Marv Davidov: 1931-2012

I just heard of Marv's passing, a month after the event.  Although I left Minneapolis in 1972, the years between 67 and 72 brought me into contact with Marv and involved with the Honeywell Project as the erstwhile head of its Labor Com't.  I remember the great humor and dedication of Marv.  I knew he was in failing health and actually had talked to him a few years ago in the process of researching white activists in the black freedom struggle.  Marv was such a "mensch" in so many ways, but more importantly he was a dedicated activist who envisioned a better world for all.  He will be missed, but his spirit is with all of us...If there is any memorial planned, please let me know.  In solidarity, Fran Shor

     Thanks for the posting on on Marv Davidoff's death.  Marv was unique and will be missed.

     Carol Masters collaberated with Marv on a book about him  I think the title was You Can't Do That or something close.

      For me the parts on the civil rights and peace movements of the late fifties and early sixities were really entlightening.

There are so many Marv stories to tell, I don't know where to begin, and I won't know when to end.  Let me tell three which I think suggest the range and depth of his activism.  For how many years did he carry around a (defused) cluster bomb, which he would whip out in all kinds of places, to remind his listeners of the violence our government and our manufacturers visited on human bodies/human beings.  Some may think that Marv's dedication to "non-violence" pertained to anti-war, anti-racism demonstrators, but, first and foremost, his "non-violence" was changing the behavior of the US state and manufacturers of weapons.  Second, some argued that Marv's dedication to stopping Honeywell's and, later, Alliant Tech's, production of cluster bombs made him "anti-labor."  But, time and again, Marv stood with workers.  In January 1993, he conducted civil disobedience workshops for HERE Local 17 and its members at the Minneapolis Normandy Hotel, when the hotel refused to rehire its workers and honor its union contracf when it reopened after having closed for a publicly-financed reconstruction.  Not only did Marv teach workers how to conduct a sit-down/sit-in, but he was also a vital bridge between the union and workers and the AIM-led protest of the Washington "Redskins" at the Super Bowl the next day.  He expanded everyone's frameworks and commitments.  Third story -- in June 2006, Marv blew away the audience at the national Working Class Studies conference at Macalester College when he told the story of his arrest and imprisonment as a freedom rider.  He held the audience in the palm of his hand as he described standing in a pitch dark jail cell, singing "We Shall Overcome" with Black and white fellow-prisoners.  He said that he had felt something in that moment that he had spent the rest of his life trying to find again.  Bless him that he had felt that sense of connection even once, and that he held a light out for the rest of us to seek.

Peter Rachleff

I didn't know Marv as well as most of you, but he was a classic and a fighter! I did an interview for him for the Indymedia newspaper about ten years ago, and he was looking kind of rocky back then! Anyway, he's definitely a local hero and the community will definitely mourn his passing.

(Although I disagree with Steve Miles on the unrelated point of whether the police beatdown of protesters at the RNC was provoked or would've happened in any case. And people have been breaking things in protest for many years before then)

One thing about Marv is you'd remember what he said.  I think part of that is that he was always walking the talk a lot more than talking the walk, so you wanted to know what he thought.  And the other part is, he'd tell you.  When I was working with INFACT (now Corporate Accountability International) right after the end of the Nestle Boycott, while we were deciding what campaign would be next, I sat down with Marv a few times.  The  thing I remember about those conversations (besides his voice, his humor, his hat) was this:   "you're not going to make the changes you want with ruling class values."  He applied it to what staff were paid, the privileges we had, or anytime there was too much of an "inside game" going on in terms of strategy. That has stuck with me.

And after we launched the Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign in 1984 and were deciding a year later which corporation to focus on in the industry, he told me to go after GE -- "they're as bad as it gets and why not take on the kingpin?"

Thanks for being there, Marv -- on the street, over the fence, around the table.

Marv agitated the agitators.

This is a picture story I made once upon a time when his buddy Howard Zinn visited.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=67901397013&l=5ed366ac5c

And Planet People might enjoy watching the video that profiles our late cohort:

http://youtu.be/JgfdvURJ-po

Rest in peace.

Marv was a remarkable teacher who shaped this community in profound ways. He taught non-violent resistance to a generation and it served us well. He was steeped in the Civiil Rights movement and Martin Luther King.  He picked up the direction that King was going when he was assassinated--King's final speeches about the War in Vietnam and its relationship to the military industrial complex. Marv taught the method of non-violence resistence using those issues as the themes.

In  some ways, the post-Marv people who abandoned nonviolence in protesting the 2008 Republican Convention thereby provoking a violent police overreaction and an aftermath in which the message got lost and both sides were blamed shows how valuable Marv was.

He was a dear friend, a mentor, a reliable compass.