These remarks by Mary-Alice Waters, speaking on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party's Political Committee, were made to a meeting to celebrate the life of Judy White held here January 21. The event was attended by more than 100 people and held at the National Union of Letter Carriers Local 24 hall. White, 62, died January 2 in Los Angeles.

"The reason that meetings like this are so powerful--paying tribute to someone like Judy who gave so much of her life to building the party--is that they allow you to see not just the contributions of an individual, but to see a slice of history that particular person happened to live through, to represent, to be part of," said Waters.

"The power of the program of Marxism is not primarily the ideas," she continued, "but the fact that it is the summation of the conditions for the liberation of the working-class. And it's strength is not just that of individuals, but the collective strength of how those same individuals work together to make that program a reality.

"Ideas of Marxism are carried by human beings, there is no other way," Waters said. "And it's those individuals by their conduct and their example, even more than their intellectual clarity or ability to speak or write, is what wins others to want to join our movement. This is where Judy's contribution was one that all of her friends and colleagues recognized so well. She helped others to see the need for a collective effort to build a movement, a proletarian party, that would be strong enough, cohesive enough, disciplined enough to be able to face off against the most powerful and ruthless ruling class that has ever walked the face of this earth."

In doing this, said Waters, "Judy helped to recruit dozens and dozens of others to the movement and helped them to begin to understand the same things that she had come to understand from her life experiences and contributions to building the SWP."

Those in attendance at the meeting included SWP members and supporters, young socialists, friends, and others who had collaborated with White over the past four decades. Participants came from several California cities in addition to Los Angeles. Others came from Vancouver, British Columbia; Seattle; Tucson, Arizona; Grand Junction, Colorado; and New York City. Several attractive displays chronicled White's political life and the tumultuous events her party was involved in. Supporters of the SWP in Los Angeles prepared a large spread of food that was enjoyed before and after the meeting.

The celebration of White's life was chaired by John Benson, a packinghouse worker from Fresno and a member of the steering committee of the party's fraction in the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Also speaking was Wendy Lyons, who addressed the crowd on behalf of the Los Angeles branch of the SWP. Lyons first worked with White in New York in the mid-1960s when they were both leaders of the Young Socialist Alliance and beginning to take on SWP leadership responsibilities.  
 
Two mighty developments
"Judy was part of a generation that was influenced by two mighty developments in the class struggle: the Cuban revolution and the civil rights movement," said Lyons. She described how White first visited Cuba in 1955 with her father, and then again in 1960 on a trip she made with a lifelong friend.

"Judy had a burning hatred for injustice, fueled not only by what she saw in the United States, but also by the oppression generated by the U.S. government abroad that she had witnessed firsthand in pre-revolutionary Cuba and also in Mexico. Judy saw in the Cuban revolution a road forward. Workers and farmers of Cuba had marched onto the stage of history and showed it was possible to change the world," said Lyons. "Judy decided that we needed such a revolution here in the United States and joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1961. She was part of the YSA's efforts to defend the Cuban revolution against U.S. government attacks."

Lyons described how the YSA threw itself into the rising movement that finally defeated Jim Crow--the brutal system of legal and dejure segregation of African-Americans in states across the South, backed up by racist terror and lynchings. "Beginning in the early 1960s," she said, "every week brought news of new actions in the South--bus boycotts, freedom rides, sit-ins, and fights against racist frame-ups. In Boston where Judy lived at that time, and elsewhere in the North, there were also growing actions in solidarity with the fight against Jim Crow.

"Judy participated in the picket lines at Woolworths in Boston, in defense cases, and demonstrations. And as the Black struggle developed a more and more revolutionary wing around Malcolm X, Judy, together with her comrades in the YSA and SWP, worked to defend it and link up with it.

"The YSA Judy joined was a cadre organization that saw ourselves as fellow fighters with Cuban revolutionaries and with Black workers, farmers, and youth who were day by day toppling Jim Crow. We were proud of our connection with the SWP," she said, a party with a program and history that at the time included in its membership those who been part of the fight against the Stalinization of the world communist movement and individuals who led workers in successful victories in the Minneapolis Teamster strikes and the over-the-road Teamster organizing campaign in the Upper Midwest during the great labor battles of the 1930s.

