In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations

According to Leo Rosten, the author of The Joys of Yiddish, a “mensch” is "someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. Other definitions define mensch as a person of honour and integrity.

Sergio d’Amia died on 16 September 2019. His mother, an Italian Communist Party activist under fascism, then in the Resistance, signed him up at the age of 10 for the Pioneers, the organisation for the youngest communists (organising youth up to the age of 15), after which they could go on to the Fgci (Federation of Italian Communist Youth).

Dear comrades, we regret to report on the passing away on June 3, of comrade Maria José Maranhão. Brazilian anti-fascist, internationalist, trotskyist, revolutionary socialist, she was also a feminist, a social and labor activist, a geographer, university teacher and academic. "Zé" Maranhão graduated in Geography in the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1970.

Helena died on September 8, 2018 at the age of 69, after a life dedicated to socialism. In the early 1970s, she was in Lisbon one of the few activists of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the party that led the armed struggle against the Portuguese colonial regime. She also joined the International Communist League (ICL), which became the Portuguese section of the Fourth International (after 1979 the LCI took the name Revolutionary Socialist Party, PSR).

Mick Woods, a comrade from Britain who had lived in Denmark for more than twenty years, died at the too young age of 64 in July. But its not only in Britain and Denmark that Mick is mourned - the proudest achievement of his political life was his involvement in International Workers’ Aid, a campaign of practical solidarity with multi-ethnic Bosnia. The tribute below, from Ulf B Andersson from Swedish Workers’ Aid, was read at his funeral by former Danish MEP Søren Sondergaard who first met Mick through the campaign. The second piece was written for his memorial meeting in London, also addressed by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell by Danish comrade Lone Degn. Establishing a proper archive for IWA would be the best tribute we could pay to Mick - Eds

José Ramón Castaños known as Troglo (1950-2018) was a long-time leader of the Fourth Internationalists in the Basque country. he died in April 2018.

It is with a profound sense of sadness that we at AIDC have heard the news of the passing of Carl Brecker, the first Chairperson of the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC). We send our condolences to his family, especially his devoted daughters Tania and Dee, their children as well as his sister Valerie and her husband Ivan.

Fidel Castro was by far the greatest statesman of this last half century. He was also the last of the great revolutionary leaders of the democratic revolutions of national liberation that began in 1910 with the Chinese, Persian and Mexican revolutions and during and after the Second World War led to the independence and unity of China and the independence of the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia, Indochina, the African colonies, Nasser’s Egypt and Algeria.

Fidel Castro Ruz, Cuba’s revolutionary leader, president, and prime minister for five decades, died in Santiago de Cuba on Friday, Nov. 25. He was 90 years old. Although one of the most profound, clear-sighted, honest, and dedicated revolutionary leaders of the past half-century, Castro has been demonized by the corporate media as a dictator, tyrant, murderer, and torturer.

Trupti I don’t whether this is an anecdote or how I saw in movements or how your smiling face and an ever optimism made me think positive. [1]