OAKLAND, Calif. — Karen Ray, a member of the Socialist Workers Party for more than two decades, died at her home in Westminster, Colorado, Nov. 11 following a long fight against cancer. She was 63.
Ray joined the Young Socialist Alliance in the late 1970s as a student at New York University and joined the SWP soon after. She got a job on an auto assembly line as part of the party’s work to strengthen and transform the industrial unions into class-struggle organizations.
Later, she became an aircraft worker at Boeing in the Seattle area and was a leader of the party’s work in that region. In 1989, Boeing workers went on strike for 48 days. Ray, who worked at Boeing’s Everett plant, was a member of District 751 of the Machinists union and walked the picket lines and helped organize to win solidarity.
Ray took responsibilities as an organizer of SWP branches, was a party candidate for public office, worked in the movement’s print shop and served on the party’s National Committee as an alternate member.
She resigned from the party some 20 years ago. In recent years, she joined the party’s supporters auxiliary to participate in the production of Pathfinder books written by leaders of the party and other revolutionaries. These efforts help keep the party’s communist continuity in print.
Fellow SWP supporter Karl Butts, who collaborated with Ray in preparing Pathfinder books for publication, says she “conducted herself with integrity, taking a serious attitude toward any assignment she took on.”
When this writer talked to Ray in October, she said she had been fired for missing work as her cancer advanced, and the boss had just sent her a $500 severance check. She said she could think of nothing better to do with it than contribute it to the SWP’s party-building fund. We received it a few days later.