As the new week dawned, A. Robert Kaufman prepared his escape from one more hospital bed. He intends to live forever or die trying. Twenty months ago he was clubbed with a wrench, stabbed in the neck and left for dead. He lost 90 pounds and needs a kidney transplant. A month ago, he was smashed in the face with a brick. In a few weeks, he’ll be 76 years old, and he spent the last week at Union Memorial Hospital, where doctors tried to find out why he’s bleeding internally.

But he’s still here. This is not precisely thrilling news to his critics, who sneer at his socialist politics, but it will cheer those who see Kaufman as one of the flickering little lights in democracy’s back room. He insists that we talk things out in public, especially the uncomfortable stuff. For decades, he’s spoken out against racism, against American wars and imperialistic instincts, against irrational drug laws and capitalist excesses of all kinds. You don’t like his side of the argument? OK, let’s hear yours. To Kaufman, this constitutes America’s great unruly dialogue at its best.

It’s also why he’s spent much of his recent hospital stay preparing a new course he’ll be teaching next month at the Free University, sponsored by the Village Learning Place and Johns Hopkins University, and pondering yet another futile election campaign. So what if he’s lost every political race he’s ever run? With Kaufman, losing’s a given.

“I use the electoral process as a bully platform,” he says. “Do I want their vote? It’s really not that important. There’s only two ways to get elected: kiss up to the fat cats, in which case they own you, or put together a grassroots movement to unite the 95 percent of the American population who collectively have less wealth than the other 5 percent.”

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That’s the kind of thing Kaufman’s been saying for roughly the last half century. But he’s spent most of the last 20 months fighting for his life. He owns a small Hilton Street apartment building that he inherited years ago. A month ago, as Kaufman was returning from dialysis treatment, a fellow smashed him in the face with a brick. He needed a dozen stitches to close the gash. The attacker was arrested.

But that was small businesses compared to June of 2005, when one of Kaufman’s tenants, a drug addict in Apartment C, robbed him and nearly killed him when he clubbed him with a wrench, stabbed him in the neck with a dirty knife and damaged Kaufman’s kidneys.

“He left me there for dead,” Kaufman said. He lay on the floor, fighting for consciousness. He found a pencil in his back pocket and scribbled on a piece of paper, “The guy in C killed me.” After a few minutes, he staggered into the street, where someone called for help. He spent a month in a coma. Doctors said he’d need a kidney transplant if he lived.

When his attacker was brought to trial, the guy said he was sorry, he was just desperate for a fix. Kaufman said, never mind prison, make him donate one of his kidneys. Instead, the guy got prison. For Kaufman, it was one more outrage. He’s spent years calling the criminalization of drugs immoral and stupid. “We’ve created criminals faster than we can ever arrest them,” he says. Just because he was the latest victim didn’t change his thinking.

“I don’t like people spending their lives in jail instead of getting medical treatment,” he says. “I don’t hate this guy. I feel sorry for him. He’s as much a victim as me. I have to stay true to my own morality.”

So, like it or not, he’s getting ready to get back in the game. Over the weekend, doctors at Union Memorial Hospital said he was close to going home. “They’ve been great,” says Kaufman. “I’d pray for them if I wasn’t an atheist.”

He was laughing when he said it. But he knew it was one more little item to stir up people’s souls.

Michael Olesker is an award-winning newspaper columnist, author of three books and former commentator on local radio and television. He can be reached at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com