It’s been roughly two months since I (and others) received an email from Peggy Fry, informing us that her beloved sister and our beloved friend Pat had died peacefully with her family at her side after a battle with brain cancer. 

In talking to Pat in the final months of her life I can’t recall a moment when she displayed any anger or despair. If the prospect of leaving a world in which she was so engaged and where so much was still to be done dragged her down, it wasn’t obvious to me. 

If anything, this daughter of Detroit who assimilated its rhythms, sensibilities, values, political astuteness, and toughness was more upbeat than I was. Even though Pat knew that she wasn’t going to reach the mountain top from where she could see the promised land or fight the next great battle in November of next year when tens of millions of people cast their vote for the next president and elect a new Congress, you would never know it. 

I shouldn’t have been entirely surprised though. Feeling sorry for herself for too long wasn’t Pat’s style. While cancer was probably the biggest challenge of her life, her unshakeable convictions, her love of her family and friends, and her sense of an “active” oneness with people fighting for a just and liveable world still captured her attention and touched her emotions.

Even when she learned that the cancer had spread, I didn’t hear despair in her voice. She said her health prognosis wasn’t good, but she wasn’t about to walk away from this fight anymore than she walked away from a good political fight against injustice.

She knew well from experience, however, that not every fight can be won. And at some point in her battle against the cancer ravaging her, she concluded that the climb was too steep and too painful, that the fight couldn’t be won. Soon thereafter she decided to suspend further treatment and go into hospice care at her sister’s home in Traverse City, Michigan, where she had been living for several months, while undergoing treatment. 

In a phone call, she told me of her decision almost matter of factly. I listened as best I could and mumbled something back to her. After finishing the call though, I had a good cry. The only consolation was that she would be surrounded by people she loved and who loved her, people who would take extraordinary care of her — her sister Peggy in the first place. 

Occasionally after that, we would talk on the phone. And now and then I would send a note to Peggy asking how Pat was doing and she would send me back a note updating Pat’s condition. What I heard wasn’t encouraging.  

Worried, I flew to Detroit in February and got a ride to Traverse City to visit her, probably for the last time, I thought. All the while I was sitting in the back seat of the car wondering what I was going to say and what feelings to express. 

But thanks to Pat, my dilemma quickly disappeared. Before I could get a word out, shed a tear, or express a hint of sadness, she took control of the conversation, insisting that we speak to what was on her mind. 

Which was, first, what was the likelihood of Trump winning the next election? And if he did, what would a Trump White House and a vengeful MAGA movement mean for the country’s future? Second, what would the makeup of a coalition that could defeat Trump look like? Third, where does labor fit into this existential struggle. Pat never – and rightly so – left out the “labor question.” 

And, finally, did the movement that she and I joined in the sixties make a difference? 

This conversation went on for roughly an hour and a half, only pausing a moment at 4 o’clock to move to the table where we began happy hour with her family, including her gracious, supportive, and loving mother, Ana. Soon though, Pat said she was tired and needed to rest. 

I don’t know if our conversation neatly tied together answers to her questions, but to me it didn’t matter. The joy of the moment was in the opportunity to spend a little time with Pat, much like the old days when we shared an office in downtown Detroit. She was the energetic and skillful correspondent of the Daily World, while I was the state leader of the Communist Party there.

In any case, I knew my visit was over and my final goodbye was in order. As best I could, I told Pat that as great a political activist as she is, she is also a great friend to so many of us. I told her that she brings to our lives buckets of friendship, kindness, joy, empathy, intelligence, compassion, and, not least, fun. And we are the better for it! And that counts for a lot.

There was no overstatement here. I’m sure others who knew and loved Pat would say much the same. And I’m sure that we will now take the many beautiful pieces of Pat – her kindness, humility, generosity of spirit, restless mind, readiness to stand up to racists and racism, and more – and carry them forward in our lives.  

While walking away, with snow coming down in the nearly empty main street of Traverse City, bounded on one side by a beautiful bay, I thought to myself that Pat is, even on the doorstep of death, what she was in life: intensely political, deeply human, self effacing, beloved by so many, and the kind of person and activist that we should all strive to be.