"The YSA was a serious, disciplined organization," Lyons emphasized. "We studied the continuity of Marxism together with the SWP and did our best to act on it. Though we were a small organization then, we strengthened ourselves during those years as we developed a strong cadre. This enabled us to play a leadership role in the movement against the Vietnam war as it expanded. The YSA grew rapidly in the late 1960s and early 1970s," said Lyons, "and became the main source for renewal of the party."  
 
Movement against the war in Vietnam
Judy White was right in the thick of this, Lyons explained. She was a founder of the Greater Boston Coordinating Committee Against the War that organized the first days of protest against the war in Vietnam in 1965. Based on this work, Boston became the headquarters of the "Bring the Troops Home Now" newsletter, which grew out of a great debate over the correct course for the developing protest movement against the war. The YSA, SWP, and other forces wanted to build an uncompromising movement against the war with the clear demand on the U.S. government to bring the troops home now. They sought a movement that would reach out and appeal to the GIs. This was in sharp opposition to others who lumped the GIs together with the military brass and the imperialist government it serves, making no distinction between the officer corps and the tens of thousands of workers and farmers in uniform who had been drafted into the military.

White moved to New York in 1966 as part of linking up the "Bring the Troops Home Now" wing of the anti-Vietnam war movement with the growing strength of the movement in New York. That same year White was nominated as the SWP's candidate for governor of New York.

This fact was noted by Ana Ramírez, addressing the crowd on behalf of the Los Angeles chapter of the Young Socialists. "My comrades and I in the YS chapter were going through the Militant to help prepare the displays that you see here," said Ramírez. "One of the things that excited us was Judy running for governor of New York in 1966. She was only 28, old enough at the time if she was a male to be drafted and sent to war. But New York State officials said she wasn't old enough to be governor.

"The ruling class in New York State saw the effectiveness of our campaign among youth and antiwar activists," Ramírez noted. "They were appalled when we demanded the addresses of all GIs who were registered to vote so we could send them campaign literature, regardless of where they might be stationed."

In 1967, following the election and a week of large mobilizations against the Vietnam war, then New York governor Nelson Rockefeller signed a law described by the New York Times as the "anti-Judy White law." It barred "ineligible" people--that is those under the age required for serving as governor--from being nominated for public office or appearing on the ballot. Backers of the law claimed White's campaign had led the 12,000 people who voted for her to waste their votes.

"There are many fighters like Judy White," said Ramírez. "Today when we honor Judy it is not surprising for me to learn of the role she played in the movement. It is an inspiration. The Young Socialists can learn from this experience and see an example of the kind of movement we are trying to build today."

Mary-Alice Waters was the featured speaker at the event. "Judy was typical of a whole generation," Waters said. "Her father was a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who came to the United States in the early part of the century. Her mother was Alsatian. They moved to Boston where Judy was born in 1938. Her father ran a family hardware and dry goods business.

"Judy didn't talk about her family very much," said Waters, "but occasionally she would explain that she had a very famous uncle, Harry Dexter White, who was probably second only to Alger Hiss as a target of the post-World War II witch-hunt of high-ranking government officials in Washington.  
 
Postwar 'red scare'
Waters described Harry Dexter White's life beginning with his work in dry goods and hardware stores in Boston. He eventually graduated from Harvard and Stanford becoming known as a capable and up-and-coming economist. In the early 1930s, he was hired to work on special projects in the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington and by the time the U.S. government declared war on Germany, White was rising fast, eventually becoming the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Roosevelt administration under Henry Morgenthau.

Though later accused of being a Soviet agent, White's work in this period could not be separated from that of the Roosevelt and later the Truman administrations.

He was one of the authors of what became known during the final years of the war as the Morgenthau Plan for Germany. This was one of U.S. imperialism's postwar schemes, eventually rejected, that put forward the perspective of making sure Germany did not reindustrialize after the war, forcing it to be a pastoral and agricultural country incapable of threatening either the Soviet Union or Washington and its postwar imperialist allies again.

The Morgenthau Plan and other such proposals were later described by opponents of Roosevelt and Truman as being in the interests of the Soviet Union.

