Published: July 24, 2020, 4:10 p.m.
Leslie Sue Cagan was born in 1947 to a Jewish couple in the Bronx, New York. Her grandmother, a seamstress, was a founding member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, which was known for its far-left politics. In 1964 Cagan enrolled at New York University (NYU), where she joined an activist group in solidarity with SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] and SDS [Students for a Democratic Society]. In 1966 she became involved in the antiwar movement. Next, Cagan started to explore a number of additional activist causes—specifically, the anti-nuclear, LGBT rights, and feminist movements, which took her around the world, from Cuba to Bulgaria. In 2000, Cagan served as a member of the Pacifica Foundation’s board of directors. In 2001 she was elected chair of the Foundation’s interim board of directors. And in 2002 she became co-chair of the newly formed anti-war coalition United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ), a post she would hold until 2008. In 2004 Cagan co-founded — along with Global Exchange founder Medea Benjamin — the organization Iraq Occupation Watch, whose mission was to encourage widespread desertion by 'conscientious objectors' in the U.S. military. In 2011 Cagan was the coordinator of The Audacity of Hope, an American boat (named after Barack Obama‘s 2006 memoir) that was scheduled to participate in a Free Gaza Movement flotilla in late June of that year. Cagan is a member of the New York Committee to Free the Cuban Five, a group of individuals convicted in 2001 by a U.S. jury for their participation in a brutal Castro spy ring and now serving time in American prisons. Both Leslie and Vince are members of the 'Collective No. 20' writing project.