Michael McKee: 1939-2025: Celebrating a life devoted to tenants’ rights. Updated on December 3, 2025. The fight started over a broken window, as fights sometimes do. The year was 1969. The window was in Michael McKee’s apartment on West 17th Street. And the fight? That was with predatory landlordism, and it lasted for the rest…… Continue reading Requiem for Michael
Category: biography
“Fix This House”
Roger and Maria Markovics on the winding road to tenants’ rights. Ten Bucks I owe you? Ten Bucks you say is due? Well that’s Ten Bucks more’n I’ll pay you Till you fix this house up new. – “Ballad of the Landlord,” Langston Hughes, 1940. The ground-floor office of United Tenants of Albany was tucked…… Continue reading “Fix This House”
Art of Memory
Thirty-four years ago today, on July 26, 1989, Louis Fulgoni, an accomplished visual artist and a great friend and comrade, died of complications from AIDS at the age of fifty-three. Raised on Staten Island, he had spent most of his adult life in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. In the 1980s, he was the art director and…… Continue reading Art of Memory
Judy West: A Radical Life
Judy West, public relations and political action director at American Federation of Musicians Local 802 from January 1983 to November 2000, died at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on January 27, 2023. She was ninety-nine. Following is a remembrance of a 2011 conversation I had with Judy, who was my supervisor…… Continue reading Judy West: A Radical Life
Cross the Narrows 