Marjorie Stamberg

• Retired Teacher and union delegate

Marjorie Stamberg, a retired Pathways to Graduation teacher and delegate who spent her life fighting for the rights of the oppressed, died on May 29 after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was 79.

Marjorie began teaching in New York City public schools in her 50s, after decades of activism and work as a journalist for publications promoting an international socialist revolution and championing the rights of the downtrodden, according to Jan Norden, her husband of 44 years and her partner for more than 50.

Marjorie, who retired in 2020, began her education career in 1999, teaching ESL in daytime high school and evening adult education in the South Bronx. She became a mentor for new teachers in Queens and returned to the classroom in 2007 in Auxiliary Services for High School. Unfortunately, the DOE closed a number of alternative high schools weeks later during a reorganization, and she and others were placed into the Absent Teacher Reserve, Norden said.

Retiree Roz Panepento, former chair of the District 79 ASHS chapter, said Marjorie was a wonderful friend, co-worker, organizer and writer. She helped Panepento blog and advocate for the teachers who had been displaced. “A lot of ATRs were floating around for years,” she said. “Marjorie kept working and working to get these ATRs rehired.”

Marjorie was an elected member of the UFT Delegate Assembly for GED Plus (now Pathways to Graduation) from 2010 until her retirement, Norden said. She also taught English language courses at Hunter College and New York University. She was a member of the Class Struggle Education Workers organization and the editor of its journal, “Marxism and Education.”

As a “radical educator,” Marjorie was opposed to remote education and demonstrated with her group – Class Struggle Education Workers – to keep schools open safely during the pandemic, Norden said. However, she learned how to use remote technology so that she could teach adult education part-time, which she continued until February 2022.

Pathways to Graduation teacher Polly Spain, who served with Marjorie on the District 79 citywide leadership committee for about five years, said she was a “powerful voice to make sure that everyone was treated fairly” and “always stood up for what was right.”

Marjorie was sharp and had a sense of humor, Spain said. “She was, in my opinion, one of the great ones that had such an impact not only union-wise, but she gave a lot of time to causes that were good for society as a whole,” she said. “She’s one of the soldiers that really cared about making this world a better place.”

Pathways to Graduation Chapter Leader Michael Friedman said Marjorie was active politically and in the women’s movement in addition to her work as a teacher and delegate. “She believed in equality, public education and helping the downtrodden,” he said. “She never stopped.”

After college, Marjorie was a civil rights activist with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Students for a Democratic Society in Washington, D.C., Norden said. She lived in New York City and on the West Coast, writing for New Left and other movement papers, founding a feminist journal, organizing telephone operators and joining the Spartacist League to champion revolutionary Trotskyism.

Marjorie “played a leading role in struggles” defending the rights of the working class, immigrants, Black people and all oppressed groups, Norden said. In 1983, she organized to stop the Ku Klux Klan from marching on Washington, D.C., he said. She traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006 and in 2016 to support striking teachers. In 2017, she organized committees to defend immigrant students and agitated to keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of schools. Last year, despite her deteriorating health, she attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Marjorie ran unsuccessfully for the state Assembly in 1978 and mayor in 1985 as a Spartacist Party candidate. In 1996 she was a founder, with Norden, of the Internationalist Group and became an editor of its newspaper, the Internationalist, which promotes an international socialist revolution, the conquest of power by the working class and the rights of the oppressed. She was an early activist for women’s liberation but broke with feminism to embrace Marxism, specifically Trotskyism, he said.

Toward the end of her life, when she was in hospice care, Marjorie was still concerned about fighting for others and getting young people into the UFT, Panepento said. A lot of young people whom she had mentored attended her memorial service.

“That said volumes to me,” Panepento said. “She didn’t have kids of her own, but she affected a lot of young people.”

Photos courtesy of Jan Norden and the Internationalist.

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