Al Stergar, an obituary (fwd from WW).

[Luciano Dondero <DOND001@xxxxxx>]

From: "Workers World" <WW@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Workers World Service" <workers-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Al Stergar, a revolutionary worker
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 10:32:09 EDT
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Organization:  WW Publishers

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.18, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

A REVOLUTIONARY WORKER: AL STERGAR. PRESENTE!

by Phil Wilayto
Milwaukee

When Al Stergar died on Jan. 2, 1996, after a heart attack
following a battle with cancer, the daily newspaper here
didn't run an obituary. It ran a news article.

The mayor sent a personal letter of condolence to Betsy
Stergar, Al's wife. Nearly 200 people attended a memorial
service on Jan. 6, although it was really a private affair
for family and friends.

The crowd included the former Socialist mayor of
Milwaukee, the state director of the American Indian
Movement, and a large delegation of Latino workers from the
Wisconsin Injured Workers Network.

The official part of the recognition would have amused Al,
who remained a combatant to the end, especially in his role
as co-editor of the Latino Community News.

Just about a month ago, he was threatened with a libel
suit by officials at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee
for printing articles accusing the school's administration
of racism.

Then he was taken to task by the city's chief of police
for another article describing police harassment of a local
Latino activist.

A few months before that, while covering a Labor Board
hearing in a union struggle, he was physically attacked by a
company goon.

You always knew which side Al was on.

UNION AT 12

Albert Stergar was born in Milwaukee on Sept. 18, 1922, to
immigrant parents from Slovenia, later part of Yugoslavia.
His dad worked at the Briggs & Stratton factory, his mother
cleaned up at the local Gimbel's department store. An aunt
was an organizer for the United Electrical Workers.

By the time Al turned 12, Milwaukee was deep in the throes
of the wave of union organizing that led to the birth of the
CIO. He joined right in, organizing groups of youths to
throw rocks at the scab-operated trolleys.

At Boys Technical High School, Al discovered photography
and printing. At this time he was also introduced to
socialist ideas and to the woman who would become his
partner in his life's work--Betsy Kelsner. They were married
in 1941. Over 50 years later, walking down the street
together, they would still hold hands.

As a working-class militant from an Eastern European
background, Al was similar to many other labor and socialist
activists in the city. He organized unions, played a leading
role in the strike wave that followed World War II, and
became editor of the union newspaper at Wisconsin Motors.

But it was Al's commitment to the struggle against racism
and in support of self-determination for oppressed peoples
that won him the love and respect of so many oppressed
workers.

FOUGHT RACISM IN THE PLANTS

As a union steward in the late 1940s with UAW Local 75, Al
helped force the American Motors Co. to open up skilled-
trade jobs to African American workers. He once said this
was his proudest accomplishment.

He later organized the workers at Dewey Metal into the
Sheet Metal Workers Union, opening up the formerly whites-
only union to Black workers.

In the 1950s, Al helped organize one of the city's first
civil-rights picket lines, demanding an A&P supermarket hire
Black workers. He was also a member of the committee seeking
justice for Daniel Bell, a young Black man beaten to death
by Milwaukee police.

Those were difficult times for activists, whether
socialist or not. Al was red-baited out of jobs, rocks were
thrown through the windows of his and Betsy's home, and
swastikas were painted on their doors. If anyone thought
that would scare them, they didn't know Al and Betsy.

Al marched for open housing in the 1960s with civil-rights
leader Lloyd Barbee and the legendary Father Groppi. When
the city's Black community boycotted the segregated school
system, he served as a principal at one of the Freedom
Schools, which his own daughter attended. He also took part
in the huge struggle to win indictments against the cops who
murdered Ernest Lacey, another Black youth.

Al participated in the 1975 Novitiate takeover in Gresham,
Wis., with the Menominee Warrior Society and the American
Indian Movement. That same year he stood with AIM members at
the city's War Memorial when they were arrested and beaten
by police while protesting an anti-AIM lecture by an FBI
informant sponsored by the John Birch Society. Al supported
the struggle for treaty rights in the often violent fish-
spearing campaigns of the 1980s.

His militant anti-racism earned him close relationships
with the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords and the Brown
Berets, as well as with AIM.

There wasn't an issue that Al wasn't involved in. A leader
in the local anti-war movement, he was in Chicago in 1968,
building street barricades outside the Democratic Party
Convention.

