I’m sad to hear of the pass­ing of the indomitable David McReynolds, who I knew most­ly through his work with the War Resisters League. I first got to know him when I was work­ing for New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers but got more expo­sure when I start­ed Nonviolence-org back in the mid-90s and trav­eled up to NYC more fre­quent­ly as a mem­ber of WRL’s board.

I got to pub­lish a won­der­ful series of David’s paci­fist writ­ings online in that era when the web was becom­ing a thing. I also remem­ber stay­ing at his place on at least one of those vis­its and get­ting to meet one of his beloved felines. His inter­ests were far more wide-ranging than the aver­age activist’s and he was always ready to chal­lenge group-think ortho­dox­ies with an intel­lec­tu­al rig­or I deeply appreciated.

I often found myself dis­agree­ing with David (and I got the dis­tinct impres­sion he could get pret­ty unbear­able at times), but he helped me see the con­se­quences of my choic­es in a way that kept me honest.

I think I still look beyond my answers more read­i­ly because of con­ver­sa­tions in David’s apart­ment. For all my qualms with Face­book, I’ve been grate­ful that it brought me back into David’s orbit in recent times and I will miss his com­men­tary and discussions.

David McReynolds, Social­ist Activist Who Ran for Pres­i­dent, Dies at 88 (Pub­lished 2018) 

His paci­fist work spanned decades and sev­er­al wars, and he twice ran for the White House as an…

www​.nytimes​.com