National Labor Federation
Journalists who have discussed NATLFED entities have praised their social work,[2][3][4][5] raised concerns about their lack of transparency,[6][7][8][9] and condemned the organization's exploitative treatment of volunteers.
[16] NATLFED literature asserts the principle that "every man, woman and child is entitled to adequate and appropriate food, clothing, shelter and medical care as basic human rights.
NATLFED entities send speakers to churches, residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, university campuses, music festivals, and other venues to introduce themselves and solicit volunteers and resources.
[20] Former members claim that deception and psychological manipulation mix with the sensation some new recruits experience of an intellectual awakening as stories of past labor struggles explain the underside of U.S. history, and classes in dialectical materialism provide a coherent, if stilted, worldview.
NATLFED converts' commitment is solidified by the emotional impact of working to exhaustion surrounded by others who constantly reinforce the group's message and beliefs.
[13] NATLFED recruits many of its members and volunteers from college campuses, through voluntary service programs, and by appeal to the larger community through speaking engagements and direct contact.
The ESWA is thriving in Boston, Massachusetts, and Rochester, New York, with assistance from several local churches and businesses that may not be aware of its practices or connection to NATLFED.
[9] Critics and some former members have claimed that the entities are highly inefficient—that the cadre consumes much of the cash, food and clothing they purport to collect for the poor.
[21] Volunteers for the entities canvass poor residential areas to recruit low-income members, knocking on doors and delivering a pitch that includes a brief explanation of organization, promises benefits, and asks for participation.
Poor members are asked to contribute $0.62 per month as membership dues, an amount said to be the average hourly pay for workers at I. M. Young in 1972.
[19][28][29] The groups also solicit resources (funds, food, clothing, medical services and legal aid) from professionals, business owners, and volunteers willing to contribute to the cause.
Because CCLP does not receive federal funds, it can organize without being subject to arbitrary restrictions on representation, audits of client files, unpredictable fluctuations in income, and general harassment from LSC and OIG bureaucrats, all of which are the plight of an LSC-funded attorney in the 21st century.
CCLP does not focus merely on individual representation or the issue-oriented litigation which others rely on to gain backing.NATLFED is substantially larger than the Communist Party, United States of America (Provisional Wing) [CPUSA(PW)].
[13] Later, Public Eye argued that it "no longer feels it is accurate to call Newman’s political network a cult", though "we still have strong criticisms of the group’s organizing style".
[13][10][34] In 1971 or 1972, Perente worked in the New York office of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and, according to Dolores Huerta, "created a lot of problems for the union, attacking us in the press.
In the mid-1970s, Perente removed himself from public view, but encouraged his followers to expand the scope of the initial organizing drives in Sacramento and Long Island.
He established an office in Brooklyn to direct the growing network he called the National Labor Federation (NATLFED), and refined an elaborate system to train and ensure the loyalty of volunteers by founding the Provisional Communist Party, a secret society of his associates.
Perente gave lectures offering idiosyncratic interpretations of the writings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin to audiences at the NATLFED office.
[10][1] Perente's movement used its core of volunteers to expand, sending recruiters to other cities and towns, starting about 20 mutual benefit associations and perhaps as many related support organizations by the late 1970s.
[16] In 1973, the California Homemakers Association (CHA) pressured Sacramento County and won wage increases for attendant care workers.
[22] In the 1970s, Perente and NATLFED briefly worked with alleged cult leader Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC).
During at least 1976 and 1977, Perente and NATLFED worked and considered merging with alleged cult leader Fred Newman's International Workers Party (IWP), but did not.
[38] In 2006, the California State Legislature allocated $610,000 to settle Vega v. Mallory, which alleged that migrant camp workers were overcharged for rent.
[18] In 2009 the party was reported to have been involved, again through some of its front groups, in a civic struggle around the proposed rebuilding of a hospital in a low-income area of San Francisco.
The first, by Harvey Kahn in 1977,[24] alleged an obscure but friendly relationship between NATLFED and Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees.
Tourish and Wohlforth report a similarly tenuous but longer-lived alliance between NATLFED and Fred Newman's new International Workers Party in the mid-1970s.
[13] In 2016, Random House Canada published former cadre Sonja Larsen's memoir Red Star Tattoo – My Life as a Girl Revolutionary.
Larsen writes about her relationship with Perente/Doeden and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of women she witnessed while living at the safe house around the time of the organization's revolutionary "countdown".
Shortly after the 1996 raid, an anonymous website appeared created by "an informal network of people" who were "frightened for the current members who are our children, siblings, former friends, and coworkers."
They felt the only way to help poor people was through Natlfed, that there was no possible success for them after leaving, and/or they were subject to physical threats if they did.Other entity members share a more positive experience, such as Western Service Workers Association (WSWA) entity member Shari Beck:[59] Shari Beck, a retired school teacher, has been volunteering at WSWA for the past three years.
