https://themilitant.com/2020/05/09/celebrate-cindy-jaquiths-55-years-building-the-communist-movement/
Celebrate Cindy Jaquith’s 55 years building the communist movement
article
BY SETH GALINSKY
Vol. 84/No. 19
May 18, 2020
MILITANT/AMANDA ULMAN Cindy Jaquith speaking in Miami, August 2016. figure
Cindy Jaquith speaking in Miami, August 2016.
MILITANT/AMANDA ULMAN Cindy Jaquith speaking in Miami, August 2016.
figure end
Cindy Jaquith, a cadre and leader of the Socialist Workers Party for
some 55 years, died unexpectedly in Miami May 2 of complications from an
intestinal
illness.
Over the years, Jaquith shouldered a wide range of national and
international leadership responsibilities in building the Socialist
Workers Party and the
world communist movement.
Jaquith joined the Young Socialist Alliance in the mid-1960s while a
student at Carleton College in Minnesota. Like thousands of other young
people of
her generation, she was inspired by the Cuban Revolution and the
proletarian fight to overthrow Jim Crow segregation.
She was a member of and helped build the party’s trade union fractions
in a number of cities, served stints as editor of the Militant and took
major responsibility
for the party’s work in the women’s liberation movement beginning in the
early 1970s.
Jaquith first joined the Militant staff in 1972. As part of her
responsibilities she frequently traveled to the Kentucky coalfields
during the Brookside
United Mine Workers organizing drive, a fight portrayed in the movie
Harlan County USA. She participated in and reported on the historic
march of 100,000
for the Equal Rights Amendment for women in Washington, D.C., on July 9,
1978.
In January 1979, when workers and farmers in Iran took to the streets in
their millions and a month later brought down the hated U.S.-backed
shah, Jaquith
was assigned to cover the unfolding revolution. Over the next year she
traveled back and forth to Iran, collaborating with fellow communists to
get eyewitness
coverage of this working-class upsurge into the hands of working people
around the world.
She interviewed garment workers, soldiers and other working people at
the forefront of making the revolution. She wrote about the mass
mobilizations of
women fighting for their liberation, and the organization of workers
into factory committees to defend their interests. Jaquith covered the
press conference
that announced the formation of the Socialist Workers Party of Iran.
Upon her return, she toured the U.S. giving public forums on the Iranian
Revolution.
The articles Jaquith wrote were invaluable for workers in the U.S. and
around the world to understand the working-class course of the Iranian
Revolution
and its lasting impact today, despite the counterrevolution by
reactionary bourgeois clerical forces that prevented a workers and
farmers government from
coming to power.
From August 1985 to November 1987, Jaquith headed up the Managua Bureau
of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, the paper’s Spanish-language
sister publication.
The bureau was established in August 1979, one month after the victory
of the Sandinista Revolution. She returned to direct the bureau in
mid-1990 until
it closed in December that year.
Over the last five years, Jaquith was a leader of the Miami branch of
the party. She worked at Walmart and was the party’s candidate for mayor
of Miami
in 2017.
The Militant will carry a fuller account of Jaquith’s political
contributions in a future issue. Messages from those who knew and worked
with Jaquith will
be featured in the article and at an upcoming meeting to celebrate her
life. Send messages to
themilitant@xxxxxxx.
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IN THIS ISSUE
Front Page Articles
list of 6 items
• Demand jobs! Join workers fights over wages, conditions
• Independent truckers rally over attacks on their pay
• Demand gov’t-funded public works program to create jobs
• Working people hold May Day celebrations all across Cuba
• ‘Militant’ extends drive for readers, to spread the word about
workers’ struggles
• Fight grows to overturn ban on the ‘Militant’ in Florida prisons
list end
Feature Articles
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• Hong Kong protest movement revives with May 1 rallies
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Also In This Issue
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• Venezuela: Working people pay price for US sanctions
• NY Mayor de Blasio scapegoats Jews for spreading coronavirus
• NY cops turned loose on political rallies, people ‘gathering’
• Contributions grow to SWP ‘stimulus’ payout appeal
• Unfolding capitalist crisis fuels interest in ‘Militant’
• Celebrate Cindy Jaquith’s 55 years building the communist movement
• Asarco strikers say ‘We’re still out here fighting for our rights’
• Debenhams workers fight layoffs in Ireland
• Cuban embassy attack
• Campaign to expand reach of ‘Militant,’ books, fund (week four)
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Books of the Month
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• The FBI: The political police of the US capitalist class
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