For the next few weeks, I am surrendering the space normally devoted to Thursday Stop the ACLU posts to crossposts from the Stop the ACLU site. This is from Gribbit:
We have been focused on the two prominent co-founders Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman; but the truth is that there were 7 others. People like Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow just to name a couple. But the most notorious of the founding “fathers” of the American Civil Liberals Union (no I didn’t spell that wrong) was Elizabeth “Gurley” Flynn.
Ms. Flynn was the co-founder who ended up being the National Chairman of the Communist Party in the US. A devout Communist who made several trips to the Soviet Union after the denunciation of Communism by Roger Baldwin in 1940. A move which had motives other than those publicized.
The public appearance of the denunciation was to give the illusion of distancing active members of the Communist party from the ACLU. When in fact it was a statement meant to be felt by Josef Stalin. Stalin enjoyed the support of people like Baldwin in the United States before the outbreak of war in Europe. Baldwin and Eastman being the strict pacifists that they were, had a total opposition to the Soviet Union entering the war. But they also saw the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty as a crime against the good Soviet people. So Flynn expulsion from the Executive Committee was a farce.
Flynn was indoctrinated into the Socialist mindset by her parents. At the age of 16 she gave her first speech on socialism entitled “What Socialism Will Do For Women.” A speech which subsequently got her expelled from high school.
At the age of 17 Flynn became an organizer for the International Workers of the World (IWW) and her career as a full time Socialist began. In 1920 she joined forces with Roger Baldwin, Crystal Eastman, Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, Norman Thomas, Jane Addams, and John Dewey to form what we now know as the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1936, Flynn joined the Communist Party in the United States. She wrote a feminist column for the Communist propaganda sheet the Daily Worker. Two years later, she was elected to the National Committee.
During World War II, Flynn worked tirelessly to get equal pay for women and establish day care centers for working mothers. Efforts which we here at Stop The ACLU applaud. Because contrary to the popular leftist belief, we here have strong feelings about the true equality of men and women of all races, creeds, and religions.
In 1942, she ran for Congress At-Large in New York and received only 50,000 votes.
After the war in 1948, 12 members of the Communist Party were arrested for plotting to overthrow the government by use of violence. Flynn attempted to gain their release but in 1951 she was arrested in a “second wave” of arrests and charged with violation of the Alien Registration Act and sentenced to 5 years at Alderson Women’s Penitentiary.
During her sentence she wrote a book entitled The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (1955).
Soon after her release from prison in 1961, Flynn was elected National Chairman of the Communist Party in the USA. She made several trips to the Soviet Union where in 1964 during a visit she died. She was given a State Funeral in Red Square then returned to be buried with her subversive friends Eugene Dennis, Bill Haywood and the Haymarket Martyrs.
These are they types of people that we are dealing with. This is the type of beginning that the ACLU was given. This is why they have been focused on ending American traditions and changing the structure of our government as founded in 1789.
This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 115 blogs already on-board.
Appendix: Note, if you will, that although the genesis of an organization does not always idicate contemporary views and behaviors (witness the Democratic Party which no longer has any ties to the classic liberal values of free speech, equality under the law and “one man, one vote” typical of the founding principles of American liberalism), in the case of the ACLU, the only evolution of its views away from its founders’ has been to “go underground” and deny the rationale behind its actions. But holding a smoking gun while proclaiming, “I did not take another potshot at the Constitution” belies its disingenuity…