Politics
Lewis has claimed that he was a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee in 1927 and that he worked in the 1930s to free the Scottsboro Boys.
In a 1997 interview, Lewis also claimed that he was an organizer in the Food, Agricultural and Tobacco Workers Union in North Carolina in the 1930s.
As an activist, he hosted a politically oriented radio program on WBAI, and ran as Green Party candidate for Governor of New York in 1998. In that race he sought to be listed on the ballot as Grandpa Al Lewis, arguing that he was most widely known by that name. His request was rejected by the Board of Elections, a decision upheld in court against his challenge. Despite this setback, he achieved one of his campaign objectives. His total of 52,533 votes exceeded the threshold of votes set by New York law (50,000), and hence guaranteed the Green Party of New York an automatic ballot line for the next four years. (See Election results, New York governor.) He said that, with no political machine and no money backing him, the likelihood of winning the governorship would be like climbing Mount Everest barefooted.
Read more about this topic: Al Lewis (actor)
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)