The following remembrances were shared by four Struggle for Socialism Party organizers at the memorial service for Comrade Bob McCubbin, held on March 21, 2026, at the People’s Forum in New York City. Bob McCubbin was a pioneering theorist of LGBTQIA+ liberation, author of the groundbreaking 1976 work “The Gay Question: A Marxist Appraisal,” and a tireless organizer who built branches of revolutionary organization with nothing but knowledge, passion, and commitment.
From the Stonewall era through his final days organizing at San Diego Pride 2025, Bob never wavered in his belief that queer liberation was inseparable from the fight against capitalism and imperialism.
Andre Powell, Baltimore, Maryland
Good afternoon, comrades. I met Bob McCubbin in 1975 when I was attending a socialist conference here in New York and stayed overnight in his apartment. He was telling me of the evils of capitalism and explaining how there had been weeks and weeks of over 95 to 100 degree temperatures in New York City, and that several people had died on the subway.
This was my second trip to New York as an adult. On my first one, I hadn’t taken the subway — wherever we went we took cabs, which were really cheap back in 1975.
So, as Bob explained the horrors of the suffocating heat in the New York City subway system, I began to get more and more scared about how we were going to get to the conference. It was in a hotel somewhere in midtown. I was thinking to myself, I don’t know if I want to get on this subway. But alas, he walked me through it, and I made it there.
Gloria Verdieu, San Diego, California
I am unable to attend in person. I am sending heartfelt condolences to everyone. For over 30 years, Bob was an active organizer in San Diego, California.
I met Bob over 25 years ago. Pam Africa and members of the MOVE organization came to San Diego and spoke about the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had been in prison for over a decade. That meeting was my introduction to the prison-industrial complex and the national struggle to free all political prisoners.
Bob was the chair of the Coalition to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Committee Against Police Brutality in San Diego. Today, I continue to organize with the Coalition to free Mumia and all political prisoners. We fight to stop police brutality and mass incarceration, to shut down the prison-industrial complex.
In July of 2025, Bob helped organize a contingent in support of Gaza, Palestine, and in opposition to the attacks on immigrants at the annual San Diego Pride March. The banner read: No Pride in Genocide.
When I visited Bob in the hospital after he was hit by a car while walking in Balboa Park and saw the extent of his injuries, I was still confident he would recover. Bob had no memory of what had happened. His concern was that we continue to work on making a better world for all. When I reminded him that he was in the hospital, his response was: “We have a lot of work to do.”
He spoke of Demetrius DuBose, a football player killed by San Diego police in 1999. He spoke of Mae Mallory and the Harlem Nine, who fought segregation in New York schools.
Bob said, “We must bring working-class people together who fight for a better world.” He believed that as workers, we have more in common than the system leads us to believe.
Bob touched the lives of many through bus trips to protests, meetings, conferences, and rallies. He was a scholar, educator, author, and mentor who led by example. Bob not only envisioned a better world — he motivated me and many others to fight for it: a socialist world. Bob was my comrade, my motivator, and my true friend. He is physically gone, but his revolutionary spirit lives on inside of me.
Bob McCubbin, ¡presente!
Berta Joubert-Ceci, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Compañero Bob made great contributions to society with his Marxist understanding of the roots of gay oppression. That was a tremendous aspect of his revolutionary life. Yet it was accompanied by other important facets of his political life.
Bob embodied what Che used to say: revolutionaries are guided by great feelings of love. Because what I remember most of him was his smile, his solidarity — that sense of being close to a loving, respectful, and understanding person.
Even if you did not know him for a long time, there was a familiarity, as if you had known him all your life. And as a Puerto Rican, as a Latina woman not born in this country, that is not an easy matter. Yet it was true with Bob — my brother in struggle, my comrade.
There was another striking quality that always impressed me: his determination to struggle under any physical ailment he endured. During some meetings that the party held by phone, I remember how he apologized for not taking notes because he was lying on the floor to relieve the excruciating pain in his back. Yet that did not prevent him from participating fully in the discussions. Any other person could have used it as an excuse to avoid being on the call, but not comrade Bob. There he stayed, on the floor, on the meeting. Resilience, determination, and love — for the struggle, for the people, and most of all for his comrades.
That was Bob. And he will always be, ¡presente!
Andrew Matatag, Baltimore, Maryland
When people ask me what really helped me understand Marxism, I say: “The State and Revolution,” “Philippine Society and Revolution,” and “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.” But I didn’t really understand Origins until I read Bob McCubbin. It blew open the doors for me. It really helps you understand historical materialism in a way that actually helps the struggle against capitalism. And it is such a rare thing for there to be a new weapon in the arsenal of the working class. Bob gave us that.
I didn’t know Bob as well as many of you did. One of the few times I got to spend time with him in person was here in New York at Gary and Lallan’s place. I remember the chair he was sitting in. I remember the bad joke that I told him that did not land. And I really feel honored to have had that time — to listen to him talk, to listen to him analyze — and to have this weapon in the arsenal of the working class that a book so rarely can be. He really gave us that.
Bob McCubbin, ¡presente!
I also quickly want to give space to our comrade Lee Patterson from Baltimore, who passed. I know grief. We all know grief. We all know pain. But I do not grieve Bob and Lee the same way I grieve anybody else, because — as people have said — they’re still here. They live. Communists live forever. It is my assertion. They are still with us today.
Comrade Lee, ¡presente! Comrade Bob, ¡presente!
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