SEATTLE — Rashaad Ali, a 30-year member of the Socialist Workers Party, died Aug. 27 after battling illnesses for the last year. He was 78. A celebration of his life and political contributions to building the SWP took place here following a Militant Labor Forum Sept. 13. The forum, titled “Amnesty Now for All Immigrants in the U.S.!” was given by Rebecca Williamson, Socialist Workers Party candidate for King County Executive.
Forty-five people attended the celebration. Among them were Ali’s lifetime companion, Michele Smith, their daughter Aisha, Ali’s sister Cecile and his stepson Lev. Participants brought food and drink that was enjoyed between the forum and the celebration of Ali’s life. Norton Sandler, a member of the SWP National Committee, spoke at the celebration
Ali grew up in an East Harlem, New York, housing project. “Like millions of his generation, he was deeply impacted by the battle to overthrow Jim Crow segregation in the South and the battle against racist discrimination across the country,” said Sandler. “He was laying cable for the telephone company when he joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1969, and the SWP a short while later. He had already participated in protests against the war in Vietnam and learned about the Cuban Revolution. He came in contact with the Communist Party and the SWP, both of which sought to recruit him.”
A fighter for Black rights his whole life, Sandler said, “he was won to communism, deciding that building the SWP and fighting for the working class to take power were necessary to end racist oppression.”
Ali was in the SWP branch in New Orleans in the 1970s when party members were involved in organizing support for Gary Tyler, a 17-year-old youth framed up for murder during a desegregation battle in a nearby small city, as well as against the attacks and frame-up of Eddie Carthan, one of the first Blacks to be elected mayor in a Mississippi Delta town since Radical Reconstruction. Ali went to this town, Tchula, to join protests defending Carthan and to write about the fight for the Militant.
“Little is written today about the role Black workers played in desegregating U.S. basic industry in the 1960s and ’70s,” Sandler said. The New Orleans branch was active in the fight against a lawsuit filed by Brian Weber, a white lab technician at Kaiser Aluminum in Gramercy, Louisiana, who sued in 1974 to overturn a United Steelworkers of America-negotiated consent decree aimed at giving Black workers the opportunity to get out of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Weber claimed he was a victim of “reverse discrimination.” The consent decree assured that Blacks and women would get 50% of the places in a new job-training program.
SWP cadres helped sell hundreds of copies of a Pathfinder pamphlet called The Weber Case: New Threat to Affirmative Action in factories, mines and mills across the country. In an important victory for Black rights, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the consent decree in 1979.
SWP branches were deeply involved in the 1974-75 fight to desegregate Boston’s schools. “Thousands of white students boycotted classes and white mobs took to the streets in an attempt to thwart court-ordered school desegregation. Black students arriving by bus at South Boston High School, where opposition to court-ordered busing has been strongest, were greeted by a threatening mob of 400 who screamed, ‘Niggers go home!’” wrote the Militant, which championed the fight from the beginning.
The Boston NAACP joined forces with the SWP and others to mobilize against the mobs. Ali participated in a conference of 2,000 at Harvard University in early 1975 that founded the National Student Coalition Against Racism, which worked to support the Black students. He was part of the defense team at that conference that prevented Maoist-inspired ultraleft thugs from breaking it up.
“At its 1979 convention the SWP voted to implement a ‘turn’ where party members and leaders would get jobs in basic industry,” Sandler said. “The decision followed major world events, including the 1974-75 worldwide recession, the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, the struggle in Boston and new stirrings in the labor movement. These developments in the class struggle laid the groundwork for building fractions in the unions, to join in fights there and recruit. This has been the party’s course ever since.
“Rashaad jumped into this, working in rail in two cities, in meatpacking, in garment and at Machinist union-organized United Airlines in San Francisco. We worked together there, building union support for the 1997 Teamsters strike against UPS.”
Sandler described how Ali shouldered various leadership responsibilities in the party, serving as branch organizer in New Orleans, Baltimore and New York. He was the SWP candidate for mayor of New Orleans, the New York City Council and governor of Maryland, among others. He joined the Militant staff in the 1980s.
Ali served on the party’s National Committee between 1984 and 1990. He was part of the SWP’s fraternal delegation at the 1984 World Congress of the Fourth International.
Ali left the party in 2000. Several years later he became an organized supporter of the party, which he remained until his death.
Participants in the celebration contributed over $4,700 to the work of the SWP.