(Last weekend I attended a celebration of Pat Fry’s long and eventful life in her hometown of Detroit. It was a fitting tribute to a beloved friend and comrade who died in August after a long illness. Everything was done with grace – remarks by family members, friends, coworkers, and comrades, a slide show that captured Pat in the many seasons of her life, and, not least, beautiful music. Here are my remarks. For the record, I wasn’t the main speaker. I joined other friends of Pat in the latter part of the celebration.)

In February I visited Pat. I flew from NY to Detroit where I was picked up by some friends. On the drive to Traverse City, I spent much of the time wondering what we would talk about. But I shouldn’t have worried – I had barely stepped through the door when Pat told me what was on the agenda.

First, did we – the generation of the sixties – make a difference in our country’s political life? Second, what will it take to beat Trump and the MAGA movement in next year’s election? And, finally, and not surprisingly, what can be done to maximize labor’s participation and leadership in the elections and generally.

I can’t recall what we decided in that hour and a half, but it doesn’t matter. For me what was so special was the opportunity to spend time with Pat. It took me back to the three years in the late eighties when we worked together in a two room office on Bagley Ave in Detroit.

I can’t quantify how much I enjoyed that experience at the time and how it remains a memorable experience to me to this day. In recent years, when we would meet for lunch in New York, I would tell her that I couldn’t think of a better coworker than her. I don’t know if she believed me, but it’s the truth. Pat was a joy to work with. She possessed an uncommon modesty, enormous energy and a high political IQ, while always finding time for her family and friends. She was never stuffy and “fun” was something she did well.

What is more, I have to believe, the years she spent working in Detroit as the correspondent for the People’s World were the happiest and most fulfilling time of her long and varied political life.

Pat, I’m sure, felt a lot of conflicting emotions during her struggle with cancer. But I believe one of those, you might be surprised, was gratitude. Gratitude to grow up in such a loving family. Gratitude to know and count as a friend all of you sitting here and so many more around the country and world. And, gratitude for the opportunity to fully live a life that she envisioned and chose for herself when she was a young woman, barely out of high school.

Back then she set her sights on becoming a drum major for peace, economic justice, equality and socialism, and against racism and oppression in its many forms. And, not surprisingly, she banged that drum nearly every day of her life, even when she was grievously ill.

Yes, there were, I’m sure, moments of sadness, of heartache, of defeat, but her throughline on most days was that of a happy warrior in the struggle for a just world.

As you can see, I’m wearing a t-shirt from Bruce Springsteen’s recent tour. My daughters bought it for me in August when the three of us went to his concert near Boston. Listening that night, I thought about which songs Pat would have especially liked – she was a fan of Bruce too. I can only guess, maybe Badlands, No Surrender, Dancing in the Dark, Thunder Road, Born to Run, Land of Hope and Dreams. But this I know – she would have loved the song he closed with: “I’ll See You In My Dreams.”

In that song he pays homage to his deceased band mates. He sings:

“The road is long and seeming without end

The days go on, I remember you my friend

And though you’re gone and my heart’s been emptied it seems

I’ll see you in my dreams

When all our summers have come to an end

I’ll see you in my dreams

We’ll meet and live and laugh again

I’ll see you in my dreams

Yeah, up around the river bend

For death is not the end

And I’ll see you in my dreams.”

I don’t know if I will see Pat in my dreams. I hope to be so lucky. But even if I don’t, I’m sure she will show up unannounced from time to time in my waking moments and put a smile on my face, a tear in my eye, and perhaps offer me some needed advice and encouragement.

I was the state leader of the Communist Party of Michigan from 1977-1988. During that time, I followed and commented on the contract negotiations between the UAW and the Big 3. The late 70s marked the beginning of an era of concessionary bargaining by the UAW top leadership. It was not so much a break from the bargaining strategy – Reutherism – of the previous quarter century as an adaptation of that strategy to changing conditions in the auto market and the declining vigor and mounting contradictions of U.S. capitalism.

But that bargaining strategy now appears to be fading into the past. If the current strike is a telling expression of its demise, the election of a new leadership embracing class struggle trade unionism is the motor of this process. Or to put it differently, the election of Shawn Fain and his team and the 180 degree shift in bargaining posture and practice is bringing down the curtain on Reutherism in its recent as well as earlier forms.

