The US-Israel war against Iran is now in its 5th week. How long will it go on? When will it end? How will it end? And what can We The People do to make it end?
For those following the news on-line, this afternoon’s headline in the New York Times reads “Trump Revels in Threats That Could Be War Crimes in Iran.” The news writer simply transcribes the dozen or so threats against Iran Trump has issued in the last 24 hours, all of which involve killing civilians and striking targets that the “laws of war” forbid destroying (water desalination, etc.). Yet this is the “new normal” in American, Hitler language that is parsed and analyzed with little outrage or opposition from our political leadership.
To much of the world, this war is unacceptable. The US and Israel started the war without justification. Iran had not attacked the US or Israel. Negotiations between the US and Iran about Iran’s nuclear program were in progress; Iran had made many efforts to demonstrate that it did not want to make a nuclear bomb. But just as in June 2025, the US and Israel attacked Iran while negotiations “were making progress.” Iran did nothing to start this war, it is “a crime of aggression.” The war is also illegal, a violation of both the UN Charter and US law (by which only Congress can declare war).
Is Israel the main culprit in starting this war? Since the 1990s, Israel’s (and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s) main foreign policy goal has been to involve the US in a war against Iran. They succeeded in doing this last June, and again in February. It is an important question for people in the USA: why do we allow Israel to suck the US into its wars – against the Palestinians, and now against Iran? Moreover, Israel’s goal is not to “defeat” Iran, but to destroy it as a state. This goal will not be accomplished in a few weeks. If Trump tries to remove the US from the war, but Israel continues it, Iran will probably continue to attack the US. War without end. Work for peace.
Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. He was 39, only a few months older than my son is now. The night before he was killed he spoke to workers on strike in Memphis, which was where he was when struck down. We know now that he was on a path from civil rights to human rights, envisioning an interracial unity of the poor, combining the work of labor unions and civil rights organizations. A year before he was killed he broke with mainstream civil rights organizations and “respectable” dissent to denounce the US war on Vietnam. In this video clip from Democracy Now! two decades ago, he speaks about the Vietnam war and why it must be stopped. With only tiny edits, the same speech could address the horror of our wars today. Alas, how we miss him.
MORE ABOUT “NO KINGS”
Demonstrations and Demographics
By Bill Fletcher Jr., Znet [April 3, 2026]
---- In In the aftermath of the “No Kings Day” demonstrations of March 28 there has been renewed interest—and concern—that in many cities the participation of people of color generally, and Black people specifically, has been limited. To my knowledge, no one has done any study on this, so we are forced to rely on a combination of anecdotal information and historical analysis and patterns. … Thus, today we have found ourselves attempting to come to grips with a level of despair and demobilization that is the result of a combination of the pounding that Black America in particular has received, as well as the absence of a counterstrategy that will take us to a post-Trump/post-neo-liberal USA. Arguments about African Americans being fearful of demonstrating are ludicrous, though there are some African Americans who have promoted such a fear, encouraging us to sit home lest we somehow provoke Trump to bring about martial law. Those who say that the demonstrations fail to address the demands of Black people have only an element of truth in that, yes, the demands need to expand. That said, Black folks have marched many times under banners that have not specifically addressed us. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “No Kings in America, Real Resistance in Rome — How Liberal Democrats and AIPAC Allies Hijacked the Movement While Italy Actually Fights Empire and Genocide,” by Michael Leonardi, Counterpunch [April 3, 2026] [Link]; “30,000 “Pissed off” Americans: A Photo Essay of the No Kings Protests in Portland,” by Bette Lee, Counterpunch [April 3, 2026] [Link]; and “Tens of thousands of union members participated in No Kings rallies across the nation,” by Kenneth Quinnell, AFL-CIO [April 1, 2026] [Link].
