Peter
Camejo
SOME
THOUGHTS ABOUT PETER CAMEJO
By
Walter Lippmann
Peter Camejo died September 13 after
a long battle with lymphoma. He was 68 and a strong fighter for social justice
as long as I knew him.
The first time I saw Peter he was a
speaker at a large rally in
The first time I had a conversation
with Peter was in November 1962. He was on a national speaking tour in defense
of Cuba, and came through Madison, Wisconsin where I was a student to speak to
young activists he hoped to recruit to a group of which he as a national
leader, the Young Socialist Alliance, the youth group linked with the Socialist
Workers Party. Through the years I had contact with Peter both while we were
members of the SWP and YSA, and afterwards. We were members until the early
1980s.
Peter moved to the Bay Area and
established a Paine Webber brokerage. I put a small retirement fund in it,
which didn't do particularly well, and I later took it out. I never felt it was
that important, and didn't hold that against Peter. I figured it was a kind of
gambling, more or less. I wasn't concerned much about retirement then. What
young person is?
When Peter ran for governor of
This spring, 2008, saw Peter again
at the offices of his company, Progressive Assets Management. Other than the
change of hair color and the addition of a very few pounds to his frame, he was
the same wonderfully animated, articulate person he had always been. I know
he'd been ill, and his death didn't actually surprise, but still it was a
terrible shock and remains a terrible loss to all who would build a better
world and a socialist movement here in the
When Peter was in his twenties, those
who knew him were all impressed by his oratorical skills. But was there any
substance to back up? Who could tell? Later on when he built an investment
management company which he told me managed a BILLION DOLLARS worth of
retirement funds and other instruments, it became obvious that here was someone
both glib AND highly competent.
Everything Peter did, whether they
met with my personal approval or not, was guided by the idea that it was
necessary to break the stranglehold of capitalist thinking, and, particularly,
of the idea that social progress must come via supporting the Democratic Party.
The need for an independent
political alternative, to the left of the Democratic and Republican parties was
always at the heart of his thinking. In his final years he was an active leader
of the California Green Party, and was strongly supporting the presidential
campaign of Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez.
Peter did not think that Cuban was a
model which could or should be copied, but an example from which socialists in
the United States could and should study attentively and from which we could
all learn, both from its positive lessons (it's possible to defeat an
entrenched adversary) and from its problematic elements (the costs of
survival).