Gerry Foley (foreground) with Jeff Mackler at his 68th birthday celebration, August 19, 2007 (photo credit: Kamran Nayeri) |
Few
revolutionaries, past or present, have devoted their entire adult lives to the
socialist cause as full-timers. Gerry Foley was one of them. He died
unexpectedly on April 21 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the mountains of
Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state.
Gerry
spent 50 years fighting—at near poverty wages—to free humanity from every form
of capitalist barbarity, oppression, and exploitation. He did it with a twinkle
in his eye and with an engaging passion for all things human—and thoroughly
enjoyed every moment.
Gerry
was 73. He died less than a week after moving from his semi-retirement
residence in Mérida, Mexico, to San Cristóbal, perhaps from the exertion of
moving his enormous collection of books into his newly rented home.His friend
Pete, on the scene at the time, told us that Gerry had just left a social event
in the large communal area of his apartment complex, where he was chatting with
some young people. He returned to his apartment extremely short of breath,
immediately collapsed to the ground, and died a few minutes later, likely of a
heart attack.
Gerry
was among Socialist Action’s most dedicated and talented comrades. Those who
knew him will immediately recall his generous spirit, depth of knowledge and
analysis, brilliance of exposition, love of life in all its diversity, and
enduring friendship.
Gerry
not only read in about 90 languages; he was fluent in more than a dozen, often
serving as translator whenever his skills were required. His uncommon language
facility was matched by a deep understanding of the history and culture of each
nationality whose language he had mastered. Books were Gerry’s sole prized
possessions. He had a collection of perhaps 10,000 scattered from California to
Alabama to Mexico.
Gerry,
fluent in Gaelic, was likely among the most informed revolutionaries on Irish
history and politics. The Irish struggle for liberation, no matter the
setbacks, was never far from his consciousness. Perhaps the socialist cause of
the renowned Irish Marxist and Republican, James Connolly—among his heroes—appropriately
expressed Gerry’s credo almost 100 years later. Connolly observed that “a real
socialist movement can only be born of struggle, of uncompromising affirmation
of the faith that is in us. Such a movement infallibly gathers to it every
element of rebellion and progress, and in the midst of the storm and stress of
struggle solidifies into a real revolutionary force.” In his own talks, Gerry
expressed similar sentiments many times.
Gerry
spent over a year in Ireland working with the Irish comrades, including
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Northern Ireland’s fiery socialist leader and the
youngest woman elected to the British parliament. As a professional journalist
writing articles for the world Trotskyist press, Gerry’s insights into Irish
politics served to inform the revolutionary politics of a generation of
political activists.
Decades
later, in 1997, Gerry headed the San Francisco-based Committee to Free Roisin
McAliskey, Bernadette’s daughter, who was imprisoned and tortured by British
authorities as she and her supporters worldwide defeated a German
government-initiated deportation effort based on trumped-up charges of
involvement in terrorist activities. Then pregnant, Roisin finally won her
freedom but not before being forced to have her baby, while in chains, in a
filthy British prison facility. Bernadette, who had won the broad respect of
U.S. Black liberation activists decades earlier when she gave to the Black
Panther Party the “Keys to San Francisco” (awarded to her by San Francisco’s
Board of Supervisors out of respect for her membership in the British
parliament), joined Gerry at mass rallies in defense of her daughter.
During
his speeches, and on virtually any subject, tears often came to Gerry’s eyes as
he inserted an Irish reference into his discourse. The Irish struggle for
self-determination, the longest in world history, lasting more than 700 years
and still uncompleted, was ingrained in Gerry’s consciousness. And if you gave
him the opportunity, Gerry would happily recount every major event of those 700
years.
No
comrade could match Gerry's deep understanding of the national
question—the
struggle of oppressed people and nations for self-determination, dignity, and
freedom. He was a champion of all oppressed peoples and despised their
oppressors with great passion.
Gerry’s
articles have appeared in socialist periodicals around the world. We will soon
be publishing a list of many of them. His spirit and dedication to socialist
revolution and to building the Leninist party, the prerequisite instrument for
bringing it into being, lives in our party and in its comrades. In his
semi-retirement, Gerry remained an honorary member of Socialist Action’s
Political Committee, often finding time to join its deliberations via Skype and
taking an occasional assignment. He hoped to attend the Socialist Action
National Convention in August.
How
Gerry became a Trotskyist
In
autumn 1960, after graduating from American University in Washington, D.C.,
Gerry began graduate school at Indiana University (IU), in its Russian and East
European Institute. There he met a fellow graduate student in Russian
literature, George Shriver, who discussed political issues with him from a
Trotskyist position.
