WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.540 Welcome to today's deep dive. We are really excited 00:00:03.540 --> 00:00:06.019 to have you with us today because we are unpacking 00:00:06.019 --> 00:00:08.539 a really really fascinating life. Yeah, it's 00:00:08.539 --> 00:00:10.919 a big one. It is. We're looking at the life of 00:00:10.919 --> 00:00:14.439 Sender Garland. And our mission today is to trace 00:00:14.439 --> 00:00:18.399 this incredibly long, complex life of a 20th 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:22.640 century American journalist, a pamphleteer, a 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:26.300 writer, and a guy whose life span basically the 00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:28.399 entire century of radical political history. 00:00:28.620 --> 00:00:31.219 Right. From 1902 all the way to 1999. It's just 00:00:31.219 --> 00:00:34.000 a massive timeline. Exactly. And our single source 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:36.259 for this deep dive is a really comprehensive 00:00:36.259 --> 00:00:39.520 Wikipedia biographical article on Garland. But 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:42.159 before we jump in, we do need to put out a crucial 00:00:42.159 --> 00:00:44.820 impartiality disclaimer, because the source material 00:00:44.820 --> 00:00:46.859 is, well, it's highly politically charged. Very. 00:00:47.020 --> 00:00:49.039 I mean, Garland was deeply embedded in the Communist 00:00:49.039 --> 00:00:52.420 Party USA, the CTE USA, for his whole life. Right. 00:00:52.780 --> 00:00:55.340 So we want to explicitly say to you, the listener, 00:00:55.799 --> 00:00:57.520 we are looking at this purely as a historical 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:00.299 text. We are not endorsing or taking sides with 00:01:00.299 --> 00:01:02.219 any of the left -wing or right -wing ideologies 00:01:02.219 --> 00:01:04.319 discussed today. No, not at all. Our goal is 00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:06.099 simply to convey the facts of Garland's life 00:01:06.099 --> 00:01:08.420 exactly as they appear in the source material. 00:01:08.959 --> 00:01:11.400 We just want to understand the history. Exactly. 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:14.159 And, you know, what's so wild about Garland is 00:01:14.159 --> 00:01:17.819 just his proximity to history. Like I said, he 00:01:17.819 --> 00:01:21.680 lived from 1902 to 1999. Almost 100 years. Yeah. 00:01:21.739 --> 00:01:24.299 And in that time, I mean, this is a man who interviewed 00:01:24.299 --> 00:01:28.379 Emma Goldman. He managed Woody Guthrie. And there's 00:01:28.379 --> 00:01:30.120 this great description of him where someone said 00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:33.459 he talked in a voice. Like a teletype machine. 00:01:33.659 --> 00:01:36.340 A teletype machine. Just that relentless, like, 00:01:36.379 --> 00:01:38.379 clack, clack, clack mechanical energy. Yeah, 00:01:38.519 --> 00:01:41.620 just nonstop. I love that image. So to understand 00:01:41.620 --> 00:01:44.140 how someone becomes this absolute fixture of 00:01:44.140 --> 00:01:46.819 the 20th century radical left, we kind of have 00:01:46.819 --> 00:01:48.239 to rewind all the way to the beginning, right? 00:01:48.280 --> 00:01:50.040 Right back to his childhood. Yeah, because he 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:52.519 wasn't born in the US. He was born in Białystok, 00:01:52.739 --> 00:01:55.840 Poland, in April 1902. Which was part of the 00:01:55.840 --> 00:01:58.290 Russian Empire at the time. Right. But his family 00:01:58.290 --> 00:02:00.750 didn't stay long. The source says they escaped 00:02:00.750 --> 00:02:03.469 in 1906 when he was just four because they were 00:02:03.469 --> 00:02:05.629 fleeing pogroms. Yeah. And for those who might 00:02:05.629 --> 00:02:09.969 not know, pogroms were these horrific, organized, 00:02:10.330 --> 00:02:12.610 violent mob attacks against Jewish communities. 