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THIS WEEK
(Video) “This War Is Already Lost”: Spencer Ackerman & Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi on Trump’s Iran Debacle
From Democracy Now! [April 2, 2026]
---- President Donald Trump gave a prime time televised address Wednesday to discuss the war on Iran, his first since the United States and Israel launched attacks on February 28. Trump gave few clues about when or how the war could end, but he boasted about killing top Iranian leaders and degrading the country’s military. He threatened to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages, where they belong.” Despite the grandiose claims, built on “lies and delusions,” Trump “did not add anything new,” says Iranian American scholar Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, who calls Trump’s shifting justifications an admission of “defeat in the war of narratives.” We also speak with journalist Spencer Ackerman, who says the U.S. has already lost the war. “Iran has changed the entirety of this conflict,” he says. “It has pivoted this conflict onto its own territory and its own goals, and the United States does not have a military mechanism to redress that, primarily the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz.” [See the Program]
Another War for Oil? Why We Need Renewable Energy
By Sonali Kolhatkar, Counterpunch [April 3, 2026]
---- The war on Iran has caused the biggest oil supply disruption in history, as oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz falters. Taken together with this year’s invasion of Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and the Trump administration’s subsequent cutting off of oil sales to Cuba — potentially its next military target — we are witnessing how the race for fossil fuel resources is compromising global peace and stability. Oil prices have swung wildly, and impacts may be felt in the fertilizer and food sectors too. According to Andy Rowell, an editor with Oil Change International, “everything is so interlinked because we’re so dependent on fossil fuels.” But what if we weren’t so dependent on fossil fuels? … If our electricity grids ran on renewable energy, and if vehicles transitioned from guzzling gas to running on solar and wind-powered electricity, leaders like Trump would be less able to wreak the sort of havoc we’re experiencing today. That would mean fewer wars and less economic disruption for Americans and people all over the world. [Read More]
Sail On, Sail On, Oh Mighty Ship of State
By Robin Anderson, Counterpunch [April 3, 2026]
---- There’s a madman in the White House (or what’s left of it) who thinks he’s a king, and he’s threatening to send US Marines on a suicide mission to Iran, but 67 percent of the US people are against it. The reasons and goals were made up, as they moved through his fever dreams on “Truth Social” in the middle of the night. “We’ve already won the war,” the madman was reported to say. It was a “preemptive strike,” but no enemy strike was planned. The US left negotiations about to conclude and the war crimes started the very next day. US bombs hit a girls primary school leaving the parents to bury the bodies of their children. At the gas pump a man connects the dots between the illegal war and our own depravations. … US Marines are sent to retrieve a mysterious prize, because God’s chosen people, as Gideon Levy called Israelis, don’t have any soldiers to send. They are busy killing in the West Bank and torturing the doctors and nurses and even the children in their dungeons of inhuman hate. [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
These newsletters usually have one or more video clips from the daily news program Democracy Now! A new documentary film about the program’s 30 years of news programming and analysis opens soon at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville. The film is called “Steal This Story, Please.” Dem Now host Amy Goodman will be speaking at the Film Center on Sunday, April 12th. For more information about the film, the event, and Democracy Now!, go here.
Missing from US media coverage of Trump’s war against Iran is that obvious fact that it is illegal under both international law and US law. Why this is so irrelevant to our media, and to our governing class more generally, is an interesting question. Hannah Arendt (Origins of Totalitarianism) wrote extensively about the collapse of the “rule of law” in Nazi Germany. It seems that the same playbook is being used in the USA today. For a lucid reminder of what is meant by “the rule of law” regarding war & peace, see former ACLU legal director David Cole’s interview on this week’s Democracy Now!
Trying to keep track of where we are and where our movements are going? Help is here. Aljazeera maintains a running account of the deaths, injuries, and other losses resulted from the wars raging now in the Middle East. There is ample evidence (for example, here) that Americans are against this war and grow more opposed every day. Even before the Iran war, Americans were turning against the Israeli death-grip on US politics, and had come to “favor” Palestinians over Israel in the on-going war against Gaza. And for those keeping score, Israel has killed at least 713 Palestinians since the Gaza “ceasefire” began in early October 2025.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
The “flagship” for last week’s “No Kings” events, which brought out 8 million people to protest Trump’s war and fascism, was in Minneapolis, the City of Stalwarts. Among the musicians performing for 200,000 people that day was Joan Baez. Now 85 years old, Baez and her music have supported peace & justice since the early 1960s. So the Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers this week come from her 1975 album, “Diamonds and Rust.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
The Next Coup Attempt, And How to Stop It
By Timothy Snyder, Thinking About [April 4, 2026]
---- We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in the history of the United States. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. If we see this, we can stop it, overcome the movement that brought us to this point, and make a turn towards something better. … It is up to us to put two and two together: Trump will seek to exploit the war (or the next one) to alter the elections. We bear responsibility for what comes next. The eventuality can seem frightening, but Trump’s position is weak. The gambit of turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is complicated and difficult. Its success depends on us. If the possibility of such a coup is not anticipated and the variants of the gambit are not called out as they emerge, he can succeed. He has attempted a coup (or, technically, a self-coup) once, in January 2021 -- there is no reason to think that he will not try to do so again. [Read More]
A Toxic Israel-U.S. Relationship Nears Its Breaking Point Amid War
By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [Israel] [April 5 2026]
