Sent to the Organization Solidarity and the Magazines
Against the Current and International Viewpoint
![[Image]](../images/hedda1.jpg) Longtime Socialist Activist Hedda Garza Dies
We were saddened to learn of the death August 23rd of longtime socialist activist Hedda
Garza. Hedda died of cancer at the age of 66 in Glens Falls Hospital near her home at
Friends Lake, New York.
Hedda began her long political life while a teenager in New York’s Washington Heights
neighborhood during World War II by joining the Communist Party’s youth group, the Labor
Youth League. In l958 in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution and the Khrushchev
revelations she joined the Socialist Workers Party and quickly became a well-known,
dynamic, and charismatic activist in the New York branch of the SWP. She frequently ran on
the SWP ticket in elections and was especially known for her impassioned public speeches
on behalf of socialism and for her effectiveness in winning young people to socialist
ideas. She also became a widely known leader of the anti-Vietnam war movement and an
activist in the civil rights and abortion rights movements in New York.
Along with over a hundred other members she was expelled from the SWP on July 4, l974,
for advocating the political positions of the majority tendency of the Fourth
International. She later joined Workers Power, one of the three organizations that merged
to form Solidarity in March l986, but left Workers Power before the fusion.
Hedda worked as a free-lance author, editor, and indexer. Among her best known
publications was the massive index to the Senate and House Watergate hearings. She also
authored numerous other books including several award-winning biographies written for
children.
Hedda remained an ardent socialist all her life. Just last year she was engaged in
gathering signatures for the full page advertisement that ran in the New York Times
calling upon the United States to drop its economic embargo of Cuba.
She will be remembered as a warm, outgoing, engaging champion of humanity and a
socialist activist of the finest caliber. She will be greatly missed.
Patrick M. Quinn
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