Dorothy Ray Healey R.I.P.
Legendary Communist and, later, legendary ex-Communist Dorothy Healey died last Sunday at age 91. At barely five feet tall, with piercing blue-gray eyes, a razor sharp-intellect, often a pipe or a panatela in her hand, Dorothy was a power-house orator, a relentless organizer, and fireball of political energy and optimism.
She was also a friend of mine.
The most notorious figure in the Southern California Communist Party, she had already made her mark as an agitator while in her teens. Steinbeck fashioned one of his farm labor organizer charatcters of his In Dubious Battle directly from Dorothy's real-life persona.
I first met her in the mid 1960's as an upcoming radical teenager. I sat transfixed in her South Central L.A. apartment and though she was 35 years older than I, we batted around for hours at a time what the meanings of socialism, communism and revolution were. She was still in the Party back then. Most of my New Left friends and I looked upon the CP'ers as dinosaur Stalinoids. But not Dorothy. Among the surviving Old Guard from the 1930's. she was the only one who showed us yunngin's any real respect. She knew she had something to offer us from her decades of battle, but also knew we had something to offer her.
No one, at least no one I knew, could conduct any ideological debate with half the gravitas and wit that Dorothy could conjure. She knew her stuff and was always ready to patiently prove it. She never recruited me or any of my close friends into the Party. We were way too rebellious and way too enamored of freedom to get sucked into that stuff. But we, nevertheless. considered Dorothy to be our Den Mother -- we were all proud to be
known around L.A. as one of "Dorothy's Kids."
She was already having her doubts about the Party when the Soviets crushed the Czech students and intellectuals in the Summer of 1968. She started backing out of her life-long commitment to it and within a few years was totally out. Her principles led her then to directly challenge the Stalinist and authoritarian structures of the CP and of what was then called "actually existing socialism." Instead, Dorothy committed the rest of her life to working for a humane, just and democratic socialism which placed the notion of individual liberty above the interests of a Goliath state.
IN 1983 she moved to Washington to take care of her grand kids. Our contact became sporadic and relegated to occasional emails. But my affection and respect for this Grand Lady never diminished. She made a slashing mark on this world. She never flinched or ran away from her past. She never ceased to propose a better future. We already miss her.
Here is the so-so L.A. Times obit. Here's a more complete homage from mutual frend Peter Dreier. Whether it's heaven or hell, Dorothy, make'em sweat!
Photo: Dorothy in the center. Circa 1959
August 9th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Marc, I seem to remember reading California Red about 10 years ago… maybe a little longer ago. I wondered then, as I do now, why she stayed in the CP after Kruschov crushed the Hungarian’s in 56 but got out after Leonid Brezhniv did the same to the Czech’s in the Prague Spring of 68 (and a little less bloody than the Hungarian uprising at that)? Any insights?
August 9th, 2006 at 6:42 am
I sympathize with anyone who mourns a friend, but I have questions.
August 9th, 2006 at 6:43 am
Sorry, questions here.
August 9th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Third time’s a charm, perhaps.
Link.
If not, the link is:
http://globaloctopus.blogspot.com/2006/08/details-of-history.html
August 9th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Not knowing details, I know that the reason that other party members stayed involved past revelations of Soviet misdeeds, was the party’s good work in the United States. Isn’t it strange that when Marc defends Orwell’s list, this is the kind of heroic activist that Orwell was ratting out and Marc would just simply label those people “Stalinists” and justify their mistreatment?
Good homage, but perhaps it should give one pause as to whether its really that simple to call all old party members and “travellers” like Corliss Lamont “Stalinist.”
August 9th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Grumpy Old Man seems enamored with Ernst Nolte’s bullshit notion of some kind of moral equivalency between communists and fascists. Communists, while often misguided, meant well and often did good. Fascists were rational actors who meant terribly and did evil. The Arrendt notion of “totalitarianism” that labels both left-authoritarian “Stalinism” and Mussolini/Pinochet as two of the same species ignores the important core of good in the first and evil in the second. One has to look at why people become commies and why people become fascists to look at the moral core. I can’t think of one person who ever went into fascism to save the world. Ezra Pound was a good poet, but thats about it.