Pat also had that rare quality that many of us, can’t claim: an ability to listen attentively and empathetically to anyone, no matter who the person.

I don’t know where I fell on the list of her friends, but I didn’t care. To be on the list was enough for me. She could have easily written me off years ago for we were on opposite sides in a very bitter internal fight in the Communist Party. And the truth is she was more right than I was. But she didn’t. Instead, she extended to me a hand of friendship, which I greatly appreciated back then and now. 

In recent years, I have lost a lot of friends, some go back to my boyhood, some to my college days, and some to my life in radical politics. Regretfully, Pat now joins that list. 

I don’t know if I will see Pat in my dreams. I hope so. But even if I don’t, I’m sure she will show up unannounced in my thoughts now and then, bringing with her a smile, a good laugh, and some good advice.

As Bob Marley sang: 

“Good friends we have had, oh good friends we’ve lost along the way.

In this bright future you can’t forget your past

So dry your tears I say.”

Finally, Pat hoped to have a seat on the freedom train when it arrives safely in the station where bells are ringing and a new day is dawning. The trouble is it has its own time schedule and pays little attention to ours. 

On the night before his life was cruelly cut short by a racist gunman, Martin Luther King in a speech said,

“Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land.”

Pat, I would like to think, saw in the course of her own life some glimpses of the promised land as well. 

In the example of Viola Liuzzo, who Pat at a young age greatly admired.  

In the May 2, 1968 unauthorized strike and shut down of Dodge Main – Chrysler’s assembly plant in Hamtramck – staged by DRUM  (Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement) and other Chrysler workers, including her dear friend, Lee Cain. 

In the election of Coleman Young in 1973, Detroit first Black Mayor and then his abolition of the much reviled STRESS. 

In the acquittal of Angela Davis who had become in the course of her life and death struggle a symbol of radical resistance and Black Power. 

In the thousands who in 1971 marched down Woodward Avenue in opposition to the war in Vietnam. 

In her first step on the soil of socialist Cuba in the same year. 

In September 19, 1981 when the labor movement and its allies – close to a million strong – descended on Washington protesting the policies of the Reagan administration. 

In the tens of thousands who gathered in Washington for the 50th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 march on Washington led by Martin Luther King.

In the million strong who assembled on the east side of Manhattan and marched to Central Park, demanding no deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe and a freeze on their production here.

In the visit of a free Nelson Mandela to Detroit in 1990 where in the old Tiger Stadium on Michigan Avenue he was greeted by nearly 50,000 people and listened to the music of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. 

In the rise of Black Lives Matter and the international protests to the police assassination of George Floyd.

In the spontaneous celebrations on that Saturday in November when Joe Biden was officially declared the winner of the 2020 presidential campaign. 

In the simple gathering of her closest friends sharing a glass of wine and enjoying the laughter, conversation, sisterhood and camaraderie of each other.

Of course, this is all speculative, but also easily imaginable.

To all of us who knew Pat – her family in the first place – we will miss her terribly. But we will also draw strength and courage from the love and legacy that she leaves behind. 

Some observations on the Ohio vote last week:

To begin, the vote in Ohio on Issue 1, repudiating the Republican Party’s transparent attempt to deny voters the opportunity to either support or oppose abortion rights this coming November is a big deal — in Ohio and far beyond. It gives a lift and momentum to activists there and across the country which can make all the difference in the world in the year ahead. Victories beget popular energy, confidence and more victories. 

Meanwhile, the defeat of Issue 1 in Ohio, and the size of the defeat, roughly 57% to 43%, is arguably a landslide and cannot but give pause and worry to the MAGA movement there and elsewhere. To some degree their confidence has to be shaken, leaving them wondering if what happened in Ohio is a headwind that will carry over into next year. 

Second, the mobilizing power of Dobbs is striking, if not surprising. It’s a court ruling that won’t go away, that won’t be buried, even by our fast moving news cycle. Its announcement generated anger, awakened a movement, and fueled the rise of new oppositional constituencies, cutting across party, popular, and partisan lines. It is fair to say that the “judicial assassination” of abortion rights, courtesy of the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court a year ago, didn’t settle anything, anymore than the “Great Compromises,” in the 19th Century settled the “slave question.”

