 Um and our next testimony will be um we're actually going to submit it into the record. It's a video I made with uh Julia Scoville. Julia Scoville is a 98 year old retired nurse and lifelong activist for social justice. She was in a leadership position at core and the Congress on Racial Equality and has been an organizer for over 12 years with the San Pedro neighbors for peace and justice. She and I did a longer Zoom it's will be submitted into the record but as a retired nurse she was given her boss called her in one day and gave her a list of all the groups that she was basically a part of and asked if she had been a member of any of them and to save her job she lies and she tells the story um about how a lifelong wonderful person was persecuted by our country. So um we will go on to the next testimony and that is a short video also from an older woman. Her name is Susan Gossman. She has been a lifelong activist for social justice and peace. She has testified here on her family history of the US Cold War and McCarthyism. My name is Susan Gossman. I understand you're asking what life was like during the Cold War. You should know at the outset that I am not a student of history nor my particularly great at political analysis but here's hoping that talking about my experiences and feelings during that time will give you some insight. According to Wikipedia the dates of the Cold War were 1945 to 1991 but to me the beginning of the Cold War was March 7th 1932 the date of the Fort Hunger March. The March took place years before I was born but because my father was one of its organizers I have always accepted it as part of my history and the names of the three young men Coleman Lenny, Joe York organizer of the Michigan Young Communist League and Joe de Blasio killed by Ford's private police force, stayed etched in my memory. A year later C. Williams a black worker died from wounds received that day. That violence was set off at gunpoint by Harry Bennett head of Ford's murderous service department. I was born on January 1st 1944. World War II would soon be over. The Fort Hunger March was behind us. The Rosenbergs were alive and Joseph McCarthy had not yet required my father's presence at one of his infamous hearings. So what was my life like during the Cold War years? My family had been party members for many years. I remember meetings, bazaars, fundraising parties and sing-alongs, being taken to see Salt of the Earth, another movie with Charlotte Abbas and Paul Robeson, my mother explaining from each to each and telling me communism would not be a reality for many generations. The fifties for me are framed by the Rosenbergs execution in 1953 and by Joseph McCarthy. My father appeared before Hugh Wack in 1958. The feeling was there may have been a connection between his subpoena and the fact that he had been an organizer of a PW Bazaar. It was an exciting and scary time. I felt that I had been accepted into a special secret society and anti-communist fervor was high. At school I was asked if I was a communist when I said my grandparents were from Russia. I learned not to say I was Jewish and to keep my mouth shut whenever communism was mentioned. If you were Jewish, you were ridiculed, asked why you didn't have a big nose, if you were rich and on and on and on. Communists, my friends, had been wanted to conquer the world. They were as evil as Nazis. Here's an excerpt from the annual report for the year 1958, prepared and released by the Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., which compares communists to Nazis. I found it while doing some research for this little presentation and my anger at reading it is so intense I can still feel it. So they, communists like the Nazis, divide people into those who deserve to exist and others who don't. And just like the Nazis, they proceed to exterminate, break, suppress all those who do not fit the image of the ruling class. Just like the Nazi state, the communist state is one in which murder has been elevated to the dignity of governmental policy. So, 1958, when I was 14, was quite a year. One weekend morning, as my parents slept in, there was a knock on our door. I answered to two men in suits and hats. Is your father home, one said? He's at work, I answered. Then glimpsing his car in the driveway, I said, oh, just a minute, and went to wake him up. Well, those men were FBI agents and they served my dad papers to appear before Hewak. They asked for my mother, but dad growled, you'll have to find her yourselves and shut the door in their faces. And the next thing I knew, we were packing our clothes and I was crying my heart out, scared and ashamed at what I thought I had done. We spent the summer hiding out at Alamedo's Bay in Long Beach. My father continued to work and joined us on weekends. My sister and I were told to say our last name was Schaefer, if anyone asks. And in case you think always grim in Long Beach, I'll share a little story with you. My sister had become friendly with a little girl her age and when it became time for her family to leave, the two decided to exchange phone numbers. Each took a piece of paper, each took a piece of paper to write their name and phone number. As they were doing this, all of a sudden my sister looked up and said, hey mom, how do you spell Schaefer? But this is far reaching stuff. Imagine my shock when as president of my union chapter, I learned that many of my union quote comrades still believe in the evil of communism. And a dear friend believes that there's no free will under communism and that communists will break and suppress all those who do not fit the image of the ruling class. And of course, this year, January 6th brought us concrete and horrible proof of the staying power of this abomination. Now let's be clear, the fight for good and right will go on and it will be won. So I end this by quoting my great great Aunt Mary. It is from a letter she wrote to her daughter Sylvia in 1970. Aunt Mary was 90 then and this is what she writes. My life was not wasted. And in my small way, I feel I contributed a little bit for progress, not just for myself and mine, but for others too. This is the way I live and the way I wish to be remembered by my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. And maybe some others will remember me too for nothing else than for my belief in Marxism and that I tried my best to live up to it. For this, I consider myself happy. She ends the letter by saying, I never did learn to spell, but I can think love, Mary. Thank you, Susan, for that testimony submitted now into the record.