candidate for SC Leadership – Bio for Milano from Dallas (Sydney Loving) #

From a young age, Milano’s family made sure to instill in her an understanding and appreciation of the Black Liberation Movement, telling her stories of her elders’ participation in the Civil Rights Movement. It was through her study of those histories and particularly the Panthers that she came to dialectical materialism, Marxism-Leninism and the works of Mao. As an undergrad in 2013, she began work in the local fight against police crimes, as well as the student movement, where she was a leader of a Black student group fighting racist policies on campus. After returning to her hometown of Dallas, TX, she joined FRSO and quickly became part of the local leadership. The original chair of the local police crimes unit, Milano has engaged in local police crimes organizing from 2017 forward, through the North Texas Action Committee which later became the Dallas chapter of NAARPR. During the George Floyd Rebellion, this organization directed the largest demonstrations the city had seen in decades. She now serves as a national co-chair of NAARPR. Milano is 27 years old and an early childhood educator at a Montessori school. She paints portraits and political banners, and spends her free time in the vegetable garden. Her wife is a fellow FRSO organizer and member of the local leadership, and they have two cats who will not listen to reason.

Candidate for SC Leadership – Bio for Bill from Twin Cities (Mick Kelly) #

I became involved in the new communist movement towards end of Vietnam War. When I was 15, I came in contact with communists who had been around DRUM (the Motor City Labor League) who gave me a clear understanding of the role of the working class, so I got a job on the night shift in a large printing plant where I helped to lead a union drive. I also played a leadership role in a socialist group called the Wisconsin Alliance.

As a member of a student delegation of Revolutionary Union, I visited China in the 1975. Later became a district level leader in the RCP, and following the split in the RCP, a member of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters. Following the decline of the RWH, was a part of the unity team that brought about the merger between the Headquarters and the Proletarian Unity League – leading to creation of the FRSO. I was a member of the first NEC of FRSO, and was one of the heads of the student commission.

From the founding of Freedom Road on, I worked very hard to promote a Marxist-Leninist line, and helped to organize the two-line struggle that took place after the 1989 attempt at counter-revolution in China. I served for many years as the MN District Organizer.

I spent quite a few years organizing students (despite the fact I never really attended college), and also spent 8 years organizing the urban poor. I am an active trade unionist.

So, enough water under the bridge. Currently, I am a member of the Standing Committee where I am responsible for Fight Back!, our international work, and some other things too.

If reelected to the Standing Committee, I will work hard to apply the political line adopted at our Congress. I will also a candidate to serve as Political Secretary.

Like anyone else I have some strengths and weaknesses. On the downside I am sometimes impatient and rude with comrades who disagree with me. On the plus side I try to work very hard, be practical about the projects we take up, and to develop a deeper understanding of M L and how it applies to the conditions we face on the ground.

Candidate for SC Leadership – Bio for James from Grand Rapids (Tom Burke) #

I am the Organizational Secretary for the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. I was co-opted onto the leadership body of FRSO in the mid-1990s while doing student activism. Following the lead of our Political Secretary, we affirmed Marxism-Leninism and opposed the Right Opportunists who split in 1999. Our new ML Standing Committee built and developed the FRSO over two decades into the determined revolutionary force it is today. The proof is in the pudding.

Most of my time and effort goes into leading the FRSO with our excellent leaders on the Standing Committee and the Central Committee. I am responsible for relating to many districts, developing new districts, members program, relating to the Student Commission and anti-war work team. I sometimes edit Fight Back! articles. I’m looking forward to expanded leadership bodies that will increase our capacity and grow our group across the country.

I am working for wages more than I did for 17 years, so I have less organizing time. I am recently an elected union officer to a small craft union. We punch way above our weight.

I also play a role in the anti-war and international solidarity movements, traveling regularly. International solidarity is important for both practical activity that impacts world events, and for understanding forces in motion and ideological developments. I recently attended the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) 5th Congress.

I am 57 years old, he/him, and Irish American, son of immigrants, working class background, Currently upper-middle class. I was a student in Manchester, England during the UK Miners’ Strike 1984-85 and became involved in the struggle against Apartheid South Africa. I was cautious to become a Marxist-Leninist, but I studied many groups and asked to join the FRSO in 1988.

I have many nicknames.

Candidate for SC Leadership – Bio for Sen from San Jose (Masao Suzuki) #

My family’s revolutionary activity dates back to my great-grandfather who fought the Spanish (1896-1898) and Americans (1898-1900) in the first Philippine wars of independence. My parents both worked with the Communist Party, USA and met while going to China in 1952 at a peace conference shortly after the Chinese revolution.

