Comrades Bid Farewell to Internationalist Class Fighter Getachew Lemma
LOS ANGELES, October 3— “Thank you Getachew. You and your wife and comrade have welcomed me into this party and made me feel part of the family,” said Maria.
“Comrade,” said Tony, “I’ve known you since I was a teenager. You have been an example to me as a communist. I pledge to carry on the struggle.”
Comrades, friends, and family gathered around Getachew’s bedside on September 8 in the last moments of his life. They sang “Venceremos” (We will win) and “Bella Ciao” (Fond Farewell) and spoke of his contributions as a committed communist. “From Addis Ababa to San Salvador, in every mine and mill,” sang Jay. “Where workers fight and organize, that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill,” highlighting the enduring legacy of every class fighter.
Getachew Lemma was raised by a single mother who had participated in the armed resistance against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia early in World War II. His mother’s resolute spirit inspired him throughout his life as a class fighter and a respecter of revolutionary women.
As a young person he was a rebel, refusing to snitch on his fellow students and workers. He quit school to join the Navy. There he helped organize small rebellions and ended up going AWOL.
An uprising began in Ethiopia in the early 1970s against the US client Haile Selassie. Getachew got involved. A friend gave him a copy of Marx’s Das Kapital. Studying it, he began to understand the need for class analysis, organization, and a plan to end capitalism.
The Dergue, a military junta and Soviet client, took power in 1974. Getachew’s friends were influenced by Maoist politics. They soon became the targets of what the Dergue and the 13,000 Cuban troops that backed them called “Red Terror.” Getachew saw his friends shot down and his own life and that of his mother threatened. He left Ethiopia as a merchant seaman.
On board ship and in port, he conversed with workers all over the world about the need for revolution, not reform. As things became more dangerous for him, he sought refuge, first in Germany and then in the US.
As a student in Oklahoma in the 1980s, Getachew read every Marxist newspaper in the university library. He decided that the best line and practice was in the pages of the PLP newspaper Challenge. Many of the best articles were written by comrades who later helped to found the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP), which split from PLP in 2010.
When Getachew moved to Los Angeles, he sought out and joined PLP. He distributed communist literature to industrial workers and helped with the high school organizing, marches, mobilizations, and meetings. He confronted the anti-immigrant racists and was arrested in a march in 2007. He was always a principled Marxist and an internationalist. Getachew was a founding member of the ICWP.
In his last few years, a debilitating condition in his feet limited Getachew’s ability to participate. He continued to do whatever he could. He wrote for Red Flag, mailed it to readers around the US, and participated in zoom meetings.
In meetings, his contributions (though sometimes long-winded) always had powerful messages that demonstrated his willingness to listen and engage. His profound class anger would burst out in the words, “Those capitalist bloodsuckers!” When his final illness prevented him from writing, he continued to read about revolutionary struggles. He had his adult grandchild read to him from Marx’s writings on historical materialism.
One thing that Getachew taught the first comrades he met was an Ethiopian saying: He who eats alone, dies alone. The collective way he struggled to live his life guaranteed that he did not die alone. Comrades, friends, and family surrounded him.