August 9th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Very sad news. After years of political activism in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, I finally got to know Dorothy well during the early 80s when I worked with the ACLU on its lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department for spying on peaceful political groups. Dorothy was one of the (many) plaintiffs and as chief investigator, paralegal, spokesperson and bottlewasher for that lawsuit I spent a lot of time interviewing her about her experiences as a victim of police spying but also the political scene of the time. Like many Communist Party members in the 50s and 60s, Dorothy took a long time to cut and run from the party because she didn’t like the alternatives she saw out there, such as becoming a rightwinger and naming names as many others did. But she eventually did leave the CP, and went on to be one of the most democratic (small d) minded activists in Los Angeles during the 70s and 80s. She was committed and sincere about fighting injustice and that is the most important thing. How many of her critics can make the same claim?
August 9th, 2006 at 8:26 am
hey dorothy healey’s inspiration kept me commited to struggling against the fascist warmaking monstrosity….
while many left the movement aftter the end of the vietnam war, her perseverence inspired me to continue fighting the good fight!!!she sure was a gadfly in the side of that media cretin george putnam…i recall him freaking out when the la times named her,woman of the year….
well it was equivalent to placing a pie on his face.
we must all be gadflies in the faces of the george putnams of the world…
that is a way to remember dorothy healey-to continue being involved in fighting the good fight against the nazi scum and oil maggots running the show from the “blight house” on pennsylvania avenue…..
well dorothy lives on in our hearts
aron pieman kay
http://www.pieman.org
August 9th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Let me add to that tirade that I never met Dorothy Healy, but I’ve met some of her comrades with similiar trajectories, like Gil Green and some others, including the parents of a very close friend, and I don’t know whether it was because most of them were working class Jewish intellectuals-without-portfolio or what, but these have been some of the warmest, most engaging and delightful folk on the personal level I’ve ever encountered. For what it’s worth, I think that once you’ve joined any “movement” and made it your home, the cutting of those personal ties would be extraordinarily painful and a major tug against leaving the fold.
August 9th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Marc, other journalists:
I realize this is not the best thread for this, but I want to ask what you would do if your editors at the various publications you write for distort your work to fit a flawed, incorrect, conventional opinion held by so-called experts in Washington and the U.S.
I am a freelance journalist living abroad, and numerous of my editors are twisting and distorting the things I write to fit a view that is in fact wrong-headed? I realize I could quit, and decline further still my earnings. Or I could complain, and earn the wrath and ill-will of my arrogant editors…
What do you do or would you do?
August 9th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Just to take one example, the millions of Ukranian peasants starved by the Russian Communists probably did not take much comfort in the “good intentions” of their oppressors.
Nor was fascism entirely free of a sort of idealism. “Giovinezza, giovinezza, primavera de belleza,” the Italian fascist anthem, has its own beauty. I doubt many Ethiopians appreciated it, though.
August 9th, 2006 at 11:18 am
GM,
I have the same questions you have (and to be completely honest, the the 68 Warsaw pact invasion of CS was a lot less bloody than the 56 invasion of Hungary).
Frydek-Mistek
August 9th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Frydek-Mistek, I was using a little hyperbole… you are right, I was a lad of 10 living in Stuttgart at the time of the Hungarian Uprising. Our family’s bags were packed and we really thought it might lead to war between the Warsaw Pact and Nato and we were ready to be evacuated at any time. I also remember my dad coming home late every night for days on end, and once I got up to get a drink of water. Dad had fallen asleep at the table and there was at least one (maybe two) photographs that caught my eye at the time… They were black and white but I remember gasping out, throwing up and Dad waking up, carrying me back to bed and staying with me for a couple of hours till I fell asleep again with dreams haunted by the pictures of the slaughter of the Hungarians. I can still see those pictures in my minds eye 50 years later.
Intended “good” indeed!!!! BULL SHIT!!!!
Jcummings, may I suggest you look up Kulaks, Yekatrinburg, Katyn Forest, Gulag, building the Trans-Siberian Rail Road, and lastly, Walter Duranty.
August 9th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Sorry for the loss of your friend, Marc.
A quick read tells me that she had good intentions but that some of her chosen vehicles to deliver the goods were defective. She learned a lesson.
Why can’t others today learn the same lesson? Why will people sacrifice their freedoms for security? They want government and “the rich” to pay for everything and solve all problems–even if solutions, which typically fail, come with a bayonet in your face.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I remember listening to Dorothy on KPFK and recall a calm, sane, and humorous voice for left wing causes. She was never an ideologue and I found her as far from being a Stanalist as anyone in the CPUSA could be. She deserves better than the trashing some want to give her.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Some (including J. Edgar Hoover) that without the CPUSA there would have been no Martin Luther King, or at least not a great national leader of that name. Whether that is true is a matter of speculation, but the point here is that the Party kept the peace and justice agenda alive at times when it was most unpopular to do so. It is very difficult for people who have looked to an organization–a group of fellow activists–for focus and fellowship for a long period to let go of it, much less to publically criticize it.
