Activist, lawmaker, lawyer dies

Rabbi Barry Silver, a longtime prominent community activist, attorney and former state lawmaker, has died at age 67 from colon cancer. The temple he cofounded, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, announced his death on Thursday.

Even when he was a boy, long before fighting for people’s rights to seek abortions, wear thongs or feed the homeless, future rabbi and attorney Barry Silver was already honing his lifelong craft of rallying public attention to causes he championed — in this case, properly recycling newspapers.

It was the 1960s in Stamford, Connecticut, when he and his four brothers convinced the city to start a recycling program separating newspapers from other trash, his brother Noah recalled. “We would scout the neighborhood and tell people to keep newspapers separate,” Noah said. “Once a week, we’d go downtown to another town to get those recycled.“

In 1992, about nine years after being admitted to the Florida Bar, Silver gained national media attention when he came to the defense of a thong-clad street hotdog vendor named Gloria Gonzalez.

After hearing complaints about Gonzalez’s cheeky attire, Palm Beach County Commissioners passed a law that year banning street vendors from wearing Gstrings, thongs and pasties. She sued. Silver represented her.

But he didn’t just fight in county court, he made his case in the court of public opinion, too. He earned headlines when he sent a thong-clad process server to a County Commission meeting to inform them of the case against them. “Especially in cases involving a public entity, public opinion can have a dramatic effect on the litigation,” he said at the time.

“For some reason, when people have a problem with authority or government,