00:02:12.909 --> 00:02:14.610 So they were literally running for their lives. 00:02:14.909 --> 00:02:16.870 Fleeing absolute terror. And they make it to 00:02:16.870 --> 00:02:19.169 the U .S. and they end up running a family bakery, 00:02:19.310 --> 00:02:22.210 first up in Burlington, Vermont, and then later 00:02:22.210 --> 00:02:25.750 in Glens Falls, New York. A very classic American 00:02:25.750 --> 00:02:28.830 immigrant starting point. Totally. But Garland, 00:02:29.090 --> 00:02:32.469 I mean, he didn't just want to bake bread. He 00:02:32.469 --> 00:02:35.210 goes on this absolute marathon of an education. 00:02:35.370 --> 00:02:38.189 Oh, it's wild. The list of schools is just, it's 00:02:38.189 --> 00:02:39.889 long. He goes to the University of Wisconsin, 00:02:40.750 --> 00:02:45.110 then NYU Law, then Albany Law, the new school 00:02:45.110 --> 00:02:47.949 for social research. And the Rand School of Social 00:02:47.949 --> 00:02:50.389 Science. Yeah, bouncing around, taking classes 00:02:50.389 --> 00:02:52.990 with professors like Scott Nearing, who is a 00:02:52.990 --> 00:02:55.409 huge radical figure. OK, let's unpack this for 00:02:55.409 --> 00:02:56.969 a second, because the source points out something 00:02:56.969 --> 00:02:58.550 really interesting about the timeline of his 00:02:58.550 --> 00:03:00.610 radicalization. Right. Because you'd think, OK, 00:03:00.710 --> 00:03:02.169 he goes to all these progressive schools. He 00:03:02.169 --> 00:03:03.610 meets Scott Nearing. That's where he becomes 00:03:03.610 --> 00:03:06.550 a radical. But no, he actually considered himself 00:03:06.550 --> 00:03:08.949 a socialist by the time he was like 13 or 14. 00:03:09.250 --> 00:03:11.620 Just a young teenager. Right. And he got there 00:03:11.620 --> 00:03:14.599 just from reading The Appeal to Reason and books 00:03:14.599 --> 00:03:16.699 by Upton Sinclair while he was working in the 00:03:16.699 --> 00:03:20.300 bakery. So my question is, is it unusual for 00:03:20.300 --> 00:03:22.939 a teenager working in a family bakery to adopt 00:03:22.939 --> 00:03:26.479 such a rigid political framework so early? I 00:03:26.479 --> 00:03:29.180 mean, before he even really reads Marx. Well, 00:03:29.180 --> 00:03:31.960 what's fascinating here is how Garland actually 00:03:31.960 --> 00:03:35.620 described this himself later in life to the historian 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:38.460 Howard Zinn. OK. Garland said that, yeah, Sinclair 00:03:38.460 --> 00:03:40.360 made him a socialist. You know, Sinclair wrote 00:03:40.360 --> 00:03:42.740 these really visceral books about the struggles 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:44.520 of the working class. It makes you angry. It 00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:46.379 gives you that emotional spark. The outrage. 00:03:46.599 --> 00:03:49.620 Exactly. But Garland said it was Karl Marx, who 00:03:49.620 --> 00:03:52.460 actually, and this is his word, recreated him. 00:03:52.819 --> 00:03:55.520 Recreated him. Yeah. Marx gave him this entire 00:03:55.520 --> 00:03:58.280 systemic critique of what he called a cruel, 00:03:58.659 --> 00:04:01.620 unjust society. So Sinclair gave him the feelings, 00:04:01.900 --> 00:04:04.080 but Marx gave him the entire architecture for 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:06.500 how the world worked. And he was basically rebuilt 00:04:06.500 --> 00:04:08.900 by that ideology. Totally. And he didn't just 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:11.199 want to like sit around and read about this critique. 