Joey Ramirez: Revolutionary organizer and working-class activist

The Party for Socialism and Liberation mourns and remembers Joey Ramirez, a great friend and comrade in the revolutionary struggle, who died after a prolonged illness on Aug. 8, 2006. He was 57 years old.

Ramirez was one of the first people to join the PSL in Los Angeles after its founding in 2004. He was a dedicated

Joey Ramirez Photo: Joe Delaplaine

activist who devoted as much time as possible to doing outreach, making phone calls, and attending demonstrations and political meetings. He was a committed student of the classic texts of Marxist literature, who constantly read in order to gain deeper political understanding and analysis.

Ramirez worked for many years as a restaurant cook on the Universal City Walk in Los Angeles. He was respected by his fellow workers and was a shop steward in his Unite Here local union.

He was an ardent activist who lived most of his life in the Latino gay community of Silver Lake in Los Angeles. He drew deep political inspiration from the Cuban Revolution and vigorously read the works of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Ramirez truly was proud to be a member of the proletarian vanguard as one of the most politically conscious and committed members of the working class.

Ramirez will be remembered by PSL comrades and friends for his unbending kindness, generosity, and deeply held political convictions. He spent hours on LA’s city buses, traversing between work, political events, meetings and his home. Despite health problems, Ramirez always found the strength to carry on the struggle for progressive change and dreamed of a socialist world. It was the revolutionary struggle that gave his life meaning.

Ramirez will not be forgotten by anyone who knew him. His legacy continues in the class struggle itself.

Joey Ramirez, presente!