Milton Tambor died last year at the age of 84. In 2021, I had interviewed Milt as part of my graduate work studying the democratic socialist movement. He had written a book called A Democratic Socialist’s Fifty-Year Adventure looking back on a long life of socialist activism. But I never had the interview transcribed, and I lost track of the audio. Recently I came across it, and realized the interview was something quite special, since Milt was from a generation of socialists that is gradually fading away. As the obituary in DSA’s Democratic Left explained, Milt’s was a shining example of true commitment to activism:

He co-chaired the Detroit Coalition to End the [Vietnam] War and chaired the Michigan Labor Committee on Central America. He joined labor delegations in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and marched in Memphis following Martin Luther King’s assassination. Milt brought a core group together in 2006 to form Metro Atlanta DSA…We gradually grew from a membership of about 30 to over 1000 during his term of leadership. In 2009, Milt picked up on the high number of Atlantans facing foreclosure in our city, especially in communities of color. Forging bonds with progressive Black leaders, including Georgia State Senator Vincent Fort, he helped found Atlanta Fighting Foreclosure. He was arrested with Senator Fort and three others in a sit-in at a branch of predatory lender Wells Fargo… Believing strongly that the strength of our organization lies in solidarity with the broad movements of poor and working people, he built our chapter’s reputation for reliably turning out to antiwar demonstrations and for the Fight for $15, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and Black Lives Matter; on union picket lines; at Occupy Atlanta; and in the annual Martin Luther King Day and Atlanta Pride marches. 

It was a privilege to get to interview someone with as rich of a background in activism as Milt had. As I look back, I wish I’d asked him a lot more questions, and different ones. There’s so much I didn’t cover. Nevertheless, Milt was a witness to (and participant in) history, and I’m pleased to be able to preserve his words here in Current Affairs even now that he has passed on.

Robinson 

It’s great to finally talk to you. I’ve wanted to talk to you for a couple of years, actually, because you’ve seen just so much of the left over the past decades. And I didn’t realize until I read your autobiography, A Democratic Socialist’s 50 Year Adventure, that you actually started in a kind of legendary place, which is the New York of the 1930s.

Tambor 

Right, the East Side where all the action was, where Jewish workers organized—a very special place, even though I moved very shortly afterward to Washington Heights, Uptown. But still, I still feel grounded when I go down to the Easts Side. My grandparents lived there, and my grandfather had a store there. So yes, it’s all connected.

Robinson 

What is your first conscious memory of encountering radical politics?

Tambor 

Interesting question. I think it was when I read the book by Erich Fromm, when he described the sane society as one that met the needs of the people who lived in that society. I said, wow, that makes sense to me. And then the more I became aware of who he was, he was talking about socialism and was a socialist. So I said, I think that’s where exactly I am and it made a whole lot of sense to me.

Robinson 

This was the Erich Fromm book you found in your uncle’s library?

Tambor 

Yes, exactly. My uncle was a clinical psychologist.

Robinson 

So, how did you end up in Michigan, then?

Tambor 

My father was a cantor, and we moved around a lot from congregation to congregation. And so, for one of the moves, we wound up in Detroit.

Robinson 

And do you remember what caused you to go into social work? Why did you decide on that?

Tambor 

I originally was going to go into psychology like my uncle because he had a profound influence on me. And then I realized that if I wanted to go to graduate school, I would have to be pretty proficient in statistics, and that was not my strong area. I wanted to do more face-to-face work and not get involved in more research or technical aspects. So, I heard about social work, and I thought that’s maybe the area I can go into. I had an experience in camp where I was involved with the Jewish Community Center, and then as a result of leading some clubs and being the counselor in camp, I was offered a scholarship in social work. So, that’s what did it. I could do face-to-face work, and I would get my tuition paid. That’s what led me into social work.

Robinson 

So, the 1950s is kind of an infamous time for the American Left in terms of it being a period of dormancy. You wrote a bit about the McCarthy hearings and their influence on you, and the socialist movement to the extent that it had existed in the 1930s, and certainly ebbed in the 1950s before sort of blossoming again in the 1960s. What was the political and social environment like in the late 1940s before the anti-war movement and New Left and all that?

