SAN LEANDRO, Calif. — The life and political contributions of Jim Altenberg and the Socialist Workers Party were celebrated at a meeting here Nov. 16. Altenberg died Oct. 31 at age 70.
Talks, displays and messages to the meeting highlighted the history of the SWP and the growing interest in the party among workers today.
Betsey Stone, organizer of the party’s Oakland branch, chaired the meeting. “Jim joined the SWP in Denver in 1978 when he was 24,” Stone said. “How was he won to the party? It began when he was in high school. He was inspired by the Black liberation struggle and supported the fight to desegregate the schools in Denver. He participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War.”
As a member of the Phoenix branch of the party, Altenberg supported copper workers on strike against Phelps Dodge. “Jim wrote for the Militant from Morenci, Arizona, a company town where Mexican workers suffered blatant discrimination,” she said. “The union battles that brought an end to segregation in the copper towns of Arizona gave Jim optimism about what the working class can accomplish.”
Altenberg was won — like others of his generation — to a party whose roots are grounded in international proletarian communist continuity. From Marx and Engels to Lenin and Trotsky, leaders of the Russian Revolution, and carried forward by the Socialist Workers Party. He was won to the perspective that a socialist revolution can and needed to be made in the U.S. and in other capitalist countries. He was inspired by the Cuban Revolution under the leadership of Fidel Castro. He was won to a party where members decide and work together to do what is needed.
Norton Sandler, a leader of the SWP in Los Angeles, said Altenberg joined as party members were involved in the industrial unions and in their fightback against the attacks of the bosses and their state, in the coal mines, steel and other industries. He highlighted Altenberg’s participation as a process operator and union member at the Tosco oil refinery near here.
“Our comrades in this and other industries won respect from fellow trade unionists by working safely, and resisting attempts by profit-driven bosses to dangerously cut corners,” Sandler said.
“Jim wrote for the Militant, detailing the unsafe conditions that led to an explosion where he worked that killed four fellow workers.”
Altenberg resigned from the party in 2000.
Later he joined the party’s supporters auxiliary, those who support the party by working to keep in print the programmatic conquests, won in struggle, recorded in books prepared by party leaders, including writings and speeches of other revolutionaries.
“Messages to the meeting describe Jim’s diligence, attention to detail and working with others as equals,” Jim White, who worked with Altenberg as a supporter, said in his remarks. “These are values common to those who support the party’s work and keep its program in print.”
A display highlighted the SWP’s turn to the industrial working class and its unions in the late 1970s. It featured the party’s involvement in the mass proletarian movement that smashed Jim Crow segregation and the SWP’s leadership role in the movement to end Washington’s war in Vietnam.
Another panel, “The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward,” celebrated the party’s 2024 campaign of Rachele Fruit for president and Dennis Richter for vice president, which advanced a road forward for workers to organize to defend their class interests. Another panel highlighted the work of the supporters auxiliary. Altenberg’s political life and contributions were part of these panels.
‘Growing interest in the party’
“We are living in times when the party finds a growing interest in the party’s course,” Dave Prince, a member of the SWP National Committee, told the meeting, “a growing interest in working-class struggles among exploited producers and others.
“They want to know, ‘Where is this going? What is the cause? How to stop World War III? What is to be done?’
“For the Socialist Workers Party, for the working class, this is not a period of despair, or seeing the world as simply on the precipice,” he said. “But a world in which — through struggle and great events — lines are drawn, class consciousness and politicization develop — conditions that spur the advance of building proletarian parties, of the organization of the working class, and of its capacity to take state power in alliance with exploited producers.
“This is what the Socialist Workers Party looks forward to winning recruits to.”
Sixty-three people attended the meeting, including members of Altenberg’s family and that of his long-time companion Carole Lesnick. Participants contributed $4,687 to the work of the SWP. A delicious potluck buffet was served.