Chris Kinder ¡Presente!
We lost Chris Kinder—activist, socialist, writer, comrade and friend—on April 14, 2025, in Oakland, at age 81. He is survived by his wife Beth Youhn, his children, Karl and Stephanie, his two grandchildren, Lulu and Chet, and many friends and comrades in the Bay Area and beyond.
Chris became a socialist while at Cornell University and grew to become a prolific Marxist theoretician and researcher who headed up the Trade Union Commission of the Spartacist League (SL) in the 1970s. His writings from this period (under the pen name “Chris Knox,”) and those after leaving the SL, have sparked and informed militant labor actions for nearly 50 years. Notable among them is the class struggle action of the Militant Caucus of the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union (ILWU) which led Local 10’s refusal to load military cargo to the Chilean junta in 1974. And later, in 1984, the union’s refusal to unload cargo from South Africa to protest apartheid was initiated by former members of the Caucus. Nelson Mandela later thanked the ILWU for this and other exemplary actions of international working-class solidarity with the South African freedom struggle.
As a founder and organizer of the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Chris again coordinated work with the longshore union. A former Black Panther and journalist, Mumia was framed for the killing of a Philadelphia police officer and was imprisoned for 43 years on death row. In 1999, the ILWU shut down all West Coast ports to demand his freedom, joining 25,000 protesters to march in San Francisco—a major contributing factor in the state’s action to remove Mumia from death row two years later.
A printer by trade, Chris was proud to work in later years as a collective member of Inkworks, the Berkeley union worker-coop printshop, and to serve as its union steward.
Chris and Beth met as labor activists in the Contragate Action Committee, defending the Sandinistas in Nicaragua against the CIA-backed Contras in the mid-80s, and they were active in many progressive movements and militant actions over their 30-plus year partnership. They also shared great times traveling the world, and exploring and camping in beautiful natural settings, near and far, in their little truck camper.
Chris was a deep lover of nature, music, humor, science and history. River-rafting and backpacking with his kids in the Sierra; rocking out to the Looters’ world-beat tunes and the eclectic punk-rock scene at the old Klub Komotion; making awesome music mix-tapes for his friends; drawing goofy cartoons for his kids’ and grandkids’ birthdays; diving deep into many science and history books and journals; lots of fun camping trips with friends, and an annual “Oyster Bake” at Tomales Bay.
Throughout his life, Chris has been a catalyst and activist in numerous anti-racist, anti-imperialist and pro-labor actions. In recent years, he contributed many articles on politics and the environment for Socialist Viewpoint (SV). As the editors of SV stated: “Chris had an amazing knowledge of history. More importantly, he could recall the facts and details and bring the lessons learned into today’s world of capitalist upheaval and mayhem—and how best to fight it.”
May Chris’s legacy inspire many others to stand and fight with the global working-class as he did, and to defeat today’s dark and cruel fascism, armed as we are with our overwhelming numbers and unrelenting passion for justice.
A Celebration of Chris’s life was held on June 22 at Redwood Regional Park, Oakland, a place Chris loved. This obituary was part of the announcement for the event.
—The Editors