White was also the co-author along with British economist John Maynard Keynes of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference agreement that organized the international monetary system coming out of World War II. Out of this came the International Monetary Fund, of which he was the first U.S. executive director.

"This same person found himself accused in 1948 of being a high level Soviet agent in the top reaches of the government," said Waters. He was brought before a federal grand Jury in New York City that was also considering the charges against the leadership of the Communist Party of the United States and eventually brought indictments against 12 of them under the Smith Act. They were convicted soon after of "advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force."

Harry Dexter White was not indicted. But his name was spread across the pages of every newspaper in the United States as the example, together with Alger Hiss, of the kind of Soviet espionage activities organized by the U.S. Communist Party and the Soviet Union. White died of a heart attack a few months later.

Judy was 10 years old in 1948 when White was brought before the grand jury, Waters explained. Five years later this hit the newspapers again when then U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower's attorney general, Herbert Brownell, accused former Democratic Party president Harry Truman of having placed Harry Dexter White in key Treasury Department posts while knowing all along about his "espionage activity" on "behalf of the Soviet Union."

"This became one of the sharpest conflicts of the entire witch-hunt period, with Eisenhower finally calling it off saying it was getting a little out of hand. This was one of the turning points of the witch-hunt," Waters emphasized.

"The Militant did a very effective job of coming to the defense of Harry Dexter White," she said, calling meeting participants attention to the display area and to an issue of the Militant published in November 1953 with an article entitled "In Defense of Harry Dexter White."

Under the pen name John Petrone, the Militant editor at the time, George Breitman, wrote, "Politically I have little or nothing in common with Harry Dexter White. So far as his public record and statements go he seems to have been a typical New Dealer. A smart young man who was called to a bureaucrat's job in Washington where he served Roosevelt and the capitalist class well by promoting the New Deal reform program that was designed to keep a discontented working class from moving in the direction of independent political action." The author then went on to expose the kind of charges that were being brought against White on a totally unfounded basis.

"These events had quite an impact on Judy," stated Waters, "especially in her teenage years as reporters gathered outside her home trying to get interviews with family and friends. It was out of events like this that Judy's generation developed a deep hatred of the witch-hunt, and the House Un-American Activities Committee know as HUAC, with its hounding of people--innocent or guilty--like Harry Dexter White, destroying thousands of lives in the process.  
 
Effects of Stalinism
"Judy came out of this also with a great hatred of Stalinism," Waters said. "She understood how deeply corrupted the individuals were that got involved with this who confused the gains of the 1917 Russian Revolution with the twists and turns of the privileged bureaucracy headed by Joseph Stalin. Harry Dexter White, like others in his generation, was attracted to Stalinism."

In the grips of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Harry Dexter White had wanted to travel to the Soviet Union to witness the benefits that a planned economy could bring to the world.

Harry Dexter White readily acknowledged that many of his personal friends and associates in Washington were part of the circle of people being charged with espionage, explained Waters.

"What Judy understood was that many of that generation attracted to Stalinism were honored to be asked to help the Soviet Union in that way, especially in wartime. Judy deeply comprehended what Socialist Workers Party leader Jim Cannon used to say when he explained that Stalinism destroyed the best of generations, not the worst."

Waters urged meeting participants to get a copy of the new Pathfinder title Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia, an interview with Rodolfo Saldaña, which was conducted by Waters and Michael Taber in 1997. "I'm sure many of you will be impressed as I was when I talked to Saldaña and got his story. He was a leader of the Bolivian Communist Party at one time who broke from the Bolivian CP through being attracted to the Cuban Revolution. He became a genuine revolutionary. There weren't many people like that in Latin America or anywhere else in the world at that time. But the Cuban Revolution had opened up a totally different historical road that was also what Judy White was attracted to and became part of," said Waters. "Judy would have appreciated Saldaña's story had she been able to read it."  
 
Rise of women's liberation movement
Waters noted, as Lyons had done earlier in the meeting, that White was typical of a whole generation of women who were affected by the rise of the women's movement and who became cadres of the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance at the time.

