David McReynolds, socialist, photographer, and lifetime WRL member, passes at 88

Early Friday morning, Aug. 31, socialist, photographer, and lifetime War Resisters League member David McReynolds — committed pacifist and socialist — died peacefully at the age of 88. David was on WRL staff for a  large part of his life and remained within community long, long after.

Born in 1929 in Los Angeles, he moved to the East Village in 1956 and began working for Liberation magazine, before joining the WRL staff. An avid photographer, a collection of his photos can be found at www.mcreynoldsphotos.org.

The memorial for David will be Saturday, Dec. 1, noon-3 p.m. at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, New York, New York 10012. To RSVP, email [email protected].

The following are excerpts from an article by WRL Member Ed Hedemann: David McReynolds (1929-2018) died at 1:30 this morning, a day after being brought to Beth Israel ICU in Manhattan. He had suffered a fall in his apartment and apparently never regained consciousness.

For those who don’t know, David was on the WRL staff for almost 40 years (1960-1999), a long time member of the Socialist Party, who ran for Congress in 1968, President of the United States on the SPUSA ticket in 1980 and 2000 — the first (I think) openly gay candidate for President — and for the U.S. Senate from New York in 2004 on the Green Party ticket. An internationalist and former chair of the War Resisters’ International, he traveled extensively, many times to war-torn countries, once getting arrested in Red Square during an anti-nuclear protest in 1978.