---- At the end of this futile war, a glimmer of hope emerges. It’s written on ice: It could turn into a disaster, as wars do, and yet, there is some hope. In these days of despair, it’s hard to expect any more than that. The war may generate a fateful upending of the relations between the United States and Israel. What was will be no more. While people in Israel take pride in the cooperation between the two countries and in the alliance of pilots forged over the skies of Tehran, dark clouds are forming around the corner. The more the war’s failure becomes apparent, the clearer it becomes that the United States has gotten itself into a mess without a clue as to how to get out, the greater the blame game that will follow. It will be patently one-sided. The United States will cast all the blame on Israel. This could lead to a domino effect in other countries that are just waiting for the ties between the two to be severed. When the fire dies down, Israel may find itself in a situation it has never been in: a local North Korea. It could become an isolated pariah state devoid of the American support, without which it can’t exist. … That day is closer than all the participants in Israel’s march of folly think. Israel will then finally have to decide between a different Israel, or no Israel at all. [Read More]
Blowback 2026: The Price of Empire and War on Iran
By Eric Ross, TomDispatch [April 3, 2026]
---- What will the costs of the latest round of illegal, ill-fated U.S. military adventurism in the Middle East amount to? Some of the toll is already clear. Washington has squandered billions of dollars on a reckless war of aggression against Iran. A merciless campaign of aerial bombardment has driven millions from their homes. American and Israeli airstrikes have rained destruction on 10,000 civilian sites and already killed more than 3,000 people in Iran and Lebanon. Among the dead are more than 200 children, many killed in a U.S. strike on a girls’ school, a war crime that evokes the grim precedent of such past American atrocities as the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam or the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing in Iraq. The latest war has also dealt a potentially fatal blow to our already battered democratic institutions. It’s a war neither authorized by Congress nor supported by the public. Instead, it was launched by a president who refuses to submit to the law or heed the will of the people, claiming in true authoritarian fashion that he is the law, and that he alone embodies the popular will. … The costs associated with this latest criminal war, measured in human lives; the misappropriation of national resources; and the erosion of the rule of law will only continue to mount. Yet there is also a less visible, less immediate price tag for such wars. If the history of American interventions in the region offers any guide, the full bill will likely not become apparent for months, years, or even decades. When it finally arrives, however, it will carry a familiar name: blowback. [Read More]
The US and Israel Are Making Gaza-Style War the New Normal
By Branko Marcetic, Jacobin Magazine [April 2026]
---- One of the most appalling aspects of the Gaza genocide — besides its near-unprecedented slaughter of children and other innocents and its near-obliteration from existence of an entire society, unparalleled in the modern era — is that officials in both the United States and Israel were overtly hoping to make it the new, horrifying standard for modern war. As we’re seeing right now in Iran and Lebanon, they’re not wasting any time applying that standard elsewhere. … As a result, the US-Israeli method of war in Iran shares a number of characteristics that, at the time, were considered unprecedented and unique to the Gaza war. The war began with a massacre of children, in what has now been confirmed to have been a targeted US bombing of a school that killed more than a hundred young girls. We now know it also began with the bombing of a sports hall and a different elementary school that killed twenty-one people, including two children, using a new short-range missile whose first-ever use in combat was this war. The US and Israeli militaries have since then dropped heavy bombs on entire residential buildings and destroyed whole residential blocks despite the obvious danger to civilians, burying ordinary Iranians under the rubble. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
(Video) A “Peace Process” Insider Reckons With Decades of Failure
By Jasper Diamond Nathaniel, Infinite Jaz [April 5, 2026]
[FB – Jasper Diamond Nathaniel, a native of Hastings, runs the interesting Substack site “Infinite Jaz.” Check it out.]
---- I sat down with Rob Malley—one of the chief American negotiators on Israel-Palestine over three decades—to discuss his book, Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel-Palestine, co-authored with Hussein Agha, who sat on the opposite side of the table, advising the PLO. The book is, in large part, a reckoning with failure. Malley and Agha describe a process that continually reinforced a terrible status quo, never imposed meaningful consequences on Israel, and ultimately set the stage for October 7 and the genocide that followed. The last 2.5 years have not been a rupture, they argue, but a return to the conflict’s more “primitive form,” now stripped of “the pretense of a hollow peace process.” The interview is long, but we cover a tremendous amount of ground. I highly recommend listening in full if you want to cut through the myths and false narratives that pervade the discourse and hear from someone who was actually in the room. [Read More] I
In Gaza, education is a daily act of quiet resistance
By Hassan Herzallah, Waging Nonviolence [March 26, 2026]
---- Across Gaza, students are trying to continue their education under extraordinary circumstances. Universities have been damaged or destroyed, classrooms reduced to rubble, and electricity and internet connections are often unreliable. Yet many students keep studying — sometimes inside tents, sometimes among ruins. Education in Gaza is no longer simply an academic path. For many students, it has become a daily act of quiet resistance. Not because students are making political statements, but because continuing to learn under these conditions becomes a way of refusing erasure — of their futures, their identities and their right to education. After more than two years of devastation in Gaza, the education system is on the verge of collapse. International estimates indicate that more than 97 percent of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and more than 12 universities across the territory have been severely affected or rendered unusable. This destruction has been caused by deliberate Israeli airstrikes and military operations, in an attempt to erase educational progress. [Read More]
Fifty years on, does Land Day still matter for Palestinians in Israel?
