as offered October 11, 2025
Remington Alessi was a good man. His death is a tragedy. It is up to us, who were his friends, to carry on.
Remington Alessi was a good man. It is customary to extol the dead. “A tribute,” declared Pericles, the ancient Athenian, “should be paid to their memory.” Such tributes are rarely anything other than laudatory. “[H]e was a fighter for freedom … [and] demonstrated his tremendous courage and … determination to free … [the world] from fascism,” is how the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti was memorialized. “He has ceased to be, bereft of life … bit the dust … snuffed it … and how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such intelligence should now … be spirited away … before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun,” said Monty Python’s John Cleese to his fellow Python Graham Chapman.
But when I say Remington was a good man, I do not offer mere eulogistic hyperbole. I name a deeper truth. He was someone who saw with clarity the nature of the politics of cruelty under which so many suffer. He was not afraid to say, “There’s some way to stop this … We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and … that’s something we can change.”
He devoted his life to making that change. Unafraid to call a fascist a fascist, or name someone like the President, the Governor, or the mayor a thug, he could not stand bullies.
In the courts and in the streets, he was a quintessential anti-fascist, using his wit and skill as the Texas chainsaw lawyer to damn the powers and principalities as they sought to grind people down. He knew court was theater, that the law was a weapon the rich created to oppress the poor, and that as an attorney he could be something of a shield. “Wherever there is a cop beating up a guy, I will be there,” said his fictive hero, Tom Joad. “Where there is cop beating up a guy, I will be there,” said Remington.
The death of such a man–in the state of Texas, where more people are killed by the police than in any other state in the country, in the city of Houston, where more people are killed by police than in any other major city in the nation, at a time when ICE, the President’s Gestapo, runs rampant–the death of such a man is a tragedy for all.
It is a tragedy that hits Valerie and [his daughter] most sharply. Remington adored them. The first song he played on the guitar after [his daughter] was born was “Here Comes the Sun.” He meant it. He vowed, not “to be a useless Dad.” Capable only of burning water or torching cereal as a bachelor, he learned to cook.
It was a skill he mastered. Leaning into the cuisine of his native New Orleans, “the only place White people know how to use spice,” he liked to say, he made the best crawfish. Anything he fried, you better watch out.
Such culinary feats were but part of his parenting. A doting father and a devoted husband, he brought his commitment to care to his wife and daughter. He was heartbroken that he would be unable to enter old age with Valerie. He was crushed that he would not be able to see [his daughter] grow up.
It is up to us, who were his friends, to do what we can to help carry forward the love Remington had for his family. We must hold [his daughter] in community, offer her mentorship, homework help, and friendship as she grows. We must extend our hands to Valerie, give her compassion, promise her that she does not have to go through this alone.
It is, I suspect, what Remington would have wanted. Even as he would have wanted Leo to carry forward his vision of creating a cadre of anarchist lawyers to confront the murdering boys in blue. Even as he would have wanted all of us, in these hard times, to get over our timid desire for social peace, and bravely challenge rising authoritarianism and white supremacy, not with a hope for comfort but with a passion for justice.
He spread that passion for justice with his wicked sense of humor. It was depicted in his homemade t-shirts. “MD Anderson Making Poor People History,” read one. “Commit Tax Fraud,” read another, featuring a picture of the children’s character Barney.
That sense of humor was on display when I visited him during his first hospitalization. They were afraid that he had cancer and so, even as we talked about legos, motorcycles, cars, and Friday, his favorite subjects, he was full of cancer jokes.
That day, as he made me laugh, as he confronted the real possibility of death, I thought of the anarchist poet Kenneth Rexroth’s eulogy for his friend Eli Jacobson–who died as the best often do, opposing tyranny. I dedicate words from Rexroth to Remington now:
You had a good life. Even all
Its sorrows and defeats and
Disillusionments were good,
Met with courage and a gay heart.
You are gone and we are that
Much more alone. We are one fewer
We are one fewer. Remington wanted to be cremated. His wish for this was similar to the wishes of Joe Hill. Hill was a poet and union organizer martyred by the state of Utah. John Steinbeck modeled Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath on Hill. In the novel Joad said, “I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere … Where there is a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.”
Hill’s last words were “Don’t waste time mourning – Organize!” After his death, his ashes were divided up amongst his friends. Remington requested the same so that we might scatter his “pocket sand,” as he called it, anywhere there is a fight for justice. I plan to take some to Chicago so that some of Remington’s remains can be beside the anarchist martyrs there. In that spirit, it seems fitting that as we reflect on this tragedy, that as who were his friends carry on, that as we remember a good man, we close with Hill’s final poem, his “Last Will.” They were fitting words for a hero of the last century, and they are fitting words for one of this era.
My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan –
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? — Oh! — If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you.
Joe Hill
Good luck to all of you, Remington Alessi, presenté!
