Jake Cooper: A fighter for the working class and socialism

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'In the political sphere, Jake's life ended as it had begun-right at the center of building a socialist movement in the United States and around the world. He traveled a path from which he never Jake Cooper, a founder of the Fourth International, the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Action, died on Sept. 8 of a stroke he suffered on Labor Day while pursuing his favorite recreational activity: fishing. He had just turned 74 two days before his death.

Jake was born in St. Paul, Minn., in 1916, the son of Joe and Rose Cooper, Ukrainian Jews of poor peasant stock who left Czarist Russia in 1905 for the United States and first settled in St. Paul.

Jake was less than a year old when the Coopers gathered their five children and all their meager possessions into a horse-drawn wagon and headed for Chaska, Minn., 25 miles from the Twin Cities, where they opened a store in one room of their house.

Three more Cooper children were born in Chaska as the family struggled against antiSemitic persecution while building a small business. Young Jake grew up fighting the scourge of anti-Semitism with the best weapons he had at the time-his fists.

Such youthful experiences with persecution spawned a hatred of injustice, and inspired a moral and physical courage and a sense of family pride and loyalty that Jake exhibited throughout his life.

Joins socialist movement

Jake and his younger brother, Dave (a leader of Socialist Action and Jake's closest political collaborator), grew up during the period of fascism's rise to power in Europe. The boys' efforts to make sense of a world apparently gone mad were given form and content through the influence of their sister, Goldy, and her husband, Max Geldman.

Goldy Cooper had left Chaska in 1929 and ended up in New York in 1931. Here, convinced of the need for socialism and opposed to the betrayals of Stalinism, she joined the Communist League of America (CLA), the predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

In New York Goldy met and married Max Geldman, a young leader of the CLA who was later imprisoned with Jake following the notorious Smith "Gag Act" federal prosecution of socialists and union militants in 1941.

At the age of 17, Jake and Dave (who was 15) were driving into the Twin Cities to attend meetings of the Young People's Socialist League. Jake graduated from Chaska High School and attended one year of college. In 1936 he moved in with Max and Goldy Geldman in Minneapolis and found work as a truck driver. That same year, he joined General Drivers Union Local 544, later known as Local 574.

Meanwhile Dave was active at the University of Minnesota building the Socialist Club. Soon the Socialist Club outstripped the Stalinist-led Marxist Club; mostly due to its close identification with the Twin Cities labor movement at the time.

And what a labor movement it was! In the depths of the Depression, the outstanding victories of the 1934 strikes of the Teamsters in Minneapolis, along with those of the Toledo Auto-Lite and San Francisco Longshore strikes marked a milestone in the U.S. labor movement.

Led by members of the Communist League of America (CLA), the Minneapolis Teamsters took on the employers, the cops, the National Guard, the courts, the Citizen's Alliance, the entire capitalist political apparatus and the craven Teamster bureaucracy. These militants transformed Minneapolis, almost overnight, from a "scab's paradise" into a mighty citadel of union power and working-class solidarity.

Organizes unemployed youth

From 1934 to 1940, the battle-hardened Teamster unionists, led by conscious revolutionaries, went on to establish outposts of militant unionism throughout Minnesota and the Northwest.

When Jake joined the local in 1936, his recruiting and organizing skills put him at the center of one of the most effective and 6 SOCIALIST ACTION diverged for 54 years.' ingenious campaigns of the Minneapolis Teamsters: the organization of unemployed workers into the Federal Workers Section (FWS) of Local 544.

In addition, the Teamster and FWS leadership saw the need for an initiative directed at unemployed youth who were especially victimized by the desperate state of the economy.

The FWS established a Youth Committee in mid-1938. It was given the responsibility of forming a subdivision of young workers and students. Jake was one of six young workers who played leading roles in the Youth Committee of the FWS. The Youth Committee, open to men and women between the ages of 16 and 25, demanded that the Roosevelt administration provide more jobs and higher wages for Minneapolis nearly 30,000 unemployed young people.

Jake's early training in these struggles served him and the movement well in his later years. He developed his political thinking and learned to clearly and straightforwardly express ideas.

Jake was also a member of the Teamster Local's Union Defense Guard (UDG). The UDG was organized in 1938 to oppose the formation of a Minneapolis chapter of the pro-fascist Silver Shirts. The Silver Shirts' aim was to recruit bands of vigilantes from towns in the farming areas to attack Jews, left-wing organizations, and unions.

The Teamsters found out about the fascist organizing drive and discovered that the fascists, with the support of local employers, were planning a vigilante attack on the union's headquarters.

