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ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN REMINDS US HOW CIVIL LIBERTIES AND COLLECTIVE
ACTION GO HAND IN HAND  
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Mary Anne Trasciatti
May 18, 2025
Power at Work
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_ At a time when civil liberties are hanging by a string, and the
institutions that working people have come to rely on to pursue
justice for themselves are being gutted, Flynn’s life and career
are a wellspring of inspiration. _

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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is one of the most important and dynamic
champions of worker power in U.S. history. For nearly six decades,
from 1906 to 1964, she devoted herself to what she called “the
working-class movement.” Inspired by the Irish freedom struggle and
appalled by the exploitation and grinding poverty she saw around her,
Flynn organized workers into unions, led strikes in a variety of
industries, supported anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements
around the globe, galvanized resistance to fascism, protested
deportation of immigrants, advocated for prison reform, championed
labor and political rights for women, fought for civil rights for
Blacks, and defended civil liberties for labor activists of all
stripes. 

My forthcoming book "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl,
Democracy, and Revolution
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is not the first biography of Flynn, but my approach to telling her
story differs from earlier books in that I place in the foreground
Flynn’s commitment to civil liberties as a characteristic and
enduring element of her activism and a force that shaped her life. My
assumption throughout the book is that civil liberties work is a
through line that connects the various phases of Flynn’s political
career and the different campaigns in which she was involved. From her
early days as a Socialist to her Wobbly years, her active involvement
in the American Civil Liberties Union (she was a founding member), and
her membership in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)
(which got her expelled from the ACLU), Flynn was a trailblazer in the
American civil liberties movement. She was an ardent and active
defender of the right to hold and express one’s own political views
and to associate with like-minded people in peaceful pursuit of
economic, social, and political change. Rather than surrender
responsibility for civil liberties to the courts, she advocated and
practiced what legal scholar Larry Kramer has called
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constitutionalism,” the idea that ordinary people are able to define
and protect their rights through vigorous debate of the Constitution
and active supervision of the judiciary.

Flynn’s understanding of civil liberties was inseparable from her
politics. She believed that freedom of speech, press, assembly, and
the right to a fair trial by jury are necessary for democracy.
However, she did not advocate for civil liberties as a matter of
individual rights. On the contrary, she recognized that in a
capitalist state such as the United States, where material resources
are unevenly distributed, some individuals, typically members of the
capitalist class, wield greater power than others, typically members
of the working class. The only way to remedy the imbalance of power
between these “haves” and “have nots” is collective action by
the latter. Collective action is impossible without civil liberties.
In other words, without guarantees of free speech, press, assembly,
and a fair trial, workers could not possibly hold union drives,
conduct strikes, organize against exploitation, resist oppression,
advocate for worker-friendly policies, or do any of the things
required to secure basic needs and a share of the good life, what
labor activists poetically refer to as “bread and roses.” 

[Screen Shot 2025 05 16 at 12.17.48]

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Library of Congress

In her younger days, Flynn toyed with the idea of becoming a
constitutional lawyer. It is hard to imagine her poring over legal
tomes, preparing memoranda, filing briefs, and the like. Such tasks
were not where her talent lay nor where her heart led her. She was an
orator, and what an orator she was!  After she joined the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW)(known to some as the “Wobblies”), she
quickly became one of the union’s most popular figures, drawing
crowds on street corners and in meeting halls, and making headlines in
the press nearly everywhere she went. Flynn’s youth and beauty
undoubtedly contributed to her appeal, but it was her capacity to
connect with an audience, to communicate empathy and compassion along
with compelling arguments, witty observations, and forceful emotional
appeals, and her obvious and unshakeable faith in the dignity and
goodness of the working class that made her truly remarkable. Numerous
individuals recalled being profoundly moved by the experience of
hearing young Elizabeth Gurley Flynn speak, sometimes decades after
the occasion. 

Unlike youth and beauty, Flynn’s affability and talent for
connecting with audiences did not desert her with age, although in her
later years with the CPUSA her audiences were more likely to be
readers of a pamphlet, magazine article, or column for the Daily
Worker than listeners of a speech. But even as the bulk of her work
shifted from speech to writing, Flynn retained the audience-centered
perspective of an orator. Her language was simple and straightforward,
but never patronizing. She never trafficked in abstract theoretical
concepts at the expense of concrete, experiential realities. She
appreciated her audience’s intelligence, whatever their level of
formal education, but also understood their need to feel as well as
think. In short, she liked and respected her working-class audiences,
and they, in turn, liked and respected her. 

