Sacramento’s leftist circles remember Michael Israel as a brilliant labor organizer, stalwart activist, and one of the first people to start rebuilding the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter a decade ago.
When a Turkish airstrike cut Israel’s life short in November 2016 as he fought for Kurdish freedom in Rojava, his friends, family and comrades were devastated.
Kurdish revolutionaries revere him as a martyr. Leftists the world over know his story. But some mainstream American media outlets, when they did cover his passing, dismissively referred to him as an “extremist” and “anarchist.”
We sit with Israel’s longtime friend and fellow organizer David Roddy to set the record straight on the life, death and memory of Michael Israel.
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