Audrey was born in the Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City, on November 19,1920. Her parents were both Jewish anarchists, who migrated from Poland in 1909 and 1914. They were part of the huge Eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States in the decades of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This population settled mostly in the overcrowded and deteriorated tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. Most worked in the garment industry and Audrey’s mother was a dressmaker. At home everyone spoke Yiddish ; Audrey could not speak a word of English when she entered school.
The Jewish immigrants arriving after the czar’s pogroms and his crushing of the 1905 revolution were strongly politicized. Audrey’s father, Morris, became secretary of the Ferrer-Rocker branch of the Workmen’s Circle in the Bronx and a person of influence in the Yiddish- anarchist Fraye Arbeiter Shtimme group.
In 1926 the family moved to the Heim Gesellschaft, (also known as Sholem Aleichem House) in the Jerome Park section of the Bronx. It was a cooperative housing complex erected by Jews who wished to preserve their eastern European culture. Everyone spoke Yiddish, including Audrey, as we have stated. The members consisted of an informal group of anarchists Trotskyists, left Zionists, social democrats,all of whom were dedicated to the cooperative movement. They were militant.If a traffic light was needed in the neighborhood, and the parents would simply stand in the street until one was provided. They showed solidarity with the teachers during a major school strike in the 1930’s by refusing to have their children bused to scab schools.
In this poor but cultivated and politically conscious neighborhood, family discussions were often about anarchist affairs, and Audrey’s home was full of anarchist books which she read at an early age. Berkman’s book, The ABC of Anarchism appealed to her when she was 11.
Audrey, herself, was bused to school through the sixth grade, to an old school building which didn’t even have indoor toilets. The kids couldn’t stand the ambience of the outhouse, so after »holding it in » all day at school, she’d dash home through the courtyard and rush to the bathroom !
The poor immigrant neighborhood was indeed a child centered community. Audrey remembered it fondly and it influenced her ideas on education through out her adult life. There were lots of children who skated and played games in all the open spaces. She also joined a group of Jewish anarchist children : « On Saturday afternoons the Vanguard Juniors of the Bronx and Brooklyn met with the parent Vanguard Group on Fifteenth Street. It as all very exciting. We cooked a meal together, and often went afterwards to a concert of to the Museum of Modern Art. It was a teenage revolutionary commune. » [1]
At 14, Audrey managed to read Emma Goldman’s autobiography, which her father had hidden on account of the sex stories. She continued learning the Yiddish language at a Yiddish cultural center where she was also taught dance, music, drama, art, printing and carpentry.
Emma became Audrey’s idol and she dreamed of being like her. She met her first in 1934 in New York and later hitchhiked with a friend to Toronto to meet Emma, who was then living with a Dutch anarchist family : « When she first walked down the stairs, she seemed a very frail old woman, but when she began expressing herself, I realized she was a very vital, vibrant person. That was quite a lesson. » [2]
In the mid-Depression, the Heim Gesellshaft Coop went bankrupt and the buildings were taken over by a private concern. Over 200 families went strike to protest their high rents, and were successful in having them reduced.
Audrey went to a girls’ high school, and then to a girl’s college (Hunter), from 1937 to 1941, where she majored math major and minored in statistics. At Hunter, she was a member of the Young Anarchists and was involved during the Spanish Civil War in political activities. In 1940 she joined the group that published Why  [3] which was founded by Dave Koven,( her future lcompanion), Sam Dolgoff, Franz Fleiger, Dorothy Rogers, Paul Goodman and others. The bulletin was active in the peace movement during World War II. Inevitably, all these political activities affected her college work.
After college, in 1941, Audrey couldn’t find a job in statistics and so found employment as a bookkeeper, work about which she knew nothing and found boring. But she was a fast learner. She started going from one job to another.In 1946, Audrey and David Koven decided to explore San Francisco, where they had been corresponding with other anarchists and had heard that the city was rich with anarchist ideas. On the way across the country, they tried to organize an anti-draft movement (the first permanent draft started right after World War II) and used up all their money, so they had to work for a year to get the money together to return to New York! However, while out west, they became friends with comrades, and decided to move out permanently. They went back to New York to try to convince some of their friends back there to move out with them.
They hoped to start a cooperative that would eventually move to the country (this is 20 years before the 60s). They and another couple pooled their money, bought a truck, and moved to San Francisco in 1949, where they rented a big house. They had just read Wilhelm Reich and were going to "uncouple," but they couldn’t deal with the jealousy that arose, so they abandoned that idea. Each person in the cooperative had an allowance from the community pot, from the money earned. (At first, it was the women who had the jobs). The cooperative broke up two years later when the first family was about to have a child — the non-parents thought they would raise the child, but the prospective parents wanted to do it by themselves. In other words, « human nature » took precedence over theory.
The anarchist group held weekly discussions at Workmen’s Circle Center in San Francisco. All kinds of ideas were discussed on topics from politics to literature to psychology. Audrey was closely associated with the beats (Kenneth Rexroth, etc.). Along with a dedicated group of pacifists, Audrey founded Walden Center and School in Berkeley, teaching there many years.

In 1951, Audrey and David had their first child, Diva, and two years later had Nora. Audrey stayed home to be with the children. In those days, Audrey had a sense of equality but not of feminism. They had read Emma Goldman, but were also influenced by Helen Deutsch, who thought that women were not fulfilled unless they had children and raised them. (Before reading Deutsch, Audrey hadn’t wanted to have children, as she didn’t want to bring them into the troubled world).