00:04:11.259 --> 00:04:12.780 He wanted to be the one writing it. He wanted 00:04:12.780 --> 00:04:15.479 to broadcast it. Which brings us to the typewriter 00:04:15.479 --> 00:04:18.040 part of his life, the apparatchik phase. Yeah, 00:04:18.079 --> 00:04:20.319 his huge stint at the Daily Worker. Right. So 00:04:20.319 --> 00:04:24.279 he spent 17 years from 1927 to 1943 at the Daily 00:04:24.279 --> 00:04:26.819 Worker, which was the official paper of the Communist 00:04:26.819 --> 00:04:29.620 Party USA. And he wasn't just doing light local 00:04:29.620 --> 00:04:32.339 news. He was doing incredibly heavy hitting coverage. 00:04:32.839 --> 00:04:35.480 Oh, massive stories. He covered the Scottsboro 00:04:35.480 --> 00:04:39.379 Boys trial in Alabama, the Gastonia textile strike 00:04:39.379 --> 00:04:43.639 in 1929, the Minneapolis general strike of 1934. 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:46.040 I mean, he was on the ground for major labor 00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:48.259 in civil rights battles. He even went over and 00:04:48.259 --> 00:04:51.120 reported on the Moscow purge trials. Right. Which, 00:04:51.220 --> 00:04:53.180 I mean, that's a huge deal. The fact that he 00:04:53.180 --> 00:04:55.120 was the one they trusted to cover the Moscow 00:04:55.120 --> 00:04:57.279 purge trials, which were these brutal theatrical 00:04:57.360 --> 00:05:00.379 trials by Stalin that shows how deeply trusted 00:05:00.379 --> 00:05:02.819 he was by the party. Oh, absolutely. The writer 00:05:02.819 --> 00:05:05.639 John Fleming actually described Garland as a 00:05:05.639 --> 00:05:07.699 literary apparatchik. An apparatchik, meaning 00:05:07.699 --> 00:05:10.680 like a total loyalist? A loyalist, a functionary, 00:05:10.779 --> 00:05:12.899 a guy who enforces the party line. He was their 00:05:12.899 --> 00:05:15.420 guy. And because he was their guy, the access 00:05:15.420 --> 00:05:18.180 he had was just staggering. The people he interviewed, 00:05:18.220 --> 00:05:20.279 let's just list a few because it's crazy. Go 00:05:20.279 --> 00:05:23.060 for it. He sat down with Clarence Darrow, Emma 00:05:23.060 --> 00:05:27.949 Goldman, Lucy Parsons. Huey Long. Which is quite 00:05:27.949 --> 00:05:30.050 the mix right there. And it gets crazier. He 00:05:30.050 --> 00:05:33.050 interviewed Nadezhda Kripskaya. Lenin's widow. 00:05:33.370 --> 00:05:36.670 Yes. Lenin's widow. And he also interviewed Olga 00:05:36.670 --> 00:05:39.889 Dneprchikova, the actress. It's an unbelievable 00:05:39.889 --> 00:05:42.730 roster of 20th century figures. It really is. 00:05:42.810 --> 00:05:44.850 But he wasn't just a reporter talking to famous 00:05:44.850 --> 00:05:47.329 people. He was also kind of this enforcer of 00:05:47.329 --> 00:05:49.370 what the party should be consuming. Right. His 00:05:49.370 --> 00:05:52.029 role as a cultural gatekeeper. The source mentions 00:05:52.029 --> 00:05:54.370 this column he wrote called The Constant Reader. 00:05:54.529 --> 00:05:57.569 And his job in this column was to literally take 00:05:57.569 --> 00:06:00.649 notes of books that should be, quote, praised 00:06:00.649 --> 00:06:03.149 or blamed. Praised or blamed. Just very cut and 00:06:03.149 --> 00:06:05.170 dry. Yeah. And if you think about it, it's so 00:06:05.170 --> 00:06:07.529 similar to what we see today with like algorithmic 00:06:07.529 --> 00:06:09.569 echo chambers or highly partisan influencers. 