Sender Garlin

Sender Garlin (April 4, 1902 – December 6, 1999) was an American journalist, pamphleteer, and writer.

Career

Background Sender Garlin was born in Białystok, Poland, on April 4, 1902. His family left the country in 1906 to escape pogroms. Among his six siblings were Tiba Willner Sam Garlen, and Charles Garlen. In the U.S., his family lived in Burlington, Vermont, and Glens Falls, New York, where his parents ran a bakery. Garlin studied at the University of Wisconsin, New York University's Law School, Albany Law School, the New School for Social Research, and the Rand School of Social Science. Garlin told historian Howard Zinn: Reading The Appeal to Reason and the writings of Upton Sinclair, Sender at thirteen or fourteen considered himself a socialist. He said: "In later years, it was Karl Marx who recreated me with his criticism of this cruel, unjust society... No one has refuted his fundamental critique."

Interviews included: Clarence Darrow, Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Huey Long, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and Olga Knipper-Chekhova. John Fleming described him as follows: Sender Garlin was a long-time literary apparatchik of the American Communist Party. He ended his days at a great age only quite recently as an elder statements of progressive community in Boulder, Colorado. He had a long association with The Daily Worker, for which he was for a time their man in Moscow. Later, he had a literary column in that paper called "The Constant Reader" in which he took notes of books to be praised or blamed.

As features editor for the Daily Worker, he oversaw "Woody Sez", the column penned by Woody Guthrie. Guthrie's column was "not considered strategic or basic" but did demonstrate that the CPUSA was "interested in the people."

He also worked for the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, managed the New York Heart Association's public affairs, and was editor of the Legal Brief of Physicians.

Boulder In 1980, Garlin and wife Martha Millet Garlin (a poet) moved to Boulder from New York City to be near their son, Alexander Garlin. He founded the Social Issues Forum on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Through this organization, he brought Left and Liberal speakers to the campus. In 1982 he joined the university's Cultural Events Board. Speakers he helped to bring include: Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Angela Davis, Ann Fagan Ginger, and Milt Wolff (last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War). He was also active in political groups, including the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Left Hand Books, and the Rocky Mountain Peace Center.

Death Garlin died at his home on December 6, 1999, at age 97. He was survived by wife Martha Millet Garlin, daughter Emily, son Alexander, granddaughter Annelise, son Victor, and granddaughters Amy and Rachel.

While reporting for the Bronx Home News, he introduced Chambers to Harry Freeman, younger brother of Joseph Freeman (who succeeded Chambers as editor of the New Masses magazine, while Garlin's younger sister, Tiba Willner (1906-1999), worked for many years at the New Masses as its promotional manager.

Works

The "Real Huey P. Long (pamphlet, 1935) The Real Rickenbacker (pamphlet, 1943) The Truth About Reader's Digest (pamphlet, 1943) Is Dewey the Man? (pamphlet, 1944) Enemies of the Peace: Profile of the 'Hate-Russia' Gang (pamphlet, 1945) Red Tape and Barbed Wire: Close-Up of the McCarran Law In Action (pamphlet, 1952) William Dean Howells and the Haymarket Era (occasional paper, 1979) Three American Radicals (book, 1991)