By Arthur Schwartz
Merle Ratner, 67, longtime advocate for peace and Vietnam, was killed while crossing the street in the East Village on Feb. 5.
Born in 1956, Merle Ratner became an activist at the age of 13 and continued to engage in activism throughout her adult life. Her family had a history of progressive activity, and she believed that as an American she had a responsibility to protest the U.S. government’s waging the war. She worked with many activist organizations— not only those against the Vietnam War, but also various social justice movements. Merle and her husband, Ngô Thanh Nhàn, were part of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign to fight for aid for those affected by “Agent Orange.”
The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign pressed the U.S. government and chemical companies Dow and Monsanto to compensate the people of Vietnam for the legacy of cancers and birth defects caused by the use of the toxic exfoliant, Agent Orange, during the war.
Her death made headlines in Vietnam, where she was a beloved figure. A memorial service was held on Feb. 15th.
Born in the Bronx in 1956, Merle was raised by a family of Jewish labor agitators. In an interview with the New York Historical Society, Ratner described her arrest at age 13 outside the United Nations as a protest against the “genocide” of the Vietnamese people by the U.S. government.
She quickly became entrenched in the antiwar movement, joining Father Daniel Berrigan outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral to denounce the secret bombing of Cambodia.
In a 2017 street interview with the blog EV Grieve, Ratner said she moved to the East Village in the early 1980s because she “wanted to live in a multiracial, working-class neighborhood.”
Merle served as program coordinator for the International Commission for Labor Rights and was a board member of the Laundry Workers Center, which campaigns on behalf of low-wage laundry and food service workers in New York and New Jersey.
She also served on the board of the Brecht Forum, the former leftist cultural center in Greenwich Village.
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