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association." Argersinger is right on this point. Because the PUL was a mature and
powerful organization before the creation of the WAA, it continued to function
with a great deal of local integrity during the period it was with the national
grouping. Indeed, it maintained its distinct local identity and its locally-oriented
activities throughout the 1930s and, symbolically, it never abandoned its original
name or added "Workers' Alliance of America" to it. Additionally, PUL as a local
process was powerful enough to split from the national WAA in 1939, when, from
the PUL leaderships' perspective, the national WAA became totally "Communist
dominated." Indeed, the PUL was able after this split to become the base for an
attempt to construct another national organization of the unemployed as a rival to
the WAA; L. Leith of the PUL became the national chairman of this rival body, the
Worker Security Federation in mid-1940. *
But Rosenzweig is also right. After 1934, the attraction of a nationally-
organized unemployed movement narrowed the focus of PUL's locally-oriented
activities - not in terms of becoming unresponsive to the local unemployed — but in
terms of its ability to cross the lines between the unemployed sector of the regions'
social movements and the other sectors, and to experiment with the more broadly
political campaigns. A dilemma faces every locally-generated movement when it
looks to merge more closely with a nationally organized movement, especially if
that national movement defines itself strictly in terms of one sector of the broader
social struggle (trade union, unemployed, civil rights, etc.): greater local flexibility
versus greater nationally-based strength. Presented with this choice few local
movements would sacrifice strength for flexibility. Nonetheless, something
important is almost always lost in the process.
During 1934 and 1935, the City-Wide Young People's Forum and the
Baltimore Black freedom movement also experienced growing connections to
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