Women for Racial and Economic Equality was an activist and political group founded by the Communist Party USA in 1975 as the successor to the Congress of American Women (CAW) and as the U.S. chapter of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF). The organization was active for over two decades in leftist policy and advocacy, focusing on racial and gender equality in legislation and the workplace, in the United States and internationally.

Re-occurring issues WREE sought to address included healthcare, worker’s rights, poverty, imperialism, and racial injustice. WREE described itself as “a multiracial, multiethnic organization that strives for the unity of all women based on the Women’s Bill of Rights, a principled program of struggle to end racism and sexism and achieve economic equality for all” (WREE-View, vol. 18, no. 1). The Women’s Bill of Rights that WREE drafted included such affirmations as equality (non-discrimination), economic justice (living wage, paid family care leave, etc.), affordable housing, education, health care (a government-funded health care system), reproductive choice (access to abortion, sex education, and birth control), etc. There were 12 rights listed in total. [Note: In the 21st century, the title of ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’ has been co-opted as a movement by a group of trans-exclusionary individuals seeking to exclude and erase transgender people with the front of “protecting women’s spaces.”]

WREE’s newsletter was The WREE-View of Women for Racial and Economic Equality, at first published bi-monthly and later published quarterly every year from 1975 to 1993. WREE’s president was Cheryl Allen Craig, and its national headquarters were in New York with local groups spread throughout the nation. The national structure was made up of a National Council composed of delegates from each of these local groups and a National Executive Board, which was responsible for putting out the WREE-View, coordinating the national convention, and facilitating connections between the local groups. The local groups were responsible for their own fundraising.

In 1995, following the collapse of the USSR, a general increase in conservatism in the United States, and a lack of funding, WREE was disbanded. However, an effort was made to re-establish the organization in 2018, and the new WREE exists today with a Facebook and Twitter account promoting progressive activism, though not to the same effect as it did in the 20th century.

[Information retrieved from FBI Vault, The WREE-View of Women, and “wree-arranging priorities” from Off Our Backs vol. 8 no. 3.]