lee zaslofsky, rest in power

This week I learned that a friend and comrade from my Toronto days has died: Lee Zaslofksy. 

Lee was a leader in the War Resisters Support Campaign, supporting men and women who refused to participate in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. For a long time, Lee was the coordinator of the network as it found housing, funds, employment, and community for war resisters coming to Canada. But "coordinator" is a shallow title that doesn't convey what Lee did; his work was much deeper and broader than coordination. Lee supplied friendship and community. He gave of himself. He showed up. He loved.

When you're involved in high-stakes activism, where your work has serious impacts on people lives, people form powerful bonds. You might know very little about someone's background or their day-to-day life, discovering bits of their story as time goes on. Sometimes you might not see or speak with each other in between meetings. Other times you'll speak five times a day. Activist comrades occupy a unique space in your life, different from an ordinary friendship. The passion of your commitment, the depth of your belief, your shared desire to move your cause forward, your deep respect for each other, creates a love that I am grateful to have experienced, more than once in my life. 

Through the War Resisters Support Campaign, I worked with people that I feel incredibly fortunate to have known, so lucky that my life intersected with theirs.

Lee was one of those people to me. Lee will always be on my list of people I am so grateful and fortunate to have known. 

I recall that we didn't always agree on everything, and sometimes differed in our visions of how to move our great project forward. We would become very heated and passionate. I recall him banging the table for emphasis -- and the next time he saw me, hugging me tightly.

Lee was a Vietnam War deserter. He had been a home healthcare aide. He had been a staffer in Jack Layton's office, when Jack was on the Toronto city council. He loved the country of Vietnam, and visited as often as he could, for long periods of time, and had boyfriends there. He was born in Brooklyn, and became a Canadian citizen as soon as he was eligible (as did I).

That might be the sum-total of what I knew about Lee's biography. But I knew much more important things: his principles, his passion for justice, his belief in human potential. His crazy sense of humour, that might elicit anything from an eye-roll to hilarity. The love that poured from him.

His death has hit us all so hard -- all the "resisters and campaigners," we used to say. Now a loose collection of people scattered around North America and beyond, some of us in touch on social media, others not at all, but our bond endures. 

Lee Zaslofsky, rest in power, my friend.