David McReynolds

File:David mcreynolds.jpeg

David McReynolds

David McReynolds (born October 25, 1929) is an American democratic socialist and pacifist activist who described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with Liberation magazine and the War Resisters League.

Early Life

He was born in Los Angeles to Charles and Elizabeth McReynolds. In 1951 he joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and in 1953 he graduated from UCLA with a degree in political science. McReynolds has been openly gay since the 1950s. Between 1957 and 1960, McReynolds was on the editorial board of the left-wing magazine Liberation.

Career with WRL

He was staunchly anti-war and a draft resister, and in 1960 joined the staff of the War Resisters League (WRL), where he would remain until his retirement in 1999 (as of 2006, he remains active within the nonviolence movement and regularly participates in WRL activities). On November 6, 1965, he was one of five men who publicly burned their draft cards at an anti-war demonstration at Union Square in New York. This was one of the first public draft-card burnings after U.S. law was changed on August 30, 1965 to make such actions a felony, punishable by up to five years' imprisonment.

Leader with SPUSA

After years of internal problems, the SPA suffered a three-way split in 1973. The SPA was renamed the Social Democrats USA by the right-wing leadership of former Trotskyist Max Shachtman. Michael Harrington and his followers split off to form the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (now the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA) with the purpose of "realignment". Arguably akin to the Trotskyist idea of "entrism", realignment envisioned working within the Democratic Party to pull it to the left. The left wing of the SPA, known as the Debs Caucus, including McReynolds, reconstituted the spirit of the SPA and Eugene V. Debs into the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) that exists today. McReynolds has long been a member of both DSA and SPUSA.

In his political career, McReynolds ran for Congress from Lower Manhattan twice and for President twice. In 1958 he ran as a write-in SPA candidate and then in 1968 as a Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Congress in the 19th district pulling in 4.7% of the vote (3,969 votes)[1]. In 1980, he ran for President of the United States as the SPUSA candidate, with Diane Drufenbrock as vice presidential candidate, receiving some 6,994 (0.01%) votes [2] and also becoming the first openly gay man to run for President in U.S. history. Upon the request of fellow Socialists, McReynolds ran again for President as the SPUSA candidate in 2000 with Mary Cal Hollis as his running mate and received 5,602 votes.

2004 Senate Campaign

On July 10, 2004, David McReynolds announced his candidacy running on the Green Party ticket for one of the New York seats in the Senate, running an anti-war campaign against Democratic incumbent Chuck Schumer, where he pulled in 36,942 votes for 0.5% of total.

2010 Senate Campaign

In late 2007, McReynolds announced he would again seek a seat in the United States Senate from New York as a Green Party candidate against incumbent Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. Slight progress has made by Greens in the state, following Howie Hawkins 2006 Senate run against incumbent Democrat Hillary Clinton in which he received 55,469 votes, for 1.2% of the total votes cast, up 0.7% from 2004.

Today, McReynolds lives in New York City and continues to be active in the Socialist and pacifist movements through the combination of Marxist politics and nonviolence.

External links

• Socialist Party USA
• War Resisters League
• The Philosophy of Nonviolence by David McReynolds
• The Infinite Series by David McReynolds
• David's Articles at MyTown
• David McReynolds: Socialist Peacemaker by Paul Buhle