She’s been fighting the good fight for nine decades

The dining room was abuzz with talk about Hurricane Irene during lunch at Riverdale Senior Services on Aug. 26.  

Like the rest of the neighborhood, seniors there droned on about wind speeds and impending doom, as they chowed down a combination of green, egg and pasta salads.

But Miriam Muravchik had other things on her mind. 

Though a gale force in her own right, the 91-year old Social Action Committee member was more interested in talking about  possible cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, the floundering economy, the unemployment rate, the breaking of unions and on and on and on and on — than about wind speeds.

When Riverdale Senior Services’ Executive Director Julia Schwartz-Leper began to announce hurricane and storm preparation tips, Ms. Muravchik walked out of the dining room. She was ready to show off her social action bulletin board.

“I don’t understand all of this about the hurricane,” she said later.

Ms. Muravchik has a history of fighting for social issues.

In 1958, she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C. in support of school integration. She said her late husband, Manny, was even on stage with “Martin” at one rally. Mr. Muravchik was a prominent union leader and member of the Socialist Party of America and the Jewish Labor Committee. 

Every painting, sculpture and knick-knack in Ms. Muravchik’s Palisade Avenue apartment, where she has lived for 36 years, is meaningful. 

She is a sculptor and many of her works decorate her apartment overlooking the Hudson River, including one of her husband and another of her husband’s hand in hers. Mementos and works of art by her family, including a painting her son made when he was a teenager and intricate cardboard cutouts her grandfather crafted after immigrating to the United States from Russia at the turn of the century, were displayed in every corner. 

Marx and dancing

Her extensive library features Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, David McCullough, art history, psychology and James Joyce.