INTRODUCTION

Introduction

I have occupIed most of my workIng lIfe lawyerIng and advocating on behalf of the causes of workers and unions. Shockingly to me at eighty-seven, I have done so continuously for sixty years, and I’m still at it, albeit at a slower pace. It is by now an integral part of who I am. I have written endless briefs, petitions, complaints, motions, and memoranda over those years on behalf of tens of thousands of individual and institutional clients. These “pleadings” now reside unseen and unread in storage boxes, and more recently they have been deposited for eternity in the “cloud.”

Happily, however, my pen, which I often have described as “my weapon,” has lived a double life. At least from the time I entered Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1950, at age fifteen, when I began writing as a cub reporter for Tilden Topics, the student newspaper. I later became sports editor, and in my senior year, editor in chief. I wrote news, features, editorials, and (sadly) an unfunny humor column. As sports editor, I traversed Brooklyn with the school’s outstanding baseball, basketball, and football teams. The borough’s then daily newspaper, The Brooklyn Eagle, hired me to

cover the teams’ games and paid me a penny a word. I recall framing my first three-dollar check. Better than the uncashed check—I must admit—was the byline.

When I entered Brandeis University in 1953, I briefly joined the student newspaper, aptly named The Justice, but found too many new interests and distractions, so I satisfied my desire to write and be heard with an occasional opinion piece or letter to the editor. Also, there were endless term papers to write, and even a lengthy senior thesis entitled “The Jew as Radical: The Marginal, Marginal Man,” a sociological study of Jewish socialists in Russia and the United States between 1880 and 1920.

It was upon entering the University of Chicago Law School in 1957 that I first learned to think and write like a lawyer. Legal writing is usually addressed to other lawyers (especially judges) with the object of persuading them of the soundness and power of one’s arguments. Legal pleadings tend toward being technical and “legalistic.” When lawyers try to engage in journalism, they frequently are criticized for their wearisome and labored prose, as I often have been.

In my case, however, as a young labor lawyer on the legal staff of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s, I became friendly with the editors of the union’s magazine, which was mailed to about 1.5 million members each month. Occasionally, the editors would ask me to write editorials and stories, and thus I was able to keep my journalistic voice and skills alive. Thereafter, and until today, I frequently have written about union, labor-related, and legal subjects for publications that share my professional and political pro-labor orientation. More recently, I have written and delivered papers on a number of varied subjects to a unique Martha’s Vineyard weekly summer “old men’s” breakfast group, of which I have been a member for the last decade. The summer discussion group was founded by Stan Snider, a leading Martha’s Vineyard maven, twenty-seven years ago. And

I have published several articles in The American Prospect magazine (available online). It was started by a group of inspired liberal and radical thinkers and writers over thirty years ago to explore social, political, and economic developments. I have incorporated some of the foregoing pieces into this collection.

Also, I have included two pieces I wrote after the 2020 presidential election that recount my observations and perspectives about Donald Trump’s diabolical effort to effect a coup d’état after he lost the election by claiming that it had been stolen (now known as “the Big Lie”), and by inciting an unlawful physical invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by hundreds of rioters and insurrectionists, many of whom were armed. The defeat of Trump at the polls by Joe Biden on November 3, 2020, was an important but narrow repudiation of Trump’s disgraceful four years as president. And his continuing denial of his defeat was the culmination of his four tyrannical years of refusals to tell the truth and abide by the Constitution and the rule of law. The outcome of the Trumpian challenge to American democracy remains uncertain as I write, and will continue to be played out in the years ahead, hopefully for the best.

Reducing my experiences, observations, and conclusions to writing has been challenging but enjoyable for me, especially as a personal forum for thinking, learning, and teaching. Writing continues to engage me, and that is why I have chosen to collect and circulate these essays to family members, comrades, and friends. I hope, dear reader, that you find my journalistic efforts of some interest as a modest source of enlightenment and as an inspiration for your own further thoughts and actions.

I would be remiss if I did not express my appreciation for the highly professional editorial and technical assistance in producing this compendium provided to me by Fred Levine, Allan Edmands, and Susan Turner at Small Batch Books, as well as the invaluable help of my longtime assistant Charlotte House, who has succeeded in keeping me organized and focused for many years.

Finally, I dedicate this collection to my lovely and loving wife, Linda, with whom I have shared more than forty memorable and remarkable years. As wife, fellow parent, and law partner as well, she has been an inspiration, soul mate, and bedrock for me through thick and thin, and my love and gratitude for and to her are immeasurable and unending.

Jules Bernstein April 2022

P.S. It should be no surprise that as a hobby, I have collected labor, radical, civil rights, and feminist art and memorabilia. I have included several of my favorite items here with brief explanatory captions, beginning on page 171.