The New Left’s Total Victory in 2024
The New Left was still pretty “new” at the annual convention of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in June 1969. A direct ideological/historical line connects that long ago…
Weather Underground
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: A New Power Rises
As President John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, organized labor looked ahead toward a future of ever-increasing power and influence. States had begun to advance laws requiring themselves…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Labor’s Private-Sector Left
In the 1960s, government worker unionism subordinating the wider labor movement was still decades away. The Left of organized labor (laying aside some straggling outright communists and fellow-travelers like International…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Causes of the Long Decline
By 1979, when Lane Kirkland succeeded George Meany as head of the AFL-CIO, fundamental changes to the economy had led to a decline in the unionized share of the private…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: A Trade Unionist in the White House
Precisely one former national labor union president has been elected to the presidency of the United States: Ronald Reagan. Before his political career, he was already a notable figure, perhaps…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Membership Decline
Lane Kirkland, leadership of the AFL-CIO from 1979 through 1995, was defined by the Long Decline in union membership and union density, the proportion of the workforce consisting of organized…
National Lawyers Guild: Origins and Early Years
The National Lawyers Guild is a radical-left association of attorneys, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers. Since its founding in 1936 or 1937, the Guild has consistently been identified…
National Lawyers Guild: The Second Red Scare
The willingness of Guild members to represent communists in several high-profile investigations and prosecutions during the late 1940s and early 1950s, combined with strong anti-communist sentiments in Congress and among…
National Lawyers Guild: The Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
The National Lawyers Guild was the first racially integrated national bar association in the United States, and actively opposed military segregation during World War II. A number of notable civil rights…
National Lawyers Guild: Consolidation and Internationalism
The year 1973 proved to be pivotal for the National Lawyers Guild and for the consolidation of its radical political ideology. That year’s convention has been described as “the cataclysmic…