To the Auto Workers’ Union

This past June, at Anaheim, California, the United Automobile Workers’ Union held its 26th constitutional convention. Almost a third of its membership has been left jobless as a result of the recession and the poor planning of the auto corporations. At this convention one of the speakers was Michael Harrington, chair of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and a member of the Dissent editorial board. Here is a slightly abbreviated transcript of his speech. —Eds.

Let me start by saying something that most of you know much better than I, that we are meeting here in the middle of the worst economic and social crisis in the United States in the last 50 years. Either we are going to go beyond Franklin Roosevelt, beyond the New Deal and the Fair Deal and the Great Society and the New Frontier, or we are going back to Hoover. That’s the choice we face today, and it’s a more fundamental one than we’ve had in a long time.

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