DER PROFESSOR’S FAKTEN

Born April 30th, 1923, as Abraham Meister, the actor Al Lewis, most renown as Grandpa Munster, began a life dedicated to humanitarian and workers’ rights. Raised in Brooklyn, NY by Russian Jewish immigrant parents, his mother -a garment worker- brought him along to May Day demonstrations and picket lines when he was a child. By the 1930s Lewis was a socialist involved in supporting tenants and the unemployed. He told a journalist: “During the Depression, people were getting evicted, ten a day. We used to come along and break the lock and put the furniture back in again… We would storm the Home Relief Centers, that or this person didn’t get a check for $8 or something, and get hit on the head [by police].” A life-long socialist activist, Lewis hosted a politically oriented radio program on WBAI in New York (the theme song was “Foot Pattin” by King Curtis) and ran as the Green Party candidate for governor of New York in 1998.