First Published: Workers Viewpoint, Vol. 4, No. 20, November 19, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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EROL Note: See the self-criticism/correction to this article printed in a subsequent issue of Workers Viewpoint.
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DURHAM, N.C–With vengeance in their hearts, the workers from the Lincoln Community Health Center walked right off the job the Monday after their co-worker, Mike Nathan, was murdered by the FBI and KKK/Nazi’s. The majority of the workers are Afro-Americans. They were angered even more by the lies spread by the hospital administration that communists are “outsiders, trouble-makers.”
The ex-slaveowning and plantation owning Watts family built Lincoln smack in the middle of Durham’s Afro-American community in the early 1900’s, so that their former slaves would not go to the hospital the Watts built for the plantation owners. For years it was the only place that blacks could get hospital care. In the early 1970’s, Lincoln hospital was cut back to a community clinic serving mostly Afro-Americans, poor and working class people.
Durham’s Afro-American community rose up when the city tried to close Lincoln down for financial reasons. Clear on his stand to fight class and national oppression in the Black Belt South, Comrade Mike quit his high-paying job at Duke Medical Center to help lead the tooth and nail fight against cutbacks. His communist work was deepened through his organizing study-training circles which strengthened and broadened the fight beyond Lincoln.
Throughout the struggle, as Lincoln Hospital became Lincoln Community Health Center, workers knew Mike for his quiet, gentle manner, absolute honesty and courage, in addition to the uncompromising, staunch character of the Party’s line he represented so well.
After the murder of the Communist Workers Party Five, the hospital administration has cynically tried to split Comrade Mike away from the communist principles that guided his life and his death. But communism is concrete, not an abstract idea. The good that Comrade Mike did while he lived, the close ties he had with workers and how he died – all flowed from the Party’s guidance and his dedication to the Party and to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
At Mike’s memorial the following Wednesday, his widow, Marty, conducted the service and exposed the administration’s lies. With example after example she showed how Mike’s desire to serve the people was why he became a doctor. That same desire along with his experience in trying to change the system led him to become a communist.
The majority attending the memorial were black workers who had known Mike deeply. They knew it was the Party’s line, the need for socialist revolution to begin to abolish all national and class oppression that Mike lived and died for. Dedicating his life to the Party of the working class and communism, Mike had taken the lead in support work for Southern Africa, organizing tens of thousands of dollars in medical aid to the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. Comrade Mike gave his life to save another comrade’s life. This selflessness is a concentrated expression of the Communist Workers Party line. This is why the Central Committee of the Communist Workers Party made Comrade Mike Nathan a Party member on his deathbed.
The ties between the Party, the working class and the masses of all oppressed nationalities are unbreakable and no amount of bourgeois slander and lies can shake it. The workers’ walkout, fully aware that Mike was a communist, is living testimony to the ties Mike had with them and their love and respect for the way he lived and died. At Lincoln Community Health Center, under the Party’s leadership, class fighters are being trained. With Comrade Mike Nathan’s invincible spirit shining like a beacon, the Party will produce countless Mikes to serve the struggle for proletarian revolution.