Vol. 72/No. 24      June 16, 2008

Hardy joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1967 as a student at the University of Illinois in Champaign. Like many others of his generation he was inspired by the battle for Black rights and the example set by Malcolm X. He was attracted to the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese national liberation struggle, and the beginnings of the movement to end the U.S. war against Vietnam.

An educated Marxist cadre, Hardy helped build branches of the Socialist Workers Party in Portland, Oregon; Houston; Los Angeles; San Diego; and New York. Those who worked with him knew him as a competent and hard worker, with a wry sense of humor.

He was active in a dynamic statewide SWP election campaign in California in 1970. During that one year there were massive demonstrations and student strikes after the May 4 killing of four students when the Ohio National Guard fired into an antiwar protest at Kent State University. On August 26, a Women’s Strike for Equality drew tens of thousands in New York and other cities, heralding the dawn of the women’s movement. On August 29, more than 20,000 Chicanos marched against the Vietnam war in Los Angeles.

In the late 1970s and well into the 1980s Hardy worked in the Pathfinder print shop in New York. This was a period of rapid expansion of the number of titles being published. He served as bookkeeper, before the widespread introduction of computers, using paper ledgers and an adding machine. PJ helped instill a culture of carefully accounting for each penny, making it possible to meet the publishing projections of the movement.

He remained in San Diego after the SWP branch there was dissolved in the late 1980s. He actively supported the work of the party, making generous financial contributions. He remained an avid reader of the Militant and Pathfinder books throughout his life.

A little more than a week before he died, PJ attended the May 1 rally for immigrant rights in San Diego. In a note he sent about a financial contribution he was making he commented: “The reinvigoration of the U.S. working class by these immigrant fighters and their supporters, at the same time that the ‘fictitious capital’ bubble is showing lots of leaking, has encouraged me tremendously.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home