Joyce Kanowitz, rest in power!

Brooklyn, New York 

Joyce Diana Leach Kanowitz, a longtime, beloved member of Workers World Party (WWP), died from natural causes on May 22, a month shy of her 99th birthday. She and her late spouse, Rubin Kanowitz, were active supporters of the Civil Rights Movement, the antiwar movement and the struggle for socialism throughout their lives. 

A packed public memorial for Joyce was held on June 27 in Brooklyn. Her three children, Saul, Hindi and Eva, hosted the event. Family, friends, coworkers and comrades paid tribute to her and her contributions to their lives and to the struggle for justice.

Joyce and her siblings grew up in a working-class Jewish section of London’s East End. Like many of the children in British cities, they were evacuated to the countryside to avoid becoming victims of the Nazi carpet bombing during World War II – in her case to Wales.

Once Joyce migrated to New York City, she became an educator, with a major focus on early childhood education. 

Joyce and Rubin were members of the civil rights organization Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) while living in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. They were especially active in supporting the movement for community control of the public schools. 

She and Rubin joined WWP in the mid-1960s, coinciding with the rapid expansion of the U.S. war against Vietnam and the upsurge in the Black Liberation Movement. 

Inspired by the women’s liberation movement, Joyce began working at the Park Slope Daycare Collective in the 1970s until her retirement in the early 1990s. She  wrote articles for Battle Acts magazine published by the women’s caucus of Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF), a youth organization associated with WWP. 

Despite facing physical disabilities as she became older, through her poems Joyce eloquently expressed the challenges she and others with disabilities face in an ableist society. 

Joyce was easy to talk to and confide in. She had great empathy and compassion and understood people.  And she was full of fun.  She was known for her incredibly sharp wit, which could be interjected at any moment and outdo everyone else around her at dinner or during informal discussions at her house, which she opened up to neighbors, friends and comrades.

Joyce never wavered one iota in her solidarity with working and oppressed peoples, from Brooklyn to occupied Palestine. She maintained her revolutionary optimism that a socialist future would eventually liberate all of humanity from the shackles of capitalism. 

Joyce Diana Leach Kanowitz will be greatly missed. 

To view the entire memorial, go to Saul Kanowitz’s Facebook page at tinyurl.com/yb7fxt6y. John Catalinotto and Kathy Durkin contributed to this article.