People Before Profit blog

Remarks at George Edwards Memorial

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:39:00 +0000

NOTE: Sam Webb spoke along with others, including Leo Gerard at a memorial in Pittsburgh for United Steelworkers founder, and longtime Communist leader, George Edwards.

Thank you.

I am honored to be here and to be able to say a few words about George ... my dear friend and comrade.

Let me begin by expressing my heartfelt love and solidarity to his partner Denice and family. You feel the loss the deepest, but be assured that all of us gathered here and many more around the country are profoundly saddened by George's passing as well as inspired by the spirit and legacy that he leaves behind.

I also want to thank President Gerard and the steelworkers union for hosting this memorial at your headquarters. There is no better place to celebrate George's life.

This union meant everything to him. Up until his health made it impossible, nothing made George happier than to volunteer his labor at this building. Here he could do his part in fighting to advance the goals of this great union.

George was proud of every union fighting the good fight against corporate greed and right wing extremism, but he was especially proud of this union and its leadership which he felt was breaking new ground in the fight for the interests of our nation's multi-racial, male and female working class.

In fact, if he were with us now, he would be singing its praises in making possible the great victory that working people and their allies scored with the reelection of President Obama for a second term.

During the nearly 35 years that I knew George he always amazed me at the many hats that he wore - gardener, wilderness enthusiast, photographer, camper, chef, sports fan, environmentalist, avid reader, mentor to young workers, and sculptor ... but the main hat that he wore so well and so long was that of a union activist against corporate power. He punched into the class struggle at an early age and only punched out when his heart stopped beating.

Some ask: where did all that get up and go come from? To me the answer is simple.

His nearly inexhaustible source of energy even as an old man came from his belief that his cause was just and righteous. It came from his belief that the 99 per cent are the real creators of wealth and would do a better job running the country than the 1 per cent. It came from his belief that a united working class had the power to bring the multi-national corporations to their knees.

And it came from a belief that there was enough wealth, natural resources, and technological know-how ready at hand to make it possible for every inhabitant on our fragile planet to live a decent and secure life, not having to worry about what tomorrow may bring.

As I mentioned, George would have been thrilled by the election outcome. At the same time he would have reminded us that our work isn't yet done.

He would be the first to say that the right wing and corporate America have been defeated, but will live to fight another day. Thus the road ahead will be bumpy and contentious, beginning with the fight over how to solve our fiscal problems, which are real, but not as real as the jobs crisis, which, George would tell us, should be the nation's top priority.

George lived a long, eventful, and fulfilling life. Most of us have some regrets as we look back over our lives, and I'm sure George had his; things that he would have done differently if he could rewind the clock.

But what stands out for me is that he tried to do the right thing; he had a big heart; he always had the back of working men and women; and he loved his family, his neighbors, his union brothers and sisters, his comrades, and his country.

He will be missed, but he will live on in our hearts as we continue to fight for a more just, equal and peaceful world.

Presente! George Edwards

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:07:00 +0000

Sisters and Brothers --

Organized labor lost a giant when Steelworker George Edwards, 94, died last week shortly after returning home from the union's Civil Rights Conference in Cincinnati. At the conference Edwards became a celebrity and got a standing ovation when Pres. Leo Gerard spoke about his lifelong efforts for democratic, class struggle union policies, including initiating the fight at the 1948 USWA convention for an African American International Vice President, a fight he continued until that goal was finally achieved 40 years later. Gerard had also singled Edwards out for special praise at the union's 70th anniversary event earlier this year in Cleveland.

Edwards was one of the founders and early officers of USWA Local 1104 at the U.S. Steel mill in Lorain. He was also a founding member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) and a member of its national executive board. During the 1970's he was president of the National Steelworkers Rank and File Committee.

Despite suffering abuse for his beliefs, including from his own union, during the McCarthy period, Edwards was also a proud member and leader of the Communist Party USA and served in its National Committee for the past 50 years. He understood that the socialist and trade union movements are intertwined and need each other, and that, without the labor movement, socialism becomes narrow and isolated and, without the socialist movement, labor loses focus, vision and a stable direction. Only when they are combined can both movements thrive and move forward to the time when working people and their allies will replace corporate power as the leading force in society.

In solidarity,

Rick Nagin

______________________________

The working class and people lost a great leader, activist, and fighter for justice and equality this past week when 94 year-old George Edwards died. While his accomplishments were many and will have positive influence on our lives for generations, what those who knew George will remember most was his all abiding humanity. While a lifelong champion of worker's rights, civil rights, and peace, George was as at home with a beer watching the game, gardening, hiking, camping, or visiting friends as he was at a meeting of his beloved steelworker unionists.

Born in 1918 in South Dakota, his family moved to Tennessee and homesteaded land in what is now the Great Smoky National Park. His father worked in the Indian Service until becoming frustrated with mistreatment of native peoples.

George obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee, then received his graduate degree from Oberlin Seminary, studying to enter the ministry. After completing his studies, George went to work as a machinist at the huge U. S. Steel Works in nearby Lorain, Ohio, making less than $1 an hour. His goal was to set up a "labor church."

However, he quickly joined the Steelworker's Organizing Committee, which was campaigning to organize that mill, and joined the Communist Party USA, along with many of the other organizers. He was active as a member/leader for the rest of his life.

Denise Winebrenner-Edwards, George's wife of 31 years, said, "He was absolutely convinced that the only way working people could achieve justice was for the people, not the wealthy, to control our economy. He saw that inherent in capitalism was inequality and injustice and that the system needed to be changed fundamentally to meet the people's needs."

After winning unionization in 1942, George founded the local union newspaper, the Lorain Labor Leader, founded a veteran's committee, and was part of the local's Political Action Committee. He was elected the local's vice president.

When America entered World War II, George immediately joined up, fighting to defeat the fascist menace in Europe.

After victory, he came back, but to a much different political climate. McCarthyism was rearing its ugly head. Still, George was elected to the 1948 United Steelworkers of America (USWA) convention, where he raised the first resolution calling for an African American vice president of the union. Although this wasn't won at that convention, George was a leading part of the movement that achieved that goal at the USWA convention nearly 40 years later.

For George, the 1950s were difficult times. Hounded by the FBI, spied on, and ostracized at the union he helped found, his name was even chiseled off of the founders' plaque at the union hall. He suffered isolation and tough times, even going through a divorce.

However, George used this time to become a photographer, setting up a studio in Lorain, became involved in hiking, camping, and became a serious artist, painting and producing metal sculptures. His metal chess sets are highly valued and are on display as gifts in presidential offices in Vietnam and other nations.

Even in these hard times, George still found ways to fight for justice. Seeing Puerto Rican workers brought in to work at the mill housed in railroad cars on company property, without running water, heat or sanitary facilities, he invited leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement to Lorain to help the workers understand what rights they had and to push for decent housing. When African American steelworkers were unable to buy homes in still-segregated areas, George purchased homes which he resold to those workers. As the civil rights and peace movements developed, George jumped on board.

In the '70's, George really began to put his stamp on policy changes that would shift political ground for all of us. Seeing a lack of democracy, a slackening of the fight against the big corporations, in the USWA, George formed the National Steelworkers Rank & File Committee. It pushed for democracy, membership involvement and solidarity. He literally ran the budding rank and file movement from an old mimeograph machine in his front room, almost permanently having blue-stained fingers. Local committees were formed in Steelworker locals across the nation, mainly made up of younger workers.

The Lorain committee did not come about because George made great speeches, but grew out of what will forever be known as the "Pink Hard Hat" incident. By now, George was a machinist instructor, teaching young apprentices the trade. But the shop foreman was making life hell for the young workers, harassing them in numerous ways, including forcing them to shave beards and cut their hair short (a big deal for those guys in those days). George painted his hard hat pink, stating that it looked like "the boss's bald head."

He was suspended for his protest, but the union, especially the young workers, rallied to his side and he won his grievance and back pay.

This was during a time that the mainstream media all trumpeted the "generation gap," the idea that only young folks were progressive and that if you were older, you couldn't possibly relate to young people. Throughout his life, and especially during this period, George showed this concept up for the lie it was. He was beloved by the younger workers and he fought for them, as well as all workers.

An important principle of the rank and file movement that George often spoke of during this period was: "We have no enemies that are workers. We are fighting for all workers. We need a rank and file movement always, to involve regular workers in the union. It needs to support union leaders when they're right and push them when they aren't!"

The rank and file movement that George began expanded and won many gains during this period. The right of workers to ratify their own contracts was won, as well as the election of an African American USW vice president. The movement fought against an experimental negotiating agreement that would have ended the union's ability to strike. The well-known Consent Decree, which ended practices of keeping minority workers in the worst, most dangerous and low paid jobs, opened up all jobs to bidding and brought women and minorities into the trades, was a major victory of the movement. All these had George Edwards' fingerprints on them.

The Steelworkers union began to shift, becoming the progressive union it is today, mobilizing its members, building coalitions, standing up for solidarity with other workers and unions across the globe.

After retiring, George married Denise Winebrenner and moved to Pittsburgh. Winebrenner, a USW activist in her own right, was elected to the Wilkinsburg City Council.

Hardly ready to relax and enjoy "golden years," George spoke of these as "the best years of my life." He was a founding member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) and was a member of SOAR's ruling executive board. With his wife Denise, they formed a local coalition, Wilkinsburg for Change, which stopped privatization of the local elementary school and pushed for better services and more access for the community to local government.

George was especially proud of the fact that he was "the first one arrested" for sitting in, blocking trucks carrying copies of the Pittsburgh Press, when workers there were on strike. The strike was successful, especially due to the massive solidarity movement.

Even into his 90s George Edwards was active, mobilizing steel retirees to rallies for health care and retiree security. When Occupy Pittsburgh held demonstrations and news conferences this past year, George was out front, attending and bringing friends.

Finally, in his late years, George got something he'd never asked for: credit for his work! He used to say, "It's amazing what you can get accomplished if you don't care who gets credit!"

Certainly, at least for the rest of us, it was wonderful to see some credit finally go his way.

At the 70th anniversary of the United Steelworkers union in Cleveland last year, George Edwards was honored with a long, very loud, standing ovation. He was recognized for his work and as the only one present who was at the founding USW convention as well as the present one.

George had just returned from a USW Civil Rights Conference in Cincinnati when he fell into a coma. At that conference, USW President Leo Gerard had honored George, saying, "He was an activist every single day of his life." The comments were occasion for another long, standing ovation, which brought tears to many eyes, including George's.

George died peacefully. He didn't live that way!

He is survived by his wife Denise, a son, daughter, and three sisters.

Denise has asked that those wishing to send flowers instead send donations to SOAR, or Next Generation (USW organization for young workers). Both of these can go to:

USW-Attn. Sec'r./Treasurer

60 Blvd. of the Allies

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Donations may also be made, in George's name, to People's World:

235 W. 23rd St.

New York, NY 10011

Excerpts from Henry Winston Writing

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:01:00 +0000

Excerpts from
Strategy for a Black Agenda
by Henry Winston
International Publishers, 1973

"Racism is not a biological characteristic. It is a social phenomenon with a class origin and role. Racism has its source in a ruling class that, in modern times, has added the twin weapon of anti-Communism to keep the working class in the U.S. from waging a united class struggle against its monopolist enemy.

There is no way out for white workers without recognizing that their common class
interests with Black workers demand that they themselves take the initiative in the fight
to oust racism from the class struggle. And Black workers must also understand that they
cannot put an end to their triple oppression by going it alone.

There are no substitutes for the class unity of the working class as a whole. This requires
the equality of joint Black and white leadership of the working class, of Black workers in
the leadership of the Black liberation movement, and all components of the working class
leading all the oppressed and exploited against corporate monopoly." (Page 33)

"There are other consequences of cultural nationalism equally detrimental to the Black
struggle for equality. Throughout the 110 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, Afro-
Americans have struggled against segregation, recognizing it as a means of setting them
apart from the rest of the population, isolating them from the mainstream of developments,
and subjecting them to special forms of super-exploitation and oppression." (Page 42)
"Even the U.S. monopolists claim they are for ‘equitable distribution.' But when auto or
steel workers strike for higher wages, the bosses do everything in their power to defeat
them. ‘Equitable distribution' is impossible as long as the capitalist class controls the
means of production, thereby exercising the dictatorship of capital over the working class
and the people in general." (Page 67)

"...at a certain point in its development, the rising U.S. capitalist class required the
destruction of the slave system to make way for the supremacy of capital. But in order to
but a brake on the sharpening class struggle, the capitalists betrayed Reconstruction,

re-enslaving the Blacks with a U.S. variant of serfdom.

