Shatzi Weisberger, known as the People’s Bubbie for being a fixture of New York protests, has died at the age of 92. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Weisberger fought alongside many causes, starting with the anti-nuclear movement and ending with a focus on Black Lives Matter and Free Palestine.
Weisberger broke curfew in 2020 when she attended Black Lives Matter protests. She then wrote an article for the HuffPost, saying that all she wanted for her 90th birthday was to abolish the police.
“As the great-granddaughter of Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, organizing is in my blood,” Weisberger wrote in her column. “As a white person, I’ve fought against the redlining of Black communities in Long Island. As a Jew, I’ve organized for Palestinian freedom. As a lesbian and a daughter of a lesbian, I’ve struggled against patriarchy and war.”
She thanked the Black Lives Matter movement for putting prison and police abolition in the headlines.
“Decades ago, when I sold newspapers advocating prison abolition on the streets of our city, I was written off as left of Left. Now, thanks to this movement, police abolition is on the front page of The New York Times.”
Weisberger was born in 1930, to a lesbian mother. She grew up in a small apartment with her mother and her mother’s female partner, despite not being aware of their relationship at the time.
Weisberger was married to a man for 18 years and they had children. She left him after reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, later realizing she was actually a lesbian.
Weisberger was a nurse for 47 years, working closely with AIDS patients during its peak in New York. As well as providing home care for those dying of the disease, she was involved in AIDS activism, including the international, grassroots political group ACT UP.
Then she turned to death education after caring for a loved one who was dying. She associated with the Positive Death Movement, as opposed to standard palliative care.
“Since retiring from nursing and full-time organizing, I’ve become a death educator,” she said. “I support people in creating their ideal dying processes through “Art of Dying” workshops and death cafes. Central to my practice is the belief that people have the right to die as they wish. Prisons and police do the opposite. They cruelly kill Black and brown people prematurely and with impunity, stealing them from their loved ones.”
She remained graceful and brave in the face of her own passing over.
“Shatzi was in her own home when she died, exactly according to her wishes, thanks in large part to the support this community showed her by donating and sharing her GoFundMe,” Jewish Voice for Peace NYC’s Instagram captioned. “She said over and over that she felt utterly surrounded in love. In her own words this past week: ‘I am dying, and yet this is the best time of my life.'”