By Noor Dadosh, 972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [March 30, 2026]
---- March 30, 1976 is widely regarded as a foundational moment in the political history of Palestinians inside Israel. The killing by Israeli soldiers and police of six unarmed Palestinians, during nationwide protests against the government’s plans to confiscate land for the “Judaization” of the Galilee, has been commemorated every year since as Land Day. Fifty years on, its legacy continues to shape the community’s political and public consciousness. Yet this anniversary arrives under exceptionally grim circumstances: Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza, escalating state-backed violence and displacement in the West Bank, and the crisis of organized crime ravaging Palestinian citizens of Israel. To reflect on the meaning of Land Day today, I spoke with Dr. Nabih Bashir, a leading Palestinian scholar of sociology, political science, and Jewish thought. A native of the northern city of Sakhnin, Bashir has engaged with Land Day over the years through both research and his own experience as an activist; in his 2006 book “Land Day — Between the National and the Civil,” he offers one of the first comprehensive analytical studies of the event, examining how it continues to function as a national and political compass. [Read More]
ISRAEL’S WAR ON LEBANON
How Hezbollah Turned Into Israel’s Main Front in Its War With Iran
By Zvi Bar’el, Ha’aretz [Israel] [April 5, 2026]
---- While the Iranian front shifts from an existential threat to a war of attrition, Israel finds itself with a new main front: Lebanon, which threatens to entangle Israel in a prolonged conflict. Like in Gaza, Israel seems capable of entering Lebanon but shows no signs of a viable exit strategy. Statements by the prime minister and defense minister suggest Lebanon could become a one‑way ticket – resulting in an indefinite military presence, establishment of a security zone, massive population displacement (which has already uprooted over 1.25 million people from their homes), daily bloody skirmishes, and the confinement of hundreds of thousands of Israelis to shelters and makeshift bunkers. Last week, Israel’s military offered a sobering assessment: disarming Hezbollah would require occupying all of Lebanon – an objective not included in Israel’s war goals. The solution, it argues, lies in a diplomatic process, because only the Lebanese state can disarm the group. But the term “diplomatic process” has no place in Israel’s political lexicon. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The AI Boom Is a Climate Bust
By Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation [April 3, 2026]
---- No wonder the AI boom is encountering fierce grassroots resistance across the US political spectrum—left to right, rural, urban, and suburban. For journalists, the breadth of that backlash makes AI’s effects on the planet much more than a tech or even a climate story. It should now be on the radar of newsrooms everywhere. A new Quinnipiac poll found that Americans by a three-to-one margin (65 percent to 24 percent) oppose having an AI data center built in their community. Their leading concern is skyrocketing electric bills. Indeed, bills for households in the vicinity of a data center have gone up as much as 267 percent in the last five years, Bloomberg reported. Like fossil fuel executives, AI titans have long insisted that their technology is inevitable. That, too, seems not to be true. Some 100 communities across 14 states have imposed moratoriums on building data centers. Last week, US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation calling for a six-month nationwide moratorium to buy time to evaluate AI’s impacts on environmental, labor, and other issues, including AI’s ability to “create Big Brother type surveillance” of citizens exercising their First Amendment right to protest, Ocasio-Cortez said. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
(Video) “Born in the U.S.A.”: Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Ban
From Democracy Now! [April 2, 2026]
---- The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Several justices seemed highly skeptical of the administration’s arguments, though a final ruling is not expected for months. “I think the oral arguments went really well for our side,” says Aarti Kohli, the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus and co-counsel in the Supreme Court case. We also speak with Norman Wong, a descendant of Wong Kim Ark, whose landmark 1898 Supreme Court case affirmed birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Citing the Bruce Springsteen song, Wong says that being “Born in the U.S.A.” means someone is part of the national community. “We need to stand as Americans together, regardless of color or religion or where we came from,” he says. “We haven’t always gotten it right with all the people here. But that doesn’t mean we should make it worse.” [See the Program] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Born in the USA,” by David Cole, New York Review of Books [April 23, 2026 issue] [Link].
