I am saddened to hear of this as well, and echo what Ted said. One of my fondest Libertarian Party memories is sitting and rapping with him and former national LP chair Geoff Neale on the floor of a convention hotel room in L.A. I'd taken all the chairs out, covered the lights and furniture with clothes and bedsheets and strewn pillows all over the floor to give a bit of countercultural ambience. I was dressed in "play attire" (the purple butterfly/faerie outfit) while they were both in "business attire," and they both just rolled with it like troopers.
Aaron was a big, brash, street-fighter kind of guy, but as Rachel Mills asked in a flier promoting him for the LP's presidential nomination, "Who would you rather have fighting for your freedom, Mr. Rogers or Tony Soprano?" His passion and commitment to our cause will be greatly missed.
The last time I saw Aaron was at the San Francisco premiere of his cult hit documentary "America: Freedom to Fascism" at the delightfully seedy Victoria Theater. I just uploaded a couple photos of him outside the theater to the files section of the CALibs group (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CALibs/files/ ).
To all you other libertarians out there who may be at risk for cancer or other health conditions from a sedentary lifestyle and/or too much red meat, trans fats, and other junk food, for the good of the movement I urge you to give some real thought to getting more exercise and adopting more of a vegetarian/healthy diet. We don't want any more valuable freedom activists prematurely giving up the ghost!
Wikipedia also has a nice profile of Aaron, which has already been updated to reflect his passing today (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Russo ).
Love & Liberty,
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