In 1937, the ACLU backed business anti-union speech against the United Auto Workers. The case revolved around one of the most famous events in US labor history. How was it that the ACLU, an organization founded to support worker revolution, ends up siding with the boss? What made the ACLU adopt this sort of like liberal pluralist perspective?
Featuring Laura Weinrib on The Taming of Free Speech: America’s Civil Liberties Compromise. Did you know that the ACLU was founded as a radical labor organization allied with the IWW? Weinrib traces the rise of the modern civil liberties movement, and modern constitutional liberalism more broadly, from World War I through the New Deal. She explains how the ACLU went from defending free speech as a means to revolutionary ends to a liberal position exalting free speech as an end unto itself—including the anti-union speech of bosses and the political speech of corporations.
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Check out
Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America by Joshua Frank haymarketbooks.org/books/1940-atomic-days
Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages by Ray Acheson haymarketbooks.org/books/1883-abolishing-state-violence