This laid the basis for perpetuating differentials in the status of Blacks as compared to
whites, thus representing a double advantage for capital: it provided a source for vast
super-profits, and also intensified racist ideology-postponing the day when a united Black
and non-Black working class would emerge to challenge monopoly.

U.S. capitalism still seeks to use the past against the future, against the working class
whose mission is not merely to change the form of oppression and exploitation-as in the
past, with the rise to power of new exploiting classes-but to put an end to oppression
and exploitation. This cannot be done on the basis of ‘traditional' economics. It can
be done only through united class and national liberation struggles moving toward the
establishment of socialism." (Page 73)

"There is an alternative to hunger, racism and oppression in this country.... The only
possible alternative for Blacks is within a program of Black unity that will not be dissipated
by separatist detours, but will play an independent role in forging a great movement
of Black and non-Black of all colors against the corporate 2% dominating 98% of the
population." (Page 75)

"As a region, the South remains the most decisive area for a liberation strategy. But
Blacks in the South-along with Blacks in other great population centers from New
York to Los Angeles-can move toward unified national power only by asserting their
strength within a broad anti-monopoly movement uniting Black and non-Black against the
common corporate enemy. To achieve this, the Black workers must become the main base
of leadership in a Black liberation strategy that recognizes the decisive role of the South,
but does not lose sight of the fact that the great strategic liberating battleground is national
in scope and direction." (Page 83)

"It is in such basic industries as steel, rubber and auto that the class unity of Black and
non-Black workers can become the main strength and develop the main leadership for
organizing the millions of unorganized Black and white Southern workers, and for a new
national political combination strong enough to defeat reaction and the danger of fascism."
(Page 83)

"Because the ‘great strategic ground' for smashing the last survivals of slavery, for ending
racism, poverty and inequality is national is scope, each regional struggle can be meaningful
only to the degree that it is linked with a national strategy. Struggle in the South ... must
be viewed ... as a unified Black struggle, a mighty tide of independent Black action within
a wider national challenge to monopoly's control of the total U.S. economy." (Page 84)

"There can be no doubt that monopoly aims at replacing ‘benign neglect' with the iron
boot. The threat of this ominous national strategy is so great as to overshadow the betrayal
of Reconstruction, the rise of the Klan, of lynch law and jim crow. As Lenin said of
this earlier betrayal, reaction in the U.S. today is prepared to ‘do everything possible and
impossible for the most shameful and despicable oppressions.'

While these new oppressions would first be unleashed against Black people, they would
not end there. They threaten labor and the oppressed and exploited of all colors with
something worse even than a return to the days when it was a crime to organize. What is
involved now is the threat of the ‘despicable oppressions' of fascism." (Page 89)

"The degree of exploitation of Black workers is clearly much greater than that of white workers.

Nevertheless, the collective form of exploitation in the decisive mass production industries is suffered by all workers.

This creates the objective basis for solidarity, for their unity and leadership in the struggle against the monopolist ruling class.

At the same time, history has assigned a doubly significant role to Black workers-as the
leaders and backbone of the Black liberation movement, and as a decisive component of
the working class leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole.

It is the monopolists' fear of Black, white, Brown, Yellow, Red and working class unity,
which in turn can form the basis for still broader people's unity, that is behind racism and
anti-Communism, the main ideological weapons of the ruling class.

Leninism, the Marxism of the imperialist epoch, is the ideological weapon of the working
class. It is the scientific guide that enables the working class to combine its struggle with
national liberation movements against imperialism. No other theory has served to free a

single working class, a single people, from imperialism anywhere in the world. Beginning with the October revolution, only those guided by Marxism-Leninism have been able to free themselves from class and national oppression and take the road of socialist construction." (Page 216)

"Black Americans have a first and equal claim on the total economy of the country-
which they helped build with 400 years of slave and near-slave labor-for billions for
jobs, housing, medical care, education, etc. They want the total economy turned around
to meet the people's needs, instead of operating for the wars and the profits of a handful of
corporate monopolists." (Page 220)

"Black people are in a unique position. On top of more than 200 years of chattel slavery,
operated by the slave-owner partners if emergent capitalism, they have had over 100 years
of capitalist exploitation, racism, war and poverty." (Page 225)

"And it is particularly ironic that the ‘invitation' to Black people to become capitalists
should come from the very same corporate monopolists who have already destroyed most
of the nation's small businesses. Those that still remain, whether white- or Black-owned,
can operate only under the impossible conditions of monopoly domination.

Not only have the mass production industries come under the control of corporate monopoly.
Through their control of the banks, chains, franchising operations, insurance and real estate
companies, etc., these same monopolists dominate all sectors of the economy, including
that in the Black community.

Now in an effort to recruit a sector of Blacks to support the ruling class against their own
people, the monopolists have offered a tiny minority the illusion of Black capitalism. This
is another variation of the tokenism rejected by the Black masses." (Page 225)

"Strength cannot be ‘transferred' to the working class. Strength emerges only from the
unity and consciousness of the workers and all the oppressed in their struggle for a better
life. As the Program of the Communist Party states:

We Communists, motivated by the elemental human needs of our class and our people,
fight the evils of capitalism. Ours is the fate of our class and our people. The trials of their
existence are ours. We strive for improvement of their condition here and now. Often
this is a life-and-death question. At the same time, we are convinced that socialism, and
beyond it communism, offers the only fundamental, lasting solution to the problems of
exploitation and oppression, that it opens the only door to an immeasurable improvement
in the quality of man's life. Thus the struggle for revolution is the logical continuation of
the struggle for a better life." (Page 259)

"But ... self-unity will come about only as a part of the revolutionary process in which the
struggle for the racial and class unity of the oppressed and exploited is an aim and result of
every battle against the racist oppressor. Those who do not understand the role of coalition
in the people's fight to improve their condition fail the see the relationship between reforms
and revolution.

Long ago, Douglas answered those who persist in the illusion that the destiny of oppressed
Black people is separate and unrelated to the destiny of exploited whites. ‘We deem it a
settled point,' wrote Douglass, ‘that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with the
white people of this country...and the question ought to be...what principle should dictate
policy...' (The North Star, November 16, 1849.)" (p. 282.)

"...it must be recognized that the main obstacle to Black and white unity against the common
enemy is the influence of racism on white workers. And it is the primary responsibility of
white revolutionaries to lead the fight against racist ideology and to mobilize white workers
in the struggle against racism and in support of Black liberation as indispensable to the
advance of their class interests.

The aim of monopoly is to force a reversal of every aspect of bourgeois democracy, limited
as it is, in order to open the way for fascism. The aim of the anti-monopoly program, as
advocated by the Communist Party, is to bring about a strategic breakthrough to a deeper
and wider degree of democracy, one that would powerfully accelerate the revolutionary
process, opening the way to Black liberation and socialism.

Once this anti-monopoly strategy succeeds in breaking the control of state monopoly
capital over Congress and the government, the forces exist, internally and internationally-
in contrast to the anti-slavery period-that can prevent the betrayal of the struggle. There
is such a perspective, and this is so, first of all, because the forces of class and national
liberation ... have changed the world balance of power." (Page 285)

"During every upsurge in the people's struggles, especially those of the mainly workingclass
Black people, there is a more extensive activation of counter-measures designed to
sustain disunity and block alliance between Black and white workers, together with the
Black people as a whole, against corporate monopoly." (Page 289)

"Black business has always been marginal even within the ghetto. And capitalism in its
present stage takes the form of giant conglomerates that increasingly devour all small
business. Any possible ‘enrichment' for Black business lies not within monopoly's strategy
of perpetuating the ghettos but within a broad all-encompassing people's strategy-an antimonopoly movement in which the primary force is the working class, Black, white, Brown,
Yellow and Red, together with the organized Black liberation movement as a whole."
(Page 304)

"When we talk about power, we are talking about political power-the shift of power
from one class to another. The Civil War resulted in the change of power from the slaveowners
to the rising capitalist class. Today the monopoly capitalist class controls the total
economy of the United States. Therefore, all talk of self-determination in the ghetto is a
fraud." (Page 307)

"Of course, the oppressed and exploited within the U.S. do not have the objective of even
becoming ‘partners' in a joint enterprise with U.S. imperialism! The task of the majority of the people of all races and backgrounds, under the leadership of Black and white workers,
is to break the power of monopoly over the government and the economy. It is this antimonopoly
struggle-which cannot be waged by the Black minority alone, but only in unity
with the non-Black majority-that alone can bring about joint power to the people and
control of the economy.

U.S. imperialism uses and has always used its economic and military power to oppose
self-determination in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Chile and the other countries throughout
Asia, Africa and Latin America where the people have in some degree their own separate
economies. Ironically, it is this same U.S. imperialism that deliberately fosters every form
of separatist fantasy for Black people, including ‘self-determination' for a people who
have no common territory or separate economy but whose population on the contrary
is dispersed in more than 160 major urban ghettos around the country. The same U.S.
monopolists who propose ‘joint control' of Puerto Rico with the Puerto Ricans offer Black
people the trap of ‘self-determination' in ghettos where that is impossible...

Black liberation in the U.S. calls for a strategy the exact opposite of Puerto Rican and other
liberation movements outside the U.S. In colonial and dependent countries, the people's aim
is to break the links that artificially tie their economies to imperialism. A liberating strategy
for Black Americans does not involve a break with the U.S. economy, but instead must aim
at overcoming forcible exclusion of Black people from their rightful participation in the U.S.
economy: The goal here is for full equality within the total economy." (Pages 312-313)

"However, the reality of the matter is that the shift of national power from the monopoly
oppressors to the people calls for a wider strategy in which the self-action of the Black
minority becomes a vital, independent part of the total struggle in alliance with the non-
Black majority against the common enemy." (Page 317)

Excerpts from
Class, Race and Black
Liberation by Henry Winston
International Publishers, 1977

"By picturing the Black condition of inequality as arising within the Black ‘family structure,'
[the Moynihan Report] identified the results of oppression as the cause of oppression. Thus,
it runs head on into the fact that Black family life-despite the ‘distortions' caused by 200
years on the auction blocks of Northern slave traders and Southern slave owners, followed
by more than 100 years of racist economic, social and political pressures of genocidal
proportions-has shown a matchless capacity for survival through struggle!" (Page 3)

"[Robert Lubar] cites the following statement from an interview in the same issue [of
Fortune Magazine] with the President [Gerald Ford]: ‘...by the year 2000, 50 percent of
the people will be living off the other 50 percent.' In this remark Ford asserts that, on one
hand, monopoly will have no jobs for 50 percent of the people while, on the other, it aims
at drastically cutting back on social services." (Page 7)

"It is ironic that he [Daniel Moynihan] equates ‘productive economies' with capitalism at
a time when even the most obviously conservative ideologues of U.S. monopoly have long
since retired the phrase ‘people's capitalism.'

What kind of ‘productive' and ‘creative' prospect is Moynihan holding out for the ‘third
world' nations when he tells them to ties their future to capitalism? How ‘productive' is a
system that in the United States, even in its ascendant stage, could develop its productive
capacity only by reinforcing wage labor with chattel slavery?

And how ‘creative' is this system in its present stage of decline? What do its multinational
corporations ‘create' except ever greater inequality and poverty for the majority of the
earth's population?

How productive for ‘third world' countries is a system whose multinational corporations
have never operated at anywhere near productive capacity except in war time? What
‘creative' solution does U.S. imperialism offer the ‘third world' when at home its economy
is geared to the non-productive pile-up of armaments and profits for monopoly, and
oppression, unemployment and inflation for the people?" (Page 23)

"'Ethnicity' has, of course, two hands. Its ‘left' hand tells Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos,
Asian Americans and Native American Indians that the ‘militant' approach is for each
group to ‘go-it-alone.' In this way ‘ethnicity' lures the oppressed away from asserting their
special claims alongside of and as part of the working class as a whole.

At the same time ‘ethnicity's' right hand makes the traditional racist appeal to the white
majority-telling them that the oppressed minorities have no special needs and are not
their allies but their competitors.

According to the ‘ethnicity' concept, if separate groups ‘assert claims,' they will ‘elicit a
very satisfactory response' from the ruling class. But if claims are advanced as part of a
united working-class struggle, ‘the benefits are necessarily diffuse and often evanescent,'-
and everyone will be left ‘about as he was.'

