The New Haven Green

By Richard Sanders, Editor, Press for Conversion!

John Spivak grew up just a few blocks from the Green, in New Haven, Connecticut, a “marketplace and common meeting ground [that] came to be accepted as the place where citizens went to voice their opinions.”

In his early years, before WWI, he

“spent many evenings there listening to men who spoke on a seemingly endless variety of topics…. There were socialists and anarchists, Wobblies (as members of the aggressive Industrial Workers of the World were called)…. even one sad-looking, wispy man... spreading the gospel of atheism.”

From the beginning of Spivak’s autobiography, to its conclusion, “the Green” is a metaphor for the physical and social space where freedom of speech and association are cherished.

Reference:

John Spivak, A Man in His Time, 1967.

Source: Press for Conversion! magazine, Issue # 53, "Facing the Corporate Roots of American Fascism," March 2004. Published by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.

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