Read on Twitter
Happy Birthday to Noam Chomsky who turns 92 years old today. One of my fondest memories was hosting Noam at @RiversideNYC back in 2009 where he spoke to an overflow crowd of 2500 people. (1/
Noam agreed to speak, free of charge, as part of an emergency fundraising effort on behalf of the Brecht Forum, a hub for anti-capitalist intellectuals, artists and organizers which operated between 1975 and 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/nyregion/07joint.html?referringSource=articleShare
The event, co-organized by many comrades including @LaceFrontUnited raised nearly $50k for what was one of the last surviving spaces of its kind in New York City, a hugely collaborative effort which grew out of Marxist study groups of the 1970s and which hosted events 7 days a wk
Noam’s wife Carol, who accompanied Noam on many of his trips had recently passed away a few months prior and he was just again starting to do public talks again. When I asked his secretary how he would be traveling to NYC, she answered that he would be taking the train by himself
I asked if we could cover his transportation or hotel or anything like that and she stated that this wasn’t necessary, that Noam was happy to do this for us on a recommendation of a mutual friend. Noam showed up that evening in a cab from Port Authority
While walking him up to his “green room,” I took the opportunity to ask him if he remembered my grandfather, a Dutch linguist who had back in his day offered several scathing critiques of Chomsky’s work. He turned to me and said simply “oh yes, Uhlenbeck, friendly guy.”
Chomsky is such an important model of a grassroots, public intellectual, someone who understands himself as both part of the broader movement for social justice but also *in service* of the movement. Offering to speak for free, at fundraisers like this one, was routine for him
Happy birthday @noamchomskyT I wish I had better than this blurry photo of that night but you were and continue to be such a powerful resource to all of us. Thank you 
