{{short description|American labor leader and author (1912–1986)}} {{Use American English|date=March 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2026}} {{Infobox person | name = Sidney Lens | image = | caption = | birth_name = Sidney Okun | birth_date = {{Birth date|1912|01|12}} | birth_place = Newark, New Jersey, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1986|06|18|1912|01|12}} | death_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | occupation = Labor activist, journalist, author, editor | years_active = 1930s–1980s | known_for = Labor organizing; socialist activism; anti-war movement; writings on American labor history | spouse = Shirley Ruben | notable_works = ''Left, Right, and Center''; ''The Forging of the American Empire''; ''Unrepentant Radical''}} '''Sidney Lens''' (January 12, 1912 – June 18, 1986), also known by his birth name '''Sidney Okun''', was an American labor leader, political activist, and author, best known for his 1977 book, ''The Day Before Doomsday'', which warns of the prospect of nuclear annihilation.
==Early life==
Sidney Lens was born Sidney Okun on January 12, 1912, in Newark, New Jersey, to Charles and Sophie Okun, Jewish immigrants from Russia who had arrived in the United States in 1907. His father, who was a pharmacist, died when Lens was three years old, and he was raised by his single mother who worked long hours in the New York City garment industry. Lens changed his name in the early 1930s.<ref name=Tribune>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Sidney Lens, Author and Labor Organizer |work=Chicago Tribune |date=June 21, 1986 }}</ref><ref name=NYT>{{cite news |last=Cook |first=Joan |date=June 20, 1986 |title=Sidney Lens Dies; Activist of Left |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/20/obituaries/sidney-lens-dies-activist-of-left.html |work=New York Times |access-date=September 4, 2020}}</ref><ref name=Papers>{{cite web |url=http://chsmedia.org/media/fa/fa/M-L/LensSid-inv.htm |title=Sidney Lens papers, 1910-1986 |last=Pugh |first=Mindy |date=December 1988 |website=Chicago History Museum, Research Center |publisher=Chicago Historical Society |access-date=September 4, 2020 }}</ref>
Raised in the Lower East Side neighborhood in New York City, Lens attended Rabbi Jacob Joseph School<ref>Sharon, Dan. [https://chicagojewishhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/cjh_2009_4.pdf "Dan Sharon's Book Notes on ''Unreprentant Radical''"], ''Chicago Jewish History Review'', Fall 2009. Accessed March 4, 2026. "Sidney Lens (1912-1986) was a radical and a labor organizer. He grew up in New York City, on the Lower East Side.... He had a harsh Orthodox education at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, where corporal punishment was common."</ref> and DeWitt Clinton High School. He briefly enrolled at New York University night school, but left without a degree.<ref name=Coker>{{cite book |last=Coker |first=Jeffrey W. |title=Confronting American Labor: The New Left Dilemma |publisher=University of Missouri Press |year=2002 |pages=103–139}}</ref>
==Career==
Lens became a socialist in the early 1930s, and joined the American Workers Party (Trotskyist) in 1934. He focused on union organizing as the primary vehicle for revolutionary change. Lens helped organize department store and auto workers in the 1930s, and participated in the Flint sit-down strike in 1936.<ref name=Coker />
Lens joined Hugo Oehler’s breakaway Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) in 1936, and relocated to Chicago as a full-time revolutionary. He wrote for party publications and produced Marxist pamphlets, but he also criticized factionalism and sectarian splits within the Trotskyist movement. He acknowledged later that the RWL failed due to ideological rigidity and lack of growth. The RWL dissolved in 1948.<ref name=Coker />
Lens worked as a union organizer in Chicago through the 1940s, although he was critical of American Federation of Labor (AFL) corruption and backroom deals. He helped establish and lead a Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) local, and later moved it into an AFL affiliate. Lens worked as a union director into the late 1960s. He opposed the wartime “no-strike pledge” as a concession to capitalism. Ultimately, Lens became disillusioned with the centralized business unionism in both the AFL and the CIO.<ref name=Coker />
Lens was active in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.<ref>Sidney Lens, ''Unrepentant Radical'' (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980)</ref> Among those he was influenced by was the Dutch-American pacifist A.J. Muste.<ref name=NYT /> In 1967, he was among more than 500 writers and editors who signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse to pay the 10% Vietnam War Tax surcharge proposed by president Johnson.<ref>"Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 ''New York Post''</ref>
Lens was a contributor to ''The Progressive'' and wrote more than twenty books. He ran for public office three times, culminating in 1980 when he was the Citizens Party (United States) candidate for United States Senate in Illinois.<ref name=Papers />
Along with his 1977 book ''The Day Before Doomsday'' which warned of the dangers of nuclear war, Lens also wrote a history of U.S. intervention abroad, ''The Forging of the American Empire'', originally published in 1974 and republished in 2003 by Haymarket Books with a new introduction by Howard Zinn; and an autobiography, ''Unrepentant Radical''.
