Ben Nichols, Socialist Mayor of Ithaca Dies
Submitted by Theresa AltOn the death of Ben Nichols on November 24, 2007...
Although he was 87 years old, it came as a shock, because he had been so active right up to the last weeks.
Ben's activism for peace and justice stretches back long before I became aware of the local left scene in Tompkins County, New York, but also for subsequent years, this is a very incomplete account, more of a personal witness.
Ben joined Ithaca DSA in 1983. It made sense. He had been supporting the UAW organizing drive at Cornell, and so had the DSA local. Next, together with Steve Jackson, he led the local activists into Ithaca city politics. We helped to oust a Republican mayor. Ben got a seat on the Board of Public Works. He chaired Ithaca DSA, where early planning for better provision of child care and affordable housing took place. He persuaded DSA activists to get involved in the Jesse Jackson presidential primary of 1984. It was also at a DSA meeting in his and Ethel's living room that the idea of a community access cable television show, "More Than The News", was born.
In 1987 he won a seat on Ithaca Common Council, where he was instrumental in securing a low-impact solution for bringing Route 96 as a two-lane highway, not a four-lane elevated monstrosity, into Ithaca's West End, a solution that seems prescient now that we are all concerned about overuse of cars and global warming. In 1988 he served as an alternate delegate for Jesse Jackson at the Democratic National Convention.
The reds from the Jesse Jackson campaign joined with the greens from the Route 96 struggle to elect Ben Nichols mayor of the City of Ithaca in 1989.
The election of the socialist mayor made the New York Times. Despite sudden massive cuts in state aid that forced him to rewrite the City budget in midyear, we can point to several new resources where mayoral initiative, backed up by community organizing, was key: the Drop-in Center for daycare, Mutual Housing, the Haley Pool and the No. 10 shuttle bus between downtown and Cornell.
After losing the 1995 mayoral race, Ben returned to the struggle for equity in education for all races and classes. He served on the Ithaca City School Board 1997-2001, worked with the Village at Ithaca to provide supplementary education to disadvantaged children, and participated in Activists Committed to Interrupting Oppression Now (ACTION) to the end. He also represented our assembly district on the State Committee of the Working Families Party, which raised our hopes when it came on the scene, but swiftly disappointed us. He helped draft the local City and County Living Wage Resolutions in 2003. Throughout these years we could always count on Ben to appear, either as host or as guest, on "Ithaca DSA Presents" for shows on education or local electoral races.
Many of us fondly remember parties in recent years at his and Judith's lakeside home, including the fundraiser in summer of 2006 that did its bit to put Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Senate.
This piece must be full of omissions if not downright errors. To write something like this, until now I would have asked Ben for help.