Harry DeBoer

Harry DeBoer (1903–1992) was an American labor militant and Trotskyist. He was born in Crookston, Minnesota,[1] and worked in the Minneapolis coal yards. DeBoer became one of the leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 – a particularly well-organized action that resulted in the shutting down of most commercial transport in the city.[2] A leading member of the Socialist Workers Party, DeBoer was prosecuted together with many other SWP leaders under the Smith Act for opposing the US involvement in World War II. He found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison.[3] In 1987, DeBoer authored the essay "How to Win Strikes: Lessons from the 1934 Minneapolis Truckers Strike" (also translated into Danish and German), in which he sought to disseminate the tactics used in the Minneapolis strike for the benefit of a new generation of socialists.

Leon Trotsky with Harry De Boer (left) and James H. Bartlett and their spouses in Mexico in 1940

In his later years, DeBoer was a member of the Committee for a Workers' International before the 1992 split.

Notes
  1. "Wellred USA Online Store". wellredusa.com/pamphlets.asp. Archived from the original on 2007-08-22.
  2. Valelly, Richard M. (1989). "New Deal Labor Policy and the Minneapolis Strikes of 1934". Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy. University of Chicago Press. pp. 103–118. ISBN 9780226845357.
  3. Haverty-Stacke, Donna T. (2016). ""If That Is Treason, You Can Make the Most of It": November 18–December 8, 1941". Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution Since the Age of FDR. NYU Press. pp. 109–138. ISBN 9781479849628.


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