Baldwin: For some within the ACLU, there was a real concern that siding with the NLRB on this would come back to bite labor. Baldwin: This is the first moment in history and the only one really when it looked like the court might actually recognize the right of agitation. In 1940, in a case called Thornhill, Alabama, it said the right to engage in picketing is protected speech.
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