Joseph Zuken

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Joseph (Joe) Zuken (1912 – 1986) was a popular Communist politician in Winnipeg and the longest serving elected Communist party politician in North America.

Joe Zuken's family immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine when he was still an infant. Raised in a secular Jewish environment in Winnipeg's working class North End he was educated at a secular Yiddish school in a socialist environment. He joined the Communist Party of Canada as a young lawyer and intervened in struggles for workers rights and in anti-fascist movements during the Great Depression.

As a lawyer he defended the party and left wing trade unions in court against state repression and later established a legal clinic to give poor people access to legal representation.

In 1941 Zuken was elected to Winnipeg's school board and was one of the few Communists to win re-election through the Cold War. He fought for the establishment of kindergartens, free textbooks, and higher salaries for teachers.

After serving on the school board for twenty years he was elected, in 1961, to Winnipeg's city council on behalf of the North End ward which had been represented since the 1930s by fellow Communist Jacob Penner. As an alderman he fought for public housing, public hospitals and rights for the poor. In 1979 Zuken ran for Mayor of Winnipeg and won 20% of the vote.

He remained an alderman until his retirement in 1983 due to poor health.

Though a loyal member of the Communist Party he expressed public criticisms of the Soviet Union in the 1970s for its restrictions on Jewish emigration and official anti-semitism in Poland in the late 1960s.

Zuken's brother, William Ross, was also an active Communist politician, and served as leader of the Communist Party in Manitoba from 1948 to 1981.