Jon Melrod's "Fighting Times" in Wisconsin

Madison BookBeat

This week on Madison Book Beat, host David Ahrens speaks with Jonathan Melrod, a prominent radical, political activist, labor organizer, human rights lawyer and pancreatic cancer survivor, now out with a memoir: "Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War" (September 2022, PM Press).

Melrod's memoir highlights his time as a student radical on the UW-Madison campus, during the peak of anti-war upheaval in the 1960s. But unlike the vast majority of protesters, after the demonstrations ended, Melrod committed himself to organizing the industrial working class for revolution.

What follows is an account of his thirteen years organizing workers in Milwaukee, and then Kenosha, where he takes on the managers of the AMC plant -- while at the same time challenging the sclerotic UAW local to focus on the interests of its members, and fending off attacks from the FBI and local police "red squads."

Melrod describes a balancing of beliefs and interests, short-term and long-term strategies as he deals with the day-to-day problems of speed-ups on the line, discrimination and sex and race harassment, while also focusing on his long-term goals of building a working-class capable of fighting for revolution.

Madison Book Beat host David Ahrens talks with Jon Melrod about his evolution as an organizer and revolutionary, prior to several appearances in Madison:

• On Wednesday, September 27, Melrod will return to the UW-Madison campus for a talk through the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice. The talk, titled "A Radical's Journey from Campus to the Shop Floor in 1970s Wisconsin," will take place at 12:30 at the Havens Wright Center Seminar Room in the Sewell Social Science Building at 1180 Observatory Drive. Registration is required, but a virtual option is available. Register here.

• On Thursday, September 28, Melrod will speak at A Room of One's Own Bookstore at 6pm, in conversation with local labor leader Bill Franks. Find more information here.

Find more about Jonathan Melrod at his website, jonathanmelrod.com, or follow him on Twitter @JonathanMelrod.