Mary-Alice Waters

Last updated

Mary-Alice Waters is a socialist and activist in the United States.

Waters became involved in Trotskyist politics at a young age, and joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the fall of 1962 while a student at Carleton College in Minnesota. [1] She became the editor of their youth paper, Young Socialist, and the national secretary of the Young Socialist Alliance. [2]

In the early 1980s, Waters, along with Jack Barnes and others in the SWP leadership, began to reject the label of "Trotskyism" and the theory of Permanent Revolution, in favour of building links with the Cuban Communist Party and Sandinista National Liberation Front.

In December 1968, she joined the editorial staff of The Militant and was named managing editor in 1969 and editor in chief in January, 1971.

Today, Waters is the President of the Pathfinder Press and the editor of New International magazine. She has written a handful of books, published by Pathfinder, on political topics. [3]

Related Research Articles

Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farrell Dobbs</span> American politician

Farrell Dobbs was an American Trotskyist, trade unionist, politician, and historian.

Jack Barnes is an American communist and the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Barnes was elected the party's national secretary in 1972, replacing the retiring Farrell Dobbs. He joined the SWP in the early 1960s as a student at Carleton College in Minnesota and quickly became a leading member of the party's youth wing. From the 1990s to the present, Barnes has directed his party to support the governments of North Korea and Equatorial Guinea; has instructed the party to abstain from antiwar or anti-racist activism; and in January 2016 lent his support to the occupation of federal lands, in Oregon, by militia movement members. Barnes was a key advocate of the party's "turn to industry" in the 1970s, its exit from the Fourth International in the 1980s and its orientation towards the Cuban Communist Party in the 1990s.

Róger Calero is a Nicaraguan journalist living in the United States and one of the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. He was SWP candidate for President of the United States in 2004 and 2008, and for the United States Senate in New York in 2006.

Martín Koppel is an American activist and journalist who served as a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party from 1994 to 2010. Knoppel also worked as an editor for Perspectiva Mundial and of the Militant, two left-wing magazines based in New York City.

Olga Rodriguez is a Chicano activist and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States.

James Harris is an American communist politician and member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1996, receiving 8,463 votes, and again in 2000, receiving 7,378 votes. Harris also served as an alternate candidate for Róger Calero in 2004 and 2008 in states where Calero could not qualify for the ballot due to being born in Nicaragua. More recently Harris was the SWP candidate in the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral election, receiving 2,057 votes (0.89%).

Harry Ring was an American communist and a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Breitman</span> American political activist (1916–1986)

George Breitman was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. He is best remembered as a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and as a long-time editor of that organization's weekly paper, The Militant. Breitman also supervised and edited several important publishing projects as the head of the SWP's publishing house in the 1960s and 1970s.

Linda Jenness is a former Socialist Workers Party candidate for president of the United States. She was the party's nominee in the 1972 election. She received 83,380 votes, making her the 4th most voted for candidate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clifton DeBerry</span> American politician

Clifton DeBerry was an American communist and two-time candidate for President of the United States of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the first black American in the 20th century to be chosen by a political party as its nominee for president.

The Pathfinder Mural is a work of art formerly located at 410 West Street in the New York City neighborhood known as the West Village. It was conceived of by artist Mike Alewitz in 1988 and painted as a collaboration among eighty artists from twenty nations, who painted it on the side of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) building housing the Pathfinder Press, the publishing arm of the Pathfinder tendency, a left-wing organization.

The Spartacist League/U.S. is a Trotskyist political grouping which is the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Socialist Organization</span> Political party in United States

The International Socialist Organization (ISO) was a Trotskyist group active primarily on college campuses in the United States that was founded in 1976 and dissolved in 2019. The organization held Leninist positions on imperialism and the role of a vanguard party. However, it did not believe that necessary conditions for a revolutionary party in the United States were met; ISO believed that it was preparing the ground for such a party. The organization held a Trotskyist critique of nominally socialist states, which it considered class societies. In contrast, the organization advocated the tradition of "socialism from below." as articulated by Hal Draper. Initially founded as a section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), it was strongly influenced by the perspectives of Draper and Tony Cliff of the British Socialist Workers Party. It broke from the IST in 2001, but continued to exist as an independent organization for the next eighteen years. The organization advocated independence from the U.S. two-party system and sometimes supported electoral strategies by outside parties, especially the Green Party of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Workers Party (UK)</span> Far-left political party in the United Kingdom

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James P. Cannon</span> American politician (1890–1974)

James Patrick Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.

Joseph Leroy Hansen, was an American Trotskyist and leading figure in the Socialist Workers Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pathfinder tendency</span> Group of historically Trotskyist organizations

The Pathfinder tendency is the unofficial name of a group of historically Trotskyist organizations that cooperate politically and organizationally with the Socialist Workers Party of the United States and support its solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and the Communist Party of Cuba.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Workers Party (United States)</span> Political party in the United States

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. The SWP began as a group which, because it supported Leon Trotsky over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, was expelled from the Communist Party USA. Since the 1930s, it has published The Militant as a weekly newspaper. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Lavan Weissman</span>

George Lavan Weissman was an American Marxist activist, journalist, and Socialist Workers Party leader.

References

  1. "M.-A. Waters new Militant editor", The Militant, 29 January 1971
  2. "The French Student Revolt". marxists.org. Mar 11, 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-03-11. Retrieved Apr 5, 2017.
  3. CUBANOW (2006-04-24). "The Digital Magazine of Cuban Arts and Culture". cubanow.net. Archived from the original on 2006-04-24. Retrieved 2017-04-06.