~ kusala
[ ku-sa-la: Pali term meaning wholesome, skillful, good, meritorious. ]
[ Action characterized by this quality (kusala-kamma) is bound to result (eventually) in happiness and a favorable outcome. ]
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kusala.diaryland.com

2006-08-08 - 4:47 p.m.

Dorothy Healey, R.I.P.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-healey8aug08,1,4968469.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

Dorothy Healey, a onetime labor organizer, civil rights activist and Marxist radio commentator who was chairwoman of the Southern California district of the Communist Party USA from the late 1940s through the 1960s, has died. She was 91.
...
"I joined the Young Communist League out of a feeling of hate and love," she told an audience at Golden West College in Huntington Beach in 1977. "I hated the system that reduced all humans to a feeling of total helplessness � of fear over what each day would bring.

"I loved the humans who lived under these [conditions] and I respected their potential."
...
From 1956 on, when Healey learned the truth from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's so-called "secret speech," in which he revealed Stalin's crimes to the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Healey became an advocate for democratizing the American Communist Party and sought more independence from Soviet control.

That led her to become an outspoken critic of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a country she had visited the previous year. Because of her opposition to the national leaders of the American Communist Party, she resigned as chairman of the Southern California district.

In 1973, she resigned from the American Communist Party. She said, however, that she remained a staunch communist and was as much an enemy of capitalism as ever.

"My resignation from the Communist Party will not bring comfort to anti-Communists on either the right or left," she said on her semimonthly commentary broadcast over radio station KPFK-FM (90.7).

"My hatred of capitalism, which degrades and debases humans, is as intense now as it was when I joined the Young Communist League in 1928," she said. "I remain a communist, as I have been all my life, albeit without a party."

Healey then joined the New American Movement, a nationwide organization for democratic socialism, co-founded by her son. She later joined the Democratic Socialists of America and became a vice president of the organization.

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Unfortunately, I never heard of you before today, Ms. Healy, but thanks for trying to make the world a better place. And for recognizing that there's a difference between demagoguery and idealism. And between totalitarianism and compassion.

There's a difference.

I may just have to check out your book.


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