The Right of Agitation

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In the early 20th century, it was labor radicals at the ACLU who began to embrace and define civil liberties as fundamentally linked to what you call the right to agitation. What did agitation mean at that time? And how did it go beyond or differ from this now conventional distinction between expression that's protected by the First Amendment and actions that are not? Yeah. So if you open up a contemporary labor law case book, you'll see that the rights that I've suggested were core to the right of agitation ... Those are heavily regulated and they do not today receive First Amendment protection. They're just outside the scope of what the First Amendment protects.

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. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig 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