Another Great Individual Passes

Ron Jacobs: Goodbye, David Dellinger is over at Counterpunch today. I'm proud to say that I met Mr. Dellinger as a young man. I was leaving the small theater at LSU--the one below the main stage over at the Student Union. If I remember right, that night I had seen either a live play called A Peasant of El Salvador, leftist political songwriter Dave Lippman, or it might have been a movie called The Battle of Chile.

Anyway, David Klein came up to me with an older looking gent and said, "Mike, this is Dave Dellinger." He shook my hand and greeted me warmly. Being all of twenty years old, to say I was impressed would be an understatement.

He was in town to address a Palestinian solidarity organization on campus. Dellinger ended up joining a group of us for food and drinks, and, while maintaining a bit of New England reserve, made it clear that he was impressed with our small but dedicated group of progressives, lefties, Quakers, liberals--and anyone else ready to make a statement against Ronald Reagan and the GOP's conservative minions.

Dellinger was a lifelong activist--antiwar (he served time for refusing induction in the 1940's), Chicago Eight Defendant, advocate for the rights of the downtrodden, be they here in the United States or abroad, and more--he will be missed.

If there is an afterlife, there'd better be a strong measure of equality--because if there isn't, the forces for good just added another to an already impressive list.