Tambor 

I came from a family that were basically solid Democrats. I had no contact with anybody from the Left—no family had any connections there. So, my only identification was with Adlai Stevenson, a liberal Democrat, and each time he ran for president in ‘52 and ‘56. I remember watching TV and rooting for him, and then when he lost to Eisenhower, I felt quite discouraged. But, I didn’t have any more of a sense, except, as you pointed out, with the McCarthy hearings. McCarthy was the devil personified. I understood that without knowing what socialism was all about, or knowing what socialists and communists had been doing. I knew that he was attacking anything that was to the Left, and somehow I identified with that. It meant you were an intellectual if you were fair game to McCarthy. I knew what I was against, and it was very clear that anytime you took a position that when contrary to what was expected to conventional thinking, you were going to be charged as being a communist. So, I knew that was something that needed to be confronted.

Robinson 

And just so I could get the timeline of your development and ideological evolution correct: did you consciously identify as a socialist at the time that you entered the labor movement? Or did that come later?

Tambor 

I think when I entered the labor movement, I began to identify as a socialist, yes. But I realized that I was an independent socialist; I didn’t have any connection with a particular party. I had no connection with the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] in the ‘60s in any sense. And any of the work that I did, whether it was leading a strike, promoting education in the Local, or taking social justice actions, that was something that seemed very natural. It just kind of flowed from getting involved. And maybe, of course, it was because it was a public sector union. Maybe it was because these workers in the ‘60s were just getting organized and there was a sense of social movement unionism. It was beyond simply wages, hours, and working conditions. There was something about it being a movement—Martin Luther King, the sanitation workers, and the strike that he led and the fact that our AFSCME [The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] in Michigan supported him and that I went down by bus to the silent march. I understood his position against the war, and I understood that’s exactly where I was. And if that was Democratic Socialism, then yes, indeed, I was one. But like I said, I didn’t have any connection with a particular formation at that point.

Robinson 

One of the things that interested me about reading your autobiography is that the history of Left politics in the ‘60s is often told as the history of the New Left, the SDS, the Yippies, and all that. But you were part of the trade union movement at the time, which I think gets much less attention. It was really interesting for me to read about the sort of the tension within labor over Vietnam. Could you talk about what the politics within trade unionism at the time was like?

Tambor 

Yes. By the way, in terms of my position, I always felt I was too old for the New Left, too young for the old Left.

Robinson 

Weren’t you like 30 years old?

Tambor 

Yes, but I was a late bloomer in that sense. So, in terms of the war itself, you had George Meany and the support of the Vietnam War—there was no question about it. But again, I was very fortunate. My whole experience in the labor movement was being with a public sector union, The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. There was a Left in the union—“Left” meaning there was a Left presence and a progressive politics. And by the way, I learned shortly after I got involved that Jerry Wurf, who was the president of the Union, was a member of the Socialist Party—here was somebody who was the leader of a public sector.

I think I noted in the book that when I went to a convention of AFSCME, there was a discussion about a resolution opposing the war in Vietnam that came to the floor, and our Local had submitted a resolution along with other Locals. There was a close voice call, and Jerry Wurf basically said, we’re opposed to the war. He went with the opposition to the war as part of our resolution. And it struck me very clearly that if there would have been another president without that sense of Left politics, that wouldn’t have passed. New York AFSCME was very progressive, and they were also key in getting that resolution moving. So, I found kind of a sense of belonging in AFSCME on the national level.

Robinson 

How long were you involved with AFSCME in Michigan?

Tambor 

For 10 years, I was a local union president. And that was a very unusual position to be in because I was responsible only to the membership, and in a sense, that was a full-time position that I helped create. Then I moved on to being a staff representative for the larger Michigan organization, Council 25, which then represented about 40,000 members in public sector venues, whether it was schools, hospitals, that kind of thing. So, I moved away from the Local and to the broader arena of public sector unionism.

Robinson 

Were there many socialists, or self-defined socialists, in the organization? Or did you feel like you were on the radical Left end of things?

Tambor 

In the Local, there were a couple of people who were. In fact, I dedicate the book to Helen Samberg, who was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America [DSA]. I was actually a member in Detroit when I became active in the labor movement. So, there were some. In fact, one of the exciting developments was that there was the New American Movement [NAM], which came along at the end of the SDS period, and these were Left people who were looking for another place to land, and that was my home. That was where I definitely understood what it meant to be a socialist. The New American Movement was my introduction to socialism, and it was a socialist feminist organization. And there, I met Saul Wellman, who acted as my mentor and someone who I respected and admired.

