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Communists for Kerry revisited, extended and revised

Posted Aug 13, 2010 by Tom Jackson

Updated Aug 13, 2010 at 07:13 PM

Oleg Atbashian’s piece, “Communist for Kerry Now GOP Congressional Candidate,” gives us a welcome opportunity to amend and correct the record.

Writing for Pajamas Media, Atbashian notes that Jason Sager was even busier than previously presumed during the run-up to the 2004 presidential election.

We already knew Sager, the unemployed audio-visual technician and tea party activist running an energized and passionate insurgent’s campaign for the Republican nomination to succeed Ginny Brown-Waite in Florida’s Congressional District 5, was part of the New York chapter of Protest Warriors demonstrators who attempted to reveal the absurdity of the left by being absurd. Atbashian writes that the picture—see it here —that has accompanied at least two stories in Hernando Today, our sister publication, originated with a second street-theater group, “Communists for Kerry.”

It’s funny how life turns out. That “Communists For Kerry” sign was designed by me, on this very computer.

Meet Jason Sager from Florida’s 5th Congressional District, formerly Comrade J.F. Che from the crazy summer of 2004 in New York. Kerry ran against Bush, and we ran an anti-Kerry, anti-left political street theater in a city where liberals outnumbered conservatives ninety to one and where being pro-Bush was equated with mental and moral idiocy.

Our group started with six non-conformists to the liberal code: Jason and Charles were born in America; Bryan arrived some years ago from Ireland; Ivan, Gene, and I were immigrants from different parts of the former USSR. On Bryan’s suggestion, we called ourselves Communists For Kerry. Our plan was to improvise a surrealistic sequel to the Red Dawn movie with a modern twist.

Every weekend we showed up on Union Square — the hotbed of New York’s left-wing street agitation — dressed up as communist icons: Lenin, Castro, Che Guevara, and assorted commissars in pointed Red Army hats, under a vintage USSR banner and the sign “We cure weak liberalism with strong communism.” Our other signs and flyers spoofed the Kerry-Edwards campaign: “Ask France First,” “Stop the vicious creation of wealth and prosperity,” and “Give each homeless person a rich Republican widow!”

Atbashian goes on to describe how, even as their group pushed what they believed to be the limits, Real Believers often outdid their best efforts.

We picked a spot between the Union Square subway entrance and a group of youngish communist agitators who preached Marxist dogmas about the evils of capitalism and the benefits of a complete redistribution of wealth by the dictatorship of the proletariat. American citizens all, they held strangely idealized beliefs about the USSR, and when I tried to dissuade them, they dismissed it as “propaganda.” A little further away, a large yellow banner saying “9-11 was an inside job” was being held by rotating volunteers, who often wore hammer-and-sickle shirts. The rest of the square’s open space facing 14th Street was filled with an assortment of ephemeral subversive groups, all with the same address on their flyers — a building a couple of blocks away that happened to be the official address of Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center. There was also an occasional showing by union activists with glossy, expensive-looking signs denouncing Coca-Cola and the Colombian government.

Thus was the group forced to dial it up. My personal favorite, a Rubik’s Cube red on all sides: “The People’s Cube: nobody is too smart, nobody is too slow, everybody is equal!”

Atbashian puts Sager, then in his late 20s, firmly in a leadership role.

Working the crowd in Che costume was not all Jason did. There probably would be no Communists For Kerry if it weren’t for Jason’s planning and organizing. I mostly did the web-related work: graphics, writing, photographs, and web formatting. Others had their duties too, yet Jason was the leader. He was the kind of leader anyone would want to have as a boss: open, funny, generous, determined, and easy to work with.

In a recent column reflecting on Sager’s activist work refudiating anti-war moonbats on behalf of the Bush re-election effort, I blended the Protest Warriors and Communists for Kerry into a single operation. They were separate, as Atbashian makes abundantly clear. And we are only too happy to correct the record.