Vol. 80/No. 5      February 8, 2016

 

Letters

 
Bea Bryant supported communist movement
Bea Bryant, a decades-long supporter of the international communist movement, died in Blenheim, Ontario, Jan. 13 at the age of 93.

Bryant grew up in a poor French-speaking farm family in Swan Lake, Manitoba. She became a primary school teacher in Toronto.

Repulsed by Washington’s war in Korea, inspired by the anti-Stalinist revolution in Hungary and won to the revolutionary perspectives of communist leader Leon Trotsky, who fought to defend the Leninist course of the Russian Revolution against the bureaucratic counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin, she joined the Socialist Educational League, a predecessor of today’s Communist League in Canada.

In 1961 Bea and her husband, George Bryant, then members of the League for Socialist Action, formed as the Canadian movement expanded, went to Cuba for six weeks as part of the party’s effort to learn about the revolution and bring that back to workers in Canada. She was active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which organized to get out the truth about revolutionary Cuba and protested Washington’s moves against it.

She helped to recruit to the communist movement a new generation attracted by the Cuban Revolution, the fight against the imperialist war in Vietnam and other developments in the class struggle.

In 1986 Bea and George moved to southern Ontario. She remained an active supporter of the Communist League, helping to distribute the Militant newspaper and books on revolutionary, working-class politics, published by Pathfinder Press. She was a thoughtful and critical reader of the Militant, which published many of her letters.

In the final 15 years of her life Bryant was active in the fight to win the freedom of the Cuban Five, revolutionaries framed up and imprisoned in the U.S. Responding to an appeal in the Militant, she began writing to them, and they responded regularly.

“Every year she received a birthday card from Gerardo Hernández,” George Bryant noted. She was overjoyed to learn of the victory with the return of the last three of the Five to Cuba in December 2014.

The Bryant’s home near the shore of Lake Erie became a bed and breakfast spot for members and supporters of the communist movement. Good food and sharing experiences in building the communist movement were always on the agenda, as well as tours of her well-kept flower garden.
John Steele
Montreal, Quebec

Land use article ‘right on the money’

The article, “Oregon Actions Demand ‘Free Hammonds,’ Open Land Use,” in the Jan. 25 issue and the accompanying editorial are right on the money. They are a convincing affirmation that the Militant is published in the interests of all working people, both wage workers and producers on the land.
Doug Jenness
Tucson, Arizona

Plans to return to Cuba

I would like to receive a year’s subscription to the Militant. I am Cuban and I plan to return to Cuba as soon as I leave prison.
A prisoner
Florida  
 
 
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