A number of those folks were members of the Local that I was president of, and they formed a caucus. So, we actually had a socialist caucus in the Local at the end of the 10 years that I was there, and that was very special. Because if you wanted to establish a presence in the labor movement then, it had to be around a socialist presence, and how do you do that except to build a caucus and try to educate, project, organize, and mobilize folks to take action and to understand what it means to be a labor socialist? Where it all happened was with the New American Movement, which later merged with the Democratic Socialists of America. 

Robinson 

Did it become more difficult in the ‘70s and ‘80s as the wave of the ‘60s broke? Being a socialist certainly into the Reagan years must have put you in a kind of marginal position.

Tambor 

Yes, it felt a little lonely. There’s no question about that. But I’ve always found it interesting that just when you think there is a lull and that nothing exciting or dramatic is going to happen, something pops. So early on, it was around the Vietnam War, and then around aspects of the New Left, and then what popped was Central America. That was eye-opening, realizing that US involvement in Central America had basically been to go after unions: if they took a position that was progressive, they were then labeled as communist, and that anything that was talked about—land reform and the rights of workers that didn’t seem to fit the narrow perspective of George Meany and the AFL—was considered to be communist, and was going to be fought in ways to get funding for unions that would compete with those progressive unions. [This was true] whether it was Nicaragua—which I visited—when the US was involved with supporting the Contras, or in El Salvador, when the US government was providing military aid that was used by the death squads to attack unions and murder trade unionists.

I was so taken by the fact that a lot of the activists of the ‘60s gravitated toward the Central America solidarity, and that was probably one of the more exciting periods, even though it was occurring at a time when there wasn’t a whole lot of other stuff going on. I consider that to be one of the real high points, around Central America.

Robinson 

Your chapter on it is exciting because I didn’t know the whole history of some of the labor solidarity groups. I guess you’d have to defy the mainstream consensus, and even among some labor organizations, to make that issue important.

Tambor 

Right. I don’t know if it comes across in the book, but what was so special was meeting other comrades who shared the same kind of commitments. You gained and earned the respect for the work that they were doing and the relationships that you’ve built with them. So somebody would ask me, what did you gain out of these 50 years? I would say a lot of it had to do with these comrades that I met and worked with, and admiring all of what they had done and building their network. And so, that came across real loud and clear in that period.

Robinson 

When the New American Movement folded with the DSA, were you in the DSA in the 1980s? Or did you join the DSA when you got to Atlanta? I was a little confused on that point.

Tambor 

I joined the DSA when I was in Detroit, before I moved to Atlanta.

Robinson 

When you moved to Atlanta, you were involved in the building of the Metro Atlanta DSA. Could you tell me how you guys went about that and what that was like?

Tambor 

I think sometimes the unexpected, really, can change your life in a way, or change your activist direction. The DSA national organization at that point had about 10,000 to 15,000 members, and they had a convention every two years, and Detroit DSA would send some delegates. And so I figured, why don’t I go? I have two sons living in LA and that’s where the convention was, and I figured then I could meet my sons and I could attend the convention. The convention turned out to be the key starting point for me because Bernie Sanders was then running for the Senate in Vermont, and we were going to take the position that the national organization was supporting his run for the Senate in Vermont. I had been in Atlanta for a couple of years, and I hadn’t really been involved in much activism. At that point, we would want to raise money to support his campaign, and there was nobody there from Atlanta.

I was asked if I could take on the task of just doing a fundraiser for Bernie Sanders. I had already begun to make connections with some trade unions and liberals, even though it wasn’t anything very lasting. But I’d already made some contacts, and so I took on that responsibility to try to organize a fundraiser. What was neat about it is that as I began to talk to people, along with another fellow, we started looking at the membership in DSA and calling up members. There had been at one point a chapter in Atlanta, but it kind of folded. But there were other members who were paper members and nothing was happening there.

So, we called them, and we arranged a party to raise money for Sanders. And at the same time, I began to ask the question, if you’re involved in doing this work, would you be interested in having a chapter—a real organization and presence—here in Atlanta? It was out of that fundraiser that those connections were made, and in 2006, a chapter in Atlanta was formed, and that’s where I wound up being chair of the chapter for 12 years. Back then, it was a pretty small organization. We had maybe a hundred members, and that was a whole different experience. And I say a whole different experience than now because then you knew pretty much everybody and had your core group.

