Mike Davis’s Many Contributions to Building a Better World Will Live On
No leftist writer can compare to Mike Davis — not in clarity, breadth, generosity, or ironclad commitment to the working class. Davis has died, but his ideas will continue to find life in generations of leftist activists and thinkers to come.
Madison Square Garden’s interior filled with thousands of striking garment workers in 1958. A banner reads “On with the strike — on to victory!” Mike Davis remained resolute in his belief in labor’s collective power. (Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
Our mentors are dying.
At one level, this is a banal statement — an inevitable consequence of the forward march of time. But for those of us on the Left, there are historical and political factors that give it additional weight.
One consequence of the past several decades of defeat and demoralization for the Left has been a lack of generational replacement of leftist leadership and mentorship. Not only have there been fewer people available to serve as potential new leaders and mentors, but those of us who came of age politically between the 1980s and 2000s have had fewer and smaller movements upon which we could cut our teeth and develop as leaders and mentors ourselves.
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