The big crowds at Madison Square Garden during wartime and a few years after, the excitement at union halls and summer camps for some of the most interesting musicians and lyricists of the time? Gone — gone, but not entirely forgotten.
Radical agitation helped bring Social Security and much of the New Deal into being. Simply put, an ambitious, active left is one that widens the scope of reform. It’s a left that, even if you disagree with it, helps clear the pathways for action.
The fight for housing security has already become a part of the general struggle against inequality made possible by the epochal rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Janet Wells Greene
New York Labor History Association
The Southern Key argues that much of what is important in politics and society today was largely shaped by the successes and failures of the labor movements of the 30s and 40s, notably the failures of southern labor organizing during this period.
The reissue of Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism invites a new generation to reflect on what it means to live a life of political commitment—where the passionate pursuit of justice meets organized political action.
Reader Comments: Unite to Defeat Trump; Lynchings, Racial Violence; Trump's Arms Race; Problem When So Many Police are Vets; Teachers Union: Cops Out of Schools; Labor and Police; McCarthyism and Black Freedom Movement; Southern Communists; Roy Cohn;
Having given his first political speech when not yet a teenager, Leon at 97 worked to pass on the wisdom gained from decades of organizing and deep thought to a new generation.
Canada and the United States are similar enough culturally, but in class relations for some 70 years the two stand markedly apart. The book under review helps to explain the multifaceted reasons why.
Two books look to the histories of the Communist International and the Tricontinental movement to evaluate how organizing around color and region can effect global struggles against oppression and grow in tandem with multiracial workers’ movements.
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