Mayor Rahm Emanuel apparently passed up the opportunity to welcome the CPUSA to his town, not so incidentally the city of its birth. And so far, no note has been taken of former Chicagoan and Party member Frank Marshall Davis, who mentored future President Barack Obama, who chose the Windy City fro his home for political reasons.  

Ron Grossman, of the Chicago Tribune, was there, however:

… more than 300 adherents who came to celebrate the party's 95th anniversary at the University of Illinois at Chicago

The very campus where Obama’s “guy in the neighborhood” Bill Ayers achieved tenure, and handed out grants to “improve” Chicago schools, working with his neighbor Barack Obama.   

Among them was Susan Gosman, who on the opening day of the convention stood in front of sign-in sheets divided by decades. Delegates were asked to mark the one during which they were radicalized. "For me, it would be 1944," she said. "The year I was born."

Gosman is a "red-diaper baby," as a communist born to communist parents is known. Her father took part in the 1930s sit-down strikes in automobile plants that won autoworkers a union. But it also got him in trouble during the 1950s. That meant tough times when she was growing up, and her parents cautioned her about the perils of following their political path.

Yet a year and a half ago, she joined the Communist Party.

"I finally realized, I didn't believe in the other side," said Gosman, a retired employee of the Los Angeles school system.

Oddly enough, another red diaper baby, born to communist parents, is David Axelrod, mastermind of Obama’s rise to national politics.

But all of this is noting but coincidence. That’s why President Obama passed up the opportunity to address the convention

Hat tip: Bryan Demko