It is my sad duty to bring news of the death of Caitlin Hines, an Irish Republican Socialist activist for nearly twenty years, due to complications associated with lingering neurological problems from a stroke suffered in January 1984, when she was only 22 years old.

Caitlin was a well-known figure in the highly politicized arena of the San Francisco Punk Rock scene, where she became a highly respected member of the punk community while still only 16 years old. Before she was a legal adult, she became a member of the Urban Management Concern, which did artist representation for a number of leading punk bands in San Francisco, as well as a regular columnist for the Los Angeles punk rock publication "Slash" magazine.

Also in the San Francisco punk rock scene, Caitlin was a founding member of New Youth--a collective of punk rock fans who sought to provide alternatives to the corporate record/concert promotion industry for punk rock bands. Many were astounded when the small collective of punk rockers convinced the Clash to play a benefit concert for the struggling New Youth organisation, raising several thousand dollars in an underground benefit concert, staged by New Youth under the noses of the powerful Bill Graham promotion firm who thought they had exclusive rights to the Clash's Bay Area appearances.

Turning from concert promotion to tour facilitation, Caitlin was among the New Youth activists who published the "Little Pink Book," a collection of contact information on punk rock bands, clubs, independent record labels, and publications from across Canada and the United States, which served to facilitate the Do It Yourself attitude of punk rockers seeking to tour, record, and make themselves known to their fellow punks across the map. She was also involved in helping to organise a punk rock benefit concert for Black Panther activist Geronimo Pratt, decades before his release from prison, where he had been railroaded by Cointelpro operations, and years before his case became a cause for much of the Left.

At the end of 1980, inspired by the news of Sean McKenna about to go blind from his protracted hunger strike, Caitlin helped to organise a benefit for the hunger strikers and other Irish Prisoners of War, which finally took place in February 1981, as word of an impending renewed hunger strike was beginning to leak out. She continued on in Irish politics as an activist, first working with the Irish Action Committee, then becoming one of four founding members of the San Francisco chapter of the H-Block/Armagh Committees, and finally joining the Irish Republican Socialist Party in late 1981.

Shortly after her 22nd birthday, in January 1984, Caitlin suffered a stroke, caused by a burst AVM blood vessel malformation while at work. She was given little chance of surviving the initial surgery to stem the intracranial bleeding, and lay in a coma for the next 30 days. She spent virtually the entire year of 1984 in hospitals, undergoing intense rehabilitation work, causing her to miss the founding of the Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America in St. Paul, Minnesota (her home town) in March of that year, but a representative of the IRSP who attended the founding conference to provide the party's greetings, delivered a special message of support for the young, stricken Caitlin.

Despite paralysis of her vocal chords which reduced her voice to a whisper and make breathing difficult for her, paralyzed optic muscles which left her with double vision, a general lack of strength and sensation on her left side, and a severely impaired sense of balance due to the loss of a third of her cerebellum, Caitlin recovered sufficiently to return to work in early 1985, after making a visit to Scotland, where she met John MacLean's daughter Nan Milton and activists of the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement at New Years, and made a visit to the Soviet Union the following New Years.

Caitlin returned to college, earning an AA degree from San Francisco City College, as well as a BA and MA degree in Linguistics from San Francisco State University. In addition to being a key organiser of activism against the Gulf War while at SF State, Caitlin gained remarkable success in her academic field of Linguistics. She was selected to deliver papers at several important international linguistic conferences--most of her academic writing being devoted to the linguistic analysis of the sexism-tinged speech used to refer to women, with two papers devoted to women as dessert and a third on women as small animals. She also collaborated on an article on the language used to report the story of the scourge of AIDS in Africa, drawing attention to the subtle and not so subtle colonial mindset that tinted the words used to report the story. Three of her articles were published in Linguistics journals, and later included in two books dealing with the language used to convey sexist notions about women. She also was a key organiser of a Linguistics conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, celebrating the contribution of her hero in linguistics--along with George Orwell--the influential Dr. Worf.

Then, several years ago, her work in linguistics suffered a serious setback, when difficulties arising from a blocked shunt, cause intracranial pressure to grow to a dangerous extent, causing new neurological damage. Caitlin lost her ability to swallow, and spent the final years of her life, nourished through a duodenal tube into her abdomen, and becoming gradually confined to a wheelchair.

Throughout, Caitlin's mind retained its clarity and she retained her passion for the Irish Republican Socialist cause, never failing to participate in the annual San Francisco St. Patrick's Day, riding in the Arcsine's annual float and enjoyed joining in the city's Arcsine's annual wreath-laying at Easter, in memory of all those who had died fighting for the Irish nation and the working class.

Tuesday, the 27th of November 2001, Caitlin developed difficulty breathing and was taken to the hospital. After being seen by a doctor, she returned home and briefly rested. She apparently collapsed while attempting to get into her wheelchair to answer the door, to let her physical therapist in for a session, hitting her head during her fall. When her roommate returned approximately fifteen minutes later and rushed in with Caitlin's therapist, they found her unconscious on the floor. Paramedics were called, and after working on her for nearly thirty minutes, they managed to get a weak pulse, but the damage had been done from a lack of oxygen to her brain. Though she was put on life-support at the hospital, she failed to manifest any brain wave activity and the following day, her mother had her taken off life support, recognizing that Caitlin's long struggle against life's adversity had, in fact, ended the previous afternoon, before the paramedics had even arrived on the scene.

Caitlin will be cremated, as was her wishes. She will be long remembered by her comrades in the Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America, her friends in the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, her colleagues in the field of Linguistics, and the many others who she had come into contact with through her activism, her academic pursuits, and her general love of justice, her love of life, and her long and difficult struggle against the adversities that fate had handed to her.

Caitlin Hines: Irish Republican Socialist, working class activists, and accomplished academic in the field of Linguistics. She is remembered with pride and sorrow by her comrades and friends around the globe.