I’m not an historian, but, I suspect, a case can be made by someone who is that the Roberts Court finds no rival in the 20th century that matches its reactionary, anti-democratic character, nature, and actions. If the analytical reach, however, is widened into the 19th century, the Taney Court might, I would think, provide a worthy competitor for that infamous distinction.

Third, in turning abortion into a crime, Dobbs has turned the vote into a powerful weapon to contest, delegitimize, and rebuke this horrendous ruling. Isn’t this what we saw in Ohio last week? Voters – in city, suburb, and, to a lesser degree, in small towns and rural communities – went in droves to vote in order to give themselves the opportunity to inscribe abortion rights into their state constitution in November, to make abortion legal, safe, and available. 

Fourth, what secured the victory in Ohio was not only the energy and righteousness of the coalition opposing referendum 1, but also the breadth and reach of that coalition. One without the other would be like a bird attempting to fly with only one wing. A similar pairing of energy and breadth will be required going forward into the next year if we hope to build upon this extraordinary victory in Ohio of our side.

Fifth, the rejection of this transparently anti-democratic maneuver is a reminder, if we needed one, that the Kansas vote, protecting women’s right to control their bodily autonomy, wasn’t an outlier. Barely a year later it looks as if it was but the first gale wind in a gathering storm across the country. It is also a cautionary tale against premature celebrations and wishful thinking that our opponents were guilty of when Dobbs was announced. It is fair to say that movement in an anti-democratic direction doesn’t automatically bring about a counter movement in a democratic one. But, in this case, it did.  

Sixth, figuring also into any explanation of the election results is that Ohio voters are increasingly onto the Ohio Republican Party. They have watched its evolution into a party of right wing authoritarianism, dominated by Trump and his acolytes — Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, for one, comes to mind. By means of gerrymandering, voter repression, and legislative skullduggery, voters across the state have been disenfranchised. That it has been done in the language and images of racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, hostility toward immigrants from the Global South, and a counterfeit and ugly nationalism should come as no surprise. It’s the bread and butter of today’s Republican Party and the MAGA movement! Last week the tables started to turn.

What is more, up until last week, this method of anti-democratic governance appeared on the surface to “work.” But in rebuffing Issue 1, one has to think and hope that a new day is dawning in the Buckeye state. 

Finally, in deciding in favor of Dobbs, the Supreme Court overturned a right that was considered deeply, many of us thought permanently, embedded in the legal and democratic fabric of our country. In so doing, the court impressed on tens of millions, including Ohio voters, the frightening fact that no rights are safe, as long as this court remains in place. This court isn’t a protector of rights, but a bulldozer of them. Much of what the MAGA movement can’t do politically and legislatively is off-loaded to the Roberts court which is only too happy to assist. For some time, it has been, according to the Linda Greenhouse, a brilliant analyst of the Supreme Court over many years, a wrecking ball, single-mindedly and methodically upending our constitutional and democratic order. But with the addition of three new justices of unassailable right wing authoritarian temperament and credentials, the Roberts court gives little weight to judicial restraint and legal precedent (stare decisis), even majority sentiment. If there are divisions and inhibitions among them, they are tactical in nature, involving the pace and timing of their judicial activism and onslaught on democratic rights and our democracy, not their disposition and aims. Is it any wonder that a conversation has begun of ways to restructure and reform the highest court in the land?

What strikes me about Sinead O’Connor’s interpretation of “Danny Boy” is the controlled beauty of her voice. I’ve always felt a kinship with her in that we both rebelled against the carefully constructed and imposed morality cages of the Catholic Church – cages that the Church itself never employed to govern its own (im)morality and predatory behavior. I’m so glad that I shedded that institution decades ago, although that is the easy thing to do. Shedding its morality cages, which are internal, is something altogether different, but it can be done! For me it took a bit of a FU attitude and a love at a young age of rock and roll.

(I want to thank Max Elbaum for allowing me to post a note I sent to him in response to his recent analysis of the MAGA danger.)

