‘A better world’s in birth’

Pat Chin in Haiti.

Pat Chin, a beloved member of the New York branch of Workers World Party, died on May 16 after a long struggle with breast cancer. An article on her many contributions to the revolutionary movement will appear in next week’s Workers World. Below is a transcript of her last message to the New York branch of the Party, called in to a meeting on March 25.

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Revolutionary greetings to my dear comrades and friends.

First of all, congratulations on the tremendous success of the March 19th anti-war mobilization. You deserve to give yourselves a big round of applause for that.

As always, your determination, heroic courage and years of accumulated skills paid off in the most gratifying of ways. A better world’s in birth, even though it takes the vision of a socialist revolutionary to understand that the fight for socialism is a long-term struggle, not for those addicted to the instant gratification of capitalist consumer culture.

My illness is a serious one, but my years in Workers World, the place where
I found the most valuable reception of my revolutionary self, where I was encouraged to be me, has given me such profound satisfaction and sense of fulfillment that it makes it much easier to bear. It gives me strength, comrades and friends.

This is a most profound truth in large part because I came from a British colonized country where you are taught to hate yourself, where racism and class discrimination are combined to infuse the poison of self-hatred, giving the colonizers less work to do as capitalism destroys the sense of self.

I’ve heard some good news about new people joining the Party. Congratulations again. I would lastly like to thank the comrades in the Party, my wonderful, wonderful Workers World, for all the practical assistance, the love, warmth and care that you have been giving me over the course of this ordeal. Without this my recovery would be much more rocky.

I have a mountain to climb, a steep mountain, but with your love and assistance I will continue to struggle forward.

Thank you from the bottom of my socialist heart and revolutionary mind. And for all the good food that you have been bringing me!

See you later, comrades and friends. Forward ever, backward never! All power to the people!