In Memoriam: Linda Thurston (1949-2023)

Our comrade Linda Thurston died suddenly in her sleep on April 22 at age 73. A member of the Spartacist League/U.S. for over 45 years, Linda was first radicalized in the 1960s women’s movement in Boston. As a student at Boston University, she and a group of friends researched and raised funds to publicize a handbook titled Birth Control, Abortion and V.D., A Guide for the B.U. Student.

At the time, abortion was outlawed, and in Massachusetts it was also illegal for anyone, other than a doctor advising a married couple, to distribute any information on birth control. As Linda wrote, “This was no idle threat,” pointing to the case of Dr. Bill Baird, who at the time was facing ten years in prison for discussing birth control publicly. Linda and her friends distributed 24,000 copies of their pamphlet at B.U. Others reprinted it, and over half a million copies were circulated around the country. It is now available on JSTOR.

Linda joined the Boston local of the SL/U.S. in 1977, and later moved to New York City, where she worked in WV production. A typesetter and graphic designer, she helped train other comrades for jobs in the printing trade. In the early 1990s, she and her husband and comrade, Mark, moved to the Bay Area, where she was key to designing leaflets for our public events, one of our main photographers at demonstrations and dogged in getting our press into bookstores and other venues.

Where Linda really made her mark was in publicizing the case of former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was framed up and sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer. She was central to the Partisan Defense Committee’s campaign to mobilize for Mumia’s freedom, getting out his columns and arranging interviews with the PDC, particularly by the black press. Among those whose support Mumia acknowledges in his 1995 book Live From Death Row are the “three Lindas (two Thurstons and one Ragin).”

Her mother was of Cherokee descent; and throughout her life, Linda was a passionate advocate of Native Americans, assembling a prodigious library of their history and struggles. Getting her MA in education, she was a longtime teacher of journalism and graphic design, and union member, in the Bay Area public school system. She took pride in working with her students on the design and layout of their annual yearbook.

Linda was a tenacious, sometimes to the point of obstinate, comrade but always unwaveringly committed to the party and her comrades. Our condolences go out especially to her husband Mark.