Free as in Freedom [Paperback]

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 50s 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.”

Returning to her childhood neighborhood, Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Lippman was shocked by the changes that had taken place since her departure to Hunter College a decade and a half before. The skyrocketing ...