Celebrating the lives of three comrades: Patrick Quinn, Joanna Misnik, & Abra Quinn

Posted October 31, 2025

A Celebration of the lives of these three founding Solidarity members will be held on SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2025 in Chicago from 12 noon to 3PM CST. This will be a hybrid meeting with participants not in Chicago linking up remotely after RSVPing.

For more information and to RSVP: tinyurl.com/PatrickJoannaAbra

PATRICK QUINN (1942-2005)

A founding member of Solidarity and a revolutionary socialist activist for six decades, Patrick died in his hometown Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on January 4th at the age of 83. Professionally, Patrick was an archivist who built the collection at Northwestern University. Politically he was won to socialism and to revolutionary internationalism as a student at the University of Wisconsin and spent his life as an organizer and teacher. He was recruited to the Young Socialist Alliance and later to the Socialist Workers Party, from which he cited his record of being expelled not once but twice.

Although his marriage to Martha did not survive, they nonetheless cooperated in raising their children and supporting their grandchildren. He later married Mary Janzen Quinn, who fully shared his politics, his love of travelling to meet with revolutionaries around the world, and his family.

Alan Wald, a longtime friend and political comrade, described Patrick as having “a larger-than-life personality.”

“He was extroverted, gregarious, approachable, and often affable and even playful — with amazing raconteurial gifts and a more retentive memory than a herd of elephants. In public discussions, he had passion and presence, usually asking the right questions, paying attention to what other people were saying, and mostly responding in affirmative if critical ways.”

Here are some of Patrick Quinn’s reflections:

Remembering the 1960s–Part 1 of 3

Remembering the 1960s – Part 2 of 3

Remembering the 1960s – Part 3 of 3

Radicalization in the 1960s Madison, WI

JOANNA MISNIK, 1943-2005

The eldest of four, Joanna was born into a Polish family in Cleveland, OH. She encountered racism in high school and rejected it. She was drawn to the antiwar movement and particularly to the “Bring the Troops Home Now” perspective that emphasized the role that U.S. soldiers could play in ending the war. The Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party were strong advocates of this orientation, and she joined.

Taking the opportunity to move to Brussels to work with the Fourth International’s staff, helping to produce Inprecor, she relished the chance to meet revolutionaries from around the world. As the SWP reduced its involvement in the FI by the end of the 1970s, she returned to Cleveland and took jobs in the industries the SWP prioritized as preparation for what its leaders saw as a deepening radicalization of the U.S. working class.

Although skeptical of this analysis, she valued her experiences with textile and steel workers. After being expelled by the increasingly sectarian SWP leadership, over the next forty years she worked to develop an organization capable of critically analyzing the complexities of a world and a socialist movement battered by capitalism and its growing inequality.

In the mid-1980s and afterward, Joanna was central to organizing Solidarity around principles of unity that left open differences in analyses but with agreement on core revolutionary principles. She always dared to think radically.

Macular degeneration led to her eventual blindness, a disease that grew over the years and for which she prepared herself. But a series of strokes disabled her and led to her death on September 3rd.

These articles reflect Joanna Misnik’s thinking:

Opening of a New Century

Thanks Bernie!

A tribute to Joanna Misnik, written by Promise Li

ABRA QUINN, 1966-2005

After a four-month battle with a second occurrence of endometrial cancer, Abra Quinn passed away on October 14, 2025. Her last three weeks were spent peacefully in her home, surrounded by friends and relatives — her younger sister, Rachel Quinn, nieces Ruby and Rosemary Marshall, and brother-in-law Tim Marshall — and her cat, Devlin.

Born in 1966 in Madison, Wisconsin to Patrick and Martha Quinn, Abra remembered going to antiwar demonstrations from childhood. She grew up attending activities as varied as the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, opposing nuclear testing, and Central America and Palestine solidarity. While an undergraduate at Northwestern University and an organizer of the anti-Apartheid divestment campaign, Abra was arrested for participating in a peaceful sit in. She was a lifelong socialist, feminist, anti-racist revolutionary.

As a graduate student at the University of Missouri, she wrote her master’s degree thesis on the organizing drives of lumber workers in the Piney Woods of Louisiana. She left before completing her PhD thesis and spent the rest of her work life as a teacher, first in Chicago, later in the Bay Area. A voracious reader, she was also an advisor to the student Rainbow Club, offering a safe space to all of her students over the years.

Here are two articles that Abra wrote for Against the Current:

Meeting Alexandra Kollontai

Wobblies on the Southern Home Front