Return to Coyoacan 50 years after Trotsky's assassination

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the Werner Transportation Co., where he was working, and proceeded to beat him up. X-rays taken at the hospital soon after revealed a broken nose, a fracture of the right cheekbone, and fractures at the base of the skull and the lower forehead.

While recovering from this savage beating, Jake was sent many get-well letters and cards, including from Natalia Trotsky, still in Mexico, who said, "And you, Jake, did you return a good blow to our enemy? I think you did for your nose speaks of this."

But the ruling class and their allies in the labor bureaucracy, notably Tobin, were not satisfied with just physical beatings, especially since this tactic did not produce the desired result of silencing the antiwar and militant labor message of the Minneapolis Teamsters.

Indicted by FBI

On June 27, 1941, FBI agents and U.S. marshalls raided the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

On July 15, 1941, a federal grand jury indicted 29 socialists and leaders of the Teamsters local, charging them with conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the government by armed revolution and conspiracy to foment insubordination among the armed forces. Jake Cooper was one of those indicted.

The largest block of those charged were officers, organizers, or job stewards of Local 544 or those on the editorial staff of The Northwest Organizer. Six were officers of the Federal Workers Section of the local, including Max Geldman, Jake's brother-in-law. Four were national leaders of the SWP, including its national chairman, James P. Cannon, and Farrell Dobbs, who was labor secretary of the SWP.

The second count of the indictment involved the Smith Act, which was adopted in 1940 and was nothing less than a thoughtcontrol "Gag Act"-as it was commonly known in labor, left and civil liberties circles, The prosecution of the Minneapolis 29 (later whittled down to 18 who were convicted) was the first prosecution under this vile act. Jake Cooper was among those convicted.

The charges carried a possible prison sentence of 10 years, but the longest sentence imposed was 16 months, which was doled out to 12 of the defendants, including Jake.

During the appeal process, Jake's parents, Joe and Rose Cooper, put up their store as security for the bail bond. Had even one of the defendants skipped, Joe and Rose would have lost everything. Although they were not themselves socialists, they had enough confidence in the defendants to risk everything they had worked for to allow a brief stay of imprisonment for the frameup victims.

Serves prison sentence

In January 1944, Jake and 14 of the 18 convicted began serving their sentences at Sandstone prison in Minnesota. The imprisoned socialists adopted a policy of operating as model prisoners to defend themselves against victimization behind the walls and to gain authority among the other prisoners.

For much of their time in Sandstone the socialists were housed with conscientious objectors: Jehovah's Witnesses and pacifists who had resisted conscription into the armed forces. Some of these were recruited to the SWP during this period.

In his letters from prison to relatives, Jake speaks of the normal preoccupations of all the socialists: looking forward to a good steak upon release, wondering how the family and the party were making out, and describing prison duties and routine.

Jake's letters, though, are filled with what was clearly his main preoccupation during his 13 months in jail-the love that he had for the woman who was to become his wife, Lillian.

Knowing Lillian today, it is easy to see the attraction she held for Jake. Spending time with her is like visiting an oasis of sanity, warmth, and order.

While in prison, Jake did a lot of reading. Among the great authors he sampled were Guy de Maupassant, Darwin, Emile Zola, Howard Fast's book "Citizen Tom Paine, and Scholem Asch.

Packinghouse worker, organizer In 1945, Jake was re. ased from prison and married Lillian in April of the same year. But life, at first, was hard. He and the other but Jake finally found work at the Armour meatpacking plant in South St. Paul, Minn.

He was elected a steward of his department and an officer of the Armour local, United Packinghouse Workers of America Local 4. Both Armour and the union tried to buy off Jake. When that didn't work they tried threatening his life. When that failed they fired him and he went to work at Swift.

In 1948 a national packinghouse strike broke out. Jake was an active participant, along with Joe Ollman, a founder of the Austin, Minn., Hormel workers' union. Once again Jake's abilities on the picketline were needed as the unionists, going up against the National Guard, organized mass picketing to successfully shut down key plants in South St. Paul.

After this Jake was again fired, and he worked briefly as a beef lugger at a small packing plant, hauling sides of beef weighing hundreds of pounds.

By this time-the year was 1949-the Cold War and the McCarthy era were in full swing. Jake and Lil moved to Chaska and took responsibility for the family store for Jake's elderly parents.

In time, Jake and Lillian, and later their oldest son, Gary, built the store into a booming business. Jake and Lillian raised six children and brought around them a devoted community through their honesty in busines and socia amprotes on sto growing city of Chaska.

Twice, though, in the years that followed, local right wingers attempted to drive the Coopers out of business. Once was in the '50s and the second took the form of a boycott in 1970.

The 1970 boycott was in retaliation for Jake's appearance on stage at the 1969 convention of the Young Socialist Alliance, a youth organization in political solidarity with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Initially, the boycott cut into business at the store. There were threatening phone calls and letters to the Cooper family, but there were also many more expressions of support and outrage from Chaska residents and even from people who lived far from Chaska. There were articles for and against the boycott in the local press. Eventually the storm passed and life went back to normal.

During these years, Jake's responsibilities at the store and his lively family life prevented him from taking an active role in politics. He did attend anti-Vietnam War demonstrations both in Washington, D.C., and locally and continued to read and study politics.

Stands up in defense of Marxism Around 1980, the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) began to chart a course away from the main theoretical and organizational concepts that had led the party for 50 years.

The SWP's newspaper, The Militant, applauded the Sandinista leadership's notion of a mixed economy as the road forward for Nicaragua. The disastrous consequences of this policy were realized in the Nicaraguan elections last February.

