Alvin Lee Duskin

1931 - 2021
Alvin Duskin, an entrepreneur best known in San Francisco for his imaginative political discourse and environmental activism, died peacefully at home. He was 90 years old.

Alvin used his influence to promote a series of visionary environmental projects in California and abroad. He organized a statewide initiative to limit the development of nuclear power plants in California and served as a board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He co-founded US Windpower, locating one of the first windfarms in Northern California. After Glosnost he made turbines in what was then Leningrad and launched the first breakfast cereal and potato packaging plant in Poland.

He placed ads in local papers urging San Franciscans to demand better from their elected leaders. His activism started with a fight against high rise development. Nicknamed the "anti-Manhattanization" campaign, he used playful organizing tactics, such as distributing a free color-by-number book featuring a portrait of the mayor where the only color choice was grey. He helped block the private sale of Alcatraz Island. When the deal stalled, leaders in the American Indian Movement reclaimed the island as Indian Land.

As a young man Alvin worked in his father's sweater factory in San Francisco, and later founded the Alvin Duskin Company. It was there that he first wove together politics and fashion, making knit dresses. His "Peace Dress" became an emblem of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. The New York Times described it as the fastest-ever selling women's dress.

In his final years he lived in Tomales, CA where he joined a writing group and worked on a memoir. His riveting stories wove together his political, personal, and professional life. An engaging raconteur, Alvin would explain without a pause that he had first met a colleague or investor by chance at a party, or at the Esalen Institute, or while organizing an anti-war concert in Golden Gate Park, or when lobbying state leaders to protect California's water rights.

Alvin held deep affection for his friends and colleagues, and his fellow alumni from the Portola neighborhood schools. He liked to remind his grandchildren that he graduated from high school with a B average without ever taking a book home and was admitted to Stanford, where he promptly realized his lack of study actually mattered greatly. He eventually earned his bachelor's degree from San Francisco State University and returned to Stanford to pursue graduate work. He encouraged his children and grandchildren to pursue their own passions, to serve others, and to live bravely.

Alvin did not want a memorial service. He asked that his friends and family honor him by taking action to move the world forward. His own stories of saving the world often ended with, "It was a lot of fun." His family plans to celebrate his life later in the year.

He is survived by Sara, his wife of 50 years, his children Marcus, Laura, Sarah, Ceres, David and Zoe, their partners, his twelve grandchildren, his Tomales community, and his lifelong friends.