"Women who joined our movement during that period of time never played second fiddle," said Waters. "The exact opposite happened and we were pushed at every step, every moment, in every way, to take on greater and greater leadership responsibility, far beyond what most of us thought or believed we were capable of.

"This wasn't because of some special policy towards women, but because the revolutionary character of the party and the Young Socialists means the organizations are always reaching to maximize the capacities and the abilities of every single individual to help them rise to the heights of whatever they are capable of doing."

Waters detailed the many leadership responsibilities White took on in the SWP, including being secretary for the large New York branch in the 1960s, women's liberation director for the party in New York, a secretary for the party's Political Committee, and party financial director responsible for corresponding and working with SWP branches.

White was elected to the SWP National Committee as an alternate member in 1971 and as a regular member at the 1977 party convention. In the 1980s, she served on the party's Control Commission for a couple of years. In 1974 she was a fraternal delegate to the world congress of the Fourth International.  
 
Struggles in Latin America
"Judy's role in the U.S. Committee for Justice to Latin American Political Prisoners (USLA) was one of the things she was most identified with," said Waters. "Judy carried out this responsibility not as a 'Latin Americanist' but as a proletarian revolutionary who completely identified with the struggles. She was one of the very best mass workers I've seen in the party," Waters said. "She loved working with people and she was completely comfortable getting involved with other forces who didn't agree with us on every question."

USLA was founded in 1966, a day after the firebombing of the party's headquarters in New York by a right-wing Cuban group during White's campaign for governor in 1966. The immediate impetus for the founding of USLA was the fact that a number of members and leaders of the communist movement in Latin America were facing extremely harsh repression. The best example was Hugo Blanco in Peru who was facing the death penalty for his work organizing a mass movement of peasants to take land from the wealthy landowners in Peru's La Convencion Valley in 1961-62.

These events, which were one of the high points of the class struggle in Latin America at that time, are detailed in the Pathfinder title Land or Death. Blanco was initially sentenced to death by a military court but after several years of a defense campaign, he was given 25 years in the infamous El Frontón prison on an island off the coast of Peru.

"On appeal Blanco's prosecutors asked for the death penalty," Waters said. "We joined others around the world in responding. It was in this context that USLA was launched." The breadth of USLA was very significant from the beginning, Waters explained. At its founding meeting, speakers on the platform who agreed to be executive board members of USLA included Paul Sweezy, who was the coeditor of Monthly Review; John Gerassi, author of the book The Great Fear in Latin America; Father Felix McGowan; Catarino Garza, who was at that time the Socialist Workers Party candidate for lieutenant governor of New York; and Joseph Hansen, who was editor of the Militant.

"From the very beginning, USLA was not a committee to defend just individuals who were part of our movement," said Waters. "The committee took up cases of Latin American political prisoners of all political tendencies, all political currents, in country after country of Latin America." USLA's efforts and the effort of others around the world resulted in Blanco being able to beat back the death penalty attempt again. He served seven years in prison before his release was won in late 1970. "Just as the Young Socialist Alliance convention was convening in New York that year, we learned that Hugo had finally been sprung from prison and it was just a joyous celebration for the entire convention," said Waters. After a visa fight that the U.S. government stretched out for years, Blanco was finally able to get into the United States in 1977 and spent two months on a speaking tour.

The high point of the USLA Justice Committee came with the defense work following the coup in Chile in 1973, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in thousands of workers and peasants being slaughtered by the military regime.

The committee turned, as thousands did in the United States and around the world, to responding to the situation faced by the victims of the U.S.-backed military dictatorship. And at that point, Judy White was on staff for USLA and editor of the committee's publication, the USLA Reporter. The committee organized a benefit art showing that raised $30,000 for the coup victims and their families. USLA issued a special issue of its Reporter running 10,000 copies. White went to Mexico to interview a number of those who were able get out. The USLA Justice Committee organized a meeting in New York City in which more than 1,300 took part.

White edited a USLA book titled Chile's Days of Terror, which was a collection of interviews with coup victims. "This USLA title," Waters said again pointing to the displays, "was copyrighted by Judy White and distributed by Pathfinder."

