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chapter 3 Coming Home Veterans Advocacy and Renewed Political Commitment A Man and His Union: Mine-Mill and the Organizational Impulse For the restless Clinton Jencks, the ASARCO job provided a new lease on life. Although the work initially involved hard and dirty labor in a low-wage position, it connected him again to the world of social action through the union. Although he worried about the corrosive impact of the fumes that caused his clothes to disintegrate in a day’s time (he wondered what they were doing to his lungs), he was upbeat once more, his morale boosted by the camaraderie he found among workers in the mill. Virginia observed an immediate change in her husband, who suddenly appeared to have “discovered something big.” She concluded that it was not really the job itself that “delighted him.” Rather, she asserted, “it was the nature of the people with whom he worked.”1 As a new member of Denver’s IUMMSW Local 557, Jencks rediscovered the exhilaration in solidarity that he had once experienced as a leader in the prewar student movement. Comfortable in this familiar environment, Jencks soon became active in the union, his primary avocation. As historian Ellen Baker observes, he “quickly made union work his second job.” He also resumed his prewar cooperation with the Communists, a logical step for a man who had found in Marx an “explanation of the violence against workers he had witnessed all his life.” Naturally outgoing and sincere in his dedication to unionism, he quickly emerged as a respected leader among the workers in Local 557, who responded to his initiativebyelectinghimshopstewardnotlongafterhisarrival.Byallaccounts, moreover, an increasingly militant Virginia Jencks was not a stranger in the union hall, where her views as a progressive were as well known as those of her Lorence_Palomino.indd 35 2/19/13 12:12 PM outspoken husband, who now took his place in the long line of fiery Mine-Mill organizers who had assumed the mantle of labor leadership after the demise of the militant Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Jencks was fully conscious of the importance of Mine-Mill’s break with the American Federation of Labor in 1937 when the IUMMSW helped strengthen the aggressive industrial union they now identified with, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). To him it was the CIO that offered industrial workers hope for the future in the postwar economy. Before long the strength of his commitment to the union resulted in a rapid rise within the ranks as the Mine-Mill leadership recognized his organizational talents.2 Jencks’s renewal of party ties in 1946 was perfectly consistent with the deep Socialist belief system he had developed since his high school years. Driven by the spirit of communalism, he embraced “political, economic, and social forms and expressions that [sought] to empower and mutually benefit all.” To him the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA; hereafter, shortened to CP) was still the organization whose work, as was true in the 1930s, most closely approximated his own desire to build a more “democratic, humane, and just society.” It followed that for Jencks, working as an organizer for a progressive union was “as natural as a leaf growing on a tree.”3 In view of his prewar background and inborn proclivity for working with all progressive forces engaged in the social struggle, his party affiliation was to be expected. Equally predictable was his determination to assume a high profile in a variety of venues, not the least of which was his active engagement in the discussion and advocacy of Denver-area veterans’ issues. Colorado’s postwar problems mirrored those confronted by returning veterans nationwide: rampant inflation, a housing shortage, veterans’ unemployment, and the persistence of discrimination against people of color, all of which offended progressives, who insisted that the war should lead to a more equitable future for those who had sacrificed their youth. Veterans Advocacy and Ideological Commitment Given his extraordinary war record and a personal history of political activism , Jencks’s engagement in organized veterans work represented a logical extension of his prewar life. In the immediate postwar era, many former servicemen and women were acutely aware of what Jencks saw as the “reactionary ” character of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In response to this political reality, progressive veterans coalesced around an 36 building for the future Lorence_Palomino.indd 36 2/19/13 12:12 PM [18.117.107.90] Project MUSE...

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