A Democratic Socialist's Fifty Year Adventure

By Milton Tambor

Milt was instrumental in founding DSA's Atlanta chapter in 2006 and rooting it in the workplace and community struggles of poor and working class Atlantans, whether through anti-forclosure, anti-gentrification, or workplace struggles, using tactics from public education, to electoral organizing, to direct action. In his memoir, Milt details how the chapter's work contributed to the building of a vibrant progressive movement in Atlanta.  

-Maria Svart, national director, Democratic Socialists of America

Milt understands that defending voting rights and fighting voter suppression are today's major civil rights challenges. In his memoir, immersing himself in social movements beginning the 60s, Milt documents the accounts of a legendary freedom fighter and what it may take to build a truly democratic society.

-Helen Butler, executive director, Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda

I am so excited that Milt has finally written a memoir about his activist life, as we need to bridge the generational divide between activists now more than ever so that new generations can be supported to organize successful movements for justice. Milt has been a direct activist mentor for me-encouraging and validating me to envision, cofound, develop, and maintain an organization, AROMA, that works to support and mentor new activists so that we can pass the torch in the sacred tradition of unsung social justice heroism. Milt is not only dedicated, responsible, and gracious; he is also warm, loving, and generous with his attention. I am so honored to call him my friend and comrade and sing his praises. His memoir will be inspiring and informing to new activists for generations to come.

-Misty Novich, founder, Activists Recruiting, Organizing, and Mentoring in Atlanta

When I first met Milt, I was struck by how serious he was about building power, building organization, and winning for everyday people. At the time, the campaign he was working on was fighting bank foreclosures in Atlanta, and he wanted to make sure that Jobs with Justice would be involved. Milt agreed to reactivate the Atlanta JwJ chapter, because he understood the importance of working people leading their own battles at work and in their neighborhoods. Milt Tambor may never fully understand how much his leadership has fed my resilience and the resolve of so many other activists. That, indeed, is what makes him such a great organizer.

-Erica Smiley, national director, Jobs with Justice

This book was a joy to read. Milt lived social unionism fighting for workplace rights, community rights, and international rights!

-Bob King, American lawyer and labor union activist and leader

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649528469

Book preview

cover.jpg

A Democratic Socialist's Fifty Year Adventure

Milton Tambor

Copyright © 2021 Milton Tambor

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2021

Photo by Reid Jenkins

ISBN 978-1-64952-845-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64952-846-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Socialist Tendencies

Sticking to the Union

Vietnam War: Labor and the New Left

The Mouse that Roared

The New American Movement

Anti-Interventionism and Central America

Labor’s Resurgence

Building Metro Atlanta DSA

Connecting the Socialist Dots

Foreword

Norm Markel

Greetings to all trade unionists, democratic socialists, and anyone interested in class struggle, both local and international. In Milt Tambor’s memoir, you’ll read about a life devoted to both participating in and organizing for economic and social justice.

Milt was the son of a Jewish cantor, born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1938. His career as a socialist organizer included serving as staff representative for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 25, and most recently organizing Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America (MADSA).

His involvement in the struggle against imperialism—both as a participant in and organizer of street actions against the Vietnam War and against US support of reactionary forces in Nicaragua and death squads in El Salvador—led to his engagement with radical politics.

In a chapter on his work for the AFSCME local, Milt points out the difference between organizing lower paid workers—like clerical, maintenance, and paraprofessionals—and social workers, who were less likely to see their class interests as workers. Later, as an assistant education director for AFSCME, Milt helped unions organize classes in steward training and collective bargaining. We can learn a lot from Milt’s experiences—for example, how to engage in left wing politics while being active in a labor union.

Milt’s commitment to humanistic Judaism, the importance of learning and teaching labor history, worker education, and international solidarity makes him an important role model, like those he honors, who enabled his own political maturing. I am grateful that my dear friend and comrade has shared this account of his life with all of us.

Norman Markel cofounded MADSA with Milt Tambor. He was the first president of the United Faculty of Florida, and is a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. His father, Azriel Isadore Markel, lost the tips of his index fingers on an assembly line at his first job in this country, then drove a laundry truck for thirty-five years, and was a loyal member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Acknowledgments

This memoir is dedicated to Helen Samberg and Saul Wellman, who inspired me to engage in trade union work as a democratic socialist. I have been enormously fortunate to have worked with Barbara Joye and Barbara Segal throughout this writing process, and without their assistance, this book would not have happened.

To my Detroit and Atlanta comrades who have fought on the side of social justice and worker rights, I am most grateful.

Finally and above all, I would like to thank Linda Lieberman, the love of my life and my wonderful partner, who provided the support and understanding needed to carry out this project.

Introduction

What is a socialist trade unionist? After thirty-three years as a full-time local union president, staff representative, and assistant education director with the Michigan American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), I felt the need to make sense of my career in organized labor and to assess, in particular, whether being a socialist influenced my trade union work. So when I was invited by the Detroit chapter of Detroit Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to make a presentation on the topic Socialism and Labor, I jumped at the opportunity.

As a Detroit DSA member, I could share my reflections on my work as both a socialist and a union representative with comrades.

To answer that question, I offered an outline of what I considered to be guidelines that a socialist trade unionist should adhere to. These included the following: advancing union democracy; promoting local union diversity and inclusion; advocating a living wage for all workers; organizing the unorganized; fostering worker education; building coalitions around social and economic justice issues; supporting labor rights and international labor solidarity; engaging in political action; developing progressive/socialist caucuses within unions; and joining and being active in a socialist organization.

