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Communism Tag

Can't say this was on anyone's near term radar. The NY Times reports U.S. and Cuba, in Breakthough, Resume Diplomatic Relations:
The United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century after the release of an American contractor held in prison for five years, American officials said Wednesday. In a deal negotiated during 18 months of secret talks hosted largely by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis, who hosted a final meeting at the Vatican, President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba agreed in a telephone call to put aside decades of hostility to find a new relationship between the United States and the island nation just 90 minutes off the American coast. The contractor, Alan Gross, boarded an American government plane bound for the United States on Wednesday morning, and the United States sent back three Cuban spies who have been in an American prison since 1981. American officials said the Cuban spies were swapped for a United States intelligence agent who has been in a Cuban prison for nearly 20 years and said Mr. Gross was not technically part of the swap but released separately on “humanitarian grounds.”

Chicago long has been a center of Communist Party USA activity. This video from 2011 shows the CPUSA protesting in support of the Occupy movement in Chicago: Today in Chicago was the 95th Anniversary celebration, as Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune reports:
Communist Party USA gathers in Chicago "I finally realized, I didn't believe in the other side," said Gosman, a retired employee of the Los Angeles school system. The Chicago convention will feature three days of speeches, panel discussions and workshops. One session will be devoted to catching up with an online era. Communists, like other radicals, traditionally recruit by hawking the party's paper on street corners. But financial constraints have forced the People's World to abandon its print edition. So one question up for discussion is how can peoplesworld.org put the party in touch with low-paid workers, environmentalists and advocates for social justice?