Per Leander
Stockholm, Sweden  
 
Clifton DeBerry
Seemingly little things often tell workers just as much about a party’s perspective as its program does. I was reminded of this while reading the article on the May 6 San Francisco meeting to celebrate the life and work of veteran Socialist Workers Party leader Clifton DeBerry (May 22 issue).

DeBerry joined the SWP after a series of discussions with party leader Farrell Dobbs. I remember DeBerry describing—at a public meeting in New York in 1983 that I attended—his very first encounter with the party, when he walked into its Chicago headquarters in the early 1950s. DeBerry said he came in and found a man sweeping the floor. They began to talk politics. It was only later that he learned that the floor sweeper was Dobbs—the well-known and respected workers’ leader who had earned his spurs in the heat of the 1930s class battles to unionize Minneapolis and then the Midwest, and who was the SWP’s presidential candidate in the 1948 election.

DeBerry said this made a lasting impression on him because it showed that Dobbs “wasn’t too good to sweep the floor.”

Doug Cooper
Sydney, Australia  
 
 
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