Sweet Land of Liberty

by Ann Toback | Workers Circle CEO

Reading this article from the July 15, 1930 Young Circle League Bulletin, we can hear the passion and fury as the young Workmen's Circle writer urgently calls out their country's failures. So much of this article could have been written in 2025.

The writer speaks to a moment in America where the prosecutions of radicals had exploded from 36 to 920 cases in three months. Union organizers were being sentenced to 1-20 years in prison for distributing leaflets to migrant farm workers in Pennsylvania and California. The charge? "Conspiracy to overthrow the government." Today, as the Insurrection Act is invoked to threaten military deployment in American cities, the echo is unmistakable.

The writer describes a country "where the last vestige of freedom is permitted to be throttled by patriotic and profiteering adventurers." How much does that remind you of our government today? Dictatorships, they decry, are at least honest about their authoritarianism, while America "crucifies freedom in the name of freedom."

Reading these words nearly a century later, we have the benefit of knowing what lay ahead for this young Workmen’s Circle member: the class struggles of the Depression, WWII, the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, and more. As we encounter their fury in 1930 at the shambles of democracy around them, we can ask ourselves: How do we compare our place in the world today? Can we find inspiration in this and other voices from our history to build our movement today? Can we say, as they do, “for every dissenter they plant behind bars two immediately take their place." Can we take inspiration and learn from their reports from the frontlines fighting fascism and their refusal to accept injustice as we work to build a lasting multiracial, multicultural democracy?