00:06:09.709 --> 00:06:12.069 Oh, that's a great point. Like imagine relying 00:06:12.069 --> 00:06:15.329 on a single column to tell you what art is politically 00:06:15.329 --> 00:06:18.490 acceptable for you to consume. He's saying, this 00:06:18.490 --> 00:06:20.709 book is good for the movement. That book is bad. 00:06:21.110 --> 00:06:23.709 He was literally programming the culture of the 00:06:23.709 --> 00:06:26.980 party. He was. But. You know, he did have a practical 00:06:26.980 --> 00:06:29.420 side when it came to culture, too. It wasn't 00:06:29.420 --> 00:06:31.860 all just strict Marxist theory. Right, the Woody 00:06:31.860 --> 00:06:34.300 Guthrie connection. Yes. This is one of my favorite 00:06:34.300 --> 00:06:36.980 details. Garland was the features editor who 00:06:36.980 --> 00:06:39.939 oversaw a column called Woody Says. And that's 00:06:39.939 --> 00:06:42.139 Woody Guthrie, the famous folk singer. Exactly. 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:44.480 And the funny thing is the Communist Party brass 00:06:44.480 --> 00:06:47.660 didn't even consider Woody's column to be, quote, 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:50.379 strategic or basic. It wasn't high theory. It 00:06:50.379 --> 00:06:53.529 was just folksy. Yeah. But Garland and the paper 00:06:53.529 --> 00:06:56.709 ran it because it showed they were, quote, interested 00:06:56.709 --> 00:06:58.810 in the people. It was relatable. It brought people 00:06:58.810 --> 00:07:01.170 in. Exactly. And Garland was always doing things 00:07:01.170 --> 00:07:03.069 like that. He was a founding editor of Partisan 00:07:03.069 --> 00:07:05.430 Review. He was a charter member of the American 00:07:05.430 --> 00:07:07.230 Newspaper Guild. And he had all these random 00:07:07.230 --> 00:07:09.709 side gigs, too, like managing public affairs 00:07:09.709 --> 00:07:11.790 for the New York Heart Association. Right. Or 00:07:11.790 --> 00:07:14.629 editing the legal brief of physicians. He was 00:07:14.629 --> 00:07:17.230 everywhere. He was highly visible. He wasn't 00:07:17.230 --> 00:07:20.319 just reporting on the movement. He was effectively 00:07:20.319 --> 00:07:23.459 the physical gateway into it. Which brings us 00:07:23.459 --> 00:07:25.699 to a really famous anecdote. Here's where it 00:07:25.699 --> 00:07:27.759 gets really interesting. The Whitaker -Chambers 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:31.079 story. Yes. So in Whitaker -Chambers' memoir, 00:07:31.160 --> 00:07:34.779 Witness, he recalls a vivid memory from 1925 00:07:34.779 --> 00:07:37.480 at Columbia University. Right. Chambers was looking 00:07:37.480 --> 00:07:40.500 for the Communist Party. And he hears about this 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:43.360 high strung, redheaded boy who had just slept 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:46.120 on a bare floor and who talked incessantly about 00:07:46.120 --> 00:07:49.079 the Soviet Union. And that boy was Senator Garland. 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:51.300 talking in that teletype voice. So Chambers meets 00:07:51.300 --> 00:07:53.740 him and what happens? Well, Chambers wants to 00:07:53.740 --> 00:07:55.560 find the party, but Garland tells him, well, 00:07:55.720 --> 00:07:57.279 actually, the Communist Party is currently called 00:07:57.279 --> 00:08:00.139 the Workers' Party for, you know, expediency, 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:02.959 legal reasons. Right. But he gives Chambers permission 00:08:02.959 --> 00:08:06.519 to use his name. basically tell them Sender Garland 00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:08.740 sent you as like a secret password. Okay, but 00:08:08.740 --> 00:08:10.319 I kind of want to push back on that a little 00:08:10.319 --> 00:08:13.019 bit. Sure. Because it sounds so cloak and dagger, 00:08:13.180 --> 00:08:15.300 right? Like this super secret underground ring. 00:08:15.379 --> 00:08:17.779 Yeah, very dramatic. But the source notes that 00:08:17.779 --> 00:08:20.839 Garland later just introduced Chambers to Harry 00:08:20.839 --> 00:08:24.120 Freeman. And Garland's own sister, Teba Wilner, 00:08:24.339 --> 00:08:26.839 she was the promotional manager for the New Masses 00:08:26.839 --> 00:08:30.139 magazine. which was a very public publication. 