Wally, as he was known by all, was the last surviving founder of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). He died January 3, 2022, at the age of 91, his family and comrades at his side, after a lifetime of principled struggle on behalf of the international working class.
Although Wally missed being a “May Day baby” by a few hours, the international workers’ holiday would be a big part of his life. Wally attended his first May Day demonstration with his mother in 1942, at the height of the war against fascism. Later he would help to organize decades of May Day marches for PLP, a day that represented our Party’s commitment to raise the red flag high and advance the historical communist movement.
Wally dedicated his life to the interests of the working class. For many years he was a member of the Communist Party (CP) USA. In 1951, as a student at the City College of New York, he helped lead a walkout over racist admissions policies that excluded Black, Latin, and Jewish students.
 Later he helped to lead the CP’s industrial union work in the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, including an epic strike that shut down the entire New York-New Jersey waterfront. Wally also began his long and prolific writing career on the sports pages of the Daily Worker, where he covered the New York Yankees and honed a lifelong devotion to baseball.
In 1962, recognizing that the Soviet Union and the CPUSA had abandoned communism in favor of state capitalism, Wally joined a group of comrades to establish something new: the Progressive Labor Movement, which led the first demonstration against the U.S. war in Vietnam. In 1965, Wally helped to organize the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.
For many decades, Wally led PLP’s trade union section, where he recruited, developed, and inspired generations of organizers. He was proud of his leadership role in a number of PLP-affiliated organizations, including the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), which fought the resurgence of the KKK and Nazis in the 1970s; the Workers Action Movement (WAM), which led a new era of militant class struggle in the 1970s and 1980s; and the Solidarity Organizing Committee (SOC), which spearheaded militant and politically advanced labor actions.
in the U.S. and internationally in the 1990s.Throughout, Wally served as an editor and contributor to CHALLENGE, and to Progressive Labor Party magazine and later The Communist magazine. His work on behalf of the Party led him to worldwide travels and correspondence in the monumental effort to build a mass international communist party. Wally’s enormous legacy consists of the hundreds of communist organizers he trained and influenced, many of whom would go on to devote their lives to the class struggle. Wally also had an indirect impact on thousands more who were inspired by the people he trained, and by the hundreds of thousands whose lives were changed by these collective efforts.
Wally was preceded in death by his first wife, and comrade Esther Chanzis. He is survived by his son Andrew Linder, his daughter Anita Caref (Doyle O’Connor), and his grandchildren Kevin Caref (Crystal Clark); Peter Caref; Elisa Caref (Pascal Abidor); and step-grandson Gavan O’Connor. Wally was also preceded in death by his second wife Toni Ades and is survived by his stepdaughter Andrea Ades Vasquez (Gerald Markowitz) and their daughter Isa Vasquez. Wally was additionally preceded in death by his long-time companion Vera Dumont.
Wally Linder will be remembered as a loyal and dedicated comrade for as long as there is a revolutionary workers’ struggle to change the world.