How this strategy operates was effectively demonstrated in the recent period by the
government's handling of the ‘anti-poverty' programs. The ‘ethnicity' spokesmen told
Blacks that the Puerto Ricans were getting ‘too much,' while Puerto Ricans were told
‘everything' was going to the Blacks. At the same time, white ‘ethnics' were informed
nothing much was left for them because it all went to the Blacks and Puerto Ricans. This
strategy helped ‘disaggregate' the working class and its allies to the point where job
training programs, adult education programs, child care and senior citizens' centers are
‘bottoming out' for everyone. And the ‘racism in reverse' concept which denied the need
for affirmative action for jobs and education for the oppressed minorities ‘disaggregated'
the masses to the point where educational opportunities for all low- and middle-income
people are being slashed away. ‘Ethnicity' is particularly destructive to the oppressed
minorities, but it also does increasing violence to the needs of the white masses.
The history of this country proves that the ‘ethnicity' strategy-adjusted by Moynihan
and his colleagues to meet monopoly's even sharper requirements in the present period of
general crisis and decline of capitalism-produces results not for the exploited but for the
exploiters. This strategy has a long record of leaving everyone not ‘about where he was'
but behind ‘where he was.' The Black people, for example, find themselves today not
‘about' where they were ten years ago, but worse off. The Black economic gains of the
sixties encompassed only a small minority of the Black people, and yet even these gains
proved ‘evanescent.'" (Pages 60-61)

"To be anti-capitalist in the Marxist-Leninist sense is to understand that the oppressed
and exploited strengthen their unity, and progress toward more advanced goals, through
step-by-step struggles. Policies and demands must be based on the issues confronting the
masses, their level of consciousness and degree of readiness to unite around a particular
issue. Slogans must be geared to mobilizing the people. Slogans that fail to involve them in
struggle around their crucial needs are worse than meaningless, since they leave the masses
disunited in the face of monopoly's onslaughts." (Page 96)

"To speak of a ‘white society' fits in with the ‘two societies' concept projected in the
sixties. This idea was promoted from both a ‘radical' and a ‘liberal' (via the ‘Kerner
Report') standpoint, which portrayed Blacks as forming an internal colony in the United
States. But Black people are discriminated against and suffer de facto segregation within
the single U. S. capitalist economy. Both Black and white are locked into one society
dominated by corporate monopoly. To imply the division of this country into two societies
obscures its real division into two basic classes, the white monopolist minority and the
multi-racial working class." (Page 102)

"Of course, U.S. capitalism through all stages of its development has perpetuated
inequality between Black and white masses. But in order to do so it has had to perpetuate
the illusion, from slavery to the present, that the white exploited have a ‘material stake'
in Black oppression. And the survivals of racist ‘advantages,'-originating in the slave
system-still lend credibility to the racist-fostered illusion that white workers on the
assembly lines and in the unemployed lines have a ‘material stake' in the different degree
to which monopoly exploits them as compared to Black workers.

In reality, white as well as Black workers have a ‘material stake' in eradicating racism.
To assert that white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism is to profoundly exaggerate
monopoly's ability to sustain this illusion-particularly in the face of the deepening
general crisis of capitalism. Such a concept is based on an overestimation of the strength of
imperialism, and consequently an underestimation-in fact, a denial-of the intensifying
contradiction between monopoly and the working class as a whole-Black, white, Chicano,
Puerto Rican, Asian and Native American Indian.

To argue that whites have a ‘material stake' in racism is to say that 180 million whites, the
overwhelming majority, have no ‘material stake' in economic and social progress, which
would mean there is no perspective for fundamental change.

The Black minority alone could not defeat the slave power. That was achieved via a
strategy combining the interests of those forces and classes with a stake in victory over the
slavocracy. And today the Black minority cannot by itself defeat the monopoly oppressors.
What is required is not a go-it-alone policy for Blacks but an independent strategy for
Black liberation as part of a wider anti-monopoly strategy-combining all those with
a stake in the defeat of corporate monopoly into a great people's coalition. And in the
perspective for such a coalition, one cannot overlook the revolutionary implications of the
proletarianization of the majority of the multi-racial masses." (Pages 104-105)

"What is required to achieve class unity is a fight to wipe out every form of material and social
inequality. And white workers have a heavy, special responsibility in this struggle because it is
they who have been infected by racism and are consequently its ‘bearers' within the multi-racial
working class. Marxism-Leninism is a guide to, not a substitute for, the anti-racist struggle
and therefore a guide also to the ‘fraternity' of the working class. And as this struggle for class
unity advances, ‘enlightenment' begins to replace racism in the minds of those who have been
its ‘bearers.' Further, the Communist Party is the only organization requiring, as a condition of
membership, that whites accept and act in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of the
special responsibility of white workers in the anti-racist struggle." (Page 105)

"The United States was born in anti-colonial struggle, and its present course of development
is today in sharper contrast than ever to that of its birth. Today's racism and inequality
mock this country's birth cries of ‘liberty' and ‘equality.'" (Page 108)

"Of course, it is true that behavior can be ‘shaped' by society. But scientific social
analysis-Marxism-Leninism-shows that racist ‘behavior' is not ‘shaped' by ‘classless'
psychological factors but by the monopoly ruling class." (Page 108)

"Under capitalism, the dominant culture does not originate with the class operating the
means of production. This dominant culture is determined by the class that owns the
means of production, and it is generated by the superstructure through which this class
controls the state and its agencies, and the mass media.

Today, when racism is widely recognized as institutional, it seems strangely out-of-date to
attribute to it either an independent existence or assert that it can be perpetuated outside of
the rule of monopoly-controlled institutions." (Page 109)

"Those who say white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism draw this conclusion from
the premise that the interests of white capitalists and the white workers are identical.
The miniscule white corporate minority controlling the social means of production cannot
compete with a unified working class. In this period of the general crisis and decline of
capitalism, monopoly's power is only as great as the divisions in the working class-the
result of racism and anti-Communism." (Page 110)

"But Marx, Engels and Lenin revealed that the workers of an oppressor nation can win their
liberation only if they recognize their stake in supporting the liberation struggles of every
people oppressed by their ‘own' ruling class. This is why Marxist-Leninists recognize the
struggle against opportunism-and racism and anti-Communism are its sharpest forms-
as the pre-condition for the unity of the multi-racial U.S. working class and its allies at
home and internationally.

Once when Lenin was asked what he would ‘add' to Marx, he replied that in the context of
the imperialist stage of capitalism, he would apply the essence of Marxism in Marx's slogan
‘Workers of the World Unite' and the resulting slogan would then proclaim, ‘Workers and
Oppressed Peoples of the World Unite.' Unite against what? Lenin urges unity against
imperialism. Therefore Lenin asserts that it is not the workers but the imperialists who
have a stake in oppression." (Pages 111-112)

"Reaction, of course, realized only too well that ‘labor in a white skin' had to be prevented
from learning it could ‘never be free so long as labor in a black skin is branded.' In 1877
reactionary forces, North and South, defeated Reconstruction. And in the 1890's, during
the period of emerging imperialism, these forces ‘legalized' the restoration of institutional
racism-doing everything possible to enforce the separation of white from Black in order
to prevent labor in a white skin and labor in a black skin from emerging as a national force.

The Marxist principle of Black and white labor unity has always been at the core of
Communist Party policy. In the 1930's, this unswerving approach helped create the
greatest degree of white and Black unity in the history of U.S. Labor, and consequently,
the greatest advances for both Black and white workers. The class struggle policies of the
thirties-which led to the organization of the great mass production industries and the rise
of the CIO-gained momentum only to the extent this principle was fought for.

It was to break this advancing unity of the multi-racial working class that monopoly
intensified anti-Communism, institutionalizing it alongside of racism. It was the massive
linking of anti-Communism with racism that enabled monopoly to set back the advances of
the thirties..." (Page 116)

"The only independent policy for Black liberation is the facing up to the fact that the
transformation accompanying urbanization and proletarianization of the Black condition carried
with it an unchallengeable demand: an equal share for Black people in the control of the total
U.S. economy, built with so many centuries of Black chattel and wage slavery." (Page 122)

"It is of course true that Black people, after being ‘ripped from their homeland,' were
oppressed by the social organization in the land to which they were forcibly brought. But
that oppression was not and is not the result of ‘the social organization of white America':
Black people were first oppressed by the tiny white slave-owning class; now that they have
been ‘ripped from' the land in the South, they are oppressed by the tiny white monopoly
capitalist class. Today they are part of a single multi-racial working class which suffers
varying levels of exploitation by a single monopoly-controlled economy." (Page 123)

"If the possibility ever existed for a separate economy in this country for Black people, it
was before the transformation of Southern agriculture into large-scale capitalist agriculture.
Such a possibility vanished with monopoly's massive penetration of the entire south. The
area in the south that formerly held a Black majority became an inseparable part of the total
national economy-with Wall Street, not cotton, as king.

In the decades between the betrayal of Reconstruction and the end of World War II,
the majority of former slaves were sharecroppers and tenant farmers-a serflike status
somewhere between chattel slavery and wage labor. At that time the South's economy was
undergoing a process of dual development: Although it was coming increasingly within
the national economy's orbit, the South-particularly in the area of continuing Black
majority-still retained features differentiating it from the rest of the country's economy.
Until recently, in fact, the pattern of economic development in the area of former Black
majority was neither completely separate nor identical with the total economy." (Page 126)

"Today, with the U.S. economy fully unified under the control of monopoly capital, the
central, all-pervasive fact of the Black condition is triple oppression: racial oppression,
oppression as workers, and oppression as a people. This is the reality, a reality that did not
evolve within a separate or even potentially detachable ‘colonial appendage'-but within
a historic process which has locked Black people, along with the white masses, into the
single society of U.S. state monopoly capitalism." (Page 137)

"Here in the United States, abolition took the fugitive slave law off the books, and the
Civil Rights struggles brought an end to legal segregation, making legal movement for
Black people possible in certain previously forbidden areas. Nevertheless, control of the
Black population's movements still continues, with the job primarily done by the laws of
capitalist economics buttressed by the all-pervasive racist practices of this country... In
the United States police violence is carried out illegally-but in ‘the name of the law,' with
the sanction of the racist government and judicial agencies-against the inhabitants of the
ghettos and barrios." (Page 147)

"To determine their destiny, it is essential for Black people to control every possible
instrumentality and institution for self-organization in the ghetto, and to fight for change
through trade unions and every other possible type of organization outside the ghetto to
‘redistribute power proportionally and to redefine the social relationship' between Blacks
and non-Blacks. This ghetto-based power of Black people must simultaneously be used to
exert maximum pressure at every level or government, industry, politics, education, etc.,
and to engage in joint action with allies at every point of mutual interest." (Pages 155-156)

"Even during the period when U.S. economic and political power was divided and shared
between the slave owners and the rising capitalist class, two separate independent societies
did not exist. The slavocracy could not survive as a separate society, but only so long as
chattel slavery served the accumulation and expansion of capital in non-slave areas of the
economy. The economy in the chattel slavery areas and that in the ‘free' labor areas were
never fully separate; on the contrary, they were interconnected and interdependent, each
evolving with an interrelated process of capital accumulation based on the unpaid labor of
Black slaves and cheap labor of white workers.

Today, when the U.S. economy continues to be ever more completely consolidated under the
control of state monopoly capital, it becomes increasingly apparent that the triple oppression
of Black people has not evolved within a separate, detachable ‘internal colony'-but that the
reality of an historic process has locked Black people and the oppressed minorities, along with
the white masses, into the single society of state monopoly capitalism." (Pages 198-199)

"When workers take on even one major corporation, they are met with the collective power
of monopoly-backed up by government-against their demands. This is the reality of state
monopoly capitalism whose consolidated power is decisive in the lives of the working masses,
whatever their color or origin. If no stratum of the workers-not even the white majority-
can effectively challenge even one corporate monopoly, how can the Black minority take on
the collective power of all the monopolists, state monopoly capitalism?" (Page 200)

"It is certainly necessary to ‘realistically project the possibilities' of ‘electoral struggles and
victories' at a particular point in time. But to simultaneously project ‘limitations' on the
outcome of future struggles in either the electoral or non-electoral arena weakens the fight
around urgent immediate issues while in no way clarifying the form or content of future
struggles." (Page 206)

"Certainly, most of those who sell their labor power of hand or brain have common interests
in opposing the monopolist exploiters. But this is only one of the many material and social
factors relevant to a strategy for waging the class struggle.

Class consciousness must be expanded from its minimum form-the recognition of
the common interest of the majority who sell their labor power-to a higher level: the
recognition that all who have a common interest in fighting monopoly do not have a
common place within the capitalist system from which to carry on that fight. Only by
identifying the specific differences within the ‘diversity of positions' of wage workers
is it possible to transform ‘diversity' under monopoly to unity against monopoly. Too
many radicals fail to understand the interrelation between the struggle for unity within the
working class and the working class's mission of uniting and leading its allies." (Page 231)

Editors' Note --
Henry Winston wrote in the two books of the strategy of the Communist Party, namely to
defeat the whole of the monopoly capitalists through an anti-monopoly coalition. In 1980
the CPUSA concluded that there was another stage of struggle that needed to be completed
before that of the general anti-monopoly stage. That was the need to defeat the ultra right,
headed by the most reactionary sector of monopoly capital through the building of an all
people's front against it. Henry Winston contributed to reaching this conclusion and he
strongly supported it the rest of his life.