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:34.559 So was the party really this super secret underground 00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:37.279 thing, or was it basically just an open secret 00:08:37.279 --> 00:08:40.039 among these New York literary circles? It's a 00:08:40.039 --> 00:08:41.799 bit of both, honestly. I mean, the Red Scare 00:08:41.799 --> 00:08:43.879 was a real thing, so there was genuine legal 00:08:43.879 --> 00:08:45.600 danger, which is why they used names like the 00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:48.200 Workers' Party. Right, the expediency. But at 00:08:48.200 --> 00:08:52.299 the same time, in those specific bohemian intellectual 00:08:52.299 --> 00:08:54.990 circles in New York, Everyone kind of knew who 00:08:54.990 --> 00:08:57.129 everyone was, so Garland gets to play the role 00:08:57.129 --> 00:08:59.629 of the elusive gatekeeper giving out passwords, 00:09:00.009 --> 00:09:01.889 even though he's also highly visible. He loved 00:09:01.889 --> 00:09:04.929 the drama of it. Total. He was a connector. But 00:09:04.929 --> 00:09:07.649 as we move into the Cold War era, his role shifts. 00:09:08.250 --> 00:09:10.769 The party is under massive pressure, and Garland 00:09:10.769 --> 00:09:13.090 becomes this incredibly aggressive pamphleteer. 00:09:13.269 --> 00:09:15.509 The pamphlets are amazing. He wrote so many, 00:09:15.570 --> 00:09:17.669 and they were so targeted. Yeah. They were basically 00:09:17.669 --> 00:09:20.529 political weapons. He wrote the real Huey P. 00:09:20.610 --> 00:09:23.169 Long. He wrote the real Rückenbacker. going after 00:09:23.169 --> 00:09:25.350 huge public figures. And he goes after the media, 00:09:25.610 --> 00:09:28.730 too. He wrote the truth about Reader's Digest. 00:09:28.950 --> 00:09:31.429 Which is so funny to think about now. Reader's 00:09:31.429 --> 00:09:34.029 Digest. Right. But to him, that was bourgeois 00:09:34.029 --> 00:09:37.850 propaganda. And he wrote, is Dewey the man? And 00:09:37.850 --> 00:09:40.450 then, directly tackling the Cold War, he writes, 00:09:40.509 --> 00:09:43.309 enemies of the peace, profile of the hate Russia 00:09:43.309 --> 00:09:46.690 gang. He was relentless. And red tape and barbed 00:09:46.690 --> 00:09:49.750 wire. Close up of the McCarran law in action. 00:09:49.830 --> 00:09:52.210 He's just churning these out. He's the ultimate 00:09:52.210 --> 00:09:54.309 loyal apparatchik defending the party during 00:09:54.309 --> 00:09:56.889 its hardest years. But time marches on, right? 00:09:57.169 --> 00:10:00.090 The Cold War evolves. And this fiery young guy 00:10:00.090 --> 00:10:03.509 in New York, he ages. Right. By 1980, he's nearly 00:10:03.509 --> 00:10:06.289 78 years old. Most people are, you know, retiring. 00:10:06.950 --> 00:10:09.809 Taking it easy. But not Cinder Garland. No. He 00:10:09.809 --> 00:10:12.049 and his wife, the poet Martha Millet Garland, 00:10:12.110 --> 00:10:14.519 they decide to move out west. They relocate to 00:10:14.519 --> 00:10:16.980 Boulder, Colorado to be near their son, Alexander. 