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By Root 872 0

She would rather be told to go to hell than be ignored. She was not often ignored. But she was told to go to hell on more than one occasion. She always questioned the ideas and deeds of government officials, both local and national, why corporate welfare seemed to be more extensive (and expensive) than private welfare, and why women and labor movements and unions did not get their fair share of what is commonly called the American dream. She also questioned why the special interest groups, more than the man on the street, always seemed to get the ear of high-ranking government officials. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all ships. Genora was ready to see all ships rise and social and legal justice performed.

Ordinarily, many if not most American citizens would eagerly have agreed with these propositions. What fair-minded individual could oppose them? Genora, however, expressed her sentiments within the context of Socialism. Historically speaking, the average American will recoil in horror at the idea of Socialism, unaware that there are several levels of this political persuasion. Genora’s ultimate persuasion was Trotskyist, and this caused her philosophies to be persona non res in the mainstream of American thought. Leon Trotsky was a Soviet; therefore he was the enemy. And his ideologies of permanent, worldwide revolution were not acceptable to most Americans, even during the drab years of the Great Depression.

Democracies must have dissenters; they cannot survive otherwise. Unlike in some other countries at the time (and into our own time as well), Genora did have the right to express her opinions, courtesy of the First Amendment—although in 1937 she was arrested during the sit-downs. Her crime? She distributed leaflets of the Flint Autoworker, edited by Henry Kraus (whom she came later to abhor), in downtown Flint, Michigan. It did not take long for the fiercely antiunion governmental authorities to realize that they had committed a serious violation of the Constitution. Genora was quickly released.

She did not advocate the overthrow of the American government. She may have gotten close to sedition on occasions but not to treason, as some of her enemies claimed. She wanted peaceful change if possible. She was ready, however, in 1937 and on some future occasions when the situation looked hopelessly bleak for the downtrodden, to man the barricades against both corporate and governmental forces in the name of social justice. Her greatest forte was the labor movement, strongly supplemented by feminist activism. From 1937, when she helped devise the plan that led to the union victory, to her death in 1995, her key word was “organize!” and close behind was “solidarity!” Her life encompassed several overarching themes: labor, women’s rights, civil rights, Socialism, education, service to the unserved, health care and insurance for all, opposition to sending American jobs overseas, anticolonialism, a woman’s right to choose between abortion and delivery, and, finally, the right of a human being to die peacefully, painlessly, and, above all else, with dignity. Genora carried out her activities in the context of these and other major societal movements of the time.

Beyond championing so many causes, Genora was a talented singer, writer, and speaker, and she possessed a love of the arts. She could be called to some extent a renaissance person, interested in learning simply for the sake of learning, not for some monetary reward or bragging rights at annual conventions. She never could get her fill of museums and art galleries or wherever the works of the great masters were exhibited.

Sadly, she suffered the tragic loss of her first two sons and battled one health problem after another, but she kept a cheerful countenance; so cheerful that her home in Los Angeles was often filled with well-wishers. Chapter 1 deals with Genora’s early years in Flint, Michigan, and why the automobile industry decided to settle there in the early 1900s. GM was cordially welcomed to Flint because it brought economic prosperity. In time, however,