Henry Winston -- A Man of and for the People -- Biographical Notes

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Henry Winston:
Man of the People & for the People

Biographical Notes

The remarkable and heroic life of Henry Winston began in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1911, in the heart of the Jim Crow South at the height of its repressive character. His father,
Joseph, worked in a small unorganized saw mill at very low wages. His mother, Lucille, did domestic work as she could, while bringing up six children, the second of whom was
Henry. Henry Winston's grandparents had all been slaves.

Young Henry went to a Jim Crow elementary school. Just after World War I, the family moved up the Mississippi River to Kansas City, Mo., in search of better living conditions.
Winston completed his formal education in a Jim Crow Junior High School. Henry Winston then had to go to work, which consisted of temporary pick-up jobs to help the family
survive. In these early years Henry was a good student and an avid reader of good literature and of anything he could find dealing with social conditions. He was also a good athlete.
The Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression hit Kansas City and the Winston family hard. No one in the family was able to keep a steady job. As all over the country, in Kansas City
an unemployed council was being built on the initiative of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League(YCL). Henry Winston joined the Council and participated in
its demonstrations and other activities, including a nation-wide demonstration in cities all over the country on March 6, 1930. This was a demonstration participated in by 1
million people, including 100,000 in New York. It was led by the Communist Leader, Carl Winter, who later was to become a co-worker of Winston's in the national leadership of the
Communist Party.

In March of 1931 the arrest of the 9 Scottsboro, Ala. Youth took place on framed up charges of rape of two white women. Henry soon became involved in the defense committee in
Kansas City which was part of a national defense campaign led by Communists Joseph Brodsky, their attorney, and William L. Patterson, the head of the International Labor
Defense (ILD)

At this time two most important events took place which were to shape the rest of Henry Winston's life. In the Unemployed Council, he met members of the YCL with whom he
became friends, received materials that he read avidly, went to meetings, became a member and not long after a leader of the Kansas City YCL. At the same time he met Fern Pierce,
the love of his life. She grew up on a poor tenant farm in Oklahoma. She also moved to Kansas City to find a better life, became involved in the activities of the Unemployed
Council, the Scottsboro Defense and then the YCL.

Henry Winston possessed notable abilities to analyze, theorize and organize and to work with people. This was recognized and as a result he was invited to New York to attend
a national school of the YCL. At that time such schools lasted for two or three months. Fern Winston was similarly recognized for her evident capacity and was invited at the
same time to the YCL national school. The result of the school was not only a grasp of Marxism but conviction of the need for the YCL and the Communist Party and a lifetime
commitment to the movement. But it also permitted the blossoming of the relationship between Henry and Fern that led to their marriage in 1933 and the birth of a son in 1934 It
was not long after this that the family traveled to the Soviet Union for the first time. What they saw there confirmed their commitment to socialism as the necessary alternative to
capitalism and they were especially impressed with the treatment of the formerly nationally oppressed peoples. Winston maintained a firm confidence for the rest of his life that the
Soviet Union would overcome all difficulties and mistakes and would continue to make major contributions to the progressive forces of the world.

Henry and Fern Winston moved to New York and both became active in the YCL leadership there, with activity centering on unemployment and the Scottsboro case. They participated
in the Hunger Marches to Washington, DC at the end of 1932.

Henry Winston soon moved up into the national leadership of the YCL through several posts including National Organizational Secretary (1936) and then National Secretary, when Gil Green left that post to assume major duties in the Communist Party. In this period the YCL was growing rapidly and had become an important force in the country. It helped build and lead the American Youth Congress(AYC), that had all the democratic-minded youth organizations among its three million members. The YCL and the AYC fought for jobs, for a national youth act and Administration. The latter was won by Executive Order of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The WPA and the CCC provided important job and recreation and cultural programs for youth. The YCL led the way in resisting the attempts of fascism to win a foothold in our country, especially among the youth. It led the solidarity effort with the Spanish Republic against the attempt of German and Italian fascism in support of Franco to take over Spain. Of the 3000 volunteers who went to fight as part of the Lincoln Brigade more than half were YCL and/or Communist Party members. Half of the volunteers did not return. Winston was particularly active in the solidarity with Spain effort not only during the years of the Civil War but for the rest of his life.

Not only was the YCL very active in building the unemployed Councils, it played a major role in supplying organizers to John L Lewis, Philip Murray and the other Congress of
Industrial Organization(CIO) leaders in building the mass production industrial unions.

Henry Winston played a leading role in this effort. Another area of Winston's concern as a national leader of the YCL was the building of the Southern Negro Youth Congress(SNYC)
from 1937-1946. At its height it involved 100,000 Southern youth, primarily African Americans. Among its leaders were YCLers Ed and Augusta Strong, Esther Cooper and
James E. Jackson, Louis and Dorothy Burnham and Grace Bassett. Whenever they needed help they reached Henry Winston and help was forthcoming. This also began a lifetime
close friendship between the Winstons and the Jacksons.

Among the leaders of the YCL, co-workers of Winston who fought in Spain, were BobThompson, who was a Captain in Spain, Carl Ross, Steve Nelson, Joe Brandt. While in the National Leadership of the YCL, Henry Winston worked closely with Gil Green, Betty Gannett, Claudia Jones, Bob Thompson, and Carl Ross. Henry Winston as well as all these other YCL leaders gradually moved on from YCL leadership to Communist Party leadership. In 1939, Henry Winston attended a national school of the Communist Party and began to move on into national party leadership. Soon the US entered the war against fascism after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Henry Winston was always a believer in leadership by example and he never asked anyone else to do anything he was not prepared to do. With the agreement of the Party leadership collective, he and other national leaders such as Bob Thompson volunteered to fight fascism, while others were drafted a few days after the start of the war. It is estimated that at least 15,000 members of the YCL and/or the Communist Party fought in World War II.

The military did not have a uniform policy with respect to the YCL and Communist Party members in the military. Some were sent to the most dangerous fronts, Guadalcanal and
the South Pacific, Omaha Beach and the opening up of the second front in France. Many others were kept out of the fighting and away from the soldiers so they would not "infect"
them with radical ideas. Henry Winston was in this second category and spent the war in Britain. His friend and comrade, James Jackson, spent the war in Burma and others spent it
at the end of the Aleutian Islands. Those who were permitted to fight the fascists acquitted themselves very well. Capt. Herman Boettcher won the Distinguished Service Cross
posthumously, fighting in the Philippines. Sgt. Bob Thompson also won the Distinguished Service Cross, while fighting in the South Pacific. Lou Diskin, a co-worker from the YCL,
won two Bronze medals for bravery under fire and fought his way from Omaha Beach to the meeting with the Soviet Army at the Elbe River and received a battlefield commission.

When Winston returned from the army to the Party leadership, he found a difficult situation of internal differences and fighting. He had followed these events while still in the army. On the one hand he appreciated the effort of the Party to pay more attention to the democratic history of the U.S. its anti-colonial history, the history of the labor movement, of the
struggle against slavery and against imperialism. its culture and traditions. He opposed Earl Browder's American exceptionalism, that discounted the danger of a postwar anti-
Soviet campaign and repression of civil liberties at home and his steps toward dissolution of a Communist Party. He supported the full restoration of the Party at the 13th Emergency
Convention, July 1945, at which Eugene Dennis was named General Secretary and Henry Winston was elected National Organizational Secretary. As National Organizational Secretary, Henry Winston was responsible for leading the effort to carry out the mass political policies of the Party and for building the Party. He was considered an expert on the theory and practice of organization of the Communist Party. The Party was known widely for its ability to get things done and to carry out its commitments. The period from the end of the war until the indictment of the 12 National Board members, including Henry Winston, in July 1948, were difficult years. US reaction resumed its efforts to reverse the New Deal, to weaken the labor movement to threaten a big increase in international tensions, including even atomic war with the Soviet Union, to hold back the national liberation movement and other progressive movements in the world, and to undermine democratic liberties in the US, and escalate racist violence. In Fulton, MO in 1947, Winston Churchill, together with President Harry Truman launched the Cold War. It was not long before there were headlines about Communists being spies for the Soviet Union and then the House Un-American Activities Committee attacking progressives and democrats in Hollywood. As we approached the1948 Presidential Elections, the Progressive Party was launched with the candidacy of former Vice President Henry Wallace and Senator Glen Taylor(D, Idaho) as its candidates. The Communist Party supported this effort for a peace alternative. But on the eve of the Progressive
Party founding Convention, the Truman Administration indicted the National Board of the Communist Party under the long dormant, thought control Smith Act legislation. This
threw a pall over the large progressive community in the country at that time and was one of the reasons for an election vote of 1 million for Wallace, instead of the 10 million
once expected. The Smith Act indictment stimulated many additional forms of attack on not only the Communist Party but the entire progressive and much of the democratic
community in the country. McCarthyism went into full swing.

The Smith Act indictment against Henry Winston, William Z. Foster, Benjamin J. Davis, Eugene Dennis, Bob Thompson, Gus Hall, Gil Green and the others and then against Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Claudia Jones, Betty Gannett, James Jackson and over another hundred across the country, charged that they had conspired to teach and advocate the violent overthrow of the government. In other words they had no evidence that the Communists had done anything to overthrow the government by force and violence, nor that they had taught that the government should be so overthrown in the future. They were charged with conspiring that they were going to teach that the government should be thus overthrown. The only evidence was distorted interpretations of the classics of Marxism. Winston was one of the defendants who spoke in the court exposing the undemocratic nature of the trial and the whole assault on democratic rights.

It took a few years before court appeals including to the Supreme Court had been exhausted and the defendants were sentenced and ordered to surrender for their jail terms - 5 years
for most. It had been agreed that four defendants would not surrender but would go underground and lead the Party from there, which meant complete separation from loved ones. The four were Gus Hall, Bob Thompson, Gil Green and Henry Winston. It was not long before Hall and Thompson were found by the authorities and imprisoned with 2 more years tacked on their sentences. In the case of Gil Green, based on collective decision, he walked in after four years and surrendered. The same took place with Henry Wisdom after 5 years. He then went to Terre Haute Penitentiary in Indiana to serve out a seven year sentence. Well into the sentence, Winston began having severe pain in the head, loss of control over balance and difficulty walking until he finally keeled over. At first the guards and the prison authorities did nothing for him. They treated him in a racist manner, as a malingering African American. When the prison authorities finally paid attention, Winston had lost all of his sight due to the growth of a non-malignant brain tumor. They had transferred him to a prison hospital on Staten Island considered a dungeon by the prisoners. John Abt, the general counsel for the Party, led the fight in courts to get him out of prison and out of the prison hospital without completely fulfilling his sentence. The mass fight domestically and internationally finally succeeded. Internationally his continued imprisonment became an embarrassment. Fidel Castro offered to trade all of the prisoners, from the Bay of Pigs aggression, for Henry Winston. Throughout the Soviet Union there were protest actions and constant news of the struggle. Finally, in 1961 President John F. Kennedy granted executive clemency. Upon his release and return from Soviet medical treatment, which could not reverse the blindness, Winston re-entered political life in the US.

At a press conference in July 1961, Winston said: "Despite my handicap, I intend to resume my part in the fight for an America and a world of peace and security, free of poverty,
disease and race discrimination...I return from prison with the unshaken conviction that the people of our great land, Negro and white, need a Communist Party fighting for the
unity of the people for peace, democracy, security and socialism. I take my place in it again with deep pride. They robbed me of my sight but not of my vision." When Winston
returned to political work with the leadership of the Communist Party, it had been 16 years since the start of the Smith Act trials in July 1948 And when he returned, the Party was still
under attack, this time under the McCarran Act. Most of the McCarran Act was declared unconstitutional in 1967.

Henry Winston was elected National Chair of the Party, confirmed by the 18th Convention in 1966 and from then until the end of his life shared leading the Party with Gus Hall, its
General Secretary. To perform his duties, he had to have help walking around his offices and traveling. To continue his lifetime habit of wide reading, others had to read to him.
With assistance, he was able to write reports, articles, pamphlets and two major books, as well as keep up a substantial correspondence domestically and internationally. First
and foremost in all this assistance was his wife, Fern Winston, who at the same time at first worked in a hospital and then worked for the Party as Chair of its Women's Equality
Commission and a member of the National Committee.

