Labor Day Book Event

Deeply personal, astutely political, Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War recounts the thirteen-year journey of Jon Melrod to harness working-class militancy and jump start a revolution on the shop floor of American Motors. Melrod faces termination, dodges the FBI, outwits collaborators in the UAW, and becomes a central figure in a lawsuit against the rank-and-file newsletter Fighting Times, as he strives to build a class-conscious workers’ movement from the bottom up.

A radical to the core, Melrod was a key part of campus insurrection at University of Wisconsin Madison. He left campus for the factory in 1972, hired along with hundreds of youthful job seekers onto the mind-numbing assembly line, Fighting Times paints a portrait of these rebellious and alienated youthful hires, many of whom were Black Vietnam vets.

Containing dozens of archival photographs, Fighting Times captures the journey of a militant anti-racist revolutionary who rose to the highest elected ranks of his UAW local without compromising his politics or his dedication to building a class-conscious workers’ movement. The book will arm and inspire a new generation of labor organizers with the skills and attitude to challenge the odds and fight the egregious abuses of the exploitative capitalist system.

See flier here

Moderated by Lisa Maldonado, Union Rep for the California Nurses Association