(Video) Meet Leqaa Kordia: Palestinian Protester Freed After a Year in “ICE Dungeon”
From Democracy Now! [April 3, 2026]
---- We speak with Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, who was freed on March 16 after spending more than a year in an ICE jail in Texas. She was arrested in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign to target student activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights. Kordia was born in the occupied West Bank and lives in New Jersey. She was arrested in 2024 during the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University. The charges against her were dropped the next day, but she was detained in March 2025 by ICE during a routine immigration check-in. “While in custody, Kordia experienced destitute conditions at the Prairieland Detention Center, including overcrowding, inedible food, inadequate medical care, broken facilities, negligence by guards and more. “The detention center conditions and the ICE agents’ methods brought to my mind a lot of bad memories from the West Bank,” she says. [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Sunrise Movement Pushes Anti-War Candidates,
By Jessica Washington, The Intercept [March 27 2026]
---- The youth-led Sunrise Movement is seizing on the U.S.–Israel war in Iran to boost challengers to sitting Democrats, joining a coalition of progressive groups arguing that lawmakers who take money from defense contractors and AIPAC cannot meaningfully oppose the war. In Denver, Sunrise is endorsing Melat Kiros, an anti-war candidate and attorney who was fired for refusing to take down her post on the genocide in Palestine. … Kiros is among a growing list of insurgent candidates — including William Lawrence in Michigan and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, also both Sunrise-endorsed — who are taking Democrats to task on their complicity in the endless wars in the Middle East. Sunrise’s endorsement is part of a broader strategy shift in which the activist group, founded in 2017 to fight climate change in particular, pivots to fighting authoritarianism more broadly. [Read More]
Thou Shall Not Pray for Peace: The Bombing of Iran and the U.S.-Mexico Border
By Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle [April 2, 2026]
----A few days after the United States launched Operation Epic Fury in Iran, the Border Patrol changed its policy on visits to the border wall, denying a church group permission to pray there, “for their own safety.” … On March 3, in the late afternoon, Joca Gallegos arrived at the border wall in Douglas, Arizona, in a van with a small group from Phoenix. The plan was to conduct a devotional, as the Presbyterian border ministry Frontera de Cristo has done with groups from across the country for decades. For many participants, this would be their first encounter with the border wall, and they were encouraged to reflect on their impressions. In many ways, it was a prayer for peace. But this time it was going to be different. Much to their surprise, this time it wasn’t going to happen at all. … The notion of a more restricted U.S.-Mexico border as a consequence of the U.S. bombing of Iran seemed extreme, even absurd, yet that appeared to be the reality. A war occurring 7,000 miles away was impacting this border. But perhaps this was indeed the new normal in “Greater North America.” [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Repression in the Classroom
By Paul Buhle, Monthly Review [March 2026]
[FB – This is a review of two books: Jane S. Smith, A Blacklist Education: American History, a Family Mystery, and a Teacher Under Fire, and Natalie Zemon Davis and Elizabeth Douvan, Operation Mind: A Brief Documentary Account of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And Why It Matters Now.]
---- Repression on campus is back in a big way, as readers far beyond the classroom know today. The saga of the Cold War years, once seemingly distant, now has lessons that we ignore to our peril. A Blacklist Education is a charming book, wonderfully personal at points, and a frightening one as well. Jane S. Smith did not understand the persecution of her father for reasons familiar to anyone who has studied forms of modern repression. The children of blacklisted screenwriters—a large concern of my own work—rarely knew more than the outline of their parents’ suffering and anxieties, and for good reasons. They were not to talk to their childhood friends and classmates about their own parents’ situations. They were offered mainly small but urgent bits of advice: do not answer to strangers, but if the door is open or people ask on the streets, offer no information about parents or any family members. Also: be aware of the cars parked near the family residence, with one or two men watching, not moving. … Smith wonders now, she says, whether her father had ever actually been a Communist Party member? A question without an answer, for the children of tens of thousands who went underground in their own ways, or surfaced as people who they had, in part, created in order to survive. Very often, especially but not only in Hollywood, they had joined the Communist Party during wartime, when the “Communist Political Association” seemed to be a natural part of the American landscape. Others had never paid dues at all as members of the left fraternal associations, which were consistently three or four times as large as the Communist Party itself. Still others were simply members of Party-led unions, numbering in the hundreds of thousands until the Red Scare. [Read More]