Michael Klonsky

Klonsky's father, Robert Klonsky, a World War II veteran who fought as a volunteer against the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, had been arrested and convicted of "conspiring to advocate Marxist views" in violation of the Smith Act during the McCarthy period.

members arrested on May 12, 1969, when "anonymous false reports of fire and a shooting" sent police and firefighters to the S.D.S.

He headed the Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist),[5] in which role he was one of the first U.S. political activists to visit the People's Republic of China.

[5][6] Klonsky later became critical of Marxist dogma but stayed active in civil rights, anti-war and educational reform politics.

By 1996, he was the director of the Small Schools Workshop at the University of Illinois, Chicago,[8] and in 1999, he was named by president Bill Clinton to the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, where he advocated small schools as a mechanism for violence reduction.