VTJP Pays Tribute to Marc Estrin

Marc Estrin - 1939-2025

VTJP Pays Tribute to Marc Estrin (1939-2025)

He died on August 10^th 2025, age 86, when his heart finally succumbed to the challenge of sustaining his previously unstoppable creativity and intellect.

Marc in the series "What's Going On" with Sandy Baird, Marc is discussing the work and concerns of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. March 2017 Channel 17 'Town Meeting Television' website: https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/vermonters-justice-palestine

Marc was a founding member of the Peace and Justice Center in Burlington. Anti-war activism became the mainstay of his lifetime work, including the creation of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (originally Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel in 2001) which was founded on the belief that Justice is necessary before Peace can be achieved.

Marc recounted how he grew up in the Bronx, surrounded at home by books and in the streets by anti-Jewish taunts. His family was strictly secular Jewish, his name Marc and his brother's name Carl embodying his parents' Marxist philosophy. There, education was prioritized, with his college education transitioning from chemistry and biology to theater. Ever re-inventing himself, he found political activism as the mainstay of his personal commitment to the ever challenging prospect of motivating human progress and humanity. This brought him to Glover Vermont, after joining the Bread and Puppet theater, and then to Burlington where he focused primarily on his ever provocative and challenging writing and publishing. His novels are surreal and often disturbing, even weird, and his short pieces can be troubling in their unexpected analogies. See a sampling at https://theragblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Marc%20Estrin

His brilliant trifold leaflet 'What if Israel Invaded Vermont' has undergone numerous reprintings. It challenges the Vermont reader to confront personally the chaos and destruction of the everyday dystopia in occupied Palestine as if it were happening here.

Along with the written word, Marc saw theater and drama as central to political activism and messaging - conventional political activism was not enough for him. Along with his ever provocative, and frequently shock-tactic writings, drama was key to how Marc challenged us to create a truly post-war and post-capitalist world. For inspiration, he filled his aging car with VTJP activists to pay homage and break sourdough bread with Peter and Elke Schumann at the Bread and Puppet theater in Glover (with a side trip to the Museum of Everyday Life.)

For VTJP, seeing that our iconic Ben & Jerry's was selling ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine was too much. A VTJP campaign that went national was fomented in Marc's and others' living rooms, see https://icecream.vtjp.org/.

'Free Cone Day' leafleting actions were a central and ever creative component, bringing conversations and a message to people (everyone!) who loves ice cream. Every year a new and current theme was developed - see https://icecream.vtjp.org/samples/ and Misdirection. (Though the ill-fated Progressive Except for Palestine theme echoing the long-forgotten breakfast cereal did not achieve critical acclaim.)

The Cantastoria "No Justice, No Sweets" was created for performance on Burlington's Church Street.

And, based on the Burma-shave road signs from the 1920s to the 1960s, Marc developed a Ben & Jerry's campaign version, with a début outside the Ben & Jerry's scoop shop on Burlington's Church Street.

The annual South Burlington Art Hop became a focus for Marc to work with local artists and Bread and Puppet's Peter Shumann to exhibit hard-hitting displays just across the road from Ben & Jerry's free ice cream truck: https://vtjp.org/artprojects/

Marc's contributions covered an amazing spectrum of human endeavour and their impact was always inspiring and profound.