This article will serve as a memorial page for our comrade Bill. If you would like to share a brief reflection on Bill’s impact in your life to be posted here, please email eec@blackrosefed.org

With mourning and sadness we report the passing of former Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation (BRRN) militant William “Bill” Bachmann of New York City at the age of 81. Bill is survived by his wife, Corine.

Bill will be remembered for his lifelong commitment to revolutionary politics and his years of dedicated organizing. Bill spent much of his career as a postal worker in New York, where he was a highly active rank-and-file member of the New York Metro Area Postal Union Local 10, an affiliate of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU). In the 1990s he became known to many for his work to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, pushing his union to join the NYC Free Mumia Coalition. Bill remained an active member of his union into retirement.

Bill pictured frame left with black baseball cap.

Bill began political activity as a member of the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), a small Trotskyist group that became critical of Leninism in the late 1980s. A majority of RSL helped to found and eventually dissolved into the Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, which was active throughout the 1990s. After the dissolution of Love & Rage, Bill would go on to join the Open City Collective of the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) in the early 2000s. NEFAC later changed its name to Common Struggle / Lucha Común before merging with other regional organizations to found BRRN in 2014. Bill was a founding member of the NYC Local of BRRN and contributed consistently to discussions on anti-imperialism and workplace organizing within the federation. He was also part of the editorial board for The Utopian, a libertarian socialist magazine run by former members of RSL.

Bill, center right in frame with unblurred face and fist raised, at the 2016 BRRN National Convention in Portland, OR.

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