MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
Memo from the Editor Peacemakers Sidney Lens was writing his twenty-third book when his final illness laid him low in the spring of 1986. He believed it was an important project: a history of the...
...Sid was a regular contributor to The Progressive for more than thirty years and Senior Editor at the time of his death...
...it increased...
...Sid Lens's three books for adolescents were to reflect his three principal political concerns: Strikemakers and Strikebreakers, a history of labor struggles...
...As he grew older (he was seventy-four when he died), his commitment to young people did not diminish...
...In all of those endeavors, he assigned high priority to reaching and working with the young...
...Matt's article, "The Crime of Politics," appeared in the same issue and examined the extent of imprisonment for political crimes in the United States and the treatment of inmates whose offenses stem from their political beliefs and actions...
...In recent years, while he has been associated with the antiwar campaign called Nukewatch, his active opposition to the nuclear arms race has repeatedly landed him behind bars...
...Ihave a similar conflict of interest with respect to another book just off the press, Crossing the Line, by Samuel H. Day Jr...
...The prison experience is detailed in Crossing the Line, but there is much more: his childhood as the son of an American diplomat stationed in South Africa...
...If it weren't for my conflict of interest, I'd advise you to order it directly from Nukewatch, P.O...
...Sam Day is a good friend and the former Managing Editor of The Progressive, and I had a chance to read and comment on an early draft of his memoir...
...His widow and lifelong political partner, Shirley Lens, made sure that last book would go to press...
...his education at a New England prep school...
...And the book contains many of Sam's own interesting pieces for The Progressive and other publications...
...his transformation from mainstream journalist to political agitator—all told with unfailing good humor...
...It was Debs, you may recall, who served a prison sentence for opposing U.S...
...Fortkamp Publishing Company, Baltimore...
...The Bomb, a prize-winning account of the nuclear arms race, and a book about Vietnam that had neither a title nor a final chapter when Sid died...
...He began his lifelong activism by organizing workers while he was still in his teens, and for many decades he was in the forefront of the antiwar movement...
...The price is $19.95 hard cover and $15.95 paperback...
...Three chapters are de-voted to the best account I've seen anywhere of the U.S...
...Box 2658, Madison, WI 53701...
...Like Sid Lens, Sam Day has been writer and activist in about equal measure, and like Sid he has given top priority to the cause of peace...
...So instead of urging you to rush out and buy copies of Vietnam: A War on Two Fronts for all the young people you know, I'll merely pass on what Linus Pauling said: "Every person should read this fine book about the Vietnam tragedy, and should vow that the United States will never again get involved in such an immoral effort to use its power to inflict control over the people of a small country...
...Bonnie was cited for her May 1989 article, "Prisoner of Conscience," an account of her own imprisonment for "invading" a nuclear-missile site...
...She persuaded me to edit Sid's draft...
...Because of my own role, it would be inappropriate for me to tell you that the book, with its vivid first-hand account of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s (in which Sid played such a significant part), is especially timely now, when the United States is once again poised on the brink of a potentially catastrophic military intervention...
...participation in World War I, and who said, "While one man is in prison, I am not free...
...She prevailed on one of Sid's close friends, Stuart H. Loory of Cable News Network, to write the last chapter...
...The book is called Vietnam: A War on Two Fronts, and it has just been published (at $19.95, hard cover) by Lodestar Books, a division of Dutton...
...One of Sam Day's colleagues at Nukewatch (and also a former member of The Progressive's staff), Bonnie Urfer, is co-winner with The Progressive's Publisher, Matthew Rothschild, of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation's 1990 Bryant Spann Memorial Prize for the year's "best article written in the Debsian tradition of social protest and reform...
...Government's attempt to suppress Howard Morland's 1979 article for The Progressive on H-bomb secrecy...
...He believed it was an important project: a history of the Vietnam war and of the antiwar movement written expressly for young people...
Vol. 54 • December 1990 • No. 12