Your description, Marc, brings to mind Sidney Lens, a guy from Chicago who brought the struggles of the 30s to life for a lot of young eastern and midwestern kids, and accorded us respect as well.
There is much great literature about the issues confronting Party loyalists in the 50s. My favorite is Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, which is “known” for its proto-feminism, but is also contains very true-sounding descriptions of the feelings and behaviors of those whose minds understood the crimes and foolishness engendered by communists, “Stalinists,” but whose hearts were still invested in “Party work” and the relationships created.
It is good that your friend Dorothy has left her memories and lessons with you, and you share them with…and so on and so on.
August 9th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I heard her speak at Ben Stein’s[?] house when I was active in the DSA.
The “Old Guard” always found the money to get us young radicals an education.
God Bless.
August 9th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
“Some (including J. Edgar Hoover) that without the CPUSA there would have been no Martin Luther King”
Uh…which side are you on ????
Sidney Lens, and Shirley, were good people. Tireless… But it’s something of a testament to the bizarre pathologies of the old “ML” left that Sidney and Dorothy would have percieved each other as deadly political enemies back in their prime. The post-sectarian formation of a group like DSA could bring them together – along with my personal hero Michael Harrington, who also survived a sectarian streak that made him less effective at critical moments than he might have been. But that was awfully late in the game and a lot of damage to the core cadre of the social movements had been done, much of which was replicated in the ’60s on the more farcical level. I will say that there was something about having survived those classic ideological brawls that must have sharpened many of these folks rhetorical skills, their ability to focus their intellects and lent them a certain charisma. On the down side, I’m afraid only the most tenacious survived with their idealism intact.
August 10th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Thanks for the advice/suggestions. Nice
August 10th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Nicely done, Marc, and in the tradition I respect of never speaking ill of the departed.
Dorothy was a singular figure of a generation now nearly gone and we could use her spirit, sense of irony and wit — and her intellectual prowess. But let us not forget that she was born into the Communist Party and imbibed its methods even as she later became critical of them. You know as well as I do that those methods were on full display in our ‘historic’ battle at Pacifica in the early 80’s. Dorothy once told me that ‘Stalinism was in her blood’ and that I should call her on it when she behaved in a Stalinist fashion. (and lest your readers miss this, I am not speaking literally, but in the sense of a top-down bureaucratic mind-set that attacks its left flank almost instinctively). Nonetheless in subsequent battles Dorothy was on the bright side — and it was always possible to maintain discussion and even friendship.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:12 am
This is weird…I happened to check back on the threads yesterday using Safari rather than Firefox and a long comment I made at 8/9 9:09 doesn’t show up. Since it was a prime example of blowhardism, it’s not a big deal, but it’ an odd anomaly, because when I checked Marc’s threads on Firefox this morning it’s still there. This kind of thing never happened back when I was using a typewriter.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
If anyone’s still looking at this threat, an interesting comment by Marc and my response may be found here.
Thanks, Marc, for your thoughts.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
“Thread.” Where’s my copy editor when I need him?
August 13th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Like Suzi W – I’m sorry for Dorothy’s loss. Met her in 1948 (I was 9) at a ‘PEOPLE’S WORLD’ fund-raiser hosted by my all-time fave ‘Aunt.’ Rose Rosenberg was one of 24 attornies the ABA tried to disbar for CPUSA membership. The Supremes upheld Rose et al unanimously. Amazing: Supremes who read the Law!
Rose quit anyway after Hungary, 1956, but never lost touch with her friend, Dorothy nor the same earthy, sensible touch. Nor hopefully I per identical proportions – then as now – of Radical Chic airheads.
Thanks for the tribute. Last one outta here please turn the lights off?
Dorothy
August 15th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Very sad news. But what a full – active – intellectually aware life she led. We should all try to do the same.
I knew Dorothy quite well during the early 70’s in LA. I lived in South Central and was politically active.
Dorothy was one of the most honest intellectuals I ever met. And she was also a wonderful – kind person.
A great American has passed.
Michael J.
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