FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
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International Communist Workers Party | |
LOS ANGELES--“The circumstances of one’s life and the moment in which one lives require that one involve herself in the struggle. It’s not a question of what you like, ” said the comrade, the first time I met her.
In 1982 I showed up at the door of the family of a student from El Salvador. The young woman had said, “My mother likes [revolutionary] politics,” and that her mother had read several issues of the communist newspaper I sent home with her, and liked that too.
So, by way of introduction, I told her mother, “Your daughter says that you like [revolutionary] politics.”
She must have thought I was an idiot or a dilettante. But she invited me in and we talked, and she finally decided that my politics were better than my grasp of Spanish. We became friends and comrades.
Carmen was a garment worker with a young baby as well as three other children at home, and her involvement was limited by her circumstances and the ill health caused by racist medical care, especially during her last pregnancy. Nevertheless, she became active in the anti-racist struggles in the local school advisory committee, and was part of a group of comrades who went door-to-door in the neighborhood every Saturday with our communist newspaper.
She participated as actively as she could in the life of the party until she was hospitalized for months in 2007 with a complicated series of medical conditions which left her dependent on her adult children and sadly unable to participate actively.
Nevertheless, she supported the formation of the International Communist Workers’ Party in 2010. She sang with the ICWP chorus at our May Day Dinners and helped as she was able. As a veteran of the struggle in El Salvador, she was disgusted by the fmln’s betrayal of that struggle, even though some family members continued to support it.
She was inspired by the growth of the ICWP in El Salvador and South Africa and the political breakthrough that our communist line represents for the international working class in the struggle against revisionist betrayal. Comrades who were present at our dinner in October 2015, organized to raise money for the international conference in South Africa, will remember her enthusiastic support, and her inspired dancing.
She left us at the end of 2015, but the circumstances of our lives and the moment in which we live call on us all to renew our commitment to the struggle for a communist world.
—Her comrade