Lee Oleson
Lee Oleson, a member and supporter of the Socialist Workers Party for five decades, died July 12 in East Orange, New Jersey, after battling long-term health challenges. He was 81 years old.
Lee was one of hundreds of young people active in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. He was arrested in December 1964, when the campus administration attempted to crack down on those organizing solidarity with the fight against Jim Crow segregation.
Oleson met members of the SWP and Young Socialist Alliance and later joined the party. In Washington, D.C., in the mid-1970s, he built solidarity with striking printers at the Washington Post.
Oleson could speak Spanish and helped other party members learn it as the party reached more deeply into Spanish-speaking layers of the working class.
In the 1980s, he worked as a steelworker in Dallas. He was active in the fight against cop brutality and in winning support for the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Oleson was the SWP candidate for U.S. Congress in 1982.
In Omaha, Nebraska, he built the SWP as a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers. He was the party’s candidate for governor of Nebraska in 1990. After leaving the party, Oleson supported its work, helping to produce and distribute books on revolutionary working-class politics. Despite the challenges he faced, he followed the party’s work closely, optimistic about the opportunities in front of the SWP.
Don Mackle
New York, New York