Rally, Comrades!, the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and the League’s Healthcare committee (where he focused most of his recent work) join with family, friends, and comrades in celebration of the amazing, full, and generous life and contribution of the one-of-kind Al G, comrade Al Gladyck, who died on March 17, 2022.
We are more than inspired by the lasting contributions that Al made to the movement for Healthcare for All. Al’s persistent, kind, and rough-and-tumble proletarian energy always put front and center the interests of the working class in free, universal, and comprehensive healthcare. His clarity was deeply grounded in both theory and practice.
Al had a solid understanding of the ways capitalism robs the working class of its health. He fought health and safety battles as a shop steward in the Detroit auto plants. He applied his profound knowledge of all three volumes of Capital to building class consciousness in every day-to-day practical interaction he had, from the factory floors of his youth to, later, the streets of Detroit, unjustly populated by homeless workers. He understood the profound insecurity that a corporate system of healthcare leaves in its wake.
Al’s work in Retirees for Single Payer wasn’t an academic exercise. It came out of the direct experience of retired autoworkers constantly threatened by cuts and rising costs to their health coverage. He never wavered in his militancy – spread with a smile – about the necessity for “Everybody In and Nobody Out!” Al contributed to the political development of the League and all who he touched. His work on Rally articles like, “Social Insurance Must Serve All the People” and “Healthcare – It’s All of Us or None of Us” crushed the ruling class narrative that our people are forever divided between the “deserving” and “undeserving.” He was relentless in challenging gutless and compromised Democratic Party officials and “business-as-usual” unionists. Pulling together with others in Retirees for Single Payer, Al had a huge impact on organizations like Healthcare-NOW! and others by sticking to a no-compromise path for improved and expanded Medicare for all! He never came to a meeting without a bundle of People’s Tribunes and subscriptions for Rally, Comrades! In fact, Al sold more subscriptions to Rally, Comrades! than anyone.
Al embodied the courage to face an industrial era in collapse and make the leap forward to a vision of the future we must create. His weekly online Single Payer Healthcare Newsletter served as a bridge from “what was” to what must be for all in the movement for healthcare justice. Al G! Resolute and irreplaceable! ¡Presente! Rest in Power!
May/June 2022. vol.32. Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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