The Conference for Progressive Political Action was officially established by the convention call of the 16 major railway labor unions in the United States, represented by a committee of six: William H. Johnston of the Machinists' Union, Martin F. Ryan of the Railway Carmen, Warren S. Stone of the Locomotive Engineers, E.J. Manion or the Railroad Telegraphers, Timothy Healy of the Stationary Firemen, and L.E. Sheppard of the Railway Conductors. The idea of joining the "forces of every progressive, liberal, and radical organization of the workers must be mobilized to repel these assaults and to advance the industrial and political power of the working class" seems to have originated with the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, which issued an appeal to unions and progressive political organizations for such a group in September 1921.
The CPPA was originally intended to be an umbrella organization uniting various elements of the Farmer-Labor political movement around a common program for joint independent political action. In practice, however, invitations to the group's founding conference were issued to members of a wide variety of "progressive" organizations, including those who did not seek a new political organization. As a result, the body was quite heterogeneous and unable to agree on a program or even a declaration of principles at its initial gathering.
Read more about Conference For Progressive Political Action: Founding Conference, Second Conference, Third Conference, First Convention, National Committee Meeting, Second Convention
Famous quotes containing the words conference, progressive, political and/or action:
“The peace conference must not adjourn without the establishment of some ordered system of international government, backed by power enough to give authority to its decrees. ... Unless a league something like this results at our peace conference, we shall merely drop back into armed hostility and international anarchy. The war will have been fought in vain ...”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)
“We ask for no statistics of the killed,
For nothing political impinges on
This single casualty, or all those gone,
Missing or healing, sinking or dispersed,
Hundreds of thousands counted, millions lost.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)