James Harris (politician)
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James Harris (1948 - ) is an African American communist politician.
Harris is a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1996, 2000, and served as an alternate candidate for Róger Calero in 2004 in states where Calero did not qualify for the ballot. Harris served for a time as the national organization secretary of the SWP. He was a staff writer for the socialist newsweekly The Militant in New York. He wrote about the mass battles in South Africa to bring down the racist apartheid system and in 1994 Harris traveled to South Africa to attend the Congress of South African Trade Unions convention.
Born into a working-class family in Cleveland, Ohio, Harris first became politically active in the civil rights movement. With growing protests against racist discrimination, tens of thousands of Black families in the city staged a school strike in the early 1960s, setting up "Freedom Schools" to study African-American history.
On graduating from high school, Harris attended Cleveland State University, where he was a founding member of the Black Student Union. He organized fellow students into demonstrations opposing the Vietnam War as well as actions against racist practices of the college, which then had only a small percentage of Black students. He became a member of the Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and later served on its national staff in Washington, D.C.
Through these experiences he joined and later became a leader of the Young Socialist Alliance. He ran for school board in Cleveland on the Socialist Workers ticket in 1969, and soon after joined the Socialist Workers Party.
A supporter of the Cuban revolution, Harris participated in the second Venceremos Brigade to Cuba in 1969 along with hundreds of other youth from the United States. Brigade members cut sugar cane for a couple of months in an expression of solidarity with the efforts by millions of working people in Cuba to maximize sugar production. Working alongside Cuban workers and meeting volunteers from Vietnam, Korea, and elsewhere deepened his sense of internationalism.
Harris moved to Atlanta in the early 1970s, and joined in the struggles of the Black community against police brutality. At the time, a number of young Blacks had been killed by police SWAT squad units. Later Harris helped mobilize supporters of Black rights in Atlanta to join actions in Boston in the battle for busing and school desegregation in that city.
In 1977 Harris moved to New York to join the staff of the National Student Coalition Against Racism, which had helped lead mobilizations for school desegregation. He became a national chairperson of the coalition.
Harris later worked in a garment factory in Los Angeles, as the SWP deepened its industrial base by building units of party members in the garment unions. In Los Angeles he was the chairperson of the SWP in the city.
He also participated in brigades to defend the Nicaraguan revolution in the mid-1980s, and joined a delegation to visit revolutionary Grenada in the early 1980s.
Harris lived and worked in Detroit in the early 1990s and was a member of the United Auto Workers there. He helped broaden solidarity with labor struggles such as those of workers on strike against Caterpillar. Harris spent several months in Peoria, Illinois, helping establish a branch of the Socialist Workers Party there in response to the battle by members of the UAW against Caterpillar.
Harris is a strong critic of the death-penalty and he has been active in a struggle against police brutality in Valdosta, Georgia, and has participated in activity with the People's Tribunal, an organization fighting to win justice for the family of Willie James Williams, killed while in police custody in that southern Georgia town.
| Preceded by James "Mac" Warren |
Socialist Workers Party Presidential candidate 1996 (lost), 2000 (lost), |
Succeeded by Róger Calero1 |
| Notes and references | ||
| 1. In the 2004 election, Harris was used as a stand-in candidate in states were Calero could not be listed on the ballot. This was due to the fact that Calero did not meet the requirements to be President. | ||
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