I became active in high school where I organized Asian American students and youth. In 1973 the study of ML led by I Wor Kuen (IWK), an Asian American ML organization, the violence against farm workers by police and the growers’ thugs in the fields of California, and the bloody CIA coup against the elected socialist government of Allende in Chile, led me to join IWK. After working with the League of Revolutionary Struggle (ML) and the Socialist Organizing Network (SON) I joined the FRSO in 2001.

My deepest roots are in the Japanese American National Movement where I have worked for almost forty years. I have also done student work, Filipino American community organizing, worked in a warehouse and a steel fabrication factory, was an Executive Board member in my teachers’ union, anti-war and international solidarity work, immigrant rights (in a Salvadoran American community unit of LRS), anti-political repression, and electoral work, mainly the 1984 Jesse Jackson campaign.

During my time with IWK, LRS, and FRSO I served as unit leader, Unity (LRS newspaper) organizer, and served on the NEC and SC for the FRSO. I have worked in the Asian Struggles Commission of the LRS, and as chair of the Joint Nationalities Commission for FRSO, Worked and Immigrant Rights/Chicano-Latino movement work team and the Police Crimes/African American work team, and most recently, the National Alliance work team. I have done theoretical work on party-building for IWK in the 1970s, the experience of socialism in the 1980s for LRS, and the national question for the FRSO, including the immediate demands for Oppressed Nationalities. I also regularly write on the economy for Fight Back! Newspaper.

If re-elected, I will work to further our central task of party-building, in particular to strengthen FRSO’s work in the national movements, to write more on the economy, and to make more contributions to our theoretical work. My main strength is my ability to help make plans and stick to them, but my weakness is being flexible and adapting quickly to changing situations. My main struggle is to balance my national responsibilities, district work, mass work, a job, and family responsibilities.

My red name is based on Sen Katayama, a founder of the Japanese Communist Party and who helped in the formation of the CPUSA.

Candidate for SC Leadership – Bio for Hagen from Jacksonville (Fernando Figueroa) #

Hagen began studying Marxism after joining Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Florida in 2008. He first read the works of Huey P. Newton, and later learned a lot from the works of Lenin, Stalin, and other revolutionaries. He has been a member of FRSO since 2009. He was co-opted to the Standing Committee in 2012 and has been elected twice to remain part of our leadership. He is 32 years old, lives in Jacksonville, FL, and his nationality is Ecuadorian and Cuban. Hagen has worked part-time at UPS and been a Teamster for 9 years. He has served as District Organizer first in Gainesville, FL – then briefly for the state of Florida – and has been D.O. of Jacksonville since 2014, but hopes to pass that responsibility on soon. Hagen has organizing experience in the student movement, the labor movement, and the movement against police crimes. He hopes to continue serving as part of our national leadership and help develop our amazing organization.

Hagen’s hobbies include spending time with his partner of 8 years, who herself is a member of two unions – IATSE and IBEW (Stagehands and Electricians). They are excitedly planning for their wedding next year. Hagen likes to read science fiction and fantasy novels, play computer games, and hopes to one day become the lucky guardian of a pet raccoon.

Additional Bio for Eli, our National Organizer (Andy Koch) #

Eli joined FRSO in 2018 in Chicago after resigning from Workers World Party, which he was a member of since 2009. He became politically active in that year as a nursing student in North Carolina through Students for a Democratic Society. His main contributions in WWP were to redesign its logo and newspaper, rejuvenate the Chicago branch as its principal organizer once he moved there in 2015, and advocating along with others internally for the establishment of democratic centralist norms in the organization. When those efforts were frustrated at every turn by leadership, he and the Chicago branch decided to resign from WWP. Since joining FRSO, Eli has contributed to student movement work, anti-police organizing, and managed the district’s general membership. On a national level, he worked on the national social media team. In 2022, he was selected by the Standing Committee for the position of National Organizer, the organization’s first paid, full-time staff role. He hopes that this role, along with the establishment of our national office, will help the organization rapidly grow and develop into the new, genuine vanguard of the multinational working class that is so sorely needed.

He is 32, of European and Lebanese ancestry, and from a petit-bourgeois background. He is the proud parent of a black cat. He enjoys building instruments (banjo, synthesizer), making field recording and collages on audio tape, studying Marxism-Leninism, and caring for his many houseplants.