Hi Max,

You probably saw this, but in case you haven’t, I’m sending it along. I’ve also been meaning to send you a brief note in response to your recent article/analysis of the MAGA threat. To begin, I thought it was excellent – the kind of analysis I don’t find in many other places – and was glad to hear that it appeared on various media sites and was well received. 

I do have a few thoughts upon reading it.

1. If Trump fades as a result of his indictments and legal problems, it does change things in some ways. As unlikely as that is at this moment, if he is forced to withdraw as a presidential candidate, it’s not simply a case of the next guy up, as they say in sports, and full speed ahead. No one else, I would say, in the GOP’s galaxy of “stars” has demonstrated the same ability to mobilize and incite a mass base on a national level quite like Trump does. Nor has anyone else so single mindedly and brazenly – DeSantis comes close – declared his intention to lay waste to constitutional structures and rights, vitiate governing, juridical, and regulatory bodies, and arrogate to himself the sole right to declare war. Finally, no other candidate in the field has expressed the same overweening desire – again DeSantis isn’t far behind – to transform the state in general and the federal government in particular into a personal sinecure to enrich himself and his capitalist cronies, not to mention lock up his enemies and silence his critics in the media. In short, Trump’s form of personalized, dictatoral rule is a unique and nasty blend of fascistic and feudal elements, marinating in the sauce of racism, xenophobia, homo and transphobia, misogyny, and christian nationalism. Now I’m not suggesting that “no Trump no existential danger to democracy” or “no Trump,no MAGA. That would not only be foolhardy, but worse still disarming, at least to the few people that might take my opinion seriously. I would, though, expect the political dynamics and political terrain would shift, albeit in ways that are beyond my pay grade, if Trump is forced out of the race. 
2. As breathtakingly reactionary as the Robert’s court is, Roberts does worry to a degree about the court’s legitimacy in the public mind. Sometimes to the point that he accedes to a degree to mass sentiment. Unlike some of his allies on the court, he possesses a tactical mind that can make him, at once, more dangerous as well as more susceptible to pressure from our side. 
3. I wonder if your analysis would have been strengthened if you had drawn into the picture in a positive, dynamic, and fuller way the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and the labor movement. If each brings their “A game” or something close to it to the elections next year, we will fight the good fight on much higher ground. If they don’t, the climb for all of us will be exceedingly steep. Thus, it seems to me, social justice, left, and progressive activists and organizations should engage these crucial political constituencies in a more robust way. Just as their success will surely hinge on what the progressive and social justice community bring to the table, the reverse is also true, but even more so.
4. We spend, it seems to me, an inordinate amount of time talking and writing about the 1st Reconstruction and the necessity of the 3rd. But we give too little attention to studying and drawing lessons from the 2nd Reconstruction – an era of struggle that was complex, many sided, many layered, and rich in strategic and tactical shifts and innovations. There is little doubt in my mind anyway that such a study would serve us well at this exceedingly dangerous political conjuncture. And who better to write it than yourself.

That’s enough! Being Sunday morning, I hope it doesn’t sound preachy. I also hope you and your family are well. I’ll be, and happily so, on the Maine coast later this week where the temperature and humidity hover in the 70’s. Relief is in sight! Sam

I’m writing an addendum to an earlier post, “Not even a whisper of concern.” While it’s brief, I believe, it fills an omission in that post. 

What went unmentioned was the nearly unqualified support of Gus Hall, the Communist Party’s General Secretary for 40 years for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Granted it is hard to quarrel with the Soviet Union’s assistance to countries fighting – Vietnam, Cuba, South Africa to name a few – for their independence from colonial rule or its insistence on the relaxation of tensions between our two countries or its readiness to enter into arms negotiations or its economic assistance to countries in the Global South or its support for the Palestinian people and an independent Palestinian state. 

