RIP Betty Resnikoff

Chicago Peace & Justice Activist Dies from Coronavirus

By Neal Resnikoff

Neal and Betty Resnikoff

*Editor's Note:  Betty Resnikoff was one of Chicago's most beloved anti-war and social justice activists. She and her husband Neal Resnikoff founded The Albany Park Neighbors for Peace and Justice where activists gather each Saturday at noon at the corner of Lawrence and Kimball to protest US government wars. They then gather across the street for enlightening political discussions at Subway. Betty died suddenly and unexpectedly at age 83 from the corona virus while she was having leg problems. This moving story about her life of activism is a story of hope at a time of darkness.

There are all kinds of stories I can tell about my life with Betty, but I’m going to focus on what was central to her—the fight for justice in this world. This was shown even on her last morning on Tuesday, April 28, which we did not know would be her last morning.  In my phone call to her in the hospital, even when she was having trouble breathing and talking, she expressed joy at hearing about the latest protest of workers, the nurses at Cook County Hospital who are demanding proper protective gear for working with victims of the covid-19 virus and others. 

Betty was a devoted friend and comrade of mine for over 60 years. On a daily basis she was a regular and devoted political analyst and organizer and fighter. She always made it her aim to make me and others think and strive to unite maximum people to make a better world. She would always ask, “What is the political aim of this or that proposal or action?” “What is our plan?” “When can we go out with this leaflet among the people and have discussion with them about opposing the oppression of the ruling class and working to build a new society?”

Betty did many kind-hearted and generous things for people, including me, over the years. This was part of her outlook on the world, which always expressed itself in discussing what was going on around her and in the wider world, and wheeling into action.

I would like to suggest that Betty is a model for what each of us could be doing more of in the world.  

Betty was a life-long fighter against injustice. 

In her young adulthood Betty became a fighting and militant supporter of changing the system of the rich ruling class in the U.S. She saw that it exploits and oppresses the working class and other people at home, and interferes illegally and unjustly in countries around the world. Betty was very much for having a system of, by, and for the people, socialism, and eventually communism.  

Betty vigorously took up various immediate issue struggles and organizing to mobilize people in such a way as to open the path in this country to socialism and communism. Betty devoted much time and energy to opening the door to building a U.S. Marxist-Leninist Party that would encourage and organize people for the needed revolutionary struggle. 

Betty’s life-long fight against injustice began when she was still a child. 

One of Betty’s early struggles against injustice was at age 4 or so against her mother, who often laid down arbitrary rules in a strict way with a lot of verbal abuse. 

One night, when her mother reached out from their apartment door to drop a bag in the shoot to the incinerator, her foot holding the door open slipped, and the door slammed shut. She then called on Betty to open the door. But Betty said, “No. My mommy told me not to open the door for anyone.” And Betty did not relent, no matter how much her mother pleaded. Her mother had to spend the night at a neighbor’s until her husband came home from work to unlock the door. Is this not a pure case of passive-aggression against a purveyor of injustice? 

Betty lived in a public housing project, which she enjoyed immensely because of all the kids and other people who were around. She fought for equality for girls. She insisted on being a member of an all boys “gang,” and, of course, they had to let her in. 

Betty was always an anti-materialist, pro-people person. When her parents asked her to make a choice between having a bicycle or a new baby brother or sister, without hesitation Betty chose to have the new baby. 

This turned out to be her brother Jim. Both Jim and the next brother, Chuck, who were also abused psychologically by her mother. She would yell at them for not doing various chores in the absolutely exact way she wanted them done. Betty always offered both of them her support and friendship. 

Betty always wanted to unite with other people, not just be someone who wanted to show off in front of others, or express superiority.

In junior high school, for example, where Betty and her girl friends were honor roll students, she was concerned with the fact that students not on the honor roll thought they were stuck up nerds who were above them. And so she organized her friends not to be on the honor roll for one semester and to focus on playing basketball well so as to show they were ordinary people who were not above the others. 

Betty’s contempt for the system showed up in high school after she won a first prize for her essay in the fire prevention contest. The next year she submitted the same essay, just to be “smart.” (Ironically, she won again. She kept her medals for many years, and laughed at the story.  (Maybe I will find them in cleaning up.)

Betty grew up in a household that was Italian Methodist. She was a part of the chorus and other activities, and was thinking about going to a Methodist college in the Midwest. But her parents objected to her leaving home in Yonkers, New York, for a distant college. Luckily a high school teacher informed Betty how she could apply for a scholarship at the New York University School of Education. She got the scholarship, and so was able to live at home and commute to college classes, the first in her family to go to college. 

