Keeping our socialist history alive

THANK YOU for the clear, wonderful article on Albert Goldman ("Defender of the movement").

I joined the Young Socialist Alliance at its founding convention in April 1960. Socialism on Trial was one of the first books I read soon after I joined. Larry Trainor, an "old timer" (at 55 years) taught that class.

He was the one who made sure we young students and workers were able to meet informally with Farrell Dobbs, Vincent Dunne, James P. Cannon-some of Goldman's "clients" and comrades in the first Smith Act Trial. All were leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the great Minneapolis truck drivers' strikes; Dunne and Cannon being members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, before being expelled from the CP as Trotskyists.

It was interesting to me that Goldman went along the same basic route, but joined the Communist Party after his membership in the IWW. The early Communist Party had a very good idea when they encouraged some members to become lawyers. Imagine having Trotsky as a "client." What a tremendous heritage!

I'm glad that you mentioned the origins of the International Labor Defense (ILD), which came out of discussions of Jim Cannon with Big Bill Haywood. Goldman worked with the ILD and its leaders, Cannon, Martin Abern and Max Shachtman, and was won over to their views by his own visits to the then-Stalinized Soviet Union.

We should emulate the comradeship of the ILD by defending those under attack now by the FBI and the use of a federal grand jury. A good companion to the article is Letters from Prison by Cannon. Thank you for this timely article!
Roger Sheppard, Waltham, Mass.