12,000 join JPC since September last year, 30% of new members are young people

During the period between September 2007 and October 2008, 12,000 persons joined the Japanese Communist Party (JCP).  The JCP held the 5th convention of its Central Committee in September last year. About 30% of the 12,000 are those who are in their teens, twenties and thirties.

Many of the 12,000 said that they joined the JCP to change society, which "treats young people as disposable." In Chiba Prefecture, many farmers became JCP members, with one saying: "In order to revitalize agriculture, politics must change." In defiance of the controversial health insurance system for those aged 75 and older, people in their sixties and seventies joined the JCP.

 A 22-year-old male member, who had taken part in the Oct. 5 national youth rally, said: "Japanese politics is at the beck and call of the United States. That is a fundamental factor in a society in which people have difficulty making a living. I want to make a society into one in which it is easy for the socially weak to live. After watching JCP Chairman Kazuo Shii's questioning in the Diet, a young man, a factory contract employee, visited a JCP office in Kanagawa Prefecture to join the party. He said: "I want to change the abnormal working conditions." In order to find bright prospects for social change, many people joined the JCP. A 26-year-old man, a resident of Saitama Prefecture, said: "I read Karl Marx's books while being hospitalized from overwork. I was deeply moved by the JCP, which has made efforts for the socially weak and opposed the war of aggression."

Source: AKAHATA