At the NYU School of Education, one of the first things Betty did was to apply to become a reporter for the Education Sun, hoping to be a Brenda Starr, the glamorous and adventurous reporter in the comic strip “Brenda Starr.” It happened that the editor was sophomore Neal Resnikoff, and he welcomed anyone who was willing to be on the staff. 

Betty was quickly given an assignment to cover a political debate by a couple of local politicians. Betty reported on the political meeting well, and ended her article by heaping sharp disdain on the Republican candidate for not showing up for the debate. It was printed. The Dean was very upset, and called Neal into his office. Neal defended the article, and Betty, and she continued writing other articles for the paper. 

Betty would come to the newspaper office regularly, and she would talk with Neal. One topic of repeated conversation was her wrestling with whether she could really continue to follow her religion, both with questions about the tenets of the religion and what she perceived as hypocrisy between preaching and practice that she observed.

Neal, with no knowledge about Christianity, really had no idea what she was talking about half of the time, but always showed interest and support by repeatedly saying, “Uh huh” and “Mmmm.” Betty was really impressed by Neal’s interest and support, and considered him a good and understanding person and friend. 

That friendship continued for the next 4-5 years, initially with Betty sharing with Neal her experiences and thoughts, including about being at the university. Betty decided, for example, to switch from being an art education major to becoming a sociology major. She was very interested in learning more about how people were part of society, and what made everything tick, and what stand we should take in the world. 

One class Betty took was with Sydney Hook, the charismatic and famous polemical professor of philosophy at NYU, an activist and debater about politics, who, at the time we were at NYU was pretty reactionary, politically. During Hook’s lectures, Betty would often raise her hand to question and challenge some point he was making. He decided to not call on her anymore. Betty often chided Neal that he had not been as active as she was in challenging Hook. 

Betty was interested in going to plays and concerts when she could. But this is mainly a story about her fighting spirit, and not about the plays, though she favored ones that focused on important social issues and relationships. 

Betty took up Neal’s invitation to drive with him a few hours north to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the outside Tanglewood Music Shed. The agreement was, since they were both short on money, that they would sneak in using a method Neal had used many times, climbing under a fence at a certain spot. But, when they tried it, security was there and blocked the way. Security had discovered the entry way under the fence.

Betty, undeterred and showing what a good sport she was, agreed to follow Neal to another spot, where they would climb over the fence, a fence that had barbed wire at the top. Neal boosted Betty up, and she did well, throwing her leg over the barbed wire. But she got her pants caught on the barbed wire as she went down. She let er rip, and landed inside the concert venue. Neal then followed. It began to rain. They huddled under a blanket and with gusto ate the cherry pie they had brought. Then Neal drove Betty back home, as she was not allowed by her parents to stay anywhere away from home over night.

When Neal picked up Betty to drive to the concert, the pick-up was at Betty’s place. She introduced Neal to her mother, and they had a little chit chat before heading out. Betty was very upset with her mother the next day when she found out that her mother had a very negative view of Neal because he had not been wearing socks. Betty told her mother that Neal was very nice and she should not get stuck about the matter of socks.  But her mother would not relent. Betty did not insist that Neal start wearing socks, except maybe when he was going to see her mother.

Neal and Betty went to a number of cultural events and sites. One was Shakespeare outdoors in Central Park. Betty found that a very memorable occasion because it turned out that the full moon hit her eye like a big pizza pie, and it was amore. She always referred to that as the time she fell in love with Neal.

Neal invited Betty to drive with him to Southern New Jersey to visit a farm there called Koininea. This was an interracial farm that was a rest home for people who had been working against racial segregation in the heart of Ku Klux Klan territory in Georgia. Betty took the train out from New York City to Neal’s Central Jersey town of Plainfield, and then they drove the few hours down to Koininea. It was a very informative and inspiring visit at the farm.

They could not stay all that long as Betty would have to get back to Yonkers, New York before it got too late. She had not told her parents where she was going. As luck would have it, when they got in the car to return to Plainfield, the car would not start, right in the middle of nowhere but cornfields. And there was the issue of Betty having to get home that night.

