As a fast friend of Archie Green's the last 22 years of his life, I am moved by the swelling of respect and affection shown him by your members and guests. Of course he will be missed, in a literal sense. In a larger sense, he, even more surely than Joe Hill, will never die. There are today thousands of persons carrying his influence in your field of folk music, in mine of labor history, in ethnic studies, cultural anthropology, and on and on -- most importantly, in the real world of day-to-day working. Only the most exceptional of human beings are able to create a new universe of discourse, a new way of looking at everyday activity and experience. Laborlore will live, and, with it, Archie Green.

Tributes to Archie seem incomplete without mention of his vision of the good society, and his passion for action toward that destination. He called himself a "left-libertarian," like one of his heroes, Jefferson, swearing "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," and like Wobblies swearing hostility to every form of economic injustice. To him, the best -- perhaps the only -- means to the good society was a democratic labor union movement. His last words might have been "Don't waste time mourning. Organize!'

Berkeley, California