Rustin's Challenge
Sun, May 17
|Philadelphia Ethical Society
Martin Luther King's chief strategist was an outspoken proponent for a class-first analysis. His words and analysis are just as relevant now. w/ Paul Prescod, Dustin Guastella and Melissa Naschek.
Time & Location
May 17, 2026, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA
Guests
About the event
Paul Prescod is a Labor Notes staff organizer and a Jacobin Magazine contributing editor. Formerly he was a Philadelphia public school teacher and organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Dustin Guastella is director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics.
Melissa Naschek is a writer and the co-host of Jacobin's Confronting Capitalism podcast
There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists today valorize Rustin on the basis of his multiple oppressed identities and civil rights organizing. On the other hand, many others dismiss him for being compromised by his commitment to the Democratic Party or by his deep suspicion of the new forms of left activism that appeared in the mid-1960s.
While Rustin certainly made some strategic mis-steps later in…