Neal called his home to ask his father for advice. His father generously offered to drive down and see what the story was. He ended up pushing Neal’s car with his own car back to Plainfield. Betty was faced with a difficult situation, since Neal’s parents were against this nice Jewish boy having anything to do with non-Jewish girls. But she decided to be very diplomatic and just be friendly. When Neal and Betty arrived at the house, Neal’s brothers and mother rushed out to meet Betty. They asked what her name was, and Neal told them Betty. Mother wanted to know her last name. Rather than give away that she had the Italian name of Alfini, Neal said her last name was Wetty. And she remained Betty Wetty until, upon leaving the next morning, after getting permission from her mother to stay over, Neal’s father said arriva derci. Neal’s mother said, arriva what? And blew a gasket, insisting on talking to Betty’s mother. Neal’s mother told Betty’s mother that Neal and Betty should have nothing more to do with each other, and Betty’s mother agreed.

Anyway, neither Betty nor Neal gave in to this injustice, and they continued to see each as often as they could.

At the end of the summer of 1953 Neal went off to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, and they both wrote to each other regularly. Then Betty finally got permission from her family to leave home, and the next year she went to the University of California in Berkeley for graduate work.

 Betty was very upset at the emphasis in the sociology graduate program. It was mainly compiling and analyzing statistics. She was more interested in meeting and talking with people and then analyzing from there. She decided to make a change. This was based on stories Neal told her about his experiences teaching in a junior high school in the Mission District of San Francisco. (After two years of graduate school, he was running out of money and took a teaching job in San Francisco, just across the Bay from where Betty was located, in Berkeley.)

Betty went into a teacher-training program for students who had a liberal arts degree. That was the beginning of a teaching career of some 50 years or so, from junior high school to college, always encouraging students to become aware of issues of the day involving injustice, and to take up critical thinking. And she was active in organizations of teachers which addressed issues of injustice.

Betty married Neal on June 11, 1960, with both saying they would give marriage a try. They agreed they would discuss any differences of opinion that came up in and about the marriage, and try to find a reconciliation that both could live with.

That year Neal came home from school saying there was a notice in the Superintendent’s bulletin announcing applications were being taken for a program called Teachers for East Africa, a program run by Teachers College Columbia University in New York under the auspices of the U.S. government’s Agency for International Development. Neal asked Betty if they should apply. Betty immediately said yes.

They agreed they would not be mouthpieces for the injustices and racism and imperialism of the U.S. government. In their joint application they said, “ We both have a keen interest in world affairs and curiosity about the people and problems of Africa… We feel that the East African program would allow us to teach and learn in an intense and meaningful way.”

Betty quickly learned in Zanzibar, where we were assigned, that this was a program that was aimed at giving a positive picture of the U.S. government. Betty and Neal did their best to counteract the notion of American equality and justice through discussion with students, fellow teachers, and others. Betty and Neal also learned this program often inserted teachers at the expense of trained local teachers who really should have had those jobs. They united with those teachers in their denunciation of the U.S. government for this.

Betty taught at the secondary school for girls in Zanzibar. She encouraged the students, who all wore head to floor black coverings called bui buis, to express their views and apply critical thinking. The students responded with great enthusiasm, and felt liberated from the non-content method the British teachers taught in this British protectorate.

Betty and Neal united with their hired household help, Issa, in his political activism in a party dedicated to independence from the British protectorate and the local ruling Sultan of Oman. (The Zanzibar revolution was eventually squelched by efforts of the U.S. government and the Tanganyikan government, which forced Zanzibar to become part of Tanganyika and  renamed the country Tanzania).

From the heat of the Equator, Betty and Neal applied for teaching positions at Eau Claire State College in Wisconsin, where wind chills could reach 50 degrees below zero. And they were accepted. Betty and Neal were active in the teachers’ union and in opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam. They were both fired after three years because of this, and nothing else, as their teaching of critical thinking skills was judged excellent by everyone who knew of their work. Students rose up in large numbers to protest in the freezing weather, refusing hot chocolate offered by the wife of the President of the College. Students also appealed to the governor of the state, and nominated Betty and Neal to be Queen and King of the College prom.

Betty and Neal during their graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, mostly during the summer breaks from teaching at Eau Claire,  joined with a number of other graduate students concerned about the problems of the U.S. society and the role of the U.S. government who decided to have a Study Group to read and discuss Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. They were convinced one cannot make the changes needed in society just by attacking one problem at a time, though that was also important to do.

 They took this broader view with them when they took up teaching jobs in Providence, Rhode Island, with Betty at Rhode Island College. At Rhode Island College Betty was lucky enough to have as colleagues a few people who focused on the class basis of each work of literature or art and published articles based on this. They raised the question, Whose class interests does this work serve? And they analyzed various works studying the class role it played at the time it was written, and the class role it plays today, if it was being studied in courses today.

