From Union Halls to the Suburbs
Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism

Scott Kamen (Author)

9781625347619

Paperback / softback, published 28 December 2023

300 pages, 13 illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.272 kg

Based on thorough research, Kamen adroitly illuminates major historical contexts while telling a story about an important organization and a crucial time—the early 1940s to the present. The book has the potential to enter political discussions outside of academe." - Kevin Mattson, author of We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) exerted an outsized pull on the political stage. Formed in 1947 by anticommunist liberals such as economist John Kenneth Galbraith and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the ADA established itself as the most prominent liberal organization in the United States for more than a quarter century. Shaped by the ADA, the New Politics movement upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality.

By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues.