Ines Weiner, a beloved math teacher in the New York public schools and a revolutionary communist with Progressive Labor Party (PLP), died on January 16 after a year-long battle with cancer. She was only 61 years old. In her last week, over a hundred people visited her hospital bed.
Politicized at an early age in the Dominican Republic, Ines graduated from Walton High School in the Bronx and got her degree in math at Lehman College, where she began Party organizing. She was known for her fighting spirit first as a student, and then as a teacher she was popular with her students, who often sought her out for help.
Her family remembers her as someone who valued growth—of a flower in her garden, a child, a husband, a comrade, a communist party. They say she knew struggle—through all the anger, frustration and tears—was growth. Though capitalism failed Ines like many millions of others, she knew that communism would eventually destroy it. Her family will miss her and remember her as someone who showed them and many others how to struggle, grow, and win. As she wished, they intend to scatter her ashes at abolitionist John Brown’s grave.
”La Maestra, Luchando, También Está Educando”
As an active PLP teacher in the Bronx, Ines was critical to many political struggles. First, she fought against police terror. When Jose Luis Zarate, a young unarmed worker from Mexico, was gunned down on the job by the KKKops, Ines helped the family see why they should take to the streets with a group of victims’ parents and PLP. A few months later in 1999, ten blocks from where Zarate was murdered, Amadou Diallo, another young unarmed worker from Guinea, was shot 41 times by the NYPD, and Ines was key to PLP’s launching the first demonstration against one of the most infamous of New York racist police killings. In 2012, she helped the Party organize against the murder of Ramarley Graham. Ines was clear that there will never be justice for the working class under capitalism.
Second, Ines struggled on the job. She believed students should “fight to learn and learn to fight.” She created math lessons that taught her students the system of capitalist inequality. When she spoke at union meetings, everybody listened. When her large school was being restructured, her organizing infuriated the school bosses. As Ines neared retirement, morale at her school was so low that staff no longer held celebrations. They made an exception, however, for Ines—a grand retirement party of 100 staff members.
Third, she was a communist organizer. Ines was a collective base-builder: she knew how to work jointly with other comrades to help build a wider base for the Party, spending many hours with them visiting the families of their students, or forming friendships with those they brought to Party events. Ines helped build the Party among many people, such as the Bronx Stella D’oro biscuit company strikers.
Boston: ”Death to the Fascists!”
Ines also took part in the 1975 PLP Boston Summer project, showing great courage in the face of the vicious racists of the anti-busing movement. In 2002, Ines went to Boston with other NY comrades to help shut down a Nazi meeting scheduled to take place at the Wakefield Public Library. PLP set up a militant picket line and Ines helped lead our action, hitting a Nazi over the head with a stick. She was charged with assault and battery, and a long court case ensued with her teaching license and pension at risk. The party built a strong legal defense that eventually won the case. Ines came up to Boston for many court dates, and became comrades forever with her Boston family. Her communist courage made that day in Wakefield a victory for the working class.
Haiti: When the Trees Marched
Ines came from the Dominican side of Hispaniola and belied in unity with workers in Haiti. Our Haitian comrades loved her for overcoming the bitter history of Haitian-Dominican relations, poisoned by the bosses of both sides. Once, on an afternoon swim in that sea which had been a graveyard of slaves, the swimmers of different nations and colors floating over the swells seemed to promise the future Ines dreamed and fought for.
A hunger strike by a protesting high-school teacher gathered union teachers in support. He lay half-dead on a concrete floor and Ines whispered that we had to put a stop to this. We tried, but it was not in our hands. We marched in the streets and headed for the Education Department with our demands. Teachers flanked and led students as though on a school trip, but this was an unauthorized march which stopped traffic for over an hour as hundreds of us crowded through the dust and mud and noise, swept along by the memory of the man lying on the schoolroom floor to protest with his life. We all carried branches the children had pulled from trees to act as flags and banners. The trees marched. The trees marched, the children danced and sang, and there was Ines waving her branch, and there she will always be for us, in the streets of the whole world, in the struggle of all the workers, among the children, with the teachers, singing for liberation.
Bella Ciao, Comrade
Ines had the inspiring life of a comrade so able in working for our class, and so human with everyone, including your second family of comrades spread around the globe. Ines, you loved nothing more than to speak with us, to struggle with us, to eat with us. Students who came to be tutored, family stopping by, comrades in a struggle or just there to talk. A house of love, comradeship, and food. Bella ciao, comrade! We will continue the struggle for communism, and through the struggle, you will live on.