The party leadership also formulated an entirely new and erroneous trade union policy for SWP members in industry which was based on the idea that a radicalization of American workers was just around the corner. SWP trade unionists were discouraged from taking an active part in the day-to-day struggles of their unions in favor of a sectarian "talk socialism" policy which produced nothing but isolation.

Basically, the SWP's new line represented the leadership's loss of confidence in the revolutionary program. Moreover, they had no confidence that their new line could survive an open and democratic debate within the party so they cancelled party conventions and imposed organizational norms aimed at suppressing dissent among the membership.

Nevertheless, a significant opposition appeared and Jake was part of this grouping. Following the SWP's 1981 national convention, Jake and other members were expelled for declaring a faction to fight for a return to the party's historic program.

By 1984 all the declared oppositionists to the SWP's new line were expelled or driven out of the party in violation of every norm of party democracy.

Socialist Action founder, leader In October 1983, the expelled members met in Chicago to form a new organization, Socialist Action. Jake Cooper was in the front row. He threw himself into building Jake Cooper in Coyoacan in 1940.

Shortly before his death, Jake Cooper submitted this article for publication in Socialist Action. It has been abridged for space. The complete version will appear in a forthcoming book on Jake's life to be published by Walnut Publishing Co. The speech referred to by Jake will be reprinted in the November issue of Socialist Action.

A celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of Trotsky's assassination was held at the Trotsky Museum in Coyoacan, Mexico, on Aug. 20-24. The celebration, held to capacity crowds, was hosted by the government of Mexico City. Guests came from the Soviet Union, France, South America, England, Mexico, the U.S., and many other countries.

In view of the fact that I had been a guard in the home of Trotsky from May 1940 till the time of his assassination in August of that year, I was selected by the committee hosting the celebration to be a guest and a speaker.

On my first day there I was taken to the Trotsky Museum, where the celebration had started. Then I proceeded through Trotsky's home and patio.

It brought back much nostalgia and memories. With a few exceptions, the place was much as I had left it in 1940.

It still looked like a fortress instead of a home. Doors of steel. Windows taken out and replaced by steel plates. Guard towers perched atop the buildings with apertures to shoot out of. Bullet marks on the buildings from the May 24, 1940, assault led by Stalinist painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The only change was in the neighborhood outside the museum. Coyoacan had changed from a village oustide Mexico City to a bustling part of the metropolitan area.

Socialist Action like a man who had been preparing for this challenge all of his life, which indeed, he had.

Jake, and his brother Dave (also expelled), were once again building the kind of party to which they had dedicated themselves in their teenage years.

At the founding convention Jake was elected to the National Committee and was re-elected at every subsequent convention. He was a full participant in every area of the party's work and never missed a convention or National Committee meeting. He traveled around the country speaking on the lessons of his experiences in the 1930s and 1940s and brought them up to date.

Although Jake had been unable to actively participate in socialist politics for several decades, his recruitment skills and political abilities were as finely honed as ever. He took an avid interest in the world political situation; especially the events in Eastern Europe, Central America, and the Middle East. He took Socialist Action newspaper with him everywhere and was the top newspaper and subscription seller of the Twin Cities branch.

His branch assignments included organizer, sales director, trade-union work director, forum committee, and many more.

SOCIALIST AC In the center of the patio stood a stone about 5 feet high with Trotsky's name on it, plus the hammer and sickle with flowers all around it.

On the second day of my visit, I was taken to see some of the ancient Indian ruins and was given a tour through the working-class area of Mexico City.

Conditions for the poor seemed abominable, with the streets in such poor condition that a car could barely travel through them. I watched women digging through rubble to find things they might use. Wages of many workers are around $4 a day.

Mexico City is the world's largest city with around 18 million people. It seems to be a bustling city with vendors everywhere trying to eke out a living. In front of every bank I noticed guards with machine guns and many armed men on the streets. The democracy of the rich has to be protected by a gun.

On Friday, Aug. 24, I was the first guest speaker at the Museum hall. I had to have a translator. I started my speech with the usual greetings and then said I would give the same speech I gave in Minneapolis 50 years ago, right after the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

I started by saying I come from the belly of the monster: U.S. imperialism, which is responsible for the horrible crimes against the peoples of Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Grenada-and is now attempting to subjugate the Arab world.

I read the talk I gave 50 years ago and concluded by saying that Trotsky's entire life was devoted to raising the whole world to a higher level, free of wars, hunger, and pestilence-forward to a socialist world.

I also spoke of my personal experience with Jacson aka Mercader (Trotsky's assassin and Trotsky himself. I received a great hand from the audience with a bouquet of flowers, hugs, and kisses.

One of Jake's proudest achievements was his role in supporting the Chaska teachers' strike in 1984. Jake showed the teachers how to organize picketlines and negotiate a contract. Eventually the teachers won the strike. As a sign of gratitude, the Chaska teachers organized a "Jake Cooper Scholarship Fund," which to date has collected over $4000 from the citizens of Chaska.

Working-class fighter till the end In August 1985, Jake played a major role in one of the most important strikes of the 1980s—the strike by Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) against Hormel & Co. in Austin, Minn.

This strike became a national beacon of hope for workers across the country and a deadly threat to the concession drive of the capitalists and their willing servants in the labor bureaucracy.

Jake was elected to head the Food Committee of the Metro Area P-9 Support Committee, a Minneapolis-based organization set up by trade unionists to assist the PThroughout the 18-month-long strike, the Food Committee, under Jake's leadership, (continued on page 9, in “Iraq and Kuwait dispute: A history suppressed”) "ION OCTOBER 1990 7

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to the Gulf.