At 101, A Peace Activist Passes On

Marder and Amistad Committee, Inc. member Charles Warner in September 2020. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

Much of this piece is pulled from a previous Arts Paper story, also by Lucy Gellman, celebrating Marder on his 100th birthday. To read that, click here.

A lifelong advocate for peace who reached the age of 101 has passed on, joining some of the ancestors he often championed in his work. Those who found comfort, guidance and inspiration in his life are now remembering him as a fierce educator, occasional rabble rouser, and sharp-witted champion of human rights until the very end.

That man is Al Marder, a lifelong member of the Communist Party who spent a century in New Haven fighting for peace, and died on Tuesday at Connecticut Hospice at the age of 101. Wednesday and Thursday, friends and colleagues reflected on a life well lived, from his upbringing in the city’s Hill neighborhood to a social justice footprint that spanned over a century of action, advocacy and activism.

“Al will always be with us,” said Joelle Fishman, chair of the Connecticut Communist Party, who met Marder in 1968 and remained close with him through the end of his life. “He’s not gone. Everything that he accomplished and everything that he taught will continue with us. Al touched thousands and thousands of people. It’s not just New Haven, it’s the world.”

“To me the legacy that Al leaves behind lives in all of us,” said Manuel (Manny) Camacho, a freshman at Southern Connecticut State University who knew Marder through his work with the anti-violence youth group Ice The Beef, and frequent attendance at New Haven Peace Commission meetings. “The best way that we can honor him, which was literally his life’s purpose, is to keep fighting for peace. It’s because of people like Al that I do what I do. ” 

For those who knew Marder in the last decades of his life, it was as a champion of the New Haven People’s Center, a founder of the New Haven Peace Commission, Amistad Committee, and Connecticut Freedom Trail, and a dedicated member of Connecticut Veterans for Peace. During those years, Marder also held more national and international profiles, including on the U.S. Peace Council and World Peace Council. In New Haven and well beyond it too, he was known for his grit and gumption, which often started with dreaming up projects, and ended with getting them over the finish line.

But Marder made peace—particularly labor rights, demilitarization, and a fervid commitment to anti-racism—his life’s work from the very beginning. Born in 1922 to Ukrainian immigrants in the city’s Hill neighborhood, Marder started growing his roots as an organizer before his 10th birthday. Some of his earliest memories were of an economically hard-hit New Haven as the city headed into the Great Depression. In a 2016 interview with Mary Donahue of Connecticut Explored, he recalled watching unemployed men come from the rail yard to his parents’ Oak Street grocery store, looking for something to eat.

Even at a very young age, Marder became committed to fighting for the wellbeing of his fellow New Haveners, and saw it as a struggle tied to the rights of workers and to the end of the military industrial complex. At 14, he would drive his parents’ car down the street—far away from the home that they didn’t know exactly what he was up to—and begin delivering copies of labor newspapers to fellow workers in the city. Jim Brasile, chair of Connecticut Veterans for Peace, marveled at how unshakeable that belief system was, even at such a young age. Decades later, Marder worked closely with Brasile to bring The Golden Rule to New Haven, where it docked in June of this year. 

By the time Marder was 16, Marder became the chairman of the Connecticut Young Communist League, publicly declaring a lifetime commitment to the cause that later made him a victim of invasive FBI surveillance and a 1954 arrest for which he was later acquitted. His years as a student at James Hillhouse High School were formative in and outside the classroom, as he spent time organizing with a fire he carried every time he spoke at an event in New Haven, however large or small (read more about his tremendous life of activism here and here).

Those years also brought him in touch with fellow changemaker Constance Baker Motley, who became the first Black woman to serve on a federal bench. Charles Warner, Jr., who met Marder through his parents and later served alongside him on the Amistad Committee and Connecticut Freedom Trail, remembered listening to stories of the years the two shared in high school, where they were in an interracial student group “that met to talk about issues of the day.”

Motley, now a civil rights icon, went on to study at Columbia University Law School, blazing a path that included clerking for Judge Thurgood Marshall, arguing cases for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and successfully fighting for desegregation in multiple cases that gained national attention, including before the Supreme Court of the United States. Marder, meanwhile, dedicated his life to fighting the military industrial complex not only in New Haven, but in the U.S. more broadly.