==Personal life== Lens married Chicago public school teacher and fellow progressive Shirley Rubin in 1946. He had no children.<ref name=NYT /><ref name=Papers /><ref name=Tribune />
==Death and legacy== Lens died from melanoma in Chicago on June 18, 1986.<ref name=NYT /><ref name=Papers /><ref name=Tribune /><ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Peace, Rights Activist Sidney Lens, 74, Dies |work=Los Angeles Times |date=June 22, 1986 }}</ref> His archives are preserved by the Chicago History Museum Research Center.<ref name=Papers /> The Sidney Lens Photograph Collection is held in the University Library at California State University, Northridge. This collection consists of photographs taken by Sidney Lens, who is depicted in some of the images. Other papers and books related to the legacy of Sidney Lens are also held at the CSUN University Library Special Collections and Archives.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/cnos/spcoll/csun_sc_slp_oac.pdf |title=Sidney Lens Photograph Collection, 1960-1970 |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=2012 |publisher=Online Archive of California |access-date=September 4, 2020 }}</ref>
==Bibliography== *[https://archive.org/details/JohnDeweyAMarxianCritique ''John Dewey, a Marxian critique''] [Chicago] Revolutionary workers league, U.S. 1942 written under his birth name, Sid Okun *''Left, Right, and Center'' (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1949): explains some of the anomalies of the American labor movement<ref>{{cite journal |last=Spielmans |first=John V. |journal=Journal of Political Economy |title=Review of Left, Right, and Center: Conflicting Forces in American Labor |volume=58 |issue=1 |year=1950 |pages=77–78 |doi=10.1086/256902 |jstor=1826203 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1826203 |access-date=3 March 2026}}</ref> *''The Counterfeit Revolution'' (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952): why Stalinism, despite its corrupt nature, nonetheless appeals to millions of people in the non-communist world *''A World in Revolution'' (1956): revolutionary movements around the world, based on extensive travels *''The Crisis of American Labor'' (1959), which theorized that anti-communist purges had robbed the labor movement of its higher ambitions<ref>{{cite news |last=Brooks |first=Tom |title=Review of ''American Trade Union Democracy'' by William H. Leiserson and ''The Crisis of American Labor'' by Sidney Lens |newspaper=The New York Times |date=21 June 1959 |page=BR6}}</ref> *''Working Men'' (1960): a history of labor, for young people<ref>{{cite news |last=Raskin |first=A. H. |title=Review of ''Working Men: The Story of Labor'' by Sidney Lens |newspaper=The New York Times |date=21 May 1961 |page=BR36}}</ref> *''Africa, Awakening Giant'' for young people *''The Futile Crusade: Anti-Communism as American Credo'' (1964): how American foreign policy was being hobbled by equating liberalism and socialism with communism<ref>{{cite journal |title=Review of Sidney Lens: ''The Futile Crusade'' |journal=The Humanist |volume=24 |issue=5 |date=1 September 1964 |page=159}}</ref> *''A Country Is Born'' (1964): the story of the American Revolution, for young people *''Radicalism in America'' (1966): a history of the American left from 1620 to the present *''What Unions Do'' *''Poverty: America's Enduring Paradox'' (1969): poverty and anti-poverty programs from the Renaissance to the Great Society *''The Military Industrial Complex'' (Kahn and Averill, 1970)<ref>{{cite journal |last=Meier |first=Heinz-Dieter |title=Review of Sidney Lens, ''The Military-Industrial Complex'' |journal=Neue politische Literatur |volume=17 |issue=3 |date=1 