That same autumn 1960, fate had brought George and Ellen Shriver to IU from the Boston area, where they had been founding members of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) earlier in the year. The YSA was the fraternal youth group of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the main Trotskyist organization in the United States at the time. As a result of joint work with George, Ellen, and other Trotskyists in defense of the Cuban Revolution, Gerry joined the Trotskyist movement.
That same autumn 1960, fate had brought George and Ellen Shriver to IU from the Boston area, where they had been founding members of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) earlier in the year. The YSA was the fraternal youth group of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the main Trotskyist organization in the United States at the time. As a result of joint work with George, Ellen, and other Trotskyists in defense of the Cuban Revolution, Gerry joined the Trotskyist movement.
After
George, Ellen, and Gerry had left IU, a strong YSA chapter remained behind
them. When in 1963 the chapter invited YSA National Organization Secretary
LeRoy McCrae to speak on the Black liberation struggle, an Indiana
McCarthyite witch-hunting prosecutor, Thomas Hoadley, saw an opportunity to
implement an obscure and reactionary anti-communist law. Three YSA members on
campus were indicted on charges of “conspiracy to overthrow the state of
Indiana by force and violence.” Gerry actively participated in this important
defense effort, soon to become a national and successful campaign for “The
Bloomington Three,” Ralph Levitt, Tom Morgan, and Jim Bingham.
After
years of effort by the YSA and SWP the law was declared unconstitutional, an
important civil liberties victory for the entire socialist movement and for all
others who understood the importance of organizing broad defense campaigns for victims
of capitalist persecution.
Gerry
defended political prisoners in the U.S. and around the world. He was always
among the first to sign up to defend capitalism’s victims everywhere and was
often involved in their defense committees. In San Francisco, he was a leader
in defense of Iranian political prisoners and a participant in the defense of
Mumia Abu-Jamal.
In
autumn 1962, Gerry moved on to further graduate study at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison, where he was an activist in the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee, also initiated by the SWP and YSA. Soon afterwards, the October 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis brought the threat of worldwide nuclear war, when the
Kennedy administration mobilized the U.S. Navy to confront Soviet ships headed
for Cuba with nuclear missiles. The Cubans, who in April 1961 had defeated a
U.S.-sponsored invasion at the Bay of Pigs, sought Russian missiles to ensure
against another such U.S.-backed invasion.
Gerry
was active in Cuba’s defense, selling the SWP’s newspaper, The Militant,
and supporting Cuba’s right to defend itself from imperialist attack. And he
helped to found a YSA chapter at Madison. Soon, Gerry moved to New York City,
where he joined the SWP and did a short stint as a social worker while becoming
a member of the newly formed and militant social workers’ union. “I didn’t do
too well by city standards,” Gerry told me at that time,” because as I saw it,
it was my job to get around all the bureaucratic restrictive provisions of the
law and make sure that all my clients got on welfare and received the maximum
funding possible.”
A few
years later, Gerry applied for a job as translator with the United Nations. He
filled out an application requiring that he list the names and number of
languages that he could translate. He listed 25. Later, his disbelieving
interviewer asked Gerry what he meant by 2.5 languages. Gerry replied that the
figure was 25, whereupon the interviewer immediately sent for a bevy of
language specialists from several UN departments to verify Gerry’s claim. Gerry
passed with ease and was surprised that he was offered the job on the spot, but
with one condition. The UN had a rule that each member nation had the right to
challenge its own nationals before their applications could be approved.
Gerry
was eventually notified that the U.S. government had vetoed his application.
But the outraged staffer who so informed Gerry surreptitiously included Gerry’s
uncensored FBI file with the UN’s letter of rejection. Gerry told me that it
had recorded virtually every YSA and SWP meeting he ever attended, every party
position he held, every public meeting he attended, and his every landlord’s
name and address. Thus, in those pre-Freedom of Information Act days, still in
the McCarthy era, Gerry inadvertently became perhaps the first American to see
his unexpurgated FBI file. He took some pride in that.
Revolutionary
journalist
Gerry
soon became a full-time staffer for the SWP, working under the direction of
Joseph Hansen in the production of what was then one of the finest weekly
revolutionary news magazines in the world, Intercontinental Press (IP).
It was Hansen, Leon Trotsky’s secretary during Trotsky’s exile in Mexico, who
mentored Gerry in the critical necessity of accuracy in reporting, depth of
research, source checking, and clear and careful formulations to explain the
SWP’s then revolutionary politics. At that time, IP was the official
periodical of the Fourth International (FI), the world revolutionary socialist
organization with which the SWP maintained fraternal relations. Reactionary
U.S. legislation prevented the party’s formal affiliation, as it does with
Socialist Action today.