He fought for the rights of welfare recipients. He marched
on Gay Pride Day.

Al was a fighter, including, when it was necessary, in a
physical sense. When he was 51, Al was arrested for beating
the hell out of the local Nazi leader--20 years younger than
he.

MARXISM BROUGHT HIM TO WWP

Al Stergar was an activist's activist, but he was also the
ruling class's worst nightmare: an activist with an
ideology--revolutionary Marxism. At the age of 13, in the
turbulent days of the Great Depression, he joined the youth
group of the Socialist Party. He was later active with the
Socialist Workers Party.

In 1967 Al Stergar became a founding member of the
Milwaukee branch of Workers World Party. At the time the
Party only had branches in New York, Buffalo, N.Y., and
Youngstown, Ohio.

Present and former members of all these organizations, as
well as of the Communist Party and others, attended Al's
memorial service.

As a WWP branch organizer, Al helped guide and develop a
new generation of revolutionaries. For many of these young
activists, Al was the first revolutionary worker and Marxist
they knew. He taught them to think in terms of class, to
always look for the historical context and material basis
for political developments.

He passed along the technical skills he had developed in
photography, printing, newspaper layout and journalism,
paying particular attention to young activists from the
communities of color. He provided a personal example of how
to combine a passion for the struggle with the qualities of
patience, sensitivity and humor.

Al was arrested many times over the course of his
political career. The most serious charges came when the
police tried to invade the local WWP headquarters after the
branch helped mobilize nearly 1,000 people against a
speaking engagement by arch-racist Alabama Gov. George
Wallace.

When news of his arrest reached the Latino community,
hundreds of dollars were collected there for the bail fund.
With the help of the Party's national center, the frame-up
of the Anti-Wallace Six was defeated.

In 1981, Al was fired from the Rose Company, where he had
been a sheet-metal worker and a thorn in the company's side
for over 20 years. The UAW local he had played a leading
role in organizing was decertified shortly after. The
company's lawyers bragged they had spent $100,000 to defeat
Al.

Al was now out of a job. But he used the time to develop
his photographic skills, taking pictures for the African
American Milwaukee Courier and the alternative Shepherd
Express. At the Shepherd he was introduced to desktop
publishing, a skill he pursued with a vengeance.

CO-EDITOR OF LATINO PAPER

After serving from 1983 to 1991 as editor-in-chief of the
Spanish Journal, Al co-founded the Latino Community News
with Ted Uribe, Juan Jose Olmos and Onofre Rivera. This
bilingual, biweekly newspaper became an important sounding
board for the city's growing Latino population.

Co-editing this paper became the focus of Al's political
work, his way of making a contribution to the community he
loved.

The last week of his life, although weakened from repeated
chemotherapy treatments, he met the deadline and got the
paper out.

At his family memorial, Al's daughter Lauren spoke of her
father's hands.

He had great hands, she said. They could comfort a crying
child, tickle his wife and make her laugh, paint a picket
sign, create a newspaper, design a leaflet, fix a car,
program a computer or make a fist to defend himself and his
class.

Al Stergar is survived by Betsy; his daughters JoEllen
Seifert and Lauren Sanchez; four grandchildren; many other
relatives; and more friends than can be counted.

Al, we're really going to miss you.

MEMORIAL MEETING ON JAN. 20

A memorial program to celebrate the life of Al Stergar
will be held at 2 p.m. on Jan. 20 at Milwaukee's United
Community Center, 1028 So. 9th St.

Among those scheduled to speak at the memorial are
Milwaukee's former socialist mayor, Frank Zeidler;
Wisconsin Injured Workers Network Director Ted Uribe;
American Indian Movement State Director Phil Bautista;
Word Warriors Report co-host Michael McGee; Milwaukee
County Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Bruce Colburn;
members of the family; and a representative of the
national office of Workers World Party.

For over 60 years, Al Stergar was a key player in many
of the progressive movements of the city. As a labor
organizer, civil-rights activist, anti-war leader,
journalist, photographer, printer and educator, he
touched many lives. The Jan. 20 memorial will give his
many friends and admirers an opportunity to share their
memories and celebrate the struggles of his life.

For more information, contact Rose Lee or Phil Wilayto
at (414) 364-1034 (phone and fax) or by e-mail at
ajrc@xxxxxxxxxxx


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