Al Lewis, radicalized by his immigrant garment worker mother at a young age, became a committed Socialist by the time of the Great Depression. When landlords evicted people, Lewis and his colleagues would break back into the properties and move the tenants’ furniture back in, and when unemployed workers were denied relief, Lewis would join others in storming relief centers and fight the police. Despite living through the reactionary Reagan years, he kept his principles and remained realistic: “I’ve been in the struggle over 70 years. It doesn’t bother me that I may not win. After doing X amount of time or years, don’t throw your hands up in the air because, you see, everybody wants ‘the win.’ They want it today. It doesn’t happen. The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle for me, and I accepted that a long time ago.”