“Our streets have been the scene of so much killing,” Marder himself said in January of last year, during a Zoom celebration of his 100th birthday. “The American people have to be awakened to the dangers that exist. And in a small way, this Peace Commission is playing a small role, an exemplary role, to show young people that there's another way.”

Those years were just the beginning of a life dedicated to social justice, labor rights, and a deep belief in the power of people over profit. In the late 1930s, Marder discovered the New Haven People’s Center on Howe Street, which even in its early years was dedicated to labor activism, integration, and job growth for working-class Black people. As his involvement with the state’s Communist party deepened, so too did his deep interest in history, through which he later learned the story of the Amistad captives and the pivotal role that New Haven played in their trial and freedom.

It was also there, three decades later, that he met Fishman after her move to New Haven in 1968. The two—often with Fishman’s longtime partner, the late activist Art Perlo—became close friends and partners in peace, she said in a phone call Thursday. Between 1974 and 1982, Marder supported Fishman’s multiple runs for Congress and for mayor of New Haven, issuing position papers as she ran on a platform of “people over profit.”

It sparked four decades of activism in which Marder, who remained physically active into his late 90s, pushed for peace globally and in his own corner of the world. In the 1980s, Fishman remembered, he became involved in efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, and soon thereafter, the Coalition to End Child Poverty. Somewhere in between those efforts, he also came across the story of The Amistad uprising, and became obsessed with it.

“I remember sitting in Al’s house one day, and he said, ‘Joelle, there’s this incredible story of captives from Africa and they won their freedom,’” Fishman remembered in a phone call on Thursday. “He said, ‘This is a story that every school child should know. How are we going to bring this forward?’”

It turned out he was the right person for the job. In 1988, Marder became the founding president of the Amistad Committee, Inc. during efforts to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Amistad rebellion. At the time, he and a small group of activists began advocating for a public way to remember and honor Sengbe Pieh and the Amistad captives.

They included Dixwell UCC’s Rev. Edwin R. Edmonds and Rev. Peter Ives of the First Church of Christ on the Green, who both championed the role that abolitionists and interracial coalitions had played in the trial and freedom of the Amistad captives. Four years later, he got his wish when the city unveiled Ed Hamilton’s 1992 Amistad memorial in front of City Hall.

Warner, who referred to Marder as “Mr. Al” for his whole life, was just a kid then, and remembered watching those efforts with a sense of wonder and excitement that later informed his work in the New Haven Public Schools. In the committee’s efforts to bring Hamilton’s statue to New Haven, Marder set up penny drives at every elementary school in the city. He pushed for the same kind of student involvement eight years later, when a replica of the Schooner Amistad set sail from Mystic Seaport’s historic shipyard. 

“He wanted all citizens to have some investment in the statue,” Warner said, adding that it was often Marder who spearheaded efforts to get into schools, talk to students and build curricula that would outlive him. “He knew that before change can happen, people have to know and understand their history.”

That year also marked the beginning of Marder’s work on the New Haven Peace Commission, of which former alder and lifelong activist Tom Holahan was the co-founder and first chair. Working with Holahan, Marder helped sculpt a city-appointed body dedicated to anti-war advocacy, demilitarization and opposition to all forms of violence at home and abroad, from drafting proposals for the New Haven Board of Alders to planting peace trees across the city.

Camacho, who met Marder through the Peace Commission in 2019, remembered feeling awestruck by all that this New Haven elder had accomplished—and still wanted to accomplish—during his lifetime. He called it a blessing to have close to five years together before Marder’s passing, in which he soaked up every ounce of knowledge and piece of advice from Marder that he could. 

“In this line of work, you know who are the legends, you know who are the top of the top,” he said. You hear about Edie Fishman, you hear about Al Marder.”

When Joelle Fishman introduced him to Marder for the first time, “I was like, the Al Marder?’” he remembered with a laugh. “I go up to him, and I’ll never forget it. Being absolutely awestruck. It’s like meeting your favorite celebrity. He starts talking to me, and his voice, I’ll never forget, caught me by surprise. It was so deep … it added to that whole identity of him.”

The last decades of Marder’s life were some of his most civically engaged. In 1995, he was a founding member and “godfather” of the Connecticut Freedom Trail, which opened to the public in 1996 and now has over 130 sites across the state (the People’s Center at 37 Howe St., as well as the Goffe Street Armory, are just two of those located in New Haven). Warner, who later took over as chair, remembered watching him work alongside former New Haven Mayor Toni Harp, then still a state senator, to get the trail formally recognized and passed in the state legislature. It was just who Marder was.

