Support Bea Bookchin's Care at Home

A utopian in the best sense of the word, Bea Bookchin has spent her entire life working for radical social change: first alongside Murray Bookchin for 57 years, as his wife of 12 years and lifetime trusted confidant and intellectual sounding board. And then, since his death 18 years ago, she has continued to promote his communalist vision of a new society, serving as a board member of the Institute for Social Ecology and mentor to countless young people in Burlington, Vermont and beyond.

Now, at 94 years old, she needs help.

Bea is badly in need of caregiving. We are hoping to raise $30,000 to assist in allowing her the same dignity and care at home in the coming months that she has shown to others throughout her life. If Murray Bookchin’s ideas have ever meant anything to you, this is a chance to help someone very dear to him that he would have appreciated deeply.

A bit of background:

Bea met Murray in 1949 when she was a 19-year-old mathematics student at City College of New York. He showed up there to recruit people for his post-Trotskyist group, Contemporary Issues, and they became instant friends. A year later she was living with him, and in 1951 they married. Though their marriage ended in the mid-1960s, they remained the closest of friends and intellectual partners throughout the rest of his life, often living together (for more than 35 years during which time they also raised their two children, Debbie and Joe) and always deeply engaged in political activism. For example, when they moved to Vermont, together they formed the Burlington Greens and Bea twice ran for Burlington City Council under a communalist-oriented platform of grassroots democracy, ecology, and a moral economy.

Another example of Bea’s activism: In 1985, Bea co-founded Citizens for a Better Waterfront, a group which forced the city of Burlington to ensure public access to its spectacular lakefront property: Lake Champlain. Bea was one of the most persuasive voices in the group, which ultimately succeeded in convincing Burlington voters to reject a bond vote that would have allowed for a massive hotel and private residence project on the lakefront. That the Burlington lakefront remains expansive and open for public use today is in no small part due to her years-long efforts.

Bea gladly gave up her career as a New York University computational linguistics research scientist to move to Vermont with Murray in 1971 and decided to do something very different: become a massage therapist. It was a job that didn’t earn her much money, but it represented the personal expression of her political desire to add mind-body healing to her theoretical pursuits and local organizing, because she believed it was an area that was particularly neglected under capitalism. She taught basic massage in the early days of the Institute for Social Ecology influencing many students; she also studied Tai Chi for 40 years and became a Tai Chi master and teacher of Tai Chi to the elderly at the local YMCA.

In the years after Murray died, Bea continued to mentor students at Burlington College and the ISE. Her love of ideas saw her take dozens of courses – in philosophy, film, religion, English literature and even Italian – through the University of Vermont’s free access program for those aged 65 and over, and she has been credited by professors at UVM with being one of the most inspiring people in their classes. As UVM Professor Todd McGowan writes in his acknowledgments in his new philosophy book: “Bea Bookchin has still not convinced me that local autonomy is salutary, but I’m indebted to her for continually trying. Our debates don’t make her any less my role model.”

Bea’s long collaboration with Murray included lengthy theoretical discussions over the kitchen table, the formation of the influential Anarchos group in New York City in the 1960s and other collectives dedicated to promoting his ideas, and providing him love and support throughout his life. In the dedication to Bea of his magnum opus, The Ecology of Freedom, Murray said it best, writing: “To Bea, who has added more to my life, done more for me as a human being – and established a sense of decency, care, understanding and kindness –than anyone I’ve ever known.”

We are hoping to keep Bea out of a nursing home by raising funds so that caregiving can occur at home. All funds will go to caregivers – and no donation is too small.

With deep gratitude,

Bea’s family and friends at the ISE and beyond