corrente

David Dellinger has died. Most likely this is one of those names that rings a bell, but you can't quite remember why.

Go read the obit at WaPo, the only place I saw that had it. This should have been the lead item on every newscast and a 72-point headline in every paper, like you get when presidents die, or popes, or similar figures not nearly as deserving of the honor as Dave Dellinger was.

For those who don't have the time, here's the short version:

*Labor organizer in the 1930s.
*Spent all of World War II in jail for refusing to register for the draft, despite a guaranteed deferrment as a divinity student. Kept getting sent to solitary for leading hunger strikes.
*Did the civil-rights thing in the '50s, before it was cool. Protested Korean War, nuclear testing.
*One of the Chicago Seven in '68, which is why that bell was ringing in your head. Find a picture; Dave's the bald-headed guy in the suit and tie in the midst of wild-assed long-haired loons like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.
*Antiwar stuff in the 70s.
*Spare time spent fighting for living-wage laws, prisoner's rights, reforming US foreign policy, frivolity like that.
*Three years ago, aged 85, he hitched to Quebec to lead a protest against the Western Hemisphere free-trade zone.
*Other free time spent staying married for 62 years and raising at least four children. Worked as a printer, writer and editor to pay the bills.

As a lifelong philosophical agnostic, I maintain a varying stance on the issue of an afterlife. Hell is right out, of course, but I go back and forth on the question of whether or not there's a heaven. Just for today I'd like there to be one, because the welcome home party tonight is gonna be a blast. May you live YOUR life in such a way that when you get there, Woody Guthrie and John Lennon are jamming together on "When The Saints Come Marching In."