Meetings pay tribute to Alice Snipper

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Alice Snipper, a veteran socialist activist, died on Dec. 31, 1987, Two meetings were held to pay tribute to Alice's life and revolutionary contributions. The first, held in Los Angeles on Jan. 10, was attended by 32 comrades, friends, and family. The second, held in San Francisco on Feb. 28, was attended by 72 people.

We are printing below excerpts from a few of the messages sent to the meetings as well as statements by some of the participants. Others whose statements are not printed here for reasons of space include Julie Rosen, Jean Tussey, Tybie Genecin, Minnie Wyman, Charles Percely, the age of 73.

Kwame Somburu, and Hayden Perry F.I.T.: The Fourth Internationalist Tendency, meeting in conference in Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 13-15, salutes the memory of Alice Snipper. We share the pain of her loss with you, her comrades, friends, and loved ones...

Alice was our comrade, too, an indispensable part of the backbone of the Socialist Workers Party during her 44 years of membership.

Along with scores of others, including the founding members of our organization, Alice was shamefully cast out of the party she had nurtured and built, for the crime of upholding the same Trotskyist principles she had fought for all her adult life...

Alice Snipper's life...was a model of revolutionary integrity. She will be missed by everyone who knew her. We extend our condolences to her comrades in Socialist Action and to her family.-Delegates to the F.I.T.'s Fourth National Conference Jeff Mackler: Alice had absorbed and lived in the great forest of our revolutionary heritage. She lived a full life of a revolutionary. For Alice, "Permanent Revolution," the simple idea that only working people in their overwhelming numbers are capable of bringing about the socialist future was ingrained in her being.

And when the Socialist Workers Party-to which she had dedicated almost 50 years of her life— abandoned central political principles and expelled her along with a small band of comrades committed to the Trotskyist program, Alice remained unshaken. She pitched in with her full energies to rebuilding the party by building Socialist Action.

We have lost a selfless comrade and revolutionary fighter whose example will help us all remember that our cause is just and that we must strive to live it everyday.

Dave Cooper: Alice Snipper was the living expression of the social revolt generated by oppression, discrimination, and war. She was always there, working. She realized herself in the struggle. Alice's life was a testimony to her faith in people and socialist future.

Minnie Wyman: Iknew Alice for 63 or 64 years. We went to school together. I remember how she first got involved in the socialist movement. We were walking to high-school one day and a friend invited us to a party of the YPSLs [Young People's Socialist League]. We decided we'd go. Alice became active with the YPSLs, and that's where, I think, she met Henry [her companion of many years].

Theodore Edwards: My memories go back to 1947 when Alice was working in the fish canneries. She helped recruit me. I had just come out of the army, and I was dead set on preventing another war. Alice worked in the fish canneries and she smelled like it. Alice was in all the party work, always there. Alice was the kind of person you could walk up to and talk about anything, freely and openly.

Myra Tanner Weiss: Alice enriched the lives of all of us, and did so gently, quietly, and lovingly. We are in her debt and in our sorrow can only pledge anew to continue the struggle, sharing her confidence in our ultimate socialistic victory.

Charles Curtiss: My memories have become a legacy... very precious memories of Alice and Henry Snipper. We went through the years together. She was a wonderful, kind, and loving woman.

Jan Snipper: I got involved in the antiwar movement in the late 1960s. As a new activist I always had lots of questions, and Alice had the answers. We looked forward to talking to each other. Probably the most important lesson she taught me was at the very beginning. She welcomed me into the family and made me feel that, as an ordinary worker, I was the salt of the earth, I was very important. She turned the values of bourgeois society upside down and put the working class on top.

Carl Finamore: Alice smiled when there was a victory for the working class. She was upset when the boss slapped us around a little bit and we got bloodied. Even in her last days, her last moments, what cheered her was a note about the gains of Socialist Action, the gains of the working class. That put a smile on her face in her last hours. That for me said everything about the depth of Alice's revolutionary commitment.

Zakiya Somburu: Alice was always warm and giving. She was always there when I first came around the movement over a decade ago in Oakland. She never made me feel like I was not wanted or didn't know as much as others. Alice would help me and answer my questions. She was a treasure in my life.

Carole Seligman: Alice retained with full force her loyalty to the ideas of her youth that is, to a future where peace and human dignity are secure because the working people will take charge of society.

Alice retained her absolute identification with the oppressed of the world and the need for the oppressed-the workers—to act as their own masters and in their own name. That is why she threw in her lot with Socialist Action.

Dave Snipper: To sum it, my mother left a great gift behind. One thing she left me was her vision of the future. Everything that she did, everything that she passed on to me and to all of you personal.

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carried that vision of the future, whether it was political or