Chris Kinder was a dear friend and comrade, a self-taught Marxist historian who made his living for many decades as a worker in a Movement print shop and organizer of the Labor Action committee to Free Mumia abu-Jamal. He lived in Oakland, California, and participated in all the labor, social justice, antiwar and socialist activities there.
Chris stayed over my place in Brooklyn many times, and he gave me his study to crash in, sometimes for several months at a time, when I made it out to California. He’d helped to arrange part of my book tour on the West Coast in 2019, and went wayyyy out of his way to run books to northern California bookstores when I found myself running short.
When I learned he died fom pneumonia (complications from a Flu) early Monday morning, April 14, 2025, I remembered an interview we did 17 years ago for my radio show, Steal This Radio, about the frame-up of Mumia abu-Jamal, a cause that occupied a great deal of Chris’s life these past 40 years. I searched and eventually found that interview, and it is with sadness triggered by hearing Chris (and Mumia’s) voices, and also with an immense sense of appreciation for having been friends with Chris and learning so much from him.
Stan Woods writes from Oakland: “I saw Chris a few days before his death at Kaiser – Oakland. Though he could barely speak he attempted to talk politics ! A Socialist activist to the last! Chris was literally an Internationalist who spent five years in Australia working with a Socialist group there. Also he was a Teamsters Union retiree, who represented the workers at Inkworks, the print shop.”
The following, then, is from Steal This Radio 45, May 2008 …. Rest in Peace and power, my friend.
https://archive.org/details/interview-with-chris-kinder-re-mumia-may-2008
JOHN ERIC BERGMAN WROTE:
Hi, Isis and Mitch.
Thanks for your updates.
You might like to know that I visited Chris and Beth in the hospital last week. Chris focused on being socialist and on opposing the Israeli military presence in Gaza. I replied that I too am socialist and that I too support the Israeli military getting out of Gaza. I’m cc:ing Beth in case my memory of my conversation with Chris is inaccurate.
May all who are grieving Chris’s death be comforted, and may Chris’s memory benefit those who yearn for social justice.
With good wishes,
Eric
I’m shocked and saddened to hear of Chris’s passing. I knew Chris during his time in Australia but hadn’t been in contact with him since 1981. We were on opposite sides of a faction fight, after which I dropped out of the organisation in question, as did he a short time later. However, since then each of us in our different ways have supported the socialist/communist aims animating the organisation, and and to this day I still support it financially and in other ways.
Chris had a fine mind and was extremely well read. I always learnt something from him and found him to be decent, principled, empathic and humane.
Vale Chris Kinder