Reflecting on the defeat of the union drive at Amazon in Bessemer, I
made the mistake of comparing it to the Flint sit-down strike of 1936. I
hadn't considered the enormous differences between the strength of the
left back then and today. I should have known better because I wrote a
review <http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/labor/not_automatic.htm> of
Sol Dollinger's book on the Flint strike. He was married to Genora
Dollinger who led the woman's auxiliary.
I doubt that the workers in Bessemer had anything going for them that
was remotely similar to what auto workers had in Flint in 1936-1937.
From my review of Sol's book "Not Automatic":
The auto union was a hotbed of radical politics at the time. Homer
Martin, seeking allies in his fight to isolate the Communists, turned to
Jay Lovestone--the leader of a group bitterly opposed to the CP. After
firing Communist Henry Kraus as editor of the union newspaper, Martin
replaced him with the Lovestoneite William Munger. You could also find
the Proletarian Party, which included future UAW leader Emil Mazey, the
DeLeonite Socialist Labor Party, the IWW and many independent radicals
in the ranks of the union movement.
Drawing upon her experience in the Socialist Party, Genora Dollinger
explains how these groups reached out to workers. In contrast to the
fractiousness of the 1960s and 70s, it is notable how the various groups
were able to work shoulder to shoulder. Undoubtedly this kind of
fraternalism would have a lot to do with the success of the strike:
"A considerable amount of preparatory work was done before the
strike by radical parties. We had several very active organizations
in Flint and Detroit: the Communist Party, the Proletarian Party,
the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers
of the World. with the exception of the Communist Party, we all had
our headquarters in the Pengelly Building, a very old building that
became the strike headquarters of the whole United Automobile
Workers Union Flint. Even as the strike was going on, we still had
our rooms on the second floor, while the main activities in the
auditorium were on third floor. Two years before the strike broke
out, the Socialist Party in Flint organized the League for
Industrial Democracy (LID). We held meetings in garages and in
basements, secret meetings, so the people wouldn’t get caught and
beaten up.
"As we got bigger, the Socialist Party started sending us their
speakers from New York. Many of them were from the Brookwood Labor
College. We put out leaflets and sold tickets for these meetings,
which were held in the basement of the biggest Methodist church and
in the Masonic Temple. We held lectures in socialism mainly, plus
labor history and current events, focusing on what was happening
politically Those were very popular meetings. We would get three and
four hundred people at some of our meetings."
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