The AFL-CIO’s uncritical support of the government’s war in Afghanistan and sham “war on terrorism” has disappointed, if not disillusioned, many activists, including progressive labor activists. For some radicals and progressives, the organized labor movement is seen as the most important social grouping in the country. As the late Saul Alinsky put it in Reveille for Radicals, it is “the key to the door of the future world of economic justice and the social betterment of mankind. The labor movement has been as much of an ideological foundation to all left-wing thinkers as the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are to devout religionists. . .”

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