Henry Winston played a major role in the Party's work in relation to all the most significant struggles for peace and international solidarity, for jobs, equality and against racism, for
democracy, progress and socialism, and for the building of the Party, the League and its press and media. He returned to activity during the last years of the Civil Rights Revolution
of the 60s and to the first serious efforts of an African American to win the Presidency in the candidacy of Jesse Jackson in 1984, which he welcomed. Among the struggles he was
most involved in were the fight to get out of Vietnam and for nuclear disarmament. He also headed the effort within the party for the freedom of Angela Davis who the Reagan
Governorship in California was trying to imprison for life or even execute in a frame-up. Every day, the freedom of Angela Davis was the first thing on his agenda, working with
Charlene Mitchell who headed the mass defense movement, with the attorneys for Angela Davis - Margaret Burnham and John Abt. The Party as a whole, as a result of Winston's
role was involved in this victorious struggle, which had become a major international effort and cause.

Henry Winston was also very centrally involved in the solidarity effort in the U.S. with the people of South Africa - The Communist Party of South Africa and African National
Congress. This included close work with Oliver Tambo, the head of the ANC after Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, Moses Mobida, the General Secretary of the Communist Party
of South Africa and with leaders of other liberation movements in Africa. At the same time, Henry Winston maintained ties with many prominent figures in the progressive
community and in the African American community in particular. At his 70th birthday celebration in a major New York hotel, Ossie Davis was the Master-of-Ceremonies. Pete
Seeger performed. Winston kept in touch with sections of the labor movement through such figures as Cleveland Robinson, the African American Secretary Treasurer of District
65, leaders of 1199.

In 1986, Winston returned to a Soviet Hospital with a recurrence of the brain tumor and they were unable to save his life. During this last period of his life, the Soviet Union was undergoing big reforms under the leadership of Gorbachev. According to CPUSA comrades who were in the hospital with Winston, following Soviet developments, Winston
welcomed the reform efforts and was hopeful they would succeed without causing any upheaval, while pointing a new way forward for socialism.

The many comrades who worked with Henry Winston, all marveled at his ability to give leadership on theoretical and political policy questions, as well as to be such a master
of organization and getting things done. His absolute commitment to the interests of the working class - Black ,Brown, white, red, yellow - men, women, old , young, etc. to the
interests of the African American and all other nationally oppressed peoples as a whole to women and youth - was undeniable. Winston was in no way a sectarian and worked well
with all kinds of democratic forces.

Nothing could shake Henry Winston's conviction and confidence and nothing could deter him from doing his utmost to further these causes and the fight for socialism. He was
always undaunted by difficulties and setbacks. Yet he was always warm, friendly and human, with a hearty laugh. He was always interested in the lives, successes and hardships
of co-workers and friends. If Winston heard of someone he knew in the leadership, or not, anywhere in the country was sick, they would get a phone call from him. Henry
Winston was certainly one of the most respected and beloved of anyone who has served in the leadership of the Party. He was always a unifying force, though he always took a
principled position on issues. Everyone who knew him realized they knew a very special person - a mentor to us all.

Henry Winston is survived by his daughter Judith, and her children.

Books by Henry Winston
Strategy for a Black Agenda, IP, 1973
Class, Race and Black Liberation, IP, 1977
Prepared by the Henry Winston Centenary Tribute Committee Executive
Jarvis Tyner
Danny Rubin
Mary Arnold
Tina Nannarone

Henry Winston is IN THE HOUSE!

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:16:00 +0000

Henry Winston PRESENTE!
Henry Winston is IN THE HOUSE!

It is a great honor to take part in this historic program.

Comrade Henry Winston, or as we affectionately called him, Winnie, would be very pleased that his centennial celebration has brought together a full house in the hall that bears his name. Henry Winston is in the house. Winnie would be very pleased that Charlene Mitchell is part of the program this afternoon. Charlene was very close to Comrade Winnie, and a powerful leader of our party for many decades. Comrade Charlene's strong personal friendship with Winnie was built on a rich history of unity in struggle and great mutual respect and affection.

And Comrade Winston would be very happy that Angela is part of this celebration today. Angela Davis holds a special place in all our hearts because of the historic struggle for her freedom. Many of us here today were active in the broad united movement that defeated the criminal conspiracy of Governor Reagan and President Nixon to frame Angela and ultimately to take her life. That struggle was won because a multiracial coalition of people of diverse political beliefs here and around the world united around the basic truth that Angela was innocent. They knew that to free Angela would be a powerful blow against racism, anti-communism and reaction in general. And it was a powerful victory.

Comrades Henry Winston and Gus Hall, both political prisoners during the McCarthy era, contributed much to the basic tactics and political approaches that won Angela's freedom. And in the first place, the battle was won because of the tremendous courage and confidence of Angela Yvonne Davis. As Winston wrote:

"Angela's unflinching courage during the long months of imprisonment, her unyielding defense of her socialist convictions: her dignity and pride in her Black womanhood, her charisma-all gave the lie to the frame-up and inspired and won the love of millions."
(Strategy for a Black Agenda, pg. 264, International Publishers, 1973)

It is important to recall the tremendous struggles Henry Winston went through that made him what he was and enabled him to make such a huge contribution to freeing Angela. Winnie was just 19 when he joined the Young Communist League after cutting his political teeth in the unemployed movement, where he not only met the YCL but also his future wife, Fern.

He was a leader in the movement to save the Scottsboro youth. He worked in the Southern Negro Youth Congress with such brilliant fighters as Esther and James Jackson, Augusta and Ed Strong, Dorothy and Louis Burnham He also worked with William L. and Louise Patterson and Claude and Geraldine Lightfoot. All were Winnie's lifelong comrades and dear friends. Winnie was a top YCL leader when the YCL helped organize the American Youth Congress, which at its height had over 4 million members. Winston played a major role in mobilizing youth to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought fascism in Spain. He was a key organizer in the fight to integrate major league baseball.

Winnie also helped build the party's work in the movement against U.S. aggression in Vietnam. And he did seminal work in the African solidarity movement. Long before they became well-known names in the U.S. left, Winnie knew Amilcar Cabral, Alfred Nzo, Oliver Tambo, Bram Fisher and Moses Mabida. He was the first to call for the freedom of Nelson Mandela, and for a boycott of the South African racists.

Over decades of brilliant leadership, Winston developed into a organizational genius who taught hundreds of comrades how it was done. I remember the meetings where he would ask those concrete questions and insist on concrete answers. And how he would say, "We have only six weeks to do this. We need to plan for every week and every day."

It is important to mention the comrades who made it possible for Winnie to function: His drivers, his secretary, those who read for him, took him to the doctor and helped him shop and write. But above all there was his wife, Fern. Fern Pierce met Winnie on a unemployed march. They fell in love, married, but were later divorced and married others.

Winnie became blind while in prison, because the authorities would not treat a brain tumor that was pressing on his optic nerves. They gave him aspirin and left him in excruciating pain. The party's outstanding attorney, John Abt, visited him and raised the alarm. "Save Henry Winston" became a worldwide movement which forced President Kennedy to quickly release him. When he left prison he uttered those immortal words, "They have robbed me of my sight, but not my vision".

Now he needed someone to help him in his day-to-day life. Winnie and his second wife had divorced. Who would help him so he could continue his valuable leadership? Fern, who had also divorced her second husband, stepped forward. They married again and she was by his side for the rest of his life. Fern was a health care worker, a member of SEIU Local 1199. She was a member of the party's National Committee and later its National Board. I remember many delicious meals and good times at their apartment in East Harlem. Fern and Henry Winston were a wonderful communist couple.

I met Winnie in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, not long after his release from prison. He stood erect and spoke brilliantly, with such pride, confidence-and yes, with optimism-about the Communist Party and the movement. He showed no signs of bitterness or
pessimism. He made us laugh and he gave us confidence.

I said to myself, this brother/comrade has just gone through what has to have been the worst ordeal of his life and he did not lose his dignity, he did not lose his political perspective and he did not lose his fighting spirit. I was just 20 years old at the time. As I listened, I told myself, "I need to get to know this man. I have found my role model."

In 1966 Henry Winston was elected the national chairman of the party, with Gus Hall as general secretary. They worked together as a team for 20 years. What was Henry Winston's vision?

He and the other Smith Act victims were imprisoned because of their vision, and because they knew how to organize to realize that vision. Through the Smith Act, the 1 percent, the imperialist ruling class was out to destroy the party because it working class party that stood for black-brown-white unity and an end to ideological and structural racism; because it was an active, organized force in building the labor movement and stood against fascism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant bigotry and full equality for women.

Because the Communist Party advocated Socialism and an end to exploitation of workers here and world wide, and saw working people as decisive force for transforming society. Because they worked for an end to war and imperialist aggression at the height of the US anti Soviet cold war hysteria they were jailed. Because they fought in Spain and helped to build the world wide anti fascist front build industrial unionism and fought for the full equality for women they were jailed.

Because the party showed that it could not only talk the talk but could also build a mass base for those politics in the largest imperialist country in the world they were jailed. Winnie and his comrades were on the frontline defending the right to dissent in our country. They were jailed for their ideas but they were not criminals, they were patriots. Winston understood and wrote extensively about the fight for unity and progress. He understood that victory is not possible without a multifaceted fight against racism. He understood the politics of the popular front and why the left and center needed unity if the people were to win.

His thinking built confidence in the possibility of winning masses of white working people away from the self-defeating ideologies of racism and anticommunism. Some 38 years ago this magnificent Marxist, this working-class son of the African American people whose grandfather was a slave, who was raised under the yoke of Jim Crow apartheid and had every reason to be pessimistic about race relations, wrote the following:

"In reality, white as well as black workers have a material stake in the eradication of racism. To assert that white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism is to profoundly exaggerate monopoly's ability to sustain this illusion-particularly in the face of the deepening general crisis of capitalism."

He said that concept is based on an overestimation of the strength of imperialism and consequently a "denial of the intensifying contradiction between monopoly and the working class as a whole-black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Asian and Native American Indian." (Strategy for a Black Agenda)

Winnie would have been very enthused by the election of Barack Obama. It was a watershed in the fight against racism even though the majority of white voters did not vote for him. Despite the Republicans' relentless daily firestorm of racist and anti- communist attacks, Obama did better among white voters than had Al Gore or John Kerry. And of course, overall, Obama defeated McCain by 10 million votes and became the nation's first African American president. That was a vote of the anti-racist majority and a refutation of the racist policies that remain the cornerstone of the Republican-Tea Party- Libertarian axis of evil today.

This year's election could turn on the issue of race. The real purpose of the Republican opposition to deficits and big government is to destroy the social safety net for working people. They aim is to divert the mass anger from manipulators on Wall Street to workers on Main Street; from millionaires to minorities and immigrants; from tax-dodging rich folks to unemployed and poor folks; from wealthy bankers to the foreclosed-upon; from Wall Street hustlers to the hungry and the homeless.

Basically the idea is to divert the mass anger of voters from the 1 percent to the 99 percent. The Republican opposition needs racism and its partner-in-crime, anticommunism, to carry out this political shell game. If they get away with this, working people, minorities, women, LGBT people, youth and seniors will have hell to pay. And so will the left. We have strong differences with a number of the president's policies, especially his foreign policy and many of his "national security" measures. These must be reversed. That said, if Romney or Gingrich or whatever surprise Republican may be waiting in the wings gets elected, does anybody doubt we will be in a qualitatively more dangerous situation? President Obama has done some very good things that have opened the doors to more profound progressive changes on major fronts of struggle. When led by Democrats before the 2010 Republican Tea Party majority takeover, the House passed over 200 pieces of legislation, most of which moved in a good direction.

Obama has created millions of jobs. He got a health care bill passed, he's fighting for the American Jobs Act, he passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the "stimulus bill') and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He won several extensions of unemployment compensation, and cut taxes on working people several times. He eliminated "Don't Ask Don't Tell," supports higher taxes on the wealthy, identifies with the fight-back of workers in Wisconsin and Ohio and the Occupy Wall Street movement. He passed new regulations on Wall St. And he raised our Social Security benefits.

Obama's 2008 speech on racism was a breakthrough for a presidential front-runner, Democrat or Republican. It was perhaps the most profound speech on race ever to come from a major capitalist party. These things have enraged the extreme right and big sections of the 1 percent because they challenge their basic beliefs.

Winnie would ask, "How do we move forward?" Twenty-five million people are unemployed in this country. Some 49 million people - one in six - live in poverty, 14 million are underwater and/or facing foreclosure, and 48 million are hungry. Schools, housing, health care and infrastructure are all in crisis.

