You bet your babushka, baby. But now, the red menace is kind of green.
NEW YORK - The d�cor inside the national headquarters of the Communist Party USA, or CPUSA, is more Macy's than Marx. Glass walls rise from the floor to form state-of-the-art work spaces, nontoxic linseed oil burnishes the work surfaces, and biodegradable blue carpet is underfoot. Colorful paintings by the renowned artists Boris Taslitzky and Alejandro Romero, depicting the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and working-class struggle, dot the walls of the expansive open-plan office. Inside their transparent cubicles, the 21-strong staff tap away on Apple Macs and sip Starbucks coffee.
This is what class warfare looks like in the 21st century.
In February, the CPUSA officially unveiled its newly refurbished office space in the trendy Chelsea district of Manhattan. The Reds went "green" for their $1 million overhaul, including various environmentally conscious features in the design. Huge windows and transparent walls were installed to take advantage of the sunlight and create greater energy efficiency. They also installed occupancy sensors so artificial lighting would not be wasted, and nontoxic building materials were used to reduce health risks to staff.
The new office is the symbol of a new era in the Communist movement and what its members hope will be the first step in a return from the political fringes.
As the new frontman of the Communist Party, Delgado, a New Jersey native and video-production expert, bears a greater resemblance to the Rock than to Che Guevara. Like the other 20 staff members -- whose roles in the office range from the finance department to national leadership -- he earns a paltry but equal $26,000 per year. The party's income comes from donations and bequests, with enough left over for the million-dollar renovation.
"We're part of a new generation," Delgado says. "The younger people are re-evaluating our presence and how we put ourselves forward. We renovated the national office, and now we want to create a new digital space."
With two other young converts to the revolutionary struggle, Delgado has formed a new technology buzz-team, which aims to announce a new Web site at the end of the year. The Youth Communist League already has a fully operational MySpace page, with 250 buddies with names such as "Maoism" and "Socialism." The Texas branch of CPUSA proudly displays a cartoon of Karl Marx in a cowboy hat on its Web site, and the party has even jumped on the YouTube bandwagon, with a video presentation of the new office set to tongue-in-cheek '70s music fit for an episode of Shaft.
Delgado claims results.
"We have turned a corner recently," he says. "We get two or three new members every week."
And though not a recruitment rate that keeps George W. Bush up at night, it is an improvement for the party, whose current membership nationwide is roughly 3,000.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the '90s were a troubled time for the party. But Delgado doesn't look back and exudes optimism. "I believe now we can achieve communism in America within my lifetime, within the next 50 years."
But away from the rah-rah spirit at headquarters and a few chatty leftist corners of the Internet, a CPUSA revival is viewed as, well, unlikely.
"As a historian, I don't usually feel comfortable about predicting the future," says John Earl Haynes, an author on domestic communism. "However, in this case, I'm confident in saying that the CPUSA has absolutely no future in the country."
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