Now, when I go to a DSA meeting here, I’ll be one of a thousand members in the Atlanta area, and that’s a whole different situation. It’s great, but you do miss some of that, there’s no question about it. But again, what you’re about is people gravitating toward Democratic Socialism, and that’s what it looks like to see that energy. 

Robinson 

With an organization of around a hundred people for those 10 years before Bernie ran in 2016 and before Democratic Socialism really took off, as socialists in Atlanta— which is not known, necessarily, for having a strong Left tradition—what do you do, with the limited capacity that you have, to keep a socialist organization thriving? How do you pick the things that you can work on as a socialist?

Tambor 

That was the first question that we as a chapter had to deal with: what is it that we want to do? And the first question was, how do we establish a presence in Atlanta to begin with? That’s where my background in labor came in really handy because I was able to develop relationships with the president of the Atlanta North Georgia Labor Council, the state federation, and a number of unions. It’s very interesting as an activist if you can learn from what other groups are doing. That’s one of the things I’m impressed with DSA now: chapters communicate with other chapters and see what works, what doesn’t, and how things go. I saw that in Detroit, the Local 600—the big UAW Local—had an annual dinner where they honored activists who had made a contribution in a number of different areas, and had labor as keynote speakers.

So, we asked, could we do something like that here in Atlanta? And from that, every year, we had a Douglass-Debs dinner where we gave awards to activists—a good number of them were labor activists, but not all—and had speakers, whether it was from AFSCME or the Service Employees International Union, and made a point of reaching out to labor. We found that we can get a dinner and have over 150 people come, and use that money to take care of some of the expenses that we needed to deal with as a chapter. So, I would say having that dinner was key in building relationships with labor. And the other thing—and I make a pitch about this—is if you’re an activist, you have to be involved in coalition work.

So, when there are other groups who are organizing around issues—whether it’s around peace and justice, around a fair wage, or like Grady Hospital when they were dealing with the closures—anytime there was a coalition around an issue, I gravitated toward that, and so did our folks. Because we’re not—the Left was not, and still aren’t—powerful enough to carry without there being support from other activists. So, a lot of the work that we did, whether it was fighting foreclosures, fighting for jobs with justice—$15 or a union—or fighting voter suppression and mobilizing voters to register, there were coalitions that were out there, and to me, it was key to be part of those coalitions.

Guess what happens when you get involved? You develop credibility. If you’re there to support the work that they’re doing and not, like some ultra leftists who use it for their own political purposes, but just genuinely be there to help build the coalition, that gains a lot of credibility for you as an organization. What was so amazing to me is that many of the people I met in those coalitions joined our chapter as a result of that because they were involved in single issues. What was neat about DSA is we were a multi-issue organization. We weren’t competing with other single issue organizations. We would say, you’re for peace and justice? So are we in DSA. And so, that made a difference to recruiting people who were activists and helped build the organization as a result.

Robinson 

How did things change for Metro Atlanta DSA after Bernie 2016, other than the influx of a lot of new younger members?

Tambor 

There was a lot of incredible excitement. I can remember when Bernie came into town, at Fox Theatre—a huge venue here where they showed Gone With the Wind. He filled the theater, and that was just one of the events he came to. He came to Atlanta several times. It was so exciting to see the place full of all these young people. And I have to add this: it was also a time that I found it most entertaining. I think when you are an activist, you look for fun. So, what I wound up doing is I had a mask of Bernie Sanders that I put on.

Robinson 

I think there’s a photo of that in the book.

Tambor 

Exactly, right. So there was this gap of time they were playing music until they really started the program. They played Motown—I love Motown music, and so I started dancing down the aisles, and people laughed and clapped, and I was having a ball with it. But it demonstrated that there was not only energy and excitement, but it was uplifting and fun. I think what Bernie Sanders did is generate intense energy. There was the recognition, and I thought this was interesting. I was always wondering, where did these people come from? Why did Bernie such have such an impact on them? And it became clear to me as I talked to them, there was a little bit, maybe a lot, of disillusionment with Obama because what was projected was it would be a lot more of a progressive agenda. And when they didn’t see that happening, they turned to Bernie Sanders, who’s been out there raising the issue of inequality and had a track record that was pretty long. That made a big difference.

