BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
MIAMI - The atmosphere at the Pathfinder bookstore in the Little Haiti neighborhood here was festive as dozens of people streamed in on Sunday afternoon, December 3, past the sparkling storefront, freshly painted in flamingo pink.
Entering the building, which also houses the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party branch, you could not miss a large sign on the wall in the back of the meeting room. It read: "Celebrate the life and political contributions of Ed Shaw (1923-1995); 50 years in the fight for socialism."
The celebration of the life of this longtime leader of the SWP, who died in Hialeah, Florida, on November 9 at age 72, was sponsored by the Miami party branch.
An appetizing food spread, set on tables in the middle of the room, became a center for socializing during a reception that lasted an hour before the program began.
Among the major attractions were extensive photographic displays on the walls, each one capturing big pieces of modern revolutionary history. Laid out in chronological order, the exhibition included a photo of Shaw when he joined the merchant marine in 1943. Maps depicted some of the trips merchant sailors took during World War II. Shaw made the run to Murmansk in the arctic region of the Soviet Union in 1943, on a ship carrying arms and supplies for the Soviet armed forces.
Shaw joined the SWP in 1944 after being introduced to socialist literature by other seamen and meeting party members during a layover in New York. Shaw was particularly attracted to the campaign to defend 18 leaders of the SWP and the Minneapolis Teamsters Union who were imprisoned for their communist views and opposition to Washington's entry into World War II.
Copies of pages of the Militant from the mid-1940s on showed Shaw's involvement in the class struggle and in numerous campaigns the party helped organize - from efforts to combat the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the early 50s to defense of Robert F. Williams, a militant from North Carolina who was framed-up for organizing armed self-defense of the Black community in Monroe, North Carolina, against the Klan. Many participants took particular interest in the Militant coverage and brochures displayed from 1964, when Shaw campaigned for vice-president of the United States on the SWP ticket with Clifton DeBerry.
The most popular display, however, was the one titled "Ed Shaw: partisan of the Cuban revolution." A number of people, especially youth, gathered around it before and after the program to look at rare photos of the Cuban revolutionary movement from 1950 to the early 1960s. The photos were reproduced courtesy of Pathfinder Press, which gathered them for publication in a new English-language edition of the book Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War: 1956-58 by Ernesto Che Guevara (see ad on page 9).
Shaw traveled to Cuba in the fall of 1960, as the Cuban workers and peasants were deepening their anticapitalist revolution and nationalizing major foreign- and Cuban-owned factories, mines, and utilities. He then did a speaking tour for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the United States with Robert Williams, using slides from his trip. Color reproductions of several of Shaw's slides were on display, along with materials produced by Fair Play. In the early 1960s, Shaw was a leader and Midwest director of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which organized activities to oppose Washington's attempts to crush the Cuban revolution.
By the time the program started, some 70 people had filled the meeting hall coming from Atlanta, Tampa, and Dade and Broward counties.
Ernie Mailhot, a member of the SWP National Committee from Miami, welcomed participants. He introduced Mary-Alice Waters, editor of the Marxist magazine New International and longtime SWP leader, who chaired the program.
"The fact that so many people came to the celebration is the best tribute to Ed Shaw who devoted the bulk of his adult life to building a communist party capable of leading workers and farmers to power," said Waters.
The audience included friends and coworkers of Shaw; Andrés Gómez and other members of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a Miami-based organization of Cubans who support the Cuban revolution; Orlando Collado and other activists in the Miami Coalition to End the Economic Embargo of Cuba; a number of activists in the West Palm Beach Cuba coalition; Haitian rights activists; a Dominican worker who found out about the event at a Pathfinder booth at the recent Miami book fair; and many of Shaw's comrades.
Six members of the local Young Socialists chapter were also present, as well as several other youth, including a college student from Swaziland and two students from Uruguay. The friends and admirers of Ed Shaw who were present came from a rainbow of Latin American countries.
In addition to introducing the four speakers, Waters read excerpts from some of the more than a dozen messages sent to the meeting. They included a message from Mirta Vidal of New York who worked with Shaw to defend political prisoners in Latin America. She traveled with him to Argentina as part of a reporting team there in the early 1970s during the prerevolutionary upsurge in that country. During much of that period Shaw shouldered many responsibilities as a leader of the SWP's international work.
Tom Leonard, a veteran party leader who was also a seaman in the 1940s, spoke of Shaw's contributions during the period he worked in the merchant marine and about his childhood in Zion, Illinois. Since 1992 Shaw had been working with Leonard to compile the party's experiences in the maritime industry and unions.
Tony Thomas, a member of Transport Workers Union Local 291 in Miami and longtime member and supporter of the SWP, and Veronica Póses, coordinator of the Miami Young Socialists, also addressed the meeting.
SWP national secretary Jack Barnes was the last speaker. He discussed how Shaw assumed responsibility as the party's organizational secretary between 1965 and 1968, making possible the transition in the party leadership to a younger generation. He explained how Shaw's work in defense of Cuba had been prepared by his previous political work and life experience.
At the conclusion of the program Mailhot made a fund appeal in honor of Shaw's life. Those present contributed $855 to Pathfinder's English- and Spanish-language publishing program to produce the definitive record of the Cuban revolution and its leadership.
Similar meetings are scheduled to take place in New York and San Francisco on December 10 and 17 respectively.