And it is all the more remarkable because of the state of the UAW that Fain and the new executive board inherited. It was in about as bad shape as you could imagine: its leadership swimming in a sea of corruption scandals and jail sentences, its members demoralized, and the auto company execs were doing high fives. Less than half of the union’s roughly 250,000 members voted in the first ever direct election of the president and executive board in March of this year. And in the runoff election that quickly followed Fain narrowly prevailed over incumbent president Ray Curry, slightly more than half of the union’s members casting a ballot. What is more, the new executive board of 15 was divided with Fain’s supporters holding a thin majority. Hardly propitious signs!

In short order, though, thanks in part to Curry who upon losing appealed for unity and in part to Fain, who quickly turned the union’s attention and energy to the upcoming negotiations, the mood and spirit shifted. And now – only a few months later – the auto workers are on strike, the leadership is leading the charge, and the demands are, in many ways, radical. No doubt the mood in the suites of the auto executives has shifted too. No longer are they laughing on their way to the bank. More likely, the words out of their mouths are: Holy Shit! What’s happening! I didn’t see this coming!

It doesn’t hurt that the Biden administration is on the side of the union in the current negotiations. One would have to go back to Roosevelt to find a president who is as partisan to labor as Biden.

Of course, if Biden and his team could find a way to dramatize that support for all to see, nothing but good would come from it in. Not least, it would distinguish him from Trump’s demagogic attempt to position himself on the side of the auto workers and manufacturing workers across the Midwest.

It takes no special insight to say that a successful strike in auto will surely give a boost to labor’s resurgence as well as class and democratic struggles going forward, including next year’s elections.

Each of us, in big or small ways, should find a way to give meaning to Solidarity Forever.

Many of the 50th anniversary retrospectives on the Popular Unity government in Chile (1970 – September 11, 1973) in recent weeks argue that if President Allende and his supporters had only done this or that the coup would have been averted and a rapid advance to socialism would have been possible. The problem with this sort of analysis is that it lacks any sense of the real constraints on and resistance to the Allende government as well as the real difficulties of any revolutionary process.

To assume, as many do, that Allende and Popular Unity were captives of illusions about the nature of the state, the neutrality of the military, the non intervention intentions of neighboring countries and the US government, the imperative of sustained mobilization of popular forces, the necessity of broader, cross class alliances, and the urgency of retaining the political initiative, I find problematic. They may have had illusions to one degree or another as well as mistaken policies. Few of us are free of illusions. I know that from my own experience. But before arriving at such a conclusion, one has to study the experience concretely and bear in mind that the revolutionary process is complex in any circumstances. And, in the case of Chile novel too insofar as it was an attempt to move towards socialism along an electoral path free of civil war for the first time.

Moreover, its failure to do so, to achieve its objectives isn’t proof positive that such a path is foreclosed going forward. Such a conclusion, history suggests, would be premature to say the least. In fact, the Chilean experience, understood in all of complexity, is more than suggestive that such a path to socialist transformation is necessary and viable.

I never envied the rich and wealthy, except for moments when I open a bottle of wine and pour some into my glass. I don’t drink Ripple any longer. I upgraded as I got older. But I suspect that the bottle of wine that is served on the patio of some estate in Richville USA is of a better quality than the bottle that finds its way onto my table. And that makes me a bit envious, not to mention pisses me off!

What a great interview of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. I couldn’t help but notice shifts in her thinking toward the Democratic Party, members in Congress, and coalition politics. I wish more on the left possessed a politics and analytical disposition that was equally flexible and dialectical as hers.

Frankly, too many on the left, unlike AOC, are politically stuck. Their categories of analysis – center, right, left – are static and frozen – rather than open ended and fluid. Once political leader or a political/social movement or political coalition are typed, they stay typed. They’re enclosed and remaine in one category or another.

What is more, Joe Biden, it is said, is a “Bourgeois” or “Establishment” politician. The Democratic party’s center of political gravity is frozen in time, dangling somewhere in the neoliberal era. And liberals have no place in this discourse, except as a term of ridicule and opprobrium.

In short, movement, complexity and contradictory locations have no place in this rigid analysis. Political life is lifeless and petrified.

But here’s the problem: If taken too seriously by too many, the winning of next year’s election becomes an unnecessarily steep climb. Luckily most activists have more common sense, not to mention analytical skills.