Robinson 

I’ve been interviewing DSA members all over the country, and most of them are fairly recent post-Bernie members, and that’s almost universally cited. But, you knew about Bernie long before he blew up.

Tambor 

Yes. When he ran for the Senate and was talking about inequality, I remember knowing then. I said, there’s something wrong; why isn’t that a key issue? Why isn’t that on the nation’s radar or in the liberal media? And I just couldn’t get it. Because even in the labor movement, there was a fella who was head of the education, Bill Fletcher. He’s quite an intellectual and wrote a book dealing with the attack on unions. He developed a program that we could use, and that I used it in AFSCME, about inequality. He laid out how the lion’s share of wages and wealth was being distributed. And like I said, I couldn’t quite understand why it didn’t resonate, even when he was running for Senate. It was only when Occupy Wall Street broke did things open. That’s what did it. Occupy Wall Street brought that whole issue to the center. Everything that Bernie had said earlier on was kind of adopted by Occupy Wall Street activists. If there wasn’t a Bernie Sanders, I don’t know whether any of this would have happened in any similar way and fashion.

Robinson 

Your book is called A Democratic Socialist’s 50 Year Adventure. We don’t know where the US socialist movement is going to go now. Obviously, we’ve had a sort of disappointment in Bernie’s two losses in 2016 and 2020. But as far as a 50-year adventure goes, it ends on quite a high note, with all the socialists flooding into the DSA and everyone talking about Democratic Socialism. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, I’m sure you went to plenty of meetings that had five people in them. And now—

Tambor 

And socialism was a dirty word then. Even though it makes some people in the middle uncomfortable, now you have to talk about it because you have elected representatives who are Democratic Socialists. That’s absolutely wild and you can’t ignore it. 

Robinson 

Let me ask you, then, where do you think the Democratic Socialist movement goes from here?

Tambor 

You want me to be a prophet?

Robinson 

It doesn’t necessarily need to be a prediction. It can almost be a “what is to be done?” kind of question, or what do you think we should focus on? 

Tambor 

I would say more of the same. Electoral politics is key in all of this. The more Democratic Socialists you get elected to the Congress, and maybe even getting a one or two in the Senate—there’s a long way to go if you want to make some headway in the electoral arena, so that always remains a major challenge. I think about the early history of the Socialist Party; at that point, when you had a couple of members who were socialists at the turn of the century, and that was considered pretty amazing. You had a party and could run on the Socialist Party line. A lot of young comrades say we should start a party. Now, whether that is likely, I think there’s too much in the way of that happening, but that could be a possibility.

So, in the electoral arena, there’s going to be a lot of energy in that area, and there will be a lot of street and protest actions. We saw Black Lives Matter and the whole issue of the criminal justice system. All of those are hot issues, and the DSA and DSA comrades and members will be involved in that to a great extent. And like I say, it’ll be more of the same, and hopefully, it’ll kind of coalesce in some direction.

Now, because you have chapters doing different things based on local issues for them, it’s not always easy to be clear on what’s the national perspective on issues are. There’s so much you got to deal with—what happens locally in New York is very different from Louisiana. What does it mean to be a DSA chapter in either of those two states? That’s quite a different experience. So, I think we’ve got to experiment, explore, and just keep going and doing what we’re doing.

Robinson 

That’s why I like talking to DSA people around the country because all the chapters are so different. There are hundreds of different experiments taking place all at the same time. Some people are running for city council, and some are running for judge or county commissioner, testing whether each of those is a viable route to getting through some part of the socialist agenda. You cite that quote about Michael Harrington focusing on the “left wing of the possible,” which I like as a description of what it means to be a pragmatic socialist.

Tambor 

Right. I’ve sensed something here in Atlanta, and you probably picked that up, too. You start with Bernie Sanders thinking about national politics, and now I know that in Atlanta that we have somebody running for the city council, and somebody who’s running for mayor in a city here near Atlanta. Local action becomes key. You can’t win, or make any real headway, unless you have some presence or some influence in local elections. And so, I think you’re going to see more chapters investing energy and time and seeing what you can do in your local municipality or city government, and I’ve seen that happening here in Atlanta. And I hear about that happening in other chapters. 

Transcript edited by Patrick Farnsworth.