If you are a progressive and think defeating Obama will move things forward, you are mistaken. Electoral struggles are not the only arena of struggle but in our country and in most countries today they are a basic part of the struggle for change, including towards socialism. Winston was a dialectician. He understood that. The Communist Party understand this. We must go forward!

Henry Winston was recognized worldwide as a great Marxist Leninist thinker and a master polemicist. His writings on the national question and on African liberation broke new ground and strengthened the struggle for liberation and freedom.

When I was in Vietnam on a peace delegation in 1972, I meet with a leading scholar there who was writing a biography of Winston. He told me that in Vietnam they knew about Comrade Henry Winston as a political prisoner and a fighter against racism and for
socialism. We talked for two hours about Winnie. He repeated many times that Henry Winston is a great hero to the Vietnamese people.

When Winnie's "Strategy for a Black Agenda" came out, the South African Communist Party's publication, The African Communist, called it "a fighting book, written at white heat by someone who is by no means an academic onlooker but a front-line participant in
a main battlefield against imperialism." They called the book "an indispensable weapon for every fighter for the liberation of Africa and her sons and daughters in the USA and Africa."

Finally, let me share a wonderful experience I had with Comrade Winston. In February, 1968 "Freedomways" magazine sponsored a celebration of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois' centennial, at Carnegie Hall. Before the event began, Winnie asked a small group of comrades, myself included, to come with him to a waiting room backstage. Soon, in walked Dr. Martin Luther King. He immediately walked over to Winnie and said "Mr. Winston, it is an honor to meet you. How are you?"

Of course Winnie, and all of us, expressed how honored we were to meet Dr. King. Then Dr. King and Henry Winston had a very pleasant and mutually respectful 10-minute talk about the struggle in general. These two African American leaders - both sons of the deep south - hit it off very well.

Dr. King then addressed a packed house with a history-making speech about Dr. DuBois' legacy. In that speech he did a courageous thing: he took on the issue of anticommunism, saying, "Our irrational, obsessive anticommunism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking."

At the time no U.S. mass leader, certainly none with anywhere near Dr. King's standing, was willing to acknowledge the problem and forthrightly, publicly speak out against anticommunism. That was a great moment for Dr. King, for Freedomways, and for all
democratic minded people.

From some things Dr. King said during the brief meeting, I think he was familiar with some of Winnie's writings. But even if he had never read a word, he knew about the great Henry Winston. And at that point it hit me that even if we were banned from the mass media and almost never mentioned in a positive light, what we were doing was known about. And it was so very, very important that we were and are a part of the struggle, advocating socialism and defending the interest of the working class. That we were and continue to build unity, build mass confidence and shining light on many complex, seemingly intractable problems.

Our theoretical and practical political work is appreciated and respected. Even under conditions of semi-legality at the time, we had a real impact.

So as we gather here today, we must celebrate Henry Winston for all that he did. I am in awe of Comrade Winnie for what he did, for his incredible contribution to our party and the working-class movement worldwide. We must continue the struggle as Winnie would have wanted us to. Always for the people, with the people, until the people win.

Henry Winston is in the house today. This is Henry Winston's house. Henry Winston, Presente today, tomorrow and always.

In Tribute to Henry Winston

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:27:00 +0000

Editor's note: These remarks were delivered at the memorial for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry Winston. Charlene Mitchell is a long time labor and political activist, a former candidate for President of the US, and a founder of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Good Afternoon. It is an honor to be present at an event to honor the life, work, and thought of Henry Winston. I count myself as among the lucky ones who had the privilege of working with Comrade Winston over a number of years and in a number of struggles. Marx wrote that: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Henry Winston made history, but his contribution to history was not based on his unique genius - although he was a genius. The history he made was grounded in the world he lived in. Growing up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and Kansas City he experienced first hand the brutal oppression of the African American people and the callous exploitation of the working class. In Hattiesburg, in the early 1900's more then one-half of the town
was African American, yet only one percent of them were registered to vote due to the disenfranchisement of the African American people in the South. His father was a laborer
in a local saw mill, who struggled to feed, clothe and house his young family on the meager wages of the mill. Thus, from birth Winston's life was intertwined with the two social
forces that would mark his future life - a member of the working class, viciously exploited by the capitalist system; and an African American, subjected to the base degradations of
national oppression.

As a fighter, Winston grew to adulthood organizing against these twin forms of oppression. He was a leader of the Young Communist League, the Unemployed Councils, and the
Scottsboro Defense Committee. In the midst of these struggles he honed the theoretical and organizational abilities that would serve him so well later as a leading member of the
Communist Party.

Many of Winston's most lasting theoretical contributions are in the areas of the anticolonial and independence struggles of Africa and the movement for African American equality. Although his personal life experiences certainly gave him important insights into these issues; it was not a sense of nationalism that drove his analysis. Instead, it was a firm
belief in the future of socialism and the historic role of the working class in bringing about that future. Winston was fully aware of Lenin's admonition that Marxism cannot be mixed with even the most refined forms of nationalism.

In a 1964 pamphlet entitled, "Negro Liberation: a goal for all Americans," Winston referred to the African American question as "the touchstone in the struggle for democracy in this
country" - adding that "...the achievement of equality for the Negro people is the key in the struggle to defend and extend democracy for all."

Winston was an advocate of the centrality of the struggle for African American equality. He understood that the fight against African American oppression was "central" to the
uniting of the working class. He understood that this "centrality" could not be posed against the class struggle - as some social democrats attempted to do by insisting that only
the class struggle is "central." Instead, Winston understood the interconnection between the class struggle and the struggle against national oppression. He also understood that no
movement would lead the U.S. working class towards the fundamental transformation of this system without a correct understanding of the centrality of the fight against African
American oppression. The white sector of the U.S. working class will never break with bourgeois ideology without cleansing itself of the odious ideology of racial superiority - in
whatever form it takes.

These ideas, the struggle for a correct line in the African American and African support movement, are the centerpiece of Winston's "Strategy for a Black Agenda." In that work,
which was a major intervention in the ideological struggle within the African American movement and among those in solidarity with African liberation and independence,
Winston pulled the covers off of the Maoists, who under the guise of "anti-revisionism" sided with the imperialists in the struggle for the liberation of Angola. More importantly,
Winston's analysis demonstrated that these positions were not merely mistakes or errors in judgment by the Maoists, but were the logical outcome of an anti-Leninist, anti-working
class philosophy.

In that book and in his "Class, Race and Black Liberation," Winston also dissected the then-current Pan-Africanist movement. He demonstrated that the nationalism and lack of anti-imperialist grounding in that movement reflected that it owed more of an intellectual debt to George Padmore and Marcus Garvey than to DuBois' conception of Pan-Afrcanism.
He noted that they were quick to base their analysis on Dubois' famous quote that "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." However, Winston added
that "Dubois said it was the problem, Dubois did not say it was the solution." Winston went on to write that, "As Lenin demonstrated, the solution lies in a strategy to overcome the
disunity of the oppressed and exploited at the line of differences in color and nationality."

Comrade Winston's leadership on these issues was not limited to the theoretical sphere. He played an active role in guiding mass movements in these areas. Winston was the
organizational brains behind the formation of NAIMSAL - the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation. Under his guidance, and through his
connections with African leaders throughout the continent, NAIMSAL succeeded in injecting a consistent anti-imperialist content to the then-developing movements in
solidarity with African liberation. NAIMSAL was one of the first organizations in this country to campaign for the freedom of Nelson Mandela and, with the National Alliance,
launched a petition drive that helped make Mandela's freedom a national issue. Much of NAIMSAL's work laid the basis for the larger African liberation support movement that
developed in the 1980's.

And under Winston's guidance, the Party helped build the largest political defense movement this country had seen since the Scottsboro defendants. I can still remember receiving a call from my brother, Franklin Alexander, in the summer of 1970 informing me that Angela Davis was facing arrest on trumped up charges stemming from a shootout at a courthouse in San Rafael, California.

I immediately went to discus this development with Winston and Gus Hall. Both had no hesitation in throwing the weight of the entire Party behind the movement to defend Angela and both immediately saw this threat as an attack against the Communist Party, the African American movement, and the entire progressive movement. Winston, especially, demonstrated a particular sensitivity to the role of gender. It was an advanced attitude I had seen displayed by him over the years. In his work in defense of Angela, he consistently expressed the importance of the role of women in the movement's leadership and in the broader society. This may have partially been due to the influence of Claudia Jones, one of his closest comrades from the "old days" and at one time chair of the Party's Women's Commission.

With Winston's assistance we rallied the Party to build an international movement demanding the release of Angela and all political prisoners. This movement, more than any other single motion, helped rebuild the Party's image in the African American community and in the broad Left. There are still many activists around who "cut their political teeth"
in that movement. And in the process of building that movement the Party made many valuable contacts with activists across the country. It was this movement that positioned us
to launch the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

In Winston's last years he had developed a particular concern for the plight of African American youth. He recognized that the general crisis of capitalism and the national oppression of the African American people were combining to stigmatize African American youth as, in Winston's words, "social pariahs." More than twenty-five years later we see Winston's concerns manifested in astronomical youth unemployment rates, collapsing public education, and mass incarceration as a method of control of African American youth.

Yet Winston was full of optimism about the long-range future. I believe he would have welcomed the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. And he would have been the first to point out the importance of the 2012 elections for the future of our country. Just think about Winston's notion about the African American question being the "touchstone in the struggle for democracy" while listening to the racist "dog whistles" - some would say "foghorns" - of every single one of the Republican Party candidates. And lined up opposed to those dog whistlers is -- albeit, with Obama at the head -- a united African American community; the organized sector of the working class, which is newly energized; and nearly all organized sections of the progressive movement. How could one be neutral in this fight and consider oneself a progressive - or even a (small "d") democrat? And make no mistake, to support a third party candidate in this election is to be neutral -- the definition of neutrality being that of having little to no impact.

It's like being in a car. Your material reality presents limited options for movement. You can't go sideways. You either hit "drive," and go forward; or you hit "reverse," and go backward; or you stay in neutral, and go nowhere. We can't afford to backwards - we have to move forward. Now, some of you all might think you're in "park" - like that's a viable option. But that's even worse since it's harder to push forward when you're in "park." We all have our criticisms of the President. But we make a fatal mistake if we see Obama as the end and not as the beginning. We make a fatal mistake if we see that entire social motion that coalesced to elect Obama as being complete and finished and not see it as an arena of struggle. Now, many forces in that coalition won't make it down to the goal line of fundamentally transforming our society. Some will drop out. Many will be pushed out. But, if we are to fundamentally transform this society, who will we transform it with if not the progressive forces that are currently behind the re-election of Obama. And, I'm sure Winston would remember Lenin, who wrote, "...bear in mind that the struggle for the main thing may blaze up even though it has begun with the struggle for something partial." Does the phrase "Bread, Peace, and Land" sound familiar?

In a 1951 pamphlet entitled "What it means to be a Communist," Winston wrote, "Those who see only backwardness, immobility and disunity in the working class, are bound to ignore the essential truth that it is the working class that possesses all the necessary qualities to bring about the transformation of society, and build socialism." Embedded in the movement to re-elect Obama are those forces - the only forces - that can bring about the fundamental transformation of this society.

Finally, it is important that we honor the life and legacy of Henry Winston. But we must also recognize that Henry Winston was not a great man in spite of being a Marxist-Leninist.
He became a great man because he was a Marxist-Leninist. He was not a great man in spite of being a member of the Communist Party. He became a great man because he was
a member of the Communist Party. Nothing in his contributions makes sense if separated from the Party and its ideology. And yet his legacy belongs not just to the Marxist-Leninists
or to the Communist Party. His legacy belongs to the African American people, to the working class, and to the oppressed people all across this world, who all strive for a better
society and a better future.

Charlene Mitchell

Danny Rubin Henry Winston Tribute

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:19:00 +0000

It is hard to overstate the importance of the contributions of Henry Winston to the Party and to me personally. My mother, my wife of 58 years, Dorothy, and Winnie were the most important adults in my life. When Winston returned to political life, it was consciously decided he would mentor me. I had just graduated from youth work and had become Organizational Secretary. We spent hours together every day for ten years. And we remained close in my succeeding assignments. I happened to be in the Soviet hospital along with John Pittman the last weeks of Winnie's life, reading to the two of them and discussing developments under the new Gorbachev leadership.

