David McReynolds

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David McReynolds
McReynolds at the 2009 Left Forum in New York City
Personal details
Born
David Ernest McReynolds[1]

(1929-10-25)October 25, 1929
Los Angeles, California
DiedAugust 17, 2018(2018-08-17) (aged 88)
New York City, New York
Political partyIndependent
Other political
affiliations		Socialist Party (1951–2015)
Prohibition Party (before 1951)[2]
Green (affiliated non-member)
Alma materUniversity of California Los Angeles
OccupationActivist, politician, writer

David Ernest McReynolds (October 25, 1929 – August 17, 2018) was an American politician and social activist who was a prominent democratic socialist and pacifist activist. He described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with the War Resisters League.[3][4] He was a resident of New York City.[5]

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Early life

McReynolds was born in Los Angeles, to Elizabeth Grace (Tallon), a nurse, and Lt. Col. Charles McReynolds, an Air Force intelligence officer.[6] In 1951 he joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and in 1953 he graduated from UCLA with a degree in political science. Between 1957 and 1960, he worked for the editorial board of the left-wing magazine Liberation. He was openly gay and wrote his first article about living as a gay man in 1969.[7]

War Resisters League

McReynolds was staunchly anti-war and a draft resister, and in 1960 joined the staff of the War Resisters League (WRL), where he remained until his retirement in 1999. In 1965 he lectured on 'The Old Left and the New Left' at the newly founded Free University of New York.[8]

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. He was close friends with Bayard Rustin[9] and other prominent peace activists, as well as literary figures such as Quentin Crisp.[10] In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[11]

McReynolds was particularly active internationally, both in War Resisters' International of which he was chairperson for the term 1986–88, and in the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace which eventually merged into the International Peace Bureau.

Socialist Party USA

The SPA was renamed the Social Democrats USA by a majority vote at the 1972 convention. Michael Harrington resigned and then formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (now the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA) with the purpose of "realignment" strengthening the role of labor unions and other progressive organizations in the Democratic Party to pull it to the left. The smallest and the most left wing of the SPA, known as the Debs Caucus, including McReynolds, formed the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA). McReynolds was long a member of both DSA and SPUSA.

McReynolds' primary theoretical contribution to socialism came from his blending of a pacifist world-view with a commitment to re-distributive socialist economics. Politically, he was a staunch anti-authoritarian and collaborated with a diverse set of political formations on the democratic left. His widely read pamphlet, The Philosophy of Nonviolence, provides a unique window into the mind of a lifelong activist wrestling with the contradictions and pitfalls which plagued the political left in the 20th century. He concludes that "...there is no living, vital philosophy which does not have 'holes' in it." Consequently, he mapped out a pluralistic approach which is, on the one hand, socialist, yet is entirely engaged with thought systems as seemingly contradictory as Hindu philosophy. He concluded that a brand of pacifist-socialism is best suited for future socialist experiments since it offers the greatest opportunity to prefigure the kinds of democratic relations necessary to create a functional and free society.[clarification needed]

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).[12] In 1980, he ran for President of the United States as the SPUSA candidate, with Diane Drufenbrock as vice presidential candidate, receiving 6,994 votes (0.01%).[13][14] Upon the request of fellow Socialists, he ran again for President as the SPUSA candidate in 2000, with Mary Cal Hollis as his running mate, receiving 5,602 votes. In both 1980 and 2000, McReynolds received the endorsement and ballot line of the Liberty Union Party in Vermont.[15]

After the 2000 election, the Palm Beach Post speculated that 2,908 voters, "mostly in elderly Jewish districts", had mistakenly voted for both Al Gore, running for President on the Democratic ticket, and for McReynolds on a "confusing butterfly ballot", thereby resulting in voided votes, helping to cost Gore the state's crucial electoral votes.[16][17]

In January 2015, the Socialist Party USA's National Committee voted to censure McReynolds over alleged racist comments made on social media regarding the Charlie Hebdo shooting and shooting of Michael Brown.[18] He resigned from the SPUSA shortly thereafter.[2]

2004 Senate campaign

Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2004

On July 10, 2004, 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.[4][19]

Later life

In 2015, McReynolds endorsed U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States, praising him as a "serious candidate" and for not personally attacking his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.[20]

