target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_52f34c71-3aed-5e33-9d24-e6d8c65775e3">151 Author interview with Kingsley Clarke, July 6, 2005.
152 Author interview with Noel Ignatiev, January 22, 2006.
153 Note on page 0 of the January 1972 edition of STO, Mass Organization in the Workplace (Chicago: STO, 1972).
154 Don Hamerquist, “Reflections on Organizing” (1970), in STO, Workplace Papers (Chicago: STO, 1980). This piece was also published in edited form, and signed by ”Members of Sojourner Truth,” in Radical America 6, no.2, March/April, 1972.
155 Hamerquist, “Reflections on Organizing,” 9.
156 Ibid., 12.
157 Ibid., 14–15.
158 Author interview with Marsha and Mel Rothenberg, October, 2006. Similar perspectives are put forward in Al, Evi, Gary, Hilda, Jim C., Marsha, Mel, Mike and Pauline, “The Crisis in STO” (n.d., but fall 1973), unpublished paper in author’s possession.
159 George S., “Critique of the Paper Entitled ‘The Crisis in STO’,” unpublished paper in author’s possession (n.d., but fall 1973).
160 Author interview with Marsha and Mel Rothenberg, October, 2006. Nonetheless, Goldfield’s proposals to prioritize mass work were accepted by STO in its annual review at the end of 1972. George S., “A Critique.”
161 “The Crisis in STO” p. 2. Ellipsis mine.
162 Ibid., 4.
163 Ibid., 8. The phrases “politics in command” and “technique in command” were popularized in English by William Hinton, a North American farmer sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party and the Cultural Revolution. See William Hinton, The Turning Point: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).
164 “The Crisis in STO,” 10.
165 Al, Evie, Gary, Hilda, Jim C., Marcia, Mel, Mike and Pauline, “The Role of a Proletarian Party in the Development of Mass Socialist Consciousness” (n.d, but fall 1973), unpublished paper in author’s possession, 3.
166 “The Role…,” 9. Emphasis in original.
167 Author interviews with Noel Ignatiev, John Strucker, Kingsley Clarke, Carole Travis, Don Hamerquist, and Marsha & Mel Rothenberg all confirm this perception.
168 George S., “A Critique.”
169 Ibid.
170 Ibid., 14.
171 Ibid.
172 The single best source for information on Big Flame is a website that contains both archival documents and contemporary reflections on the group’s activities and legacy. http://bigflameuk.wordpress.com (accessed September 27, 2011).
173 This and subsequent quotations in the next four paragraphs come from the “Report on the Sojourner Truth Group in Chicago,” unpublished paper in author’s possession, n.d., but probably early 1974. Thanks to Kevin McDonnell for providing me with a copy of this document.
174 Don Hamerquist, “Trade Unions/Independent Organizations” (1973) in Workplace Papers (Chicago: STO,1980), 38.
175 Ibid.
176 Ibid., 45.
177 Ibid., 52.
178 Ibid.
179 Author interview with Kingsley Clarke, April 2, 2006.
180 Author interview with Don Hamerquist, September 14, 2006. Telephone interviews with Elias Zwierzinski, January 1, 2007, and Guillermo Brzotowski, October 10, 2008, corroborate the basic outline though neither of them recalled the specific debate over the title of the publication.
181 Telephone interviews with Elias Zwierzinski, January 1, 2007, and Guillermo Brzotowski, October 10, 2008, provided context and insight into the paper, which I have been unable to obtain. While most former members attribute authorship to Zwierzinski and Brzotowski, Brzotowski himself denies having been central to drafting it.
182 “Report on the Sojourner Truth Group in Chicago.”
183 Noel Ignatin, “Outline History of STO,” unpublished manuscript in author’s possession.
184 Author interview with Noel Ignatiev, January 22, 2006.
Chapter Three: “A Science of Navigation”
The November/December 1971 issue of the Insurgent Worker featured a fairly typical lead article about a recent job action at the Melrose Park International Harvester plant. IH Melrose was a massive factory that produced, among other things, bulldozers and other tractors. Entitled “Harvester Workers Walk Off Over Discrimination,” the piece told an inspiring story of worker solidarity in an antiracist context.185 The incident began when a “notorious racist” foreman in the small tractor department reassigned an older black worker—referred to throughout only as “Tiny”—into a job where he was responsible for work that had previously been handled by two white workers. Having set the worker up for failure, the foreman twisted the knife: Tiny would not receive the same bonus as his coworkers because he had not kept up with the work load. This sort of petty power-play was a daily occurrence at any large factory, and the