As well, Betty experienced an exhilarating mass turnout of students and faculty in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam, and discussion during this gathering on how this was an unjust and illegal expression of U.S. imperialism, and the demand for All U.S. Troops Out Now!

Betty made friends with and followed up for years with these colleagues and worked to apply their outlook.

It turned out they were inspired and educated to take this stand by the application of Marxism-Leninism in Canada, by the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist). This in turn inspired efforts in the U.S. to form a Marxist-Leninist party. Betty was very active in taking this up as a way of defeating exploitation and oppression in the U.S. and U.S. imperialism, and replacing it with socialism and eventually communism.

Betty took this up as she was active in organizing at Boston University, where she participated in a strike of the faculty.  And she taught at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and assisted in a political study group there. One of the good stories about Betty in Boston that shows her fighting spirit happened when she was participating in a team pasting up posters advertising an upcoming political meeting. After she pasted up a poster on a wall along the stairs at a rapid transit stop, she saw a woman in a fur coat begin to tear down the poster she had just put up. Betty yelled at the woman and told her to stop or else. When the woman didn’t stop Betty went back down the stairs and dumped the bucket of paste over the woman’s head and fur coat. Betty then ran.

 Then Betty was active in Philadelphia. She volunteered to go there because the party building organization she was with saw the importance of building a local unit in that working class city.  Betty was instrumental in organizing part-time teachers, of which there were many, into a union at Philadelphia Community College, where she taught. This was one of the first efforts to organize part-timers in the country. It was successful, after a bold and militant strike and picket line.

After working in Philadelphia, Betty moved to Chicago, also to work on building political organization there. She taught at DePaul and Devry and then the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC). Betty kept working on the methods and content of her teaching. Rather than be the teacher, she became the coach. She urged the students to keep on working on papers and skills until they mastered them, with grades based on their final products, not on the weak efforts they may have made along the way.

Betty hit the headlines in the school newspaper at UIC and support from many students when, during political discussion at a table in the cafeteria the university administration demanded that she stop. Betty said that she and the students had every right to continue the political discussion they were having. The administration then sent the campus police to handcuff Betty and take her away. While they were doing this, Betty shouted out to all the students in the cafeteria that their rights to have political discussion were being violated.

On the way to the campus police station and inside the station, Betty kept explaining to the police how the arrest was a violation of basic rights. And they listened. Because the administration initially decided not to press charges—of trespassing on her own campus!—the police said they would release her. But she indicated she needed a ride back to the Student Center. While they were making the arrangements for the ride, the administration called to say to keep on holding Betty because they were seriously considering putting on charges. But the police told the person on the phone that Betty had already left!

Another good story that shows Betty’s militant spirit came when she went up to Northwestern University in Evanston to support a protest there against the CIA coming on campus to interview students for jobs with the CIA. In the midst of the protest and its circular picket, one of the students from the Conservative Club broke through the line, carrying a U.S. flag. Betty just moved forward and grabbed the flag from the fellow and threw it on the ground. Some people who were at the protest remember to this day this action by Betty.

Betty has been active with starting and building a neighborhood peace and justice organization in Chicago, and the Chicago Anti-War Committee. She was an active writer of draft leaflets and proposals for action, and was a speaker at rallies and forums. Even when Betty was having trouble with increasingly painful legs, she would go out for distribution of leaflets or for holding up a placard at a demonstration, in the coldest weather, sitting on her rollator.

Even in the deepest days of pain and woe since last September while at home, and then in and out of the hospital, and in and out of the care center, and then when she had increasing trouble speaking (perhaps because of the corona virus), she would bring up political issues and state how important it is to oppose the U.S. government interfering in other countries, and the importance of workers’ unity and action.

Betty has been and is a model for all of us to follow. We need to be active to change the world, knowing from history that it can be done. That is an important way to influence others and win the battle of public opinion. Even people she knew from years ago when she was in Boston stay in touch and are active based at least partly on Betty’s influence.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, Betty was a life-long fighter against injustice. And how about each of us doing more on this front to make a similar contribution to making a better world for us, our children, and the working class and people throughout the U.S. and in countries across the world?

On the last days of her life, including in the morning of her death, we would talk on the phone, even with her trouble breathing. I would tell her stories about how the workers were protesting, and she would always say something like “That is very good.” On one of her last days she said, “The workers must be united.”


You can pay your respects at https://www.obituare.com/betty-resnikoff-obituary-75950/