From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor documents the overlooked history and lasting influence of the International Socialists through the words of its members.
The Independent Socialist Club, founded at UC Berkeley in 1964 as a radical civil rights group, lit the spark of the Free Speech Movement that same year, and its members and successor organizations would go on to play an outsized role in shaping the course of both the Black freedom struggle and the rank-and-file labor insurgency of the 1970s.
Following their success in the Bay Area, the ISC launched chapters across the country, and in 1969 became the International Socialists, with much of its growing membership relocating to the Midwest to take industrial jobs in the auto, steel, communications, and trucking industries. In their final years, among other important efforts, the IS created a majority-Black youth group known as the Red Tide, founded the seminal publication Labor Notes, and helped create Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor includes twenty-six original reflections by leading membersâincluding renowned scholar-activists Nelson Lichtenstein and Nancy Holmstromâoffering invaluable insights into this influential but little-known organization.