David McReynolds
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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.[1]
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 was openly gay in the 1950s and in a relationship with long-time partner Alvin Ailey.
Between 1957 and 1960, McReynolds was on the editorial board of the left-wing magazine Liberation. 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).
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 than in 1968 as a Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Congress. In 1980, he ran for President of the United States as the SPUSA candidate, with Diane Drufenbrock as vice presidential candidate, receiving some 6,898 votes 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.
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 Democrat incumbent Chuck Schumer, where he pulled in 36,942 votes.
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.
[edit] External links
- ^ David McReynolds, "Thinking About Retirement", Nonviolent Activist, March-April 1999 (retrieved 23 October 2006).
- Socialist Party USA
- War Resisters League
- The Philosophy of Nonviolence by David McReynolds
- The Infinite Series by David McReynolds
- David's Articles at MyTown
| Preceded by Frank P. Zeidler |
Socialist Party Presidential candidate 1980 (lost) |
Succeeded by Willa Kenoyer |
| Preceded by Mary Cal Hollis |
Socialist Party Presidential candidate 2000 (lost) |
Succeeded by Walt Brown |
| Preceded by Mark Dunau |
Green Party Candidate for United States Senator from New York 2004 (lost) |
Succeeded by Howie Hawkins |
