Two lifelong fighters for Trotskyism

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Where to find us SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1990 15 CHICAGO-Long-time Trotskyist militant Walter H. Schonbrun died on May 20 in Evanston, III. He was 74 years old. From his youth to his death, he worked to build the revolutionary party in the United States.

Harold—his friends and family knew him by his middle name-grew up in Toledo, Ohio. Socialist Action member Ted Selander recollects that Harold participated in the Lucas County Unemployed League as far back as 1932-33, when he was in his teens. The crucial Auto-Lite strike of 1934 also had a big impact on Harold's political formation.

The revolutionary socialist organization in Ohio at that time was the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (later the American Workers Party) which fused with the Trotskyists in the Communist League of America in 1934. The organization grew, and at a convention in Chicago in 1938, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was founded. At that convention, Harold met his wife-tobe, Betty.

By 1938, Harold had moved to Cleveland. In 1941, he was drafted into the Army and participated in the final battles against the Nazis on the Western Front. After the war, he and Betty moved to Chicago.

Harold had some vocational training in the printing trades, and he attempted to get a typography job. But he found no welcome mat at any of the International Typographical Union-organized shops. Harold decided to tackle the problem in a different way. He got a job at a non-union place, organized it, and brought the whole shop into the ITU. Harold was a "typo" until he retired in 1978.

Harold left the SWP during the 1950s, but his union involvement increased. For many years, he served on the Executive Committee of ITU Local 16. Harold was highly regarded in his union. He was very active in the Chicago Tribune strike that began in 1985.

Harold continued to support the SWP as a sympathizer. When the SWP began to be drawn off the revolutionary course in the early 1980s, he lent a hand in the effort to stay the course.

After the SWP leadership undemocratically expelled the party's political minority in 1983-84, Harold became a source of aid and comfort to the newly formed Chicago branch of Socialist Action. He followed our work closely and helped wherever he could.

Through the years, Harold had taken sculpture courses at the University of Illinois, Circle Campus. He became an accomplished sculptor in wood and metal. One work in his living room is that of a globe trapped in a cage of wrought iron bars. A single bar is broken apart, symbolizing the advances made by the working class in the revolutions of this century. It remains for us to break the rest of those bars. — VINNIE LONGO Sam Randall Sam Randall, a member of the Trotskyist movement since his youth, died May 30 in the Kingsbrook hospital in Brooklyn after a long illness diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease. He was 76 years old.

Early deprivation and hardship contributed to Sam's compassionate understanding of human misery, unlike many others who are brutalized by childhood mistreatment.

As the son of immigrant parents, he learned early in life that the vast majority of those who migrated to this country never found the promised land. Sam grew up in the Hebrew Orphanage Asylum in Manhattan.

Eventually, he made his way to California by hitchhiking, a common mode of travel in those days. He found a job in industry near Los Angeles at the Douglas airplane factory-at the time of the early CIO.

Strikes broke out everywhere, many poorly organized. Douglas was no exception, and the strike was soon defeated. But in the course of it, Sam met some Trotskyists, Baltimore P.O. Box 16005 Baltimore, MD 21218 P.O. Box 1046 GMF Boston, MA 02205 (617) 497-0230 Chicago P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657 (312) 327-5752 Cincinnati P.O. Box 27111 Cincinnati, OH 452 (513) 272-2596 who were trying to salvage something from the strike. He joined the band of Trotskyists in Los Angeles, who were then in the Socialist Party.

After the founding of the Socialist Workers Party in 1938, Sam returned from Los Angeles to his native New York and there decided to go to sea, first as a member of the Sailors Union of the Pacific and shortly thereafter as a member of the Seafarers International Union.

This was in the early days of World War II, as the Roosevelt administration was preparing to enter the war, and already at that early stage the government was intervening to "keep the ships sailing."

Sam's suggestions on how to conduct job actions, which inspired confidence among the sailors to stand up for their rights, and at the same time to fend off the intervention of the Coast Guard and other government agencies, won the respect of everyone involved.

When the U.S. entered the war, his trips as ship's navigator were transatlantic, carryCleveland P.O. Box 6151 Cleveland, OH 44101 Boston (216) 429-2167 Los Angeles P.O. Box 60605 Terminal Annex Los Angeles, CA 90060 (213) 660-2891 Minneapolis P.O. Box 14087 Dinkeytown Station Minneapolis, MN 55414 (612) 430-1476 ing troops and war materials. His main interest was in making contacts with the warscattered cadres of the Fourth International.

During the 1960s, Sam continued his support of SWP campaigns, and was especially active in and financially supportive of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the civil rights movement, and the antiwar movement. During this period of his life, he met Ruth Schein, who had been attracted to the Trotskyist movement as a result of the Cuban Revolution, for several years his comrade and companion.

Upon learning of Sam's death, Ruth recalled that he seemed to have an infallible political instinct, always able to detect the main conflicting class forces at work. She said, "He had a way of analyzing complicated political problems and explaining them in workers' language."

Despite his early years in the orphanage and his years of sailing and living away from New York, Sam felt close to his sister and brother-in-law, Matty and Bob Appel. They were his family. They looked after him in the long years of his illness, devoting themselves to his care.— FRANK LOVELL New York P.O. Box 20209 Ca. Fin. 693 Columbus Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10025 Pittsburgh 1625 Pillow Ave.

Harwick, PA 15049

San Francisco 3435 Army St., Suite 308 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 821-0458 Seattle P.O. Box 1182 Bothell, WA 98041

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