Thomas F. Barton papers

Thomas F. Barton was born in 1935 in Indiana. He was active in the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL), a chapter within the Socialist Party, during the 1950s and through the first half of the 1960s. During this time, he was also a member of the Student Peace Union, in which he assisted in organizing the anti-Vietnam War movement in Philadelphia, and an editor of the Young Socialist Review. Barton represented the Chicago Branch of the YPSL at its national convention in 1964, a year by which the chapter began to align more closely with Trotskyism. This ideological shift led to many changes within the organization that ultimately led to its dissolution.

Barton continued to participate in the peace movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s as the east-coast distributor of the anti-war Vietnam GI newsletter with fellow activist Jeff Sharlet, which was circulated to troops deployed in Vietnam as well as those in the Army Reserves in the United States. His participation with the newsletter laid the roots for his later anti-Iraq War activism. In 2003, Barton began publishing the anti-war Traveling Soldier newsletter which was distributed among soldiers deployed in Iraq, as well as Germany, Japan, and various military bases in the United States. Barton also established the Military Project, a committee that grew from the organizing efforts of Traveling Soldier that supported the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and helped organize soldiers and civilians against the war. The Military Project also organized prisoners against the Iraq War into the Prisoners Against the War section of the committee. In the same year, Barton also began publishing the anti-war GI Special newsletter, later known as Military Resistance, an emailed newsletter that is still being published. The Military Project collaborated with various anti-Iraq War organizations and committees, including Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Veterans for Peace (VFP) and the Troops Out Now coalition, to advocate for the end of the Iraq War.

Barton remained active in the socialist and labor movements throughout his life. During the 1970s he published the pro-labor and anti-Vietnam War Wildcat newspaper, in association with the Wildcat group, which sought to organize industrial workers in various cities throughout the United States. He maintained membership in multiple socialist organizations throughout the 1970s and into the 2000s, including the American Socialist Organizing Committee, and published a newspaper of the same name. He was also a shop steward for Local 768, District Council 37, which organized against budget cuts to Medicaid and layoffs made within the Greater Hospital Association of New York (1199) in New York City.

Bibliography:

“Background on Thomas Barton.” Thomas Barton Papers (MS 539). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Various items throughout the Thomas F. Barton papers, 1964-2015, bulk 2003-2005, HLL.2019.005, Gerth Archives and Special Collections, California State University, Dominguez Hills.