John Penley

John Rhodes Penley was a Lower East Side photojournalist, Yippie-era activist and self-described anarchist whom the New York Post once called "New York City's cuddliest anarchist." He died on 15 September 2026, aged 74. The Free Lance News and EV Grieve reported his death; the Peopleforever report date of 30 September reflected later coverage rather than the day he died.

Raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Penley was a high-school football co-captain when Asheville High desegregated in 1969. The campus clashes that autumn, and the racist threats that followed against his adoptive father, assistant principal James Etheridge Penley, shaped his politics. After graduating in 1970 he enlisted in the U.S. Navy as an air traffic controller, serving in Crete and Naples. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War he saw American nuclear-armed aircraft placed on alert, an experience that left him disillusioned with the military. In Greece he connected with student anarchists around the Athens Polytechnic uprising.

Honorably discharged, he organized early marijuana and anti-nuclear protests, including a 1982 trespass at the Savannah River Plant that made him one of the "Savannah River Plant Six." Convicted, he jumped bail, lived underground for about three and a half years, and began documentary photography in Nicaragua covering Sandinistas and Contras for the radical Guardian newspaper. Arrested there, he chose to return to the United States and serve nearly a year in federal prison rather than renounce his citizenship. Released in October 1984, he took a bus to New York and landed at Yippie headquarters on Bleecker Street.

On the Lower East Side he freelanced night crime and protest photos for the Post, Daily News, Newsday and the New York Times City section, while organizing with squatters, homeless campers in Tompkins Square Park and later Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of his photographs are held at NYU's Tamiment Library. Roommates at various times included illustrator Seth Tobocman and singer Chan Marshall (Cat Power). He briefly married Japanese performance artist and jazz singer Nozomi Oye. After losing his East 3rd Street base he returned to Asheville to care for his father, covered Charlottesville and Trump-era protests, then lived in Las Vegas and Lake Havasu as health declined. Friends remembered a brilliant strategist, media prankster and kind fighter who spilled blood for Loisaida.

Rainbow Gathering organizer Garrick Beck called him one of the all-time great activists of the era: a brilliant strategist, public speaker and compassionate human being.