Morrie Rosen Is Irate

Morrie Rosen is on the move. He is telephoning City Council members, preparing petitions, challenging opponents and calling names. This person is a lunatic, says Morrie Rosen. That person is a damned fool. It’s time to get something done, says Morrie Rosen.

I know what you’re thinking: What, him again? I thought he was retired. I thought he was dead. I thought he was at least content to live out his old age raising flowers or walking dogs. What’s Morrie Rosen raising hell about now?

Morrie Rosen is raising hell about what he has always raised hell about: people. He cares deeply and desperately, and when Morrie Rosen cares, he states his concern in a strident, high-pitched voice that pierces the heart like an arrow from God.

This time it’s old people. Morrie, himself 74, wants Councilwoman Ruth Galanter to restore a three-block “safe zone” along the Venice boardwalk that would be closed to roller skaters and skateboarders.

“I keep thinking about Ann Gerber,” he says, “and about all of the other old people who have been hurt. I keep thinking about them and I don’t like what I’m thinking.”

Ann Gerber died instantly 10 years ago when she was smashed to the ground by a bicyclist trying to avoid a skateboarder. Bicycle enthusiasts have since been given their own lane.

Outraged over the old lady’s death, Morrie organized a protest funeral, whipped the community into a frenzy and got a piece of boardwalk designated for walkers only.

It was established in front of the Israel Levin Senior Center, of which Morrie was executive director. He retired five years ago, content in the belief that the safe zone would remain in perpetuity. He was wrong.

Galanter, lobbied by beachfront activist Jerry Rubin, wiped out the safe zone last July, maintaining that it was never enforced anyhow.

Morrie was furious. She had not even bothered to talk to the old people. Who in the hell did she think she was? He demanded Galanter come to the center and explain herself. Then, in front of 200 people, he told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. She told him to shut up and listen.

Morrie listened and said she still didn’t know what she was talking about, so now he’s organizing to get that safe zone back.

Understand, please, that confrontation is not new to Morrie Rosen. At age 8 he collected names on petitions to spare the life of a teen-age boy who had killed his grandmother.

“He was too young to die,” Morrie says, confronting the memory as though it occurred only yesterday. “No one asked why he had killed her, what she had done to him.”

That was his childhood on New York’s Lower East Side. Morrie calls them days of bread and potato soup.

Years later, as a union leader, he challenged New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia for cutting the park department budget. “The Little Flower,” he said, referring to LaGuardia’s nickname, “has blossomed into a stink weed.”

Then he went after the owner of a garment factory who didn’t want to pay him the $4 he owed him. The money represented four days’ work. Morrie told the man if he didn’t pay him, he would find a rock and bust his window, and then he would bust his head. He got the $4.

Morrie took over as director of the Israel Levin Center in 1964 and set the standard for activism on behalf of senior citizens. “The day I got there,” he says, “I was surrounded by five women screaming at me to do something.

“The Jews were lost and demoralized. Their homes had been taken by eminent domain for redevelopment. The old people sat on the benches waiting for death. Those women were right. Someone had to do something.”

It took Morrie five years to get them organized, but eventually he helped get the diverse members of the center assembled into a cohesive force. He got them housing and sometimes food, and then he got them that safe zone.

“You know,” he says, thinking about the people whose voice he has been for 25 years, “I started there as their son and I left as their father.”

Morrie swears he is not going to abandon them now. He has offered to debate Jerry Rubin, whom he dismisses as a lunatic, and to work to unseat Ruth Galanter, whom he dismisses as a fool.

“I’m not going to let up,” he says, “as long as there is one ounce of danger to those old people.”

When I left him, he handed me a small booklet of memorial prayers. One seemed especially appropriate. It said, “Mark the man of integrity, and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace.”

And the man of action.