Gerry
remained on the SWP staff for some 17 years, writing for all its publications,
with his articles often reprinted by FI sections. His journalistic assignments
took him to Portugal, where he covered the 1974-75 revolution, which overthrew
the fascist Salazar dictatorship. He also traveled as a reporter to Iran, when
in 1979 a revolutionary wave swept from power the U.S.-backed and installed
Shah of Iran and opened the door wider than ever to a socialist transformation.
In both cases and in all other instances where Gerry’s knowledge, reporting,
and language skills took him to far-off places to cover revolutionary
developments, Gerry collaborated with the FI groups in those countries, which
were active in the mass mobilizations.
Gerry
left the SWP in 1980 to take a staff position on the FI’s new publication, International
Viewpoint (IV). He remained in Paris on this assignment for more than
a decade. His departure from the SWP, which expelled Gerry retroactively,
stemmed from his opposition to the bureaucratic and cult-like practices of SWP
National Secretary Jack Barnes, who, along with a compliant new “leadership
team,” engineered the SWP’s rejection of its Trotskyist heritage. This was
accompanied by the expulsion of hundreds of its most dedicated comrades,
including many of the SWP’s founding members from 1938. Many of these comrades
soon after formed Socialist Action.
Relocated
in Paris, Gerry was a staff writer, translator, and often a speaker for IV at
conferences and conventions of FI sections. He authored hundreds of articles
covering critical events in world politics and joined the French section of the
FI, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).
Beginning
in the late 1980s, Gerry’s mastery of Slavic and other Eastern European languages,
and his keen interest in the mass movements in the USSR and Eastern Europe that
challenged Stalinist rule, allowed him to author scores of articles that
provided great insight into the revolutionary developments in these countries—especially
the critical struggle of the USSR’s oppressed nationalities.
Gerry’s
assessment of the importance of these developments coincided with Socialist
Action’s. For the first time in decades the possibility of building Trotskyist
parties in Eastern Europe and the disintegrating USSR had real and immediate
potential. He supported Socialist Action’s efforts to send Trotskyist
delegations to Eastern Europe and the USSR as well as our contributions to the
building of a Trotskyist party in Poland, including the translation into Polish
of some important works by Trotsky.
In
the early 1990s, Gerry returned to the U.S. to work full time for Socialist
Action as the International Editor of our newspaper. Typical of Gerry, however,
before leaving IV, he insisted that we underwrite his proposal that he
visit Hungary for three weeks so he could “learn the language” and more
effectively follow events in that country.
Back
in the U.S, Gerry was immediately co-opted to Socialist Action’s Political
Committee, where his knowledge of Eastern Europe and the recent events in the
USSR contributed greatly to the depth of coverage in our press.Socialist Action newspaper’s
coverage of revolutionary developments in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and
Ireland were remarkable in their detail and analysis, often from first-hand
sources or direct participation in the unfolding events.
Gerry
eagerly took on assignments around the world. Following the Zapatista rebellion
in Mexico, he visited San Cristóbal, Ocosingo, and other cities that the
Zapatistas had temporarily occupied, to learn first hand of their impact and to
meet with their representatives.
An
incident related to the Zapatista rebellion comes to mind that highlights Gerry’s
desire to directly connect with the people whose struggles he embraced. I
visited San Cristóbal to try to meet with the Zapatistas and to observe their
negotiations with the Mexican government, which temporarily ended their first
uprising in 1994. Before I left for Mexico, Gerry asked me to bring him back a
dictionary of the language of the indigenous people. At the time, such an
effort was the last thing on my mind. But by coincidence, during a press
conference following the negotiations, a fellow walking through the aisles was
hawking just such a dictionary, and I thought that I would bring it back to San
Francisco to surprise Gerry with my ability to make good on his essentially
eccentric request.
I
gleefully handed Gerry the dictionary upon my return, and he quickly opened it.
In a moment, with perhaps a tiny hint of disdain, Gerry said, “This dictionary
is Tzotzil. I need to begin with the major indigenous root language, Nahuatl.
It won’t do me much good.” Vintage Gerry! I am sure that comrades who knew him
have thousands of similar anecdotes highlighting Gerry’s magnificent
eccentricities.
Gerry
Foley touched the lives of revolutionaries around the world, including comrades
from other socialist currents that do not share our politics, program, and
traditions. Socialist Action has received condolences from many comrades
outside our movement, comrades who might have differences with us on important
political questions but who respected Gerry’s diligence in presenting our ideas
and who benefited from the material that only his skills and experience could
provide.
Gerry
was one of a kind. To know him was to be enriched in myriad ways. He lives on
in our deeds and dedication to the revolutionary cause and program that he championed
for a lifetime.
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