Activity

For Brown and Yoneda, party membership led them into union activity. Angela Gizzi’s experience provides a different pattern. Her interest in the left led her to union activism and then to the CP. She was born in San Francisco’s North Beach, an Italian neighborhood. Her parents were middle-class Ita…

For Brown and Yoneda, party membership led them into union activity. Angela Gizzi’s experience provides a different pattern. Her interest in the left led her to union activism and then to the CP. She was born in San Francisco’s North Beach, an Italian neighborhood. Her parents were middle-class Ita…

In the early 1930s, party members formed “fractions” within union locals, which typically met before union meetings and formulated a position that CP members were to follow when the meeting started. However, as Dorothy Ray Healey later recalled, “Some of our closest allies were unhappy about it,” a…

The 1934 strikes were important catalysts for many. Edith Arnstein’s family came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush and were related to several of the city’s elite German Jewish families. She later described the summer of 1934: “A long and bloody strike has divided the city. In middle-class home…

In the 1938 general election, a coalition of business and conservative groups tried to constrain the state’s robust union movement through a ballot initiative. Proposition 1 originated with the Industrial Association of San Francisco (which a U.S. Senate investigating committee chaired by Robert La…