00:10:17.620 --> 00:10:19.259 And if we connect this to the bigger picture, 00:10:19.740 --> 00:10:22.080 it's just incredible. He doesn't retire. He basically 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:25.059 takes his New York radicalism and rebrands it 00:10:25.059 --> 00:10:28.080 for a modern university town. He found the Social 00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:31.200 Issues Forum at CU Boulder. He joins the Cultural 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:34.179 Events Board. Almost 80 years old. Yeah. And 00:10:34.179 --> 00:10:37.039 the people he brings to speak in Colorado, he 00:10:37.039 --> 00:10:39.980 just... taps his network. He brings Howard Zinn. 00:10:40.039 --> 00:10:42.159 Who actually ended up writing Garland's obituary 00:10:42.159 --> 00:10:45.379 later. Exactly. He brings Michael Parenti, Angela 00:10:45.379 --> 00:10:49.320 Davis, and Fagan Ginger. Milt Wolf, who was the 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:51.500 last commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. 00:10:51.580 --> 00:10:53.960 Bringing the history of the old left -right to 00:10:53.960 --> 00:10:56.259 the students of the new left. And he stays active 00:10:56.259 --> 00:10:59.340 with local groups, too. C .S. Pays, Left Hand 00:10:59.340 --> 00:11:01.899 Books, the Rocky Mountain Peace Center. He just 00:11:01.899 --> 00:11:04.200 never, ever stopped. And away to the end. Yeah. 00:11:04.659 --> 00:11:06.580 Sender Gerland passed away at his home in Boulder 00:11:06.580 --> 00:11:10.419 on December 6, 1999. He was 97 years old. Left 00:11:10.419 --> 00:11:12.720 behind a huge family, too, right? He did. His 00:11:12.720 --> 00:11:15.299 wife, Martha, his children, Emily, Alexander, 00:11:15.539 --> 00:11:17.919 Victor, and his granddaughters, Annalise, Amy, 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:21.279 and Rachel. Just a massive legacy. Yeah. So what 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:23.080 does this all mean? When we look at this Wikipedia 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:26.129 article and trace this whole story, To me, Sender 00:11:26.129 --> 00:11:28.769 Garland's life is just a master class in relentless 00:11:28.769 --> 00:11:30.509 ideological commitment. Oh, without a doubt. 00:11:30.809 --> 00:11:34.149 I mean, from a little boy fleeing pogroms to 00:11:34.149 --> 00:11:37.450 praising and blaming books for the party to organizing 00:11:37.450 --> 00:11:41.629 forums in his 90s, his 97 years basically map 00:11:41.629 --> 00:11:44.730 out the entire 20th century American radical 00:11:44.730 --> 00:11:47.409 left. It really is a map. Yeah. And leaves you 00:11:47.409 --> 00:11:49.950 with such a lingering kind of provocative question, 00:11:49.970 --> 00:11:52.299 I think. What's that? Well, think about you, 00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:54.659 the listener, and think about someone dedicating 00:11:54.659 --> 00:11:58.059 80 years of their life to a single rigid political 00:11:58.059 --> 00:12:00.460 framework. I mean, from a teenager reading Upton 00:12:00.460 --> 00:12:03.460 Sinclair all the way to a 97 year old in Boulder. 00:12:03.580 --> 00:12:06.340 Yeah. When you hold on to an ideology for that 00:12:06.340 --> 00:12:09.120 long through massive global upheavals, purges 00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:12.759 and an entire Cold War, does your worldview actually 00:12:12.759 --> 00:12:15.620 adapt to the changing century or do you just 00:12:15.620 --> 00:12:17.639 spend a lifetime trying to force the changing 00:12:17.639 --> 00:12:20.549 century to fit your worldview? Wow. Does the 00:12:20.549 --> 00:12:22.629 teletype machine ever change its message, or 00:12:22.629 --> 00:12:24.889 does it just keep printing? Exactly. Something 00:12:24.889 --> 00:12:26.950 to really think about. Absolutely. Well, thank 00:12:26.950 --> 00:12:28.649 you so much for joining us on this deep dive. 00:12:28.750 --> 00:12:29.889 It's been great. Thanks for listening.