As a result of the presentation and positive feedback from DSA members, I considered writing an essay about my own experiences as a socialist trade unionist. I would then be able to determine when and how union and left wing politics were joined together. I was now ready to look critically at events in my activist and union life stretching over four different decades.

In 1969, as president of AFSCME local union 1640 representing workers in nonprofit agencies in Detroit, I led the workers out on strike. One of our demands was that grassroots community organizations needed to be represented on the funding bodies of community chests.

In the 1970s, the local union’s opposition to the war in Vietnam deepened my involvement in anti-war activities. As a cochair of the Detroit Coalition to End the War representing labor, my activities were inextricably linked to New Left and peace movements. Later in that same decade, I joined a New Left organization, New American Movement (NAM). In NAM, I would develop a clearer sense of identity as a socialist trade unionist, which would lead me to form a socialist caucus within the AFSCME local.

In the 1980s, I linked up with group of labor activists from the UAW to form the Michigan Labor Committee on Central America, which I chaired for five years. We challenged the cold war foreign policy of the AFL-CIO and reported on our fact-finding trip to El Salvador, where unionists were being murdered by right wing death squads.

In the 1990s, my work with the Michigan AFSCME education department allowed me to develop educational material for rank-and-file union members, which included labor history, economic inequality, and political action.

It soon became obvious that any full treatment of all these events could not be covered in an essay. Instead, I was looking at something more akin to a memoir. In a full account, I would have to address these other basic questions: What constitutes socialist trade union practice? How do social and political conditions affect the work of socialist trade unionists? At the back of my mind, a more crucial question then emerged. Was there a future for unions? Would the continued assaults on organized labor ultimately result in its demise? Labor history hinted at an answer. At the onset of the Great Depression and after open-shop campaigns waged by big business against organized labor unions, membership in the US slipped into single digits.

Then came the upsurge in the 1930s—sit downs, general strikes, and massive organizing by rubber, steel, and auto workers—resulting in a dramatic growth of union membership. In the 1960s, a new segment of the working class, public sector workers, gained union representation under state bargaining laws. I would conclude that unions, the one institution geared toward protecting and defending workers, would hang tough. To counter the attacks by the right, major changes in organized labor’s strategies and institutions would likely be required. Support for alt-labor formations, such as worker centers, could also be crucial.

Writing a memoir, however, raised for me some fundamental doubts. Was I engaged in nothing more than personal hubris? What significance would my story have to others beyond a close group of my friends and comrades? Moreover, my experiences were centered at middle levels of organized labor as local president and staffer. Wouldn’t an account from a leader with power and influence at the highest levels of a national union be of so much more interest? Those doubts ultimately melted away when I realized that the written account could be mainly for my own personal use. I well understood as I was getting older that memory fades while words on a printed page stay. I was reminded of a union arbitration advocate in a class I attended who said with much emphasis, If there’s no written record, it never happened.

I also learned firsthand how the absence of an account by a lifelong activist can mean a grievous loss to his friends and comrades. Saul Wellman, a mentor to myself and other lefties in Detroit, lived a revolutionary’s life as head of the Communist Party in Michigan, labor organizer of auto workers, and volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

Many comrades urged him to write about his experiences and were willing to help him in any way possible. Although Saul was reluctant to do so, his comrades did put together a film documentary on his life with his participation, titled Professional Revolutionary. In my conversations with Saul, he acknowledged the importance of keeping a record and urged me to write about my experiences and to maintain a journal. I did heed his advice, and his encouragement motivated me to continue with this project. In contrast to Saul, who was a red diaper baby, suckling socialism at his mother’s breast, I did not have that experience and would therefore have some catching up to do.

Then there was the issue of how to write a memoir. I knew how to write journal articles. Over the years, articles that I had published covered labor management relationships, collective bargaining in social services, independent unionism, professionalism and declassification in the public sector, and a history of social work unionization. My PhD dissertation was an empirical study of the scope of bargaining in nonprofit agencies. So I was familiar with academic writing where one stands outside one’s self, for the most part, and provides an ostensibly objective analysis.

Writing a memoir would be something different. I would need to find my own voice. That would mean more than describing events but also candidly expressing how I was processing them. That voice, I was certain, would have its roots in my childhood and family upbringing. Would I be able to find that voice? Would that voice come across as real and genuine? Ultimately, that will be for the reader to decide.

In my retirement, something totally unexpected came up, which gave this project a new direction. In 2005, I planned to visit my sons, who were living in Los Angeles. The national DSA convention would be convening around the same time. I was able to attend the convention as a Detroit DSA delegate. When I agreed to organize a fundraiser in Atlanta to support Bernie Sanders’s Senate campaign, the wheels were set into motion. With another comrade, I would organize the Metro Atlanta DSA chapter and serve as its chair for twelve years. In that capacity, I would promote socialist education, recruit new members, build coalitions (Atlanta Jobs with Justice and Atlanta Fighting Foreclosures), march in protests and in solidarity with unions, engage in civil disobedience, and actively support the Sanders’s campaign for president as well as the campaigns of Atlanta DSA members running for local office. Those twelve years would impact me profoundly as an activist. I now saw myself in a broader context—not just as a trade union socialist but as a democratic socialist—operating in a number of arenas. That more general identity was reinforced by the huge spike in DSA membership at the national level following