"Well-known [New York] community activist Harry Wieder, 57, was killed last night, after a taxi struck him. Emergency crews arrived on the scene almost immediately and transported Wieder to Bellevue Hospital, but attempts to resuscitate him failed," reports City.com. "Wieder was a longtime member of Community Board 3, as well as an activist for gay rights and the rights of the disabled."

In Betty Adelsen’s 2005 book, The Lives of Dwarfs: Their Journey from Public Curiosity Toward Social Liberation, she wrote of Wieder:

He has gained both fame and notoriety. In 1993 New York Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote a Runyonesque article about Wieder, inventing some details, but capturing his combative, roguish nature and his penchant for truth.”

You can read a longer excerpt from the book here.

RIP.