Peace Activist Art Rosenblum Dies

by Judy Rosenblum

Sunday, 16 June 2002

I am sad to inform all of you that Art Rosenblum was killed in a car crash last week. Art was a wonderful person and a great peace activist. Here is a tribute from his loving wife Judy: Peace and Love, Art R.

 

Art Rosenblum was killed in a car accident last week at age 74. He was a peace activist since the 60's, a writer, printer, pilot, mechanic, and inventor. Today, June 13th, is the 26th anniversary of the day we met. Art lived in the future. He called himself a futurist. He had a clear vision of the planet ruled by love. When he was 20, he went to Paraguay to join the pacifist Christian community called the Society of Brothers, where they followed the teachings of Jesus and held all things is common. He lived with them until he was 38, when he struck out on his own. For two years, he traveled all over the country, setting up print shops for any group that opposed the Vietnam War, asking only room and board in communes along the way.

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In 1969, he came to Germantown in Philadelphia to start a commune devoted to finding ways to bring about a whole new age of peace and love to the world. He created a small nonprofit organization called Aquarian Research Foundation. He wrote a newsletter for over thirty years about alternative lifestyles, safe energy, psychic research, and sustainable living. The first five years of the newsletter are published in his book, Unpopular Science.

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Art had an offset press in his dining room, which he used to print newsletters and also a booklet on natural methods of birth control, which grew into a book that sold over 90,000 copies. When we married in 1976 after a 28-day courtship, I helped him edit the fifth edition. The next year, Art became a pilot at age 49 and started flying people all over to visit intentional communities. He took in printing apprentices to work for peace groups that needed printing done at cost. He printed and distributed 300,000 Big Party invitations in 1984 to visualize and celebrate, in advance, the disarmament of the world.

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In 1988, he flew a Soviet social scientist to visit intentional communities in the U.S., and we wrote and produced the first video on such communities, called Where's Utopia? He influenced Ted Turner to create the Turner Tomorrow Award, which resulted in the prize-winning book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, who befriended Art.

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He raised our two kids to be loving, free, creative, and caring about the needs of the world. He picked up every hitchhiker on the road that could fit in the car. He took in homeless people to live with us. He championed homebirth, home schooling, polyamory, communal living, natural foods, alternative medicine, and every cause that came down the road. He flew his small plane to Cuba a few times at age 70. He took in Freedom Summer kids to sleep on our floors every summer. He got himself arrested for civil disobedience trying to free Mumia. He promoted the Disclosure Project's efforts to get UFO information out in the open.

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At 74, seaweed man still bounded down the stairs two at a time and built a loft with our daughter. He spent his last years writing articles to his listserv and teaching our son about electronics and politics. He started a free radio station which the FCC shut down. He threw out our old printing press and got two old copy machines and made handouts about Dennis Kucinich and Israeli refuseniks. On his last drive out, he was transporting a computer that was to be the first in a project to give computers and mentoring to disadvantaged kids in the neighborhood.

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Art wanted a world without money where everyone's needs would be met. He deeply believed that if he worked for the universe, the universe would work for him. And it did, many, many times. We even managed to keep an airplane somehow, on a poverty level income, because he did his own maintenance.

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He never gave up trying. He said, "The difficult things we do right away. The impossible takes a bit longer." He didn't believe in death. He said that death is just a change of lifestyle. He thought he could be more effective from the other side.

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We will be having a street celebration of all causes that Art promoted, August 11th, in downtown Philly, and invite you to come and help Art visualize a positive future for the planet