Bruce Augustyniak (Bruce Kala)

Bruce Augustyniak, also known as Bruce Kala, died in Chicago on September 6, 2002. Bruce was a longtime socialist and anarchist who was trained as a scientist and gave up what presumably would have been a lucrative career to be a revolutionary. He devoted his whole adult life to this work, as a member of the International Socialists from 1970 to 1973, the Revolutionary Socialist League from 1973 until 1989, and the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation from 1989 to 1998. During the 1970s and 1980s he worked in the U.S. Post Office in Chicago, in other industries in Los Angeles, and as a teacher in New York,and helped produce the RSL’s newspaper, The Torch/La Antorcha, and a book, Trotskyism and the Dilemma of Socialism, by Ronald D. Tabor and Christopher Z. Hobson (1988). In later years Bruce was active in several anarchist groups in the San Francisco area; he was known for his extreme militancy and bravery at anti-Klan/anti-Nazi demonstrations. Most recently he worked in Chicago, his hometown, as an organizer for the Service Employees’ International Union until this summer. He was living with his brother when he died unexpectedly.

Bruce was not only an opponent of authoritarian society but, to some extent, its victim. He had a hard life, struggling against drugs and enduring the unsettled existence of an activist who lacked long-term steady work, family, and community involvements. Now that he has passed, we honor and remember his achievements in the struggle for a new society.