Weekly Featured Marxist, Texas – Gene Lantz

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genelantz

Gene Lantz is a North Texas based Communist Party USA leader.

Gene Lantz has been a union man for most of his working career. He retired from Vought Corp. in 2002 after working there for 27 years. He is the chairman of the United Auto Workers Union Local 848 that represents the plant.

In the 1970s, Gene Lantz was a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, but eventually led his faction out of the party over doctrinal differences. He went on to lead a Maoist/Trotskyist hybrid called the North Star Network with Peter Camejo, later a California Green Party Gubernatorial candidate.

However, by the early 2000s, he was a full-fledged Dallas based Communist Party of Texas member.

Lantz is active in Jobs with Justice, various union groups and with the communist-led Texas Alliance of Retired Americans.

He and his wife Elaine Lantz, are also heavily involved with the Democratic Party and actively supported the candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008.

Lantz works closely with several Texas Democratic Congress members, particularly Dallas/Fort Worth area “Progressives,” such as Reps Marc Veasey and Eddie Bernice Johnson.

In July, 2013, Walmart sued Gene Lantz, the United Food and Commercial Workers, OURWalmart and Jobs with Justice for civil trespassing for crossing their parking lots.

Gene Lantz has been making videos of public officials supporting Walmart workers and posting them on YouTube, which he regards as a key tactic in the long strategy to unionize Walmart.

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Comments

  1. We should of course keep in mind that it is perfectly possible for an activist to work with or support politicians he might not wholeheartedly agree with on every issue, or vice versa. Much is made here of the fact that Lantz has worked with several Democratic politicians. This of course does not show that those Democrats would accept Lantz’s politics wholeheartedly, or vice versa.

  2. Well, this is not “my way of thinking.” This is logic, and so yes, the point still holds, even if we’re talking about someone like David Duke. If Duke decided he wanted to work on some project, and some party Smith decided to work with him on it as well, it would not at all follow that Smith shares all of Duke’s convictions. Or do you believe that it would– that if two persons X and Y work together on some matter, they must share all of their fundamental convictions?

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