Knowing the local authorities would do nothing but assist the efforts of the fascists to destroy their union, the Local's leadership organized its own defense apparatus, which became the UDG.

Jake's keen political understanding and remarkable physical prowess made him an ideal member of the defense guard. From his OCTOBER 1990 earliest years in Chaska and going on into the 1940s, Jake demonstrated many times an awesome fighting ability against scabs, cops, union goons, and vigilantes. Jake's single-minded devotion to duty in this field earned him the nickname of "One Track" among the other UDG guards.

But Jake and his fellow guards were not some ignorant toughs who just liked to slug people. People who knew Jake-but did not know of his fighting abilities—are always amazed to learn that this gentle and thoughtful man struck physical fear into opponents just by showing up at a picketline.

At the memorial meeting for him in Chaska, his oldest son stated how he could not remember his father ever laying a hand on him. Jake was first and always a man of ideas who resorted to physical acts only Telegram to Jake Cooper's and comrades Coyoacán, Mexico Sept. 11, 1990 It is with great sadness that we just learned of the death of Jake Cooper, a revolutionary-Marxist, loyal, and courageous disciple of Leon Trotsky. To paraphrase the words of Lev Davidovitch [Trotsky], Jake did not live his life in vain. He died with the immense satisfaction of knowing he had dedicated his life to the noblest task possible: building a better world, free of evil, oppression, and violence. We send his companion, Lil, his family, and his comrades our fullest support and admiration for this exemplary revolutionist.

- Palmira and Esteban Volkov (Esteban "Seva" Volkov is the grandson of Leon Trotsky) when absolutely required to defend the rights of workers and the oppressed.

The life-and death-responsibilities of the UDG could only be entrusted to militants who understood the political strategy their activities served. The same is true of the next and even greater challenge life had in store for Jake Cooper-as a guard for Leon Trotsky in Mexico.

Guard for Leon Trotsky Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution of 1917, was exiled by Joseph Stalin from the Soviet Union in 1929. Eventually he found refuge in Mexico in 1937.

While in exile, however, his writings and influence posed a threat to the Stalinist bureaucracy, which they could not afford to ignore.

It soon became clear to Trotsky and his co-thinkers around the world, particularly in the United States, that a defense guard needed to be established to protect Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, in their home in Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City.

The SWP asked Jake to take a leave from his assignment as an organizer for Local 544 and take on the important task of guarding Trotsky. Jake was selected for this critical assignment on the basis of his political reliability, strength, and absolute honesty.

In April 1940, the 24-year-old Jake and a carload of other Trotskyists set out for Mexico. For security reasons, family and friends had to be kept in the dark about his mission.

Years later Jake talked about wondering on the long drive to Mexico how he should address Trotsky and what kind of a man he would be. He reported a deep sense of relief when, at their first introduction, Trotsky hugged him warmly "like a grandfather."

Jake was popular at the Coyoacán "fortress," especially with Trotsky's young grandson, Seva, who called him "Hercule, which is French for Hercules. [See accompanying telegram from Esteban "Seva" Volkov.] Jake had been there about a month when the expected assault arrived. In the early morning hours of May 24, over 20 men dressed up as Mexican police and armed with machine guns overpowered the guards and stormed the premises, firing some 200 shots into the family living quarters.

Miraculously, Trotsky and Natalia survived by lying under the bed in their darkened room. Young Seva was wounded in the toe but was otherwise unhurt. Tragically, Sheldon Harte, one of Trotsky's American guards, was kidnapped and murdered by the Stalinist attackers.

But this would not be the last attempt on Trotsky's life.

Three months later, on Aug. 20, 1940, Jake left the compound for an assignment in Mexico City. When he returned he found the household in an uproar-Trotsky had been attacked with an Alpine ice axe by a Stalinist agent who had posed as a follower and had wormed his way into a meeting with Trotsky alone in his study. Trotsky died one day later.

Victim of Tobin's attacks A month later Jake returned to Minneapolis and resumed work in the trucking industry. By this time, however, Daniel J. Tobin, the international head of the Teamsters Union had started an all-out attack on the Minneapolis Teamsters' local.

Tobin was acting on behalf of President Roosevelt, the FBI, and the police. The leadership of Local 544 had been campaigning as early as 1937 against the U.S. war drive and had set an example of militancy which was a direct threat to the capitalists' plans for taming the unions and getting into World War I1.

In 1940, Tobin sent AFL goon squads to Minneapolis to attack Local 544 militants and leaders. Jake became a victim of one of these attacks.

In June 1941, 60 of Tobin's hoodlums grabbed Jake from the loading platform of (continued on next page)

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(continued from preceding page) defendants were blacklisted from most jobs,