Eric Mann on Revolutionary Struggle Part 2: Labor Organizing, The Working Class, and Proletarian Internationalism

Rev Left Radio

Breht O'Shea

Communism, Politics, Liberalism, Society & Culture, Philosophy, News, History, Leftwing, Socialism, Marxism

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 128 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Breht speaks with veteran organizer, revolutionary strategist, Elder of the movement, and author Eric Mann.

Together they discuss Eric's life and work, including his book on George Jackson, the Hard Hat riot against Vietnam protesters, how to organize effectively in the work place, Eric's personal relationship with Howard Zinn, the importance of revolutionary journalism, combatting chauvinism, and SO much more.

Check out Part One of Breht's discussion with Eric HERE

Opening clip from Mother Country Radical podcast

More Biography of Eric Mann: Eric Mann (born December 4, 1942) is a civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental organizer. He has worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, Newark Community Union Project, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Black Panther Party, the United Automobile Workers (including eight years on auto assembly lines) and the New Directions Movement. He was also active as a leader of SDS faction the Weathermen, which later became the militant left-wing organization Weather Underground. He was arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge police headquarters on November 8, 1969. He was instrumental in the movement that helped to keep a General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, California open for ten years. Mann has been credited for helping to shape the environmental justice movement in the U.S. He founded the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, California and has been its director for 25 years. In addition, Mann is founder and co-chair of the Bus Riders Union, which sued the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for what it called "transit racism", resulting in a precedent-setting civil rights lawsuit, Labor Community Strategy Center et al. v. MTA.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The police riot radicalizes SDS, turns it from a debate club into an army of militants.
0:07.2	And while some members still want to focus on building a peaceful mass movement,
0:11.1	Bernadine is determined to channel their rage, to up the level of protest and provocation.
0:17.3	SDS is not, the movement in this country, is not something that exists exists during the school year and it's going to start up again in the fall.
0:24.3	And if they have to worry about whether we're going to be in the streets in the fall, we're going to be on the streets and in every institution in this country from now on.
0:31.9	It all comes to a head at the 1969 SDS Convention in Chicago.
0:37.1	These are leaders of the nationwide youth organization
0:40.0	that calls itself SDS, students for a democratic society.
0:44.6	I'm Mike Klonsky, National Secretary of SDS,
0:47.3	and this is Bernadine Doran, Interorganizational Secretary.
0:49.7	Bernardine and a group of student activists are out on the street
0:52.2	outside the convention hall.
0:54.3	The nation of SDS, we've always been quite willing to talk about.
0:56.4	I will talk about socialism anywhere in the streets or in the Senate anywhere.
1:01.4	Mike Klonsky, one of SDS's two other leaders, is talking over her, but she doesn't seem to mind.
1:07.9	They're having a good time with the reporters, giving this crazy, impromptu press
1:11.8	conference, playing to the crowd.
1:13.9	Is there a communist faction making a big power play for SDS at this?
1:17.1	Is there any communist back here?
1:21.8	That's my mom laughing. In fact, the whole thing is kind of funny. Inside, the convention is a circus of
1:30.3	counterculture college students. It's like a model UN meeting on acid. A cramped, sweaty
1:35.8	auditorium, more than a thousand delegates. People are making speeches, moving and seconding
	...

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