McReynolds died on August 17, 2018, aged 88, following a fall he sustained at his New York City home.[21]

Footnotes

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ a b Mulkerin, Joseph. "A socialist presidential candidate — no, not that one — looks back". The Villager, 27 August 2015. Retrieved 28 August 2015.
  3. ^ David McReynolds, "Thinking About Retirement", Nonviolent Activist, March–April 1999, p. 7.
  4. ^ a b Martin Duberman, A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds, New York: The New Press (2011): 221 
  5. ^ "Our Campaigns - Candidate - David McReynolds". www.ourcampaigns.com. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  6. ^ https://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=7993
  7. ^ Leaders from the 1960s: A Biographical Sourcebook of American Activism. Edited By David De Leon Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994 ISBN 0-313-27414-2 pp.215–219
  8. ^ Berke, Joseph (October 29, 1965), "The Free University of New York", Peace News: 6–7 as reproduced in Jakobsen, Jakob (2012), Anti-University of Londin–Antihistory Tabloid, London: MayDay Rooms, pp. 6–7, archived from the original on October 12, 2012 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ John D'Emilio. READING THE SILENCES IN A GAY LIFE The Case of Bayard Rustin pp. 59–68 in The Seductions of Biography. Edited: Mary Rhiel, David Suchoff, David Bruce Suchoff. Routledge, 1996 ISBN 0-415-91089-7
    "Rustin's only defender was Dave McReynolds, a younger gay staffer at the War Resisters League, whom Rustin had mentored over the years"
  10. ^ Dave McReynolds. NOTES ON KNOWING QUENTIN. and QUENTIN CRISP: THE RADICAL, Quentin Crisp Archives (2005)
  11. ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
  12. ^ "Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 5, 1968" (PDF). Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  13. ^ "1980 Presidential General Election Results". Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  14. ^ Kari Lydersen. David vs. Goliath. In These Times. Vol. 24, No. 10 (2000).
    On his 1980 presidential run: "He was among the first openly gay political candidates for any office, having come out in WIN magazine in 1969, and though he doesn't see himself as a "gay and lesbian candidate," he has continued to work for gay rights."
  15. ^ "Vermont November 2000 General Election". Thegreenpapers.com. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
  16. ^ "Joel Engelhardt and Scott McCabe, "Over-votes cost Gore the election in Florida," ''Palm Beach Post,'' undated website". Palmbeachpost.com. Archived from the original on June 16, 2011. Retrieved September 27, 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ "Kevin Phillips, "The GOP's control of Congress and the White House can last only so long," ''Los Angeles Times,'' April 15, 2001, page M-1". Retrieved September 27, 2011. [dead link]
  18. ^ Reinholz, Mary (May 1, 2015). "Rift Among Socialists Over Former Presidential Hopeful's 'Potentially Racist' Comments About Michael Brown". Bedford + Bowery. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  19. ^ "C:\Documents and Settings\hhardwick\Desktop\WEBSITE\EOU06 STATEWIDE JD GOV BY AD.qpw" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 22, 2012. Retrieved 2011-09-27. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ "Why I support Bernie Sanders". Peoples World. July 7, 2015.
  21. ^ "David McReynolds, longtime peace activist and agitator, dead at 88". New York Daily News. August 17, 2018.

Works

Further reading

  • Paul Buhle, "David McReynolds:Socialist Peacemaker". Nonviolent Activist, March–April 1999.
  • Scott H. Bennett, "Conscience, Comrades, and the Cold War: The Korean War Draft Resistance Cases of Socialist Pacifists David McReynolds and Vern Davidson," Peace and Change, vol. 38, no. 1 (Jan. 2013), pp. 83–120.
  • Scott H. Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915–1963. Syracuse University Press, 2003.
  • Dan Vera, "Being Peaceful: An Interview with David McReynolds." White Crane, No. 57 (Summer 2003), pp. 4–10.
  • Keith Stern, Queers in History. Dallas, Texas: BenBella Books, 2009.

External links

Party political offices
Preceded by Socialist Party Presidential candidate
1980 (lost) 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Socialist Party Presidential candidate
2000 (lost) 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Green Party Candidate for United States Senator from New York
2004 (lost) 		Succeeded by
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