Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Area Reporter - December 7, 2006
Cynthia Laird, c.laird@ebar.com
Born in October 1941 into a working class Jewish family in Los Angeles, Dr. Alcalay won full scholarships to the University of California Berkeley and UCLA medical school. He served as a military doctor for a year in Vietnam, where he organized with nuns a clinic for children, and became politically radicalized. In the 1970s he founded a public health project for migrant farm workers with volunteer doctors and nurses, which has grown into the clinic, Salud Para la Gente (Health for the People), in Watsonville, California.
He also used his medical skills in England (Great Ormand Street Hospital for Children), Germany (Max Planck Institute), Kenya, Mexico, and Nicaragua. In Nicaragua he co-produced a 90-minute video documentary about the health gains made under the Sandinista government in the 1980s titled The Other Invasion, which referred to the large international gathering of health workers flown into Managua in 1984 to bring world attention to Nicaragua's health successes. The country's program of public health was awarded top recognition for health gains made in a developing country that year by the World Health Organization.
After his diagnosis with HIV in 1986, Dr. Alcalay produced a radio magazine "AIDS in Focus" that aired from 1987-1993 on KPFA in Berkeley, as well as nationally. At a time when Mumia Abu-Jamal was under increasing censorship and banned from recording commentaries (1996 and 1997), Dr. Alcalay worked as associate producer and recording engineer with Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio on All Things Censored, a CD of comments and essays by notable people speaking on Abu-Jamal's behalf. Dr. Alcalay made activist films with Sherry Gendelman and Maria Gillardin, and collaborated with Dateline Australia reporter Nick Lazaredes, most recently on a post-Katrina segment entitled "New Orleans Blues."
Dr. Alcalay became interested in the healing properties of marijuana, and interviewed nearly all of the 300 scientists (representing 20 countries) of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. He learned to identify which types of herb work most effectively to treat each medical condition. After becoming medical director of the Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative in Oakland, California, he was interviewed for the PBS documentary, Waiting to Inhale.
Dr. Alcalay, who worked at Kaiser for many years, served on the boards of HIV Education and Prevention Project of Alameda County, which works to prevent further spread of HIV, hepatitis C, and other sexually transmitted diseases; and GreenAid, the Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc.
Just a week before his death Dr. Alcalay got a call from Lazaredes, inviting him to work with the new English-language Al Jazeera network. Friends said that Dr. Alcalay wanted to do this - and so much more. He fought and refused to accept death until, always the doctor, he read his own diagnosis in the hospital after completing his fourth round of chemo and understood he was not going to make it. He died five days later at his home in Oakland.
Dr. Alcalay played saxophone and spoke Spanish. Friends said that he was a gay man who transcended gay politics; a Jew who demonstrated against the Israeli occupation of Palestine two months before he died; a doctor who asked to be called "Mike," because he thought the title "doctor" separated him too much from his patients; a generous, anarcho-communist who grew marijuana to give it away, and enrolled more than 1,000 patients for medical cannabis, never asking a penny in return.
Dr. Alcalay is survived by twin sons, Nolen and Aaron Edmonston; his mother, Charlene Herbert; stepfather, Alvin Lau; two brothers; a sister; and hundreds of friends and comrades.
A memorial celebration of Dr. Alcalay's life will take place Sunday, January 14, in the Vista Room at Lake Merritt's Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Avenue, Oakland, from 2 to 10 p.m. Parking in the center's lot costs $3 per car. Info: (415) 626-2139 or charlie@lifewish.org.
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