Audrey stayed home five years until Nora was three. Being pregnant, and having children led Audrey to think a great deal about raising children and to re-evaluate many of her former ideas. Whereas before she had thought sociological change would take place through revolution, she now realized she had to rethink this position. She began to see that things don’t change with violence; changes take place because of the kind of people we start out as when we are children. This is what determines the kind of adult we are. Therefore, to a great extent — but not wholly — the primary influences on children’s lives are critically important. But Audrey never believed in indoctrination or proselytizing. IN her thinking about the developmental process, of how children think and learn, she was influenced by A.S. Niell, and the attitudes that were part of the liberation philosophy. There is respect for the child as a person; each person counts, and is important.
In San Francisco, Audrey was a cooperating parent at a nursery school which had started during the war years. Because of the new line of thinking and her nursery school experience, she decided to go back to school and get a teaching credential at San Francisco State University.
It was after Audrey finished school that she and David met the Wilchers, the Goulds and the McRaes, through KPFA. Denny was public affairs moderator there. She already knew Barbara Moskowitz from Presidio Hill Nursery School. From their talks, they realized they all had a lot in common. Part of the original KPFA articles had to do with education and this group started thinking about the possibility of starting a school. Lee McRae was a musician, Ida Wilcher was a dancer, and Denny Wilcher was taking education courses. Audrey knew she didn’t want to teach in San Francisco — she couldn’t stand the kind of institutionalization she saw there. (When she took Diva to a public school, it was so bad that she and David sold their house so they could afford to send her to private school — Presidio hill School, which still operates in San Francisco.)
Eventually, the group decided to start their own school. They made successive drafts of the principles of the school. something they could all agree to as primary values of education. The school was thought of not just as a community for children, but for adults as well. Their vision was of a school that would teach children how to think independently, would give them all the tools for a creative existence (all the arts),an educational environmenr that would help produce individuals of worth : no authority figures, no icons.
A few sources of influences in Audrey’s educational philosophy are traceable to her early years.She was most impressed by a teacher at Sholem Aleichem from the Modern School in Stelton, New Jersey – a follower of the the anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer. Audrey had gone to visit Stelton in her late teens. Another influence was the Little Red School House in New York’s Greenwich Village. She had read deeply on non-traditional education, education that concentrated on the needs of children rather than the needs of the State. She paid close attention to the writing of Randolph Bourne, an educator and literary figure prominant around the time of the first World War.
The group of parents who would start Walden felt they didn’t want a cooperative school. They felt education really was the concern of teachers and children, and while listening to the voices of the parents, the teachers needed to be in charge. Audrey’s Presidio Hill experience (a cooperative) showed her that every time the parents changed, the school changed. Ongoing continuity of education, she felt, couldn’t happen if teachers were hired at the whim of the parents. The group felt strongly that Walden had a definite philosophy, and if people who visited didn’t like that philosophy, they should find another school or begin one themselves.
The alternative Walden School in Berkeley was started in 1958 and Audrey, one of the founders, taught first grade through the Upper Group, in various combinations till 1971. In the beginning, teaching wasn’t easy. They tried to meet the needs of all the children. The first year, they took the children to bookstores to choose the books they wanted to read. They didn’t believe in textbooks, as they weren’t felt to have meaning for the kids. In the early years, there was a great dedication to musical and dramatic performances. Ida and Lee, in producing material that could be shown to the public. Some parents and teachers thought that perhaps the process was more important than the final production, but the children loved the productions, and so Ida and Lee prevailed. The trips started right away. That summer, they planned trips not only for children but for families as well.
Audrey taught first grade in her last year at the school. During that last period, the kids chose whatever they wanted to do — and all they wanted to do was play. By this time, Audrey was feeling she had outlived her usefulness as a teacher, and so she stopped teaching.
Audrey and David then traveled in Europe for six months, camping. She then started doing part-time bookkeeping at Moe’s Books, while also interested in working with old people. She kept her job at Moe’s Books for a long time. In 1978, she separated from David.
Audrey also loved acting : « I’ve always been interested in doing theater. It probably started when I was a little kid going to Yiddish school, and they were doing a Hanukah play and I was really rambunctious. They threw me out. So there was always a repressed desire to be on the stage again. » She joined Stagebridge in 1980, took classes and worked in productions. She played quite a variety of roles : a depressed woman in « Health: Lost and Found »; the "How Lady" in the « Enchanted Why »"; Marietta Stowe, a feisty women’s rights activist in « Sinners and Suffragists »; and Mary Austin, a fascination 19th century nature writer in « Jack London and Friends ». She played twice the good witch Strega Nona in five Grandparent Tales, and also a wicked queen, a mother, and the "old woman in the shoe." She also joined with the College Avenue Players where she played Marietta Stow, a feminist who ran for Vice President with Belva Lockwood in the 1890s. She is also featured in the documentary « Emma Goldman: The Anarchist Guest » (2000) which appeared in many festivals and was broadcast on PBS. That same year she also participated in the International Anarchist Convention in Venice.
Audrey Goodfriend gave birth to two girls, Diva Goodfriend-Koven of New York and Nora Goodfriend-Koven of Berkeley; she also enjoyed the company of four grandchildren and four great grandchildren

Sources : Interview by Pam Blair in 1987-88 ; Linda Spector, « About Time, » 1999 ; ; Audrey Goodfriend Death Notice ; Paul Avrich, « Anarchist Voices » (interview with A. Goodfriend, June 1974). « Radical Coops in the Roaring » ; United Workers’ Cooperative Company.