Sidney Lens

Sidney Lens (born on Jan. 28, 1912 in Newark, New Jersey, died, 1986). His real name is Sidney Okun and, while testifying under oath on Feb. 15, 1965 before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, said that he could not remember if he had ever changed his name legally. Lens-Okun married Shirley Ruben.

AFL-CIO

Since 1941, Lens served as director of Local 329 of the United Service Employees Union, AFL-CIO.

Running for Illinois

Lens has run unsuccessfully for the Illinois legislature and for the United States House of Representatives. He has also been a member of the board of directors of the Chicago Council for Foreign Relations.

Support for peace movement

In 1962 Shirley Lens and Sidney Lens servedon the Advisory Council of the Hyde Park Community Peace Center, with Timuel Black and Quentin Young.

National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee

As of May 1964, Sidney Lens, writer, business Manager Local #929 AFL-CIO, Chicago Illinois, was listed as a sponsor of the Communist Party USA front, National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices

In January 1969, the Chicago radical newspaper, Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices, listed those who had helped produce its first 16 monthly issues as "writers, researchers, photographers, artists and clerical workers".

The list included Sidney Lens.

GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee

Circa 1969, Sid Lens, National Mobilization Committee, Chicago , was listed as a sponsor of the Socialist Workers Party led GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee .

Guardian

In March 1979, the New York radical magazine the Guardian issued an emergency appeal to funds in an effort to save the publication.

Over fifty supporters endorsed the appeal including Sidney Lens

Institute for Policy Studies

In 1993 was listed as a among "former Visiting Fellows and Visiting Scholars and current TransNational Institute Fellows" on the Institute for Policy Studies 30th Anniversary brochure.

Fair Play for Cuba Committee

Lens was an original sponsor of the Castro-subsidized Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This led to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee calling him as a witness.

Communist Affiliations

Lens invoked the protection of the first and fifth amendments to the Constitution when asked whether he had been a member of the Revolutionary Workers League (cited as subversive and Communist) from the mid-1930s until late 1947. He also declined to answer when asked if he had ever been a Trotskyite or a member of any splinter group of Trotskyites. These are instances of Len's evasiveness when confronted regarding his alleged Communist-affiliations.

However Len did admit to having held official positions in the American forum of Socialist Education. He further admitted to writing a pamphlet for the Mine, Mill and Smelters Union, ten years after that union was expelled from the CIO for being dominated by Communists. He also admitted to signing an appeal to the 86^th congress, calling for the United States to abandon unilaterally all nuclear weapons tests, calling for admission of Red China to the UN and calling for all U.S. foreign aid to be channeled through agencies of the United Nations. Lens also admitted that he had petitioned at various times for amnesty for Communist Party leaders who were convicted under the Smith Act; for the convicted Communist spy, Morton Sobell and for Communists Henry Winston and Gil Green.

Len has further been a sponsor of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee; a committee with the directive to lead and direct thr Communist Party's Operation Abolition campaign.

In 1965, Len was a prominent supporter of the anti-Vietnam "teach-in" movement, which the Communist propaganda apparatus exploited for purely Communist purposes. In 1966, he was a member of the national council of the Committee for Independent Political Action, and a main speaker at the CIPA's Chicago conference. The CIPA has as its objective the formation of a new political party, and the Chicago conference was attended by radical pacifists, violent racists, representatives of the so-called "new left" and known members of the Communist Party.

Publications

• Left, Right and Center
• The Counterfeit Revolution
• A World in Revolution
• The Crisis of American Labor
• Working Men
• Africa - Awakening Giant
• The Futile Crusade
• A Country is Born

Lens has also written for such magazines as Commonweal, Harvard Business Review and Liberation Magazine, the masthead of which features a representative list of pacifists, Socialists, "civil rights" agitators, and notorious Communist-fronters, including Dorothy Day, Waldo Frank, Bayard Rustin, Lewis Mumford, Staughton Lynd, Michael Harrington, James Peck and Martin Luther King Jr..