faif-2.0

Chapter 4
Impeach God
Although their relationship was fraught with tension, Richard Stallman
would inherit one noteworthy trait from his mother: a passion
for progressive politics.
It was an inherited trait that would take several decades to emerge,
however. For the first few years of his life, Stallman lived in what he
now admits was a “political vacuum.” 1 Like most Americans during
the Eisenhower age, the Stallman family spent the Fifties trying to
recapture the normalcy lost during the wartime years of the 1940s.
“Richard’s father and I were Democrats but happy enough to leave
it at that,” says Lippman, recalling the family’s years in Queens. “We
didn’t get involved much in local or national politics.”
That all began to change, however, in the late 1950s when Alice
divorced Daniel Stallman. The move back to Manhattan represented
more than a change of address; it represented a new, independent
identity and a jarring loss of tranquility.
“I think my first taste of political activism came when I went to the
Queens public library and discovered there was only a single book on
divorce in the whole library,” recalls Lippman. “It was very controlled
by the Catholic church, at least in Elmhurst, where we lived. I think
that was the first inkling I had of the forces that quietly control our
lives.”
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