Winston was one of the most remarkable human beings and political leaders I ever knew and had the privilege of working with. He had a very strong grasp of Marxist theory, of politics and was a master of the theory and practice of Party organization. He knew a life of hardship from childhood and throughout his life which he faced with great fortitude, steadfastness, and humanity. For a man blinded in prison, who was not able to go to school beyond junior high and yet write two masterful volumes, and do everything else he did on a daily basis, is quite remarkable. His devotion to his class, his people, his Party and to his family, friends and co-workers was unshakeable. His concern for people, their lives, their families, their jobs and health was just part of his nature. And he was a great mentor and teacher to all around him, a teacher by example, in the first place.
What he taught us stands in great stead today when the people of our country face so sharp a choice of direction, when they face an extreme right that wants to take everything severely backward, versus the Obama Administration, with all its limitations, is open to moving forward from where we are in the interests of the great bulk of the people. What does Winston teach us? To recognize the sharpness of the danger, that a major section of monopoly wants to reverse everything and together with the most backward political trends and organizations to enrich big monopoly at the expense of all working people. He teaches us to recognize whose self-interest runs in the opposite direction, the need for the widest unity of major sections of the population, starting with the multi-racial working class, the racially and nationally oppressed as a whole, women, youth, seniors and many more. He teaches us that racist ideology and practice and anti-communism are the greatest weapons of reaction to divide the people. The labor movement and working class as a whole needs to lead the way. The Communist Party needs to show this strategic course and play a special role in uniting the necessary forces and defeating the attempts at division. These are lessons for today even more than they were when Henry Winston wrote his two books and lived the remarkable and heroic life he did.

I believe Henry Winston is one of the heroes of our people for all time. We have gone through periods when new movements for social progress felt they needed to start afresh, that there was little in our history to draw from. We are in such a period. I believe, as did Winnie, that a mass sustained working people's movement for democracy, progress and then socialism must learn from history. It must draw on all that is positive in our history. It must have men and women who remain heroes, to be a truly popular movement. To Marx, Engels, and Lenin heroes were people who made outstanding contributions in leading and moving with masses of people in a forward direction. They were not without weaknesses or faults, nor did they always win.

In our history the heroes include Crispus Attucks, Tom Paine, Samuel Adams, Hariet Tubman, Chief Joseph, Wendell Philipps, Abaham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Parsons, William Z Foster, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Sen Katayama, Jesus Colon, W.E.B. Dubois, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King,Jr. Lorenzo Torrez, Henry Winston and many more . Internationally, they include Marx, Engels, Lenin, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxembourg, Georgi Dimitrov, Dolores Ibarruri, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, and many more.

Winnie sought to teach me and others many things. You will have to be the judge of how well we learned. He taught me about the centrality of the struggle for full equality and against racism in relation to the class struggle and the entire front of struggle for democracy, peace, jobs, progress and socialism. He taught me and corrected me on many things that have to do with the sensitivity of whites to national oppression and that white Communist leaders have to fulfill a high level of responsibility in fighting racism among white working people. But he also taught me much in every area of Marxist theory and practice, including on the necessity for the Communist Party to exist and grow.

Winnie was a teacher up to the last few days of his life. Just before he passed away in the Soviet hospital I read to Winnie and John Pittman, who also was nearly blind, from the Soviet press translations about the state visit of Gorbachev to India where he met with Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister, son of Indira Gandhi and grandson of Nehru. The last sentence of the joint communiqué sounded to me like a pacifist position and I commented, that it must have been placed there by Gandhi. Winston said, "No, that last sentence was not Gandhi, it was Lenin." I was startled, but since Winston said it I acceptedd it. When I returned to the States, I found the quote in the Lenin Collected Works. This was Winnie's last gift to me, his last lesson, which I shall forever treasure. Lenin wrote in The Question of Peace, July 1915, LCW, V.21, p.293, "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal..." Thank you so much Winnie for that final lesson.

Tribute to Henry Winston

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:28:00 +0000

Editor: These remarks were delivered February 19, 2012 at Winston Unity Center in NYC, at a memorial on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry Winston.

It is an honor to have been invited to participate in this tribute to Henry Winston on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Over the last twenty-five years I have often thought about Winnie and how much I miss his brilliant analyses and his warmth and compassion. I think he had the most genuinely expressive smile of anyone I have ever known. Communists are often accused of giving so much of their love and affection to the revolutionary struggle that they have little left to devote to one-on-one relationships. Winnie was certainly the most convincing refutation of that assumption. His love for the struggle was always matched by his love for all of the individuals in his life, both those in his intimate life and those in his political life.

I cannot reflect on the life of Henry Winston without also remembering Kendra and Franklin Alexander, who loved Winnie with all their hearts. It was the two of them, along with Charlene Mitchell, who recruited me into the Communist Party. A constant theme our many discussions back then was the life and work of Henry Winston. In fact I would not be exaggerating if I said that it was Winnie, channeled through Kendra, Franklin and Charlene, who persuaded me to join the Communist Party.

When I think back on that period I find it hard to believe that so much happened within a relatively short period of time. What stands out most in my memory of the events that unfolded after I became a Communist was the presidential campaign during which Charlene Mitchell and Mike Zagarell were the Party's candidates for president and vice-president. At the same time I was working on a Marxist-Leninist political education program for the Black Panther Party. I was a graduate student during this time and had been a member of the Communist Party for less than a year when I accepted a position at UCLA. During the summer prior to the semester I was scheduled to teach, Kendra Alexander and I joined a delegation to Cuba and after an amazing time in revolutionary Cuba, we returned to discover that I had been made the target of a raging anti-communist attack headed by Governor Ronald Reagan.

I mention the details of this period not only because this was when I met Henry Winston for the first time, but also because he was a constant inspiration to me, especially when it came to garnering the courage to stand up to attacks I had never imagined would be directed individually at me. In my own mind, as I compared my journey as a black girl from the deep South to Winnie's migration up from Mississippi to Kansas City, it helped me create the resolve to confront the racism, sexism, and anti-communism that shaped the attacks that were directed against me.

In Strategy for a Black Agenda, Winston wrote a postscript to his pamphlet "The Meaning of San Rafael" in which he acknowledged all of those who played a major role in the struggle for my freedom. He failed, however, to point out that he himself played a critical role in the development of the international campaign. As Chair of the CPUSA he appealed to Communist Parties throughout the world -- from South Africa to France to Australia to India. In the postscript he wrote that "[t]he growing strength and prestige of the socialist world made it much more difficult for U.S. Imperialism to exploit anti-communism in this case, as was done so successfully in the Rosenberg, Smith Act, and other political cases of the 1950's." But characteristically, he did not acknowledge that it was his own organizing efforts-his, Charlene's, and many others-which helped to persuade Communist Parties everywhere to encourage their members to support a young and relatively unknown member of the CPUSA.

Henry Winston helped to imbue an important internationalism into the Black Liberation Movement of that period. Through his writings and his speeches, he helped Communist and progressive activists to develop a conceptualization of solidarity with African freedom struggles that was grounded in anti-imperialist unity. At a time when W.E.B. DuBois' work had been long marginalized both in academia and in popular discourse, Winnie introduced DuBois to young activists and scholar/activists.

Winston's role in the creation of NAIMSAL, the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, helped to further popularize DuBois' notion of an anti-imperialist Pan Africanism, which emphasized unity with the socialist countries against settler colonialism and against the neocolonialist strategies that attempted to bring "free" African countries into the orbit of capitalism. Inspired by Henry Winston, NAIMSAL generated support against the Apartheid regime in South Africa that foreshadowed the important U.S. role in the global Anti-Apartheid movement in the 1980s that helped to eventually bring down the racist government and usher in a new era of democracy in South Africa.

Through NAIMSAL, support was generated in black communities, in the labor movement, and on campuses, not only for the African National Congress, but for SWAPO, the MPLA, FRELIMO, and other progressive African Liberation organizations. In 1973, I was able to bring greetings from Henry Winston and indeed from the entire party when I visited Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea, and Tanzania. The highlight of my trip to Africa was a meeting with Augostino Neto at the MPLA headquarters in Tanzania. I remember that he specifically asked me to convey his regards to Winnie.

Henry Winston was indeed revered throughout the world. Communists and those who were not deterred by anti-communism had no problems openly declaring their admiration for him. In my many travels in the socialist, capitalist and non-aligned countries, I had the opportunity to hear vast numbers of people express their profound respect for Winnie. But also, on many occasions I encountered actors, musicians and public figures (whose careers might have been placed in jeopardy had they openly declared their admiration for a communist), who secretly assured me that Winnie was a major source of inspiration in their lives.

Comrade Jarvis Tyner has described in very moving terms a meeting that took place between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry Winston on the occasion of Freedomways' centennial celebration of W.E.B. DuBois. It was an auspicious meeting, occurring just two months before Dr. King was assassinated and during the period when Dr. King was deeply involved in the first stages of organizing the Poor People's Campaign. If Dr. King was at all familiar with Henry Winston's writings, he would have known that Winnie always emphasized the inextricable connections between racial oppression, capitalist exploitation, and imperialist war. King's insistence during that period on our understanding the dangers associated with what he called the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism brought him closer to Henry Winston and other Communists who always contended that these three modes of oppression created a field on which each helped to sustain and reproduce the other.

In November of last year I had the opportunity to participate in a major Occupy mobilization in Oakland, California, which was represented as a general strike opposing the police violence with which the Occupy encampment was attacked. This march was multiracial, multigenerational, multigender, and it emphasized the centrality of working class struggles. As many as forty thousand people participated in that march and it was a wonderful moment to experience. The sense that we constituted a powerful community of resistance was palpable and many people of my generation felt that finally there was some possibility of fulfilling the promise of the struggles of the 1960s.
But what has been most important about the upsurge in activism over the last period, including in Wisconsin, Cairo, and New York-and the reason why I evoke these developments in my tribute to Henry Winston-is that for the first time since the 1930s, the era of Winnie's own youthful activism, we can speak openly and honestly about the perils of capitalism. This fulfills a great legacy we associate with Henry Winston's enduring opposition to corporate capitalism and to the racism and militarism that has always sustained human history's most rapacious form of economic production.

Three years ago when we enjoyed the planetary euphoria occasioned by the election of Barack Obama, I remember thinking that this was a moment I wished Winnie (as well as Kendra and Franklin and all those who had given their lives over to the cause of social justice) could have experienced. And while the euphoria has subsided, and some people allow their often valid criticisms to render them oblivious to what these last three years might have been like had the Republican candidate been elected, there can be no doubt that the current upsurge in labor and social justice activism is related to the political climate produced by the election of Obama.

As we work in multiple arenas with the aim of further expanding the possibilities of socialism, the spirit of Henry Winston will always be with us. Our words and our actions can help to create a future that reflects Winnie's enduring commitment, his incisive vision, and his beautiful smile.

Presente! Lorenzo Torrez, copper miner, Communist leader

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Lorenzo Torrez, leader of the Communist Party, a staunch yet quiet spoken fighter for union rights and Mexican American equality, died New Years Day in Tucson. He was 84.

Torrez was born in Gila, N.M., May 18, 1927. He went to work in the underground copper and zinc mines at age 16 and toiled there for 25 years with a break during World War II when he served in the U.S. Army in Europe. After the war, he returned to the non-ferrous mines in New Mexico enduring with his fellow miners brutal exploitation and racist discrimination.

Torrez and his wife Anita, and scores of other miner families starred in "Salt of the Earth," a film about a bitter 1950 strike at the Empire Zinc Corporation mine in Bayard, N.M. led by the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union (MMSWU).

The miners played themselves. Lorenzo had a speaking role in the film, and Anita and their children also appeared on-screen.

Later, Torrez described the conditions that drove the miners to strike, humiliated by racist discrimination, consigned to the dirtiest, most dangerous and lowest paid work underground: "Even the pay lines were segregated with Mexicanos on one side and Anglos on the other," he told People's World in an interview.

"We couldn't sit together. The swimming pool was segregated. There was one day a week that the Mexicanos could go swimming, and then they would drain the pool and refill it."

The segregated company housing was miserable with no running water for the Mexican American workers' shacks.

When the striking miners were barred from picketing under a Taft-Hartley injunction, their wives took their place, were arrested and filled the jail, yet returned to the picket lines every day for seven months. Their courage and militancy was key to winning the strike.

That strike battle-and the making of "Salt of the Earth" --were turning points in Torrez' life. He and Anita were married and both joined the Communist Party USA. Juan Chacon, a copper miner who played the leading role in the film, also joined the CPUSA. He served as president of that local of the MMSWU for many years. Chacon and his wife Virginia were lifelong friends of Lorenzo and Anita Torrez.

The film was banned from movie theaters during the years of the Cold War witchhunt. The actors were blacklisted and the MMSWU was expelled from the CIO. The union later merged with the United Steelworkers of America.

