Remembering Pat Scott
Former co-workers of Pat Scott held a memorial picnic and celebration of her life Sept. 6 in Federal Way, Washington. She had been a member of “Our Walmart,” which fought to organize a union there from 2011 to 2015. Through that experience, Scott met members of the Socialist Workers Party on the job and became a staunch friend and supporter of the party. She died March 17 after a long illness.
Along with other Walmart workers nationwide, Scott went on strike in December 2014, part of a nationwide week of actions. The United Food and Commercial Workers union backed Our Walmart’s campaign for better wages and conditions on the job. After the strike, Scott was fired, but won her job back, working there over 20 years.
Scott worked to build support for Alyson Kennedy, the SWP candidate for president in 2016 and 2020. “You guys are the only ones I see who are fighting for workers’ rights,” she told party members. She used her artistic talents to design a campaign button for Kennedy that the SWP campaign printed and used around the country in 2016, and she helped get the Militant and books by party leaders around to workers she met.
Scott traveled across the region with party members to bring support from Walmart workers to other labor struggles, including to support the 2017-18 silver miners strike in Mullin, Idaho; to Yakima in 2020 to back a strike by apple packinghouse workers; and to Portland, Oregon, to walk picket lines with bakery union members on strike at Nabisco in 2021.
After reading the Pathfinder book It’s the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System about the fight to free five framed-up Cuba revolutionaries in the U.S., Scott said: “I can sum this up — under capitalism there is no justice for working people.”
The SWP was Pat’s party. We need more Pat Scotts!
Rebecca Williamson
Seattle, Washington