In the ’60s and ’70s, thousands of student radicals across North America and Western Europe decided to become manual workers to get rooted in the working class and participate in its struggles. Jon Melrod was one of them.

After a period of intense involvement in the student movement against the Vietnam War, and in solidarity with the Black Panthers, Melrod chose to find employment in a factory. He spent thirteen years of his life as an industrial worker, most of them as an employee of American Motors Corporation (AMC) in Wisconsin. His aim was to transform Local 72 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) “into a model of union militancy, rank-and-file democracy, and progressive political action.” During his career as an autoworker, Melrod was one of the leading actors of a caucus of dedicated activists who published the Fighting Times newsletter and organized various actions to improve working conditions, raise the level of political consciousness, and fight against sexism and racism.

Melrod grew up in an all-white, largely Jewish neighborhood in the racially segregated Washington, DC, of the 1950s. After graduating from an uptight boarding school in Vermont, he enrolled at University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he got deeply involved in student politics. He joined Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1968, when the organization was at its peak.