January 1972 |page=338}}</ref> *''The Forging of the American Empire'' (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1971): American intervention and imperial expansionism throughout its history<ref>{{cite news |title=Review of ''The Forging of the American Empire'' by Sidney Lens |newspaper=The New York Times |date=20 February 1972 |page=BR24}}</ref> *''The Labor Wars'' (New York: Doubleday, 1973): the struggles of the labor movement from the Molly Maguires to the 1930s *''Poverty, Yesterday and Today'' (1973) a history of poverty for young people *''The Promise and Pitfalls of Revolution'' (1974)<ref>{{cite journal |title=Review of ''The Promise and Pitfalls of Revolution'' |journal=Fellowship |volume=41 |issue=3 |date=1 March 1975 |page=20}}</ref> *''The Day Before Doomsday'' (New York: Doubleday, 1977): On the dangers of nuclear war<ref>{{cite news |last=Yergin |first=Daniel |title=The Road to Armageddon: Review of ''The Day Before Doomsday: An Anatomy of the Nuclear Arms Race'' by Sidney Lens |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=24 July 1977 |page=151}}</ref> *''The Unrepentant Radical'' (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980): Autobiography<ref>{{cite journal |title=Review of ''Unrepentant Radical: An American Activist's Account of Five Turbulent Decades'' |journal=Fellowship |volume=47 |issue=4–5 |date=1 April 1981 |page=27}}</ref> *''The Bomb'' (YA; New York: Dutton, 1982): a history of the arms race *''The Maginot Line Syndrome: America's Hopeless Foreign Policy'' (Ballinger, 1982)<ref>{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=Steve |title=Review of Sidney Lens, ''The Maginot Line Syndrome'' |journal=Journal of American Studies |volume=18 |issue=2 |date=August 1984 |pages=305–306 |doi=10.1017/S0021875800018983}}</ref> *''Strikemakers and Strikebreakers'' (YA; New York: Dutton, 1985)<ref>{{cite news |last=Sloan |first=Irving J. |title=Review of Children's Books: ''Strikemakers and Strikebreakers'' by Sidney Lens |newspaper=The New York Times |date=1 September 1985 |page=BR16}}</ref> *''The Permanent War'' (New York: Schocken, 1987): a shadow, unaccountable American government is committed to maintaining a permanent state of militarism *''Vietnam: A War on Two Fronts'' (YA; New York: Dutton, 1990)<ref>{{cite news |last=Myers |first=Walter Dean |title=Why Were We in Vietnam, Daddy? Review of ''Vietnam: A War on Two Fronts'' by Sidney Lens |newspaper=The New York Times |date=11 November 1990 |page=BR48}}</ref>
==See also== * List of peace activists
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lens, Sidney}} Category:American trade union leaders Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists Category:American anti–nuclear weapons activists Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American historians Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Jewish American historians Category:Historians from New Jersey Category:Historians of the United States Category:Labor historians Category:American political writers Category:American non-fiction children's writers Category:American writers of young adult literature Category:American autobiographers Category:American tax resisters Category:Citizens Party (United States) politicians Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:1912 births Category:1986 deaths Category:Deaths from melanoma in the United States Category:Deaths from cancer in Illinois Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American Jews Category:20th-century Illinois politicians Category:20th-century American trade unionists Category:DeWitt Clinton High School alumni Category:Rabbi Jacob Joseph School alumni Category:Writers from Newark, New Jersey