In Memoriam: Todd Nolan (1945-2022)

Todd Nolan, a cadre of the Spartacist League/U.S. for more than 50 years, died on November 19, 2022. Our deepest sympathies go out to his wife of 35 years, Cindy Nolan. A longtime dedicated supporter of the party, Cindy fought to the end against the money-grubbing health care industry to try to get Todd the care he needed.

Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1945, Todd took some pride in the Québécois heritage of his father. While a student at Stony Brook University in New York in 1970, he was recruited to the Spartacist League. Moving to New York City, he became the local treasurer, a post he held for ten years before moving to the Bay Area and becoming treasurer there in the early 1980s.

Being a party treasurer is not some routine accounting job. It is central to the existence and political functioning of a Bolshevik organization. Working together with the party leadership, the treasurer’s job is both to scrupulously maintain the party’s political and financial independence from state interference while ensuring our capacity to operate as an open, legal organization.

Todd was not only conscientious in handling the hard-earned funds from comrades and sympathizers who support our political work, he deeply understood that this money was an expression of political consciousness. From the early days of the SL/U.S., he played an important political role in establishing our financial norms; and as treasurer of our two biggest locals, he trained many new party treasurers. In her eulogy to Todd, a former national treasurer of the SL/U.S. recalled his “gruff, grouchy, frequently barbed but always carefully considered advice and training.”

Todd spent his working life in the printing/publishing industry, starting out in a hot-type print shop in New York City, where early issues of Spartacist were published. In the Bay Area, he worked for many years as a proofreader for the San Francisco Chronicle. A member of the Media Workers Guild, he was active in an eleven-day strike in 1994. Years later, in a 2009 report titled “For a Fistful of Dollars,” Todd described the support among co-workers for his intervention against a deeply concessionary contract being sold by the union leadership.

Todd was also a very able amateur astronomer. The Hubble Telescope website features several color compositions of different galaxies and nebulae by Todd. He also corresponded with the developers of the computer planetarium program Stellarium.

We salute his dedication to the party and will sorely miss his witty and cantankerous comradeship.