http://www.workers.org/articles/2015/08/29/joe-johnson-a-fighter-for-workers-and-the-oppressed/
Joe Johnson, a fighter for workers and the oppressed
By Deirdre Griswold posted on August 29, 2015
Picture this: You have fallen in your own home and can’t get up. You
live alone and the telephone is at one end of a long hall. You are lying
at the other end.
Joe Johnson with Ed Childs, Larry Hales and Bryan G. Pfeifer of Workers
World Party.
Joe Johnson with Ed Childs, Larry Hales and Bryan G. Pfeifer of Workers
World Party.
Joe Johnson of Chippewa Falls, Wis., a longtime subscriber to Workers
World, first came to our editorial board’s attention when he sent us a
letter in 2007 describing how he had spent five days — five days! —
inching his way along the floor until he could call for help.
It was the thought of Workers World and the struggles of the oppressed
everywhere that kept him going, he wrote.
Johnson died on Aug. 5 at the age of 84. He had been living for several
years in a modest room at the Wissota Health and Regional Vent Center
dealing with serious health problems. It was cancer that finally brought
him down. But up to the very last days of his life, this veteran of many
struggles exuded revolutionary optimism, energy and courage, signing all
his letters “In the spirit of Crazy Horse! We shall win!”
In his many letters to the paper and conversations with comrades from
Workers World Party who visited him, Joe exuded a fighting spirit and a
broad knowledge of history — especially of the class struggle in the
U.S. since the 1930s and the heroic battles of nationally oppressed
peoples for freedom and sovereignty.
Joe was born in Chicago in 1930. When still young, he met the leaders of
the great Minneapolis general strike of 1934 — revolutionary socialists
who had helped build the Teamsters union. In the 1950s he resisted the
draft during the U.S. war against People’s Korea and spent time in
federal prison for his anti-war stand. He also worked in Canada
periodically from the 1950s on. In later years, he promoted progressive
knowledge and concepts through bookstores he acquired in the Chippewa
Falls area.
Joe Johnson understood the power of the workers when organized and
conscious of their goal, and was inspired when labor and youth occupied
the State Capitol in Wisconsin trying to stop Gov. Scott Walker’s
union-busting drive. But he knew they needed revolutionary communist
leadership and organization to sustain that struggle.
WW organizer Bryan G. Pfeifer, who visited Joe about twice a year,
recalls that “the first thing he’d do is hand me a stack of bills he had
saved in the intervening months since our last visit. Being indigent, he
only received on average about $10-$20 a month from the state and also
possibly some contributions from friends. Handing me his diligently
saved funds, he’d say, ‘Use this for whatever the party needs and build
the party.’
“He wanted to immediately discuss the class struggles going on, all with
an internationalist focus. He particularly was interested in the youth
and students joining WWP and the work of Fight Imperialism, Stand
Together (FIST). He was an implacable foe of the repressive bodies of
the capitalist-imperialist state such as the police and military.
“He never abandoned the oppressed, consistently insisting on the need
for working-class white workers to fight chauvinism and white supremacy
and to support formations such as the Black Lives Matter movement.”
This was consistent with Johnson’s earlier support for the Vietnamese
national liberation struggle, the Irish liberation struggle, the
American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers and many other Black
liberation forces, the Brown Berets and the women’s and
lesbian-gay-bi-trans-queer liberation movements.
Joe Johnson made his mark on history and will long be remembered with
great affection.
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Also see:
1.What it takes to unite the workers & oppressed
2.Justice for Kendrick Johnson!
3.Police violence against Martese Johnson sparks campus protests
4.Tribute to an anti-racist fighter and thinker
5.Workers World and FIST at Left Forum
.
Chippewa Falls
Joe Johnson
Workers World Party
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