That Flynn was a talented orator is of central importance to my
telling of her story. It helps explain her popularity, her success as
an organizer, strike leader, and fundraiser for numerous labor defense
campaigns, and her overall approach to civil liberties. For Flynn,
speech was not an abstraction; it was a type of action without which
organizing, striking, labor defense campaigns, and all other forms of
collective political action were impossible. Like many socialists of
her generation, she saw freedom of speech and all First Amendment
rights as part of the United States’ revolutionary legacy. She
consistently used the language and symbolism of Americanism to claim
that revolutionary legacy for working-class movements.

As befits an activist for whom civil liberties were inextricably tied
to the class war, the book is organized around the various
“battles” that Flynn fought in defense of First Amendment rights.
Among the topics I cover are her leadership of free speech fights in
Missoula, Montana; Spokane, Washington; and Paterson, New Jersey from
1909 to 1915. These fights sparked a conversation about civil
liberties that reverberated around the United States and the globe. I
also examine her advocacy for labor activists arrested and imprisoned
under the Espionage Act during World War I, part of a global effort on
behalf of political prisoners connected to labor and anti-colonial
movements throughout the United States and Europe, as well as in India
and Mexico. The book covers Flynn’s major contributions to civil
liberties in the 1920s and 1930s as a founding member of the ACLU and
an anti-fascist, and her controversial expulsion from that
organization in 1940. That act fed the juggernaut of the Cold War by
granting the seal of liberal approval to anti-Communism. I also
explore Flynn’s opposition to repression of the CPUSA and her
increasing involvement in the struggle for Black liberation,
specifically her opposition to practices such as police brutality,
housing discrimination, lynching, and the poll tax. Further, I discuss
Flynn’s leadership of defense campaigns during the Smith Act trials
of CPUSA leaders – including herself – in New York. Finally, the
book covers the last few decades of her career after her release from
federal prison, where she was sent following her Smith Act conviction,
during which she continued to fight against political repression and
for the right to travel, which she undertook when the State Department
revoked her passport. 

Although she was beloved by workers and enormously popular inside and
outside labor circles during her lifetime, the Cold War and
anti-Communism have largely erased Flynn from public memory. My aim
for the book is to revive Flynn’s story and her reputation, to give
readers a sense of the extraordinary work she did to defend the rights
of speech, press, assembly, and a fair trial for labor activists of
all kinds, and in so doing, to demonstrate why a robust defense of the
First Amendment – not just in theory, but in practice – is
necessary for the functioning of democracy in a capitalist state.
Flynn knew that workers can only build power and enjoy full democratic
participation in the workplace and in society when they are free to
organize and speak out collectively against the forces arrayed against
them. The struggle to claim and hold that freedom would need to be
waged again and again. At a time when civil liberties are hanging by
a string [[link removed]], and the
institutions that working people have come to rely on to pursue
justice for themselves are being gutted
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Flynn’s life and career are a wellspring of inspiration for
organizing and creating multi-ethnic, multi-racial alliances in the
U.S. and among workers around the world. She is a model for the kind
of audacious, fierce, brave, and militant activist who can meet this
moment and win.

 

_MARY ANNE TRASCIATTI is an activist, scholar, and editor. She is
President of the Triangle Fire Coalition, and a Professor of Rhetoric
and Director of the Labor Studies program at Hofstra University in
Long Island. Her latest book, "Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl,
Democracy, and Revolution" will be published in June 2025
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Rutgers University Press._

 

_Sustained and effective worker power arises out of collective action.
By building self-funding, democratic organizations, America’s
workers can confront and influence powerful forces, including
employers, Wall Street, and the government. Our goal at POWER AT
WORK is to contribute to a discourse in the United States that
emphasizes the importance of collective action and puts workers and
worker power at the center of that conversation._

 

* Civil Liberties
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* collective action
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* Labor Movement
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* IWW
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* CPUSA
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* Smith Act
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* Anti-Communism
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