Maria Voukelatos, a passionate socialist and animal liberation activist, died suddenly and unexpectedly on March 26. Nothing suggests she took her own life. While the cause is still unknown, her death at home in Sydney was likely quick and painless. She was 37.
Maria became a socialist at Sydney University. Her grandfather on her mother’s side was a Greek communist partisan during the Nazi occupation. Initially drawn to the Labor Club on campus, where she was the anti-racism officer on the Student Representative Council, Maria abandoned Labor for the socialist youth organisation Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party.
A generation of Resistance activists will remember Maria fondly for her gutsy socialist feminist activism. At the Network of Women Students Australia (NOSWA) conferences, she led the charge for Resistance against the influence of radical feminism. The shrill, often personalised jibes of the ‘radfem’ brigade were no match for Maria’s keen Marxist intellect and her patient explanations, good humour and steely determination.
Serving stints as a Resistance organiser in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, Maria guided and inspired many comrades. A vivacious social butterfly, she needed to give and receive warm hugs. Her comradeship and sisterhood were tender and embracing. She was a role model for young women striving to overcome body image demons and sexual hang-ups.
In early 2001, Maria rushed back from Adelaide to Sydney to care for her terminally ill father, who died a few months later. Suppressed grief may have triggered the eating disorder, mania, depression, paranoid delusions and suicidal urges that Maria endured — with phenomenal courage — for a decade. These were her twilight years.
Belatedly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Maria’s mood swings were stabilised by psychiatric drugs. Yet by dulling her ability to feel, they made her life barely worth living. “I live vicariously through Chocolate”, she once told me, referring to our Jack Russell terrier’s playful antics — such as digging for raindrops that had vanished into a pool of water.
Maria underwent a remarkable transformation in her final two and a half years. Having turned a house into a home, she began to reconnect with the outside world. She opened her eyes to the veiled terror of factory farms and slaughterhouses, and became a vegan. Acting on her newfound convictions triggered a virtuous cycle of health and wellbeing.
Far from dissipating or ossifying, as so often happens as youth fades, Maria’s radicalism deepened and achieved a certain roundedness. She expanded her circle of compassion and the scope of her activism to embrace the plight of animals, such as pigs in factory farms, without losing her revolutionary Marxist bearings. She reengaged with the socialist movement, becoming an activist in the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society.
A deeply compassionate soul who trembled with indignation at every injustice, Maria could have contributed so much more to the struggle for a better world. She would have wanted us to carry on that struggle on her behalf, and for all sentient beings with whom we share this pale blue dot hanging in the cosmic void. Comrade Maria, we salute you.
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