|
| Affiliation | Workers League |
|
| Name | Jean T. Brust |
| Address |
West St. Paul, Minnesota , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
August 31, 1921
|
| Died | November 24, 1997
(76 years)
|
| Contributor | Chronicler |
| Last Modifed | Juan Croniqueur
Sep 09, 2023 01:24am |
| Tags |
|
| Info | BRUST, Jean (Tilsen) - union organizer, socialist activist, one of three nominees for Vice President on the Workers League ticket in 1984.
Jean Tilsen was born on 8/31/1921 in Elgin, Minnesota, the daughter of Jewish immigrants who had fled Russia. Each of the five children was born in a different town in Minnesota or one of the Dakotas. Her father was a traveling salesman and small merchant.
After her family moved to St. Paul in 1935, Tilsen became active in the Young People's Socialist League, the youth movement of the Socialist Party. At the time, Trotskyists were in control of the local chapter, and Tilsen followed them into the Socialist Workers Party when it was organized locally in 1940. Jean's future husband, Bill Brust, joined the SWP at the same time. Later in 1940, Trotsky was murdered, and in 1941 some leading Trotskyists in the USA were arrested.
Worked in a defense plant during World War II. Married a young SWP member and had a daughter, Cynthia, in 1944, but the marriage broke up soon thereafter. She lost her industrial job after the war and participated in the packinghouse strike in St. Paul in 1946 with her future husband. Both found work later in 1946, participated in another packinghouse strike in 1948, and were married in 1948. They had two sons, Leo and Steven.
The revolutionary movement faced new challenges and crises in the postwar period. A section of the Trotskyist movement, led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel, abandoned the fight to build independent revolutionary parties. The Pabloites won support from a group of trade unionists and other party members who had been made cynical and demoralized by the difficult and protracted struggle against Stalinism and imperialism.
The Brust home in St. Paul was the local party headquarters at this time, with leading party members meeting in the basement to discuss the progress of the internal struggle over the issue of Pabloism.
Jean had left her job in meatpacking in the early 1950s, and took on many public responsibilities as a local party leader. She often chaired press conferences which were held during tours of SWP leaders, and was quoted in articles in the capitalist press.
The latter part of the 1950s marked the beginning of the most difficult period of Jean's political life. The SWP drifted away from Trotskyism and toward Castroism in the early 1960s. The Brusts did not support the shift in emphasis and were pushed out of the SWP. They resigned from the party in 1964.
During this period Jean returned to school, obtained a college degree and a master's degree in anthropology. A bit later she began teaching at St. Olaf College, a small school in Northfield, Minnesota, south of the Twin Cities.
The Brusts visited British Trotskyists in 1963.
In 1966, the Brusts helped to organize anti-Castro SWP members into the Workers League Party. Jean Brust had a serious auto accident in 1966 and suffered a broken ankle from which she never fully recovered.
Jean was instrumental in building three branches of the Workers League in Minnesota in the early 1970s.
Relocated to Detroit in the late 1970s to assist in the new party headquarters; Bill Brust remained in Minnesota to help with party building there.
The PATCO strike in 1981 inaugurated years of bitter struggles against concessions and union-busting. Jean, despite being slowed by her earlier injury and severe arthritis, intervened in all of these battles. In addition to national strikes like PATCO and Greyhound, there were local and regional strikes in the Midwest, above all the long Hormel strike in 1986-87 in Austin, Minnesota, about 40 miles south of the Twin Cities. Bill and Jean both worked to bring to the rank and file the hard truth that victory was impossible without a turn to political struggle.
Jean made several long trips, including to Sioux Falls SD for the John Morrell meatpacking strike in 1987, and to International Falls, on the border between Minnesota and Canada, during the bitter struggle of construction workers against scabbing between 1989-91.
The last years of Jean's life were burdened by illness and immense personal losses. Bill died in 9/1991 after a six-month struggle with cancer. Only two and a half years later, in 4/1994, their 40-year-old son Leo, a dedicated member of the Workers League then working in Michigan, died suddenly of cardiac arrest.
Brust suffered a stroke on 11/21/1997 and died on 11/24/1997 at the age of 76.
Abridged from [Link]
|
 | BOOKS |
 |
|
| Title |
Purchase |
Contributor |
|
| Start Date |
End Date |
Type |
Title |
Contributor |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
| INFORMATION LINKS |
|
|
|