"The record of the Socialist Workers Party in defense of the Latin American political prisoners throughout the period of time that Judy was at the very center of it saved a good many lives of our comrades in Latin America and those from other political tendencies," said Waters. "This was an example of communist defense policy at its best and one of the proudest chapters in the history of the Socialist Workers Party."  
 
Launching of 'Perspectiva Mundial'
White was a staff writer for Intercontinental Press in 1976-1977, a weekly Marxist news magazine edited by Joseph Hansen. While on the IP staff, White, who was fluent in Spanish, began editing the Spanish-language section of the publication. This was a precursor to Perspectiva Mundial, which was launched in 1977. "In the fall of that year, she formally became the editor of Perspectiva Mundial on the masthead," Waters said, "but in point of fact she had been editing the magazine since its inception in collaboration with two comrades from Mexico who spent time in the United States helping get the publication off the ground. This year is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Perspectiva Mundial," said Waters. "I hope we can organize some appropriate celebrations of this fact around the country."

This was the period of Judy's greatest leadership responsibilities in the party, said Waters. "Later, Judy herself set limits on what she would and would not do. More and more she limited herself to what she was most comfortable with. The greatest disappointment from the party's point of view was that she was capable of doing more. We joked with her about her bourgeois beatnikism, or 'bohemian streak.' She was a disciplined cadre of the party for many years but at a certain point, in 1978, she walked into the office and said she was going to Mexico to be part of building a pyramid. She said 'that's what I want to do and I'll probably be back in a few years.'"  
 
Revolutions in Nicaragua and Grenada
Waters said White returned to the party in 1979–1980. "It was the strength of the Nicaraguan and Grenadian revolutions and the party's decision to concentrate our forces in the mines, mills, factories, and rail yards organized by the industrial unions that attracted Judy back to the party," said Waters. She was a party member for another 16 years, helping to build party branches in San Diego, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. She participated in the work of the party's industrial fractions in the United Auto Workers union and the International Association of Machinists as an aircraft assembler, on the production line at a Revlon cosmetics factory, and later in the kitchen at United Airlines. In 1984 White participated in a session of the party's leadership school, teaching Spanish there.

In the late 1980s she was part of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial Bureau that provided readers of those publications uninterrupted eyewitness coverage for more than a decade of the developments during the rise and fall of the Nicaraguan revolution.

"Judy's contributions were extremely important," Waters said. "But it was the party that she built that made it possible--the party she left as a legacy to the comrades coming onto the scene today."

John Benson, as chairperson of the meeting, read portions of several of the more than a dozen messages that were received. Among them was a message from Róger Calero, a meat packer and an activist in Local 789 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is fighting to win a contract at Dakota Premium Foods in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"I was a young participant in the revolutionary process in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1985," Calero wrote. "Working through these events with a communist in the United States was decisive to my integration into the class struggle in the United States and the communist movement here. Judy was one of those who helped explain to me the difference between revolutionary leadership and both social democracy and Stalinism."

Betsey Stone, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in Chicago, wrote about White's abilities as translator. She had an ability to get the "meaning of exactly what the speaker was saying, giving as accurate a translation as possible. She didn't try to improve on what the speaker said, or add her own idea or emphasis, so people--including those whose political ideas were different from hers--grew to trust and appreciate her translations. Often the applause she would get afterwards would match that given to the speaker."

Norton Sandler, from the SWP's national committee, told how White had twice contributed to the party's Capital Fund. The first was from a sizable inheritance she received and the second was from a back pay settlement she won from a San Diego employer who had laid her off out of seniority while providing jobs for male co-workers who had less seniority. Sandler urged participants in a position to do so to make a contribution of $1,000 or more to the SWP Capital Fund, which goes to the continued production of Pathfinder titles, including upgrading the printing equipment and building in New York where these books are produced.

Sandler explained that everyone present could contribute to the Judy White Party-Building Fund to honor her work in building the SWP for three and half decades. Participants contributed $3,500 to the fund at the Los Angeles meeting. Contributions to the Judy White Party-Building Fund can be sent to the SWP at 406 West Street, New York, NY 10014-2570.

Wendy Lyons is a sewing machine operator and the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. Norton Sandler contributed to this article.  
 
 
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