Thursday, April 16, 2026
YOU ARE INVITED TO A PANEL DISCUSSION
Thursday, April 16, 2026
8:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time
“SOCIALIST ACTIVISTS IN INDUSTRY:
The Experience of the International Socialists”
Panelists:
* Candace Cohn, Steelworker
* Bill Parker, Chrysler/Stellantis worker
* Mel Packer, Teamster
* Wendy Thompson, General Motors/American Axle worker
IN 1970 THE International Socialists decided to reorient their socialist activism from campus-based movements to organizing with and amongst industrial workers. The IS relocated their organization, leaders, and core membership to cities in the midwest, and emphasized factory and transport work. These mostly young activists were convinced that the industrial working class was on the march, and, combined with the socialism from below perspectives, could give rise to a new era of revolutionary change in the United States.
Ultimately, the promise of increased militancy that sounded at the beginning of the 1970s quieted by the end of the decade, replaced with mass layoffs, a turn to concessionary bargaining by bureaucratically led labor unions, and the foreclosing, for the time being, of the sense that socialist revolution was possible. But the legacy of the International Socialist experiment with “industrialization,” what they called their organizational turn to working-class organizing, contains vital lessons for socialists today.
Join Solidarity for a panel discussion with former members of the International Socialists.
This panel coincides with the release of a new book, From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor, edited by Andrew Stone Higgins. Read Steve Early’s review. Both Candace Cohn and Wendy Thompson have articles in the book.