But that is only one side of the coin. On the other side, a different picture obtains. Gus threw his full support to the Soviet Union when it invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and crushed socialist reforms and democratization there. In a report to Central Committee, Gus said the action was regrettable, but necessary to prevent “a counter revolutionary takeover.” Gil Green, who opposed the party’s position, on the other hand, called it “a very serious blunder” in a statement to the New York Times, while at the same time resigning from the Central Committee.*

When Soviet Party leader Leonid Brezhnev in the invasion’s aftermath declared that the Soviet Union and other socialist states have a right and duty to invade other states in Eastern Europe if they believe the future of socialism hangs in balance there, Gus was on board.

A decade later Soviet troops in the spirit of the Brezhnev Doctrine gathered on Polish borders to “defend socialism,” while other troops invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979. Not a word of criticism to these actions came from the mouth or pen of Gus.

Nor did he oppose the actions of communist parties across Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, when they initially employed force to block the desire of tens of millions for democracy and a better life.

Ditto when a handful of Soviet communists organized a putsch on the morning of August 19, 1991. On the same day – Moscow is a few time zones ahead of us – at a meeting in the party’s national office (I was there), Gus, who had become a fierce critic of Gorbachev by then, expressed a cautious optimism that the putsch might succeed. He warned us to be circumspect though, since it wasn’t yet clear if that would be the case. When it quickly collapsed and its organizers were arrested, his only reaction was to flail the incompetence of the coup organizers and the backwardness of the “Russian” people.

If this wasn’t enough, at the first meeting of the National Board after the failure of the coup, a resolution was introduced to “neither condemn nor condone”* the coup. As you might expect, the resolution, was opposed by a number of NB members and narrowly passed, further straining the already strained relations between the two competing camps in the party at that moment. I don’t know if this clash was the final straw in the internal fight going on in the party at the time, but it did exacerbate divisions. A few months later at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, nearly half of the leadership and membership left in protest. 

As I have indicated, Gus wasn’t a lone wolf. In each instance above, the majority of the National Committee, including most who left the party in 1991, supported most of these policies and positions up until the time that Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party and gave everybody license to criticize Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War years. Aside from Czechoslovakia, which predated me, I include myself in this camp. No whisper of concern, let alone a forceful objection, was heard from me. And not out of fear; I drank the Kool Aid too. 

Only later, in the mid-1990s, did I reconsider my earlier positions supporting Soviet interference and interventions (and much else) and reached the conclusion that I as well as the party were wrong. In my new calculus (1) democratic aspirations, democracy, and national sovereignty shouldn’t be reduced, as we did, to a second order concern, occupying a back seat to the imperatives of the “defense and consolidation of class power and socialism;” (2) no socialist country should be above critical examination nor act as the broker of political correctness; (3) inordinate decision making power shouldn’t be invested in any one person, which, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, was the practice in most communist parties where the General Secretary was much more than first among equals; the U.S. party was no different, (4) nothing good will come from the subordination of marxism to the interests of a socialist state nor should a socialist state – in this case, the Soviet Union – claim to be its official interpreter and codifier, and (5) each of us has to independently make decisions, resisting where warranted collective pressures to fall in line.

Some see this exercise of mine as blame shifting, a political diversion, nothing more than resurrecting old corpses that would be better off left dead. I heard that criticism to my earlier post. I will probably hear it again, perhaps with greater insistence. So be it. I don’t share that point of view. Indeed, with the rise of China and its drift toward authoritarianism and the uncritical support accorded to it by some on the left, the resuscitation of this old history seems like a good idea to me.*

What is more, the old corpses of the past are a reminder that the building of vibrant collective and decision making culture that encourages competing views and thinking outside the box in an atmosphere of equality is, as difficult as it may be, a necessary task.

Finally, the buried bones of yesteryear underscore that the theories and analytical framework that backstop our practical work require regular and collective scrutiny as well as elaboration. Not only should they guide our political practice, but they should be constantly tested against it. No one has a franchise on marxism or radical thought.

• Dorothy Healy, Al Richmond, and a few others members of the Central Committee opposed the invasion too.
• Only later did I learn, while recently reading Al Richmond’s memoir, “Long View from the Left,” that a similar language is found in a resolution at the time of the Soviet intervention in Hungary.
• The consolidation of authoritarian rule in China provides a ground floor for similar practices in other states challenging imperialism and pursuing a non-capitalist path of development.