Cindy Nolan (1962-2024)

Our comrade Cindy Nolan died of brain cancer on December 7. She was 62 years old. From her youngest days as one of eleven children in an impoverished black family until her death, Cindy was an impassioned fighter against oppression. She joined the New York Spartacus Youth League in Spring 1982 and later that year was an active participant in building the 5,000-strong labor/black mobilization we initiated that stopped the Klan from marching in Washington, D.C. This had a lifelong impact on her, which she often spoke of, as a demonstration in action of the revolutionary road to black freedom.

Moving to the Bay Area, where she married our comrade Todd Nolan in 1987, Cindy was a student and member of our campus fraction at San Francisco State University. There she was a force to be reckoned with in political combat with our opponents. Battles with mental illness took her out of the party. But when she stabilized, she worked as a stalwart party sympathizer and fought to make her way back into membership.

Cindy regularly outdid other comrades in selling subscriptions to Workers Vanguard. She almost always intervened at party forums and other events and wasn’t afraid to write a critical letter when she disagreed with something we had written or said.

Although she and Todd had split up, Cindy moved back in with him and became his main caregiver in the last years of his life, while fighting tooth and nail against the money-grubbing healthcare industry. During this time, she was dealing with her own diagnosis of brain cancer. Here again, Cindy defied the odds, living for over four years with a cancer that is usually fatal within months. Throughout that time, Cindy not only avidly followed and supported the political rearming of the ICL, but also traveled to other locals to assist in our interventions.

Despite her ups and downs, Cindy never gave up on the fight to be a good communist. Nothing made her happier than the news that her reapplication for membership had been accepted and she had been made a member emeritus in September this year. Sadly, she never recovered enough to participate again as a member in the party’s work and discussions. Nonetheless, she died, as they say, with her boots on.