Dec 12, 2025
Breht speaks with veteran organizer, revolutionary strategist, and author Eric Mann.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Mann reflects on his decades
of struggle; from his early work with SNCC and SDS, through his
involvement with the Weather Underground and his time as a
political prisoner, to his rank-and-file organizing as a UAW
autoworker. Along the way, Mann wrestles with the realities of
repression and counterinsurgency, the need for disciplined cadre
and a Black-led united front against imperialism, and the history
of the Marxist Left in the 60's and 70's in the USA as told through
his personal experiences. His story is both a living history of the
U.S. Left and a revolutionary call for commitment and organization
for a new generation of revolutionaries.
More Biography of Eric Mann: Eric Mann (born December 4, 1942) is a
civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental organizer. He has
worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, Newark Community Union
Project, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Black Panther
Party, the United Automobile Workers (including eight years on auto
assembly lines) and the New Directions Movement. He was also active
as a leader of SDS faction the Weathermen, which later became the
militant left-wing organization Weather Underground. He was
arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action
against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced
to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder
after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge
police headquarters on November 8, 1969. He was instrumental in the
movement that helped to keep a General Motors assembly plant in Van
Nuys, California open for ten years. Mann has been credited for
helping to shape the environmental justice movement in the U.S. He
founded the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles,
California and has been its director for 25 years. In addition,
Mann is founder and co-chair of the Bus Riders Union, which sued
the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for
what it called “transit racism”, resulting in a precedent-setting
civil rights lawsuit, Labor Community Strategy Center et al. v.
MTA.
Mann is the author of books published by Beacon Press, Harper & Row and the University of California, which include Taking on General Motors; The Seven Components of Transformative Organizing Theory; and Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer. He is known for his theory of transformative organizing and leadership of political movements and is acknowledged by many as an veteran organizer on the communist left.
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