What does it mean to be a revolutionary?

Death has silenced the voice of a true revolutionary: after a seven-year battle with cancer, our compañero Eric Quezada is gone.

Eric was a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and co-creator of the San Francisco Mission District’s Center for Political Education.

Eric’s idea of socialism wasn’t rooted in abstract ideals, but in normal people working together everyday to create a better world in the present. He was always building dialogue and solidarity across borders with all those facing oppression and maintaining relationships to movements and people across the globe.

Eric doesn’t leave us easily. For several days after his death, after the beautiful silent procession to his house to pray our good-byes and light candles for his road, he visits us in our dreams. In one, he shows up, already gaunt, to a meeting of a committee we both served on. “You’re dead, man,” I tell him in my dream. “I know,” he answers, “but I think there’s an important vote…” Before Día de los Muertos, the night of Noche Santificada, my partner Michelle dreams that they are going to Cuba together.

We remember him with an altar built with friends at the Mission Cultural Center, at the Secret Garden, in Dolores Street’s altar, Calixto’s altar, Casa Bonampak’s altar and at 518 Valencia, in PODER’s t-shirt for his memorial and in our friend Patrick’s poster. At the Secret Garden, it is strange not having him there among the living, talking quietly with us as he had every year since PODER started doing Day of the Dead celebrations with our families at the garden, but now instead as one in the altarsitos we created in the garden beds. Amigo, compañero, presente!

Through all these remembrances I struggle to come up with a phrase to sum up that special quality of Eric’s character as a leader, that “something” that carried over into what defined Mission Housing’s resident programs back in the day, or PODER now, or Dolores Street Community Services, or San Francisco Legal and Education Network: revolutionary humility.

In a gathering at Centro del Pueblo a few days after his death, someone talks about “su humildad, el sabía que no era nadie sin nosotros” – his humility, he knew he was nothing without us. It’s an odd word, “humility,” that sometimes denotes meekness, no sense of self, no ego. In Spanish, “un hombre humilde,” is also a simple man, a campesino or worker, without riches, authentic.

But there is something about leading with humility, moving change with quiet strength, learning to listen, trusting the people. Eric certainly had an ego, and he was certainly competitive, and he certainly had opinions that he shared with us. He was an educator, and for many of us in the Mission, we were schooled by Eric in history, in organizing, in the wider internationalist politics and solidarity with which he infused his local work. He sometimes launched into heated debates, especially when we had had a few drinks. But the quality I remember in his working world was his gentleness, tact, and diplomacy in dealing with others. He was “aglutinador” as our friend Vladimir put it: glue, bringing together the widest front in our common struggles.

“El tenía una posición reál, no politiquera, sinó firme,” remembers Vladimir – Eric had a real position, not politicking, but strong. I never had the sense that in his words or actions he was “positioning” for something for himself, a name for himself, a prominence in some network or gathering. When he ran for office, it felt like we ALL decided that he was the one who should run; he was our candidate in the sense of being both a leader and also one of us. We knew who he would be accountable to, not because of words or promises or the organizational discipline of a party we did not have, but because of the deep ties of friendship and relationship and mutual trust and respect that comes from years of working in a community.

He was a communist and an anti-imperialist, but his path was not that of dogmatic language or radical slogans. He could break it down for us, without confusing us with the confined language of theory, and without trying to impress us. He liked to quote Cabral:“Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” He knew the strategy was for the long-term, and that the work was not confined to some narrow political realm of struggle, but encompassed sport and music, tradition and the romantic. And, though I never saw him cry, one of the strongest memories from friends is his deep emotion that he often expressed in public, in a way many of us men are shaped to hide.

Even now, as we contemplate PODER’s work for the coming period, we honor that revolutionary humility that infuses our philosophy– the quiet work for change, trying to fuse cultural practice with building power for the people, sometimes to the detriment of our own organization’s visibility or fundraising. As we continue in new phases of the struggle, I am constantly reminded of Eric’s role within our movement. We lost a key person, an example of how to struggle. Our challenge, Vladimir reminds me, is how to maintain this impulse, this type of consciousness. We need more revolutionary humility. We need more Erics.