Unemployed, hounded and harassed by the FBI, Torrez moved from job to job struggling to support his family. He landed a permanent job as a Communist Party organizer in California, organizing in Los Angeles' Latino community.

In 1974, Torrez moved with his family to Tucson where he served as chair of the Arizona CP for more than 30 years. He also led the party's Chicano Equality Commission and was a member of the CPUSA National Committee.

He built the Arizona CP into an influential organization in all the progressive movements of Arizona. He also wrote and raised money for People's World and its predecessors.

Torrez helped establish the Salt of the Earth Labor College in Tucson, which continues today.

Steve Valencia, president of the labor college told the World, "Lorenzo changed the political landscape of Arizona. For him, the liberation of the working class and equality for the Mexican American people were inherently tied together."

Torrez called on the labor movement to organize undocumented immigrant workers. Even as his health declined, "Lorenzo urged us to join every action against SB-1070 and struggle to repeal that racist law," Valencia said.

Voters last November recalled Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, the author of the anti-immigrant racial-profiling law.

In 1981, Valencia was a copper miner, recording secretary of United Steelworkers Local 6912. "Lorenzo suggested that I write a letter to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland urging him to host Solidarity Day, which I did," Valencia said.

Other local labor leaders also urged the federation to act. More than 250,000 marched in Washington Solidarity Day, Sept. 19, 1981 to protest President Reagan's smashing of PATCO.

Valencia continued, "Lorenzo taught me how to work in the labor movement and work in coalitions. He told us to forget about our feelings of inadequacy and address problems that are shared by all workers."

Torrez was also a pioneer in the struggle for Mexican American political representation, Valencia added. "I always say: Before Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva, there was Lorenzo Torrez."

Pastor and Grijalva are Arizona's first two Mexican Americans members of the U.S. Congress. But Torrez ran for Congress before they ran, and also boldly ran against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater.

"Lorenzo told us it is time for these majority Latino districts to be represented by a Mexican American," said Valencia. "He wanted voters to see a Latino name on the ballot."

When Pastor declared his candidacy, Torrez rallied the Tucson CP club to join in the effort. Pastor's victory in 1991 set the stage for Grijalva's election in 2002. Pastor and Grijalva are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

In 2004, the 50^th anniversary of the release of "Salt of the Earth," Lorenzo and Anita Torrez spoke at public meetings across the nation about the film. They were hailed as working class heroes. The Library of Congress in 1992 selected "Salt of the Earth" for inclusion in the National Film Registry as one of the greatest films produced in the United States.

Lorenzo Torrez is survived by his wife, Anita, and their three children Yolanda, Roberto, and Sally and by eight grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

Joe Bernick contributed to this article

David Montgomery, A Life Well-Lived

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:26:00 +0000

David Montgomery, the prominent left-wing historian, just passed away. Substantial obituaries were carried by The New York Times, The Nation and elsewhere. David had initiated a school of labor historians who studied the lives of workers, especially in the work place and from that perspective they dealt with the labor movement and the big corporate interests and the class struggle. His outlook was always pro-worker, pro-labor and anti- big capital.

David taught labor history first at the University of Pittsburgh and then at Yale. He retired a few years ago as Emeritus Professor of History. At one time he served as national president of one of the two associations of college historians. At the same time, Eric Foner, also a left-wing historian, served as the president of the other assoiation of college historians.

David and I became close friends in1949 while we were students at Swarthmore College, the Quaker school that long has been rated one of the three top liberal arts schools in the country. He was captain of the football team (no wins), President of the Student Government, and graduated with highest honors. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of the college Young Progressives of America (YPA). The YPA was one of only a few from the Progressive Party of 1948, still functioning. YPA dominated the political life of the school, with a membership of about 50 in a school of 900. It was viewed as a pro-Soviet, pro-communist, Marxist-led group, and no one denied it. At that time, David thought very well of Marx and the Soviet Union, but also of the Austrian School economist Joseph Schumpeter.

I came to Swarthmore as a participant in the Communist Party youth movement and committed to communism. Another freshman was Eddie Fujima who became one of my roommates and best friend until he returned to Japan in1962. Eddie’s politics and mine were very close. David, Eddie and I became close friends and remained so throughout our lives, though we saw little of each other in recent years. We kept in close touch after David graduated and moved to NY and Eddie left Swarthmore after two years and got a job in NY. We got together a couple times a year in NY. Eddie and I were
surprised when David turned down a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, became the first of us to actually join the Communist Party, USA and went into a UE organized machine shop in NY. David married an African American woman, Martel Wilcher (Marti), who was politically active and whose politics were similar to David’s, Eddie’s and mine. Their first of two sons was named after Eddie.

When my wife, Dorothy and I moved to NY from Phildelphia in 1960 for me to head Party youth work, David and Marti had moved to Minnesota at the request of UE so he could work at organizing machine shops David had a hard time holding a job because of McCarthyism, even though he had dropped out of the Party after the revelations about Stalin in 1956. David remained friendly and sometimes worked on projects

with the Party. In Minnesota, David cooperated with Betty Smith, the current head of International Publishers, who was then the Minnesota District leader of the Party. While travellling to Minnesota, on one occasion I visited the Montgomery family.

The Montgomery’s moved to Pittsburgh so that David could return to academic life, teaching history at the University of Pittsburgh. I visited them once there and talked with David about his thinking on approaching labor history from the standpoint of the lives and conditions of workers at the workplace. I enthusiastically agreed with that approach. When we talked about Poland and the rise of the Solidarity Movement there we did not see eye to eye but did not let that disrupt our friendship.

I saw David only twice after that. He had moved to New Haven to teach history at Yale. It was 1980, I believe, when the huge demonstration of a million people for nuclear disarmament took place up one of the avenues to Central Park. I was marching with the Communist Party contingent and helping carry the Party banner. Suddenly I heard someone from the many on-lookers, some waiting to join the end of the march, called out, “Danny” When I looked in the direction of the call I saw David running toward me and we embraced. He was there with his family. We could do little more in that setting than acknowledge each other and the excitement of the huge demonstration.

After that, I heard from Joelle Fishman, the Chair of the Party in Connecticut, that she saw David from time to time and they cooperated on various projects and struggles, most notably, the organization of workers at Yale and their fight for a contract. David was very active in gaining faculty support. Also, Eddie returned from Japan and was married and had a son. We visited each other several times and Eddie brought me up to date on David, Marti and his godson, Eddie, and the second son. Eddie was no longer a Party member but his politics remained similar to mine.

In 2010 before the elections, I heard about a conference taking place at New York University on the subject of how universities were becoming profit-making machines tied in with big capital. David Montgomery was to be the keynote speaker. Despite health problems I decided to go so I could see David, after so much time. As usual his public speaking style combined academic expertise with populism in content and manner of delivery. He was a huge hit. I got there early but decided to wait till after he spoke and the meeting was over. When I approached him and he saw me, as usual he screamed my name and ran over and we embraced. We then found a quiet spot and sat down and caught up on our families. He acknowledged his health was not too good and the family planned to move back to rural southeast Pennsylvania where he grew up, and where he earned the nickname, “Zeke”, which was his sole name at Swarthmore. Then we talked politics about the country and world and then about how
the Party was doing. He expressed appreciation for the work of the Party in Connecticut under Joelle’s leadership. We had similar points of view on everything we discussed.

David was a very good listener and questioner and did not speak much in social settings. He laughed easily with a big hearty laugh. He was a nice guy. But whenever he spoke everyone took notice, as he was a person who always had something to say. What he said was full of unique information and took definite sides. The side was always that of the working class and labor, the fight against racism and for full equality, for peace and democracy, and was pro-socialism. He was a dear friend and he left his mark not only on his friends but on all of US labor historiography. The very best to Marti and his family.

Obiturary for Edward Elkin

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:55:00 +0000

Edward Henry Elkind, a lifelong peace activist and local resident for the past 30 years, died at age 81 on Sunday October 8, 2011 at the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington in Rockville, Maryland. The cause of death was cardiac arrest secondary to Parkinson's Disease. Mr. Elkind was born on September 20, 1930 in Manhattan, New York, the son of Paul David Elkind, a dentist and musician, and Ethel (Blum) Elkind. His father died when Mr. Elkind was five years old. He was mainly raised by his mother, who was a political activist herself and by his maternal uncle, Herman L. Blum, an engineer who owned a Whirlpool Corporation franchise and helped establish the Royal Switch Board Company, which still exists. Also influential was his grandfather, Saul Elkind, a classical musician who performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra during the period (1924-1949) that Serge Koussevitzky was director. Young Mr. Elkind played the cello.

Mr. Elkind attended Horace Mann School for Boys in New York City. While an 18-year-old freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1948 he worked to register voters, organize a rally, distribute literature and acted as a poll watcher in the Henry Wallace for President campaign. Those he met in the campaign influenced him to join the Communist Party, to which he remained loyal for the rest of his life. During the early 1950s agents would approach him on the street and attempt to make him a collaborator. He would not speak to them. He commented, as quoted in an unpublished "Profile" of 11/19/1986 by Leslie Norton that, "In retrospect, it was a ridiculous decision to join at that time. The party was beginning to fall apart. Later on, of course, I figured, what the hell, I'm being followed around anyway."

Mr. Elkind met his future wife, Harriet Gesser, a social worker, in 1951 when both were taking courses at the Jefferson School of Social Science, which was a communist sponsored institution. Later he taught courses in political economy and the theory of Marxism-Leninism at the People's School for Marxist Studies, which succeeded the Jefferson School, which had been shut down in 1956 as the result of government repression.

Having dropped out of Rensselaer after a year without a degree, he returned to school at Columbia University between 1958 and 1962, where he was an activist on the student council and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. He was then employed with significant stretches of unemployment as a computer programmer in a series of consulting jobs lasting two or three years each by IBM, Grumman and Bell Labs. This lasted for 25 years. About his work he commented, as quoted in the Norton "Profile," "They want you to be intelligent on the job and stupid about everything else." He liked to talk politics in the workplace. His son Raphael, then age 24, commented in 1986 that his father never "made it," in the business world because he refused to be a manager. At which Elkind laughed, "Those are the limits of communism."

Because of his science background, Elkind was attracted to the anti-nuclear and peace movement, helping establish the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, which is now a global organization. He also worked with SANE for many years, which included participation in marches and electoral campaigns to pressure legislators to establish a moratorium on nuclear bomb testing in the atmosphere and arms proliferation. His children grew up accompanying him and his wife and participating in these events. In his honor after he died, his son's family went to the Occupy Wall Street encampment, which, as they put it, is where their father would have been. His daughter commented that he taught her not to expect others to fight your fights, but to be there to fight for others.
In 1986 the Grumman Corporation fired Mr. Elkind, then age 56, because he would not sign a security clearance statement. He was not able to obtain another job in computer consulting. The financial insecurity, plus his lifelong depression took a toll on his marriage. He and his wife obtained a divorce. He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked at Kramer's Bookstore on Dupont Circle.
At the same time that he moved to Washington, D.C., Mr. Elkind continued his political involvement, becoming an officer in the local communist organization, the Frederick Douglass Club. In this capacity he helped organize educational forums, establish and edit the club web page, and advocated for progressive causes such as DC home rule, full employment, and the expansion of public housing, rent control and public health clinics. Having been hospitalized for depression on a number of occasions, he had a particular sympathy for providing medical services to "crazy" people, most of whom he found not to be crazy. The seven years he endured in his last illness was in his view nothing to being depressed.

With his colorful picket signs and buttons, he was a regular figure at demonstrations and marches on the mall against American aggression in Latin America and the Middle East. His daughter commented that he taught her how to separate being Jewish from Israel. For many years he distributed the party's newspaper, People's Daily World at trade union meetings, such as the Washington's Teachers Union, where his comrades were activists.

Mr. Elkind was also a longtime supporter of the Nation Magazine Discussion Club, the Washington Peace Center and the Washington Ethical Union, where he met Corrian Atwell, his faithful companion for the past twenty years. Especially in his last years she provided for his well being and quality of life. He donated his large collection of political pamphlets, books and memorabilia to the Lewis J. Ort Library, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, Maryland, which institution has designated it the "Edward H. Elkind Collection."
Mr. Elkind in summarizing his life remarked in the Norton "Profile" that the dissolution of his marriage was his biggest failure. On the other hand, he considered his three children to be his biggest successes. These were Raphael Elkind of Westport, Connecticut, and his two daughters, Lisa Elkind and Juliet (Elkind) Cruz, both of New York City. Besides these, he is survived by five grandchildren, Hannah, Peter and Henry Elkind, and Margo and Rebecca Cruz.