“He’s a visionary, but he’s also the rare place where planning and action meet,” Warner said. “If you look at Al’s life, it was not always fun or safe. To be the target of the government during a period [of your life]—what kind of imprint must that leave on a person? And yet, he continued to do work speaking truth to power. He always said, ‘We all swim or we all sink together.’”

The two didn’t always agree, Warner added, “but there was always an undercurrent of true love and respect” in their discussions with each other. 

Ed Hamilton’s statue, meanwhile, was only part of Marder’s legacy in the city. During Harp’s mayoral administration in New Haven, Marder and fellow members of the Amistad Committee worked closely with New Haven’s City Plan Department and sculptor Dana King to begin work on a sculpture of William Lanson, the nineteenth-century genius and Black engineer who gave birth to the city’s Long Wharf and holding walls of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.

After carrying that work into administration of Mayor Justin Elicker, Marder and committee members watched as the city installed and unveiled the piece in September 2020. In October 2021, at 99 years old, he passed the title of Amistad Committee president to longtime member Kai Perry, who first came to New Haven on the Amistad as an educator.

At an anniversary celebration of Dixwell UCC last year, Perry praised Marder for championing both peace and telling the story of enslavement, resistance, and interracial efforts toward abolition in Connecticut through a century of work. In a phone call Friday, she added that she could never have prepared herself for the grief that she felt at his passing. 

“Even though we’ve been sort of planning for this day a long time, I still wasn’t ready for it," she said. "Two years ago, when he asked for the [Amistad] board to elect a new president, he was 99 years old No one felt up to the task, including myself, but we still wanted to make sure we had things in order."

"I’m just grateful for all that time we got to spend together," she added. "I don’t feel at all able or equipped to continue his legacy, but I am committed and do feel confident in keeping his legacy alive. But there’s no other Al. No matter how hard I work, it will not be the same. I can hear his stories. I can hear his message, I can continue to support human rights and to support the Amistad, the ship. I can ensure that we continue to do that work."

Even at the end of his life, and sometimes from where he was confined to a recliner or bed, Marder never stopped organizing. Millie Grenough, who sits on the New Haven Peace Commission, remembered first meeting Marder in 1991, during the Gulf War. At the time, she and bassist Jeff Fuller joined forces to produce a CD titled “Mosaic: New Haven Sings of Peace and War.”

When Marder heard about it, he encouraged her to ask the Haymarket Fund for grant money, so that the two could produce more copies of the work and provide educational materials to accompany it. The funding, which came through, allowed them to publish a booklet of information with the CD, and get copies of the music into the city’s public schools.

It also kept Grenough in contact with Marder, who especially loved her recent song “Where Do We Want Our Green To Go?” When she stepped onto the Peace Commission roughly four years ago, she was elated to see him sitting across the table from her in a room at City Hall. “I remember being so excited that I came over and gave him a kiss,” she said in a phone call Thursday afternoon. 

In the same call, she and her husband Paul Bloom remembered visiting Marder during the last weeks of his life. Even as his physical health declined, he remained mentally sharp, with peace very much on the mind. When a recent conversation turned to the Israel-Hamas War, Marder stressed how important—and overdue—he thought it was for faith leaders to get involved in bringing attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He called for a ceasefire, encouraging members of the Peace Commission to organize around the issue. 

“I said, ‘Why do you think the U.S. is supporting Israel?’ and he said, ‘Well, do you know what the business and political relationships are between the United States and Israel?’” Bloom recalled. “I thought, here’s this guy that is about to leave us, and his insight on this is deeper than” much of what he’d heard in the mainstream since the conflict began in early October.

Camacho, who attended a Zoom meeting with Marder shortly before he passed, remembered a similar interaction. By then, Marder was bedridden and very weak, Camacho remembered. And still, he spoke with a gravitas that got the whole room listening in seconds.

“Even though his circumstances were not the best, mentally he was focused on what he’s always been focused on, which was ensuring peace,” Camacho said. “He could barely open his eyes, barely move his mouth, but still, the words that he could say, all of it pertained to organizing for peace. If that doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does.”