Sidney Lens also known by his party name Sid Okun, was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 labor leader, political activist, and author, best known for his book, The Day Before Doomsday, which warns of the prospect of nuclear annihilation, published in 1977 by Doubleday. He also wrote a history of U.S. intervention abroad, The Forging of the American Empire, originally published in 1974 and republished in 2003 by Haymarket Books

Haymarket Books

Haymarket Books is a non-profit left-wing book publisher and distributor. It is published by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change...

 with a new introduction by Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...

; and an autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

, Unrepentant Radical.

Formerly a member of Hugo Oehler

Hugo Oehler

-Biography:An active trade unionist, Oehler joined the Communist Party USA in its early days, and by 1927 was a district organizer for the party in Kansas...

's Revolutionary Workers League

Revolutionary Workers League (Oehlerite)

The Revolutionary Workers League was a radical left group in the United States. It was led by Hugo Oehler and published The Fighting Worker newspaper.-Origins:...

, Lens was active in retail worker unions in Chicago and in the anti-war

Anti-war

An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...

 movement during the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Lens was an editor of The Progressive

The Progressive

The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics, culture and progressivism with a pronounced liberal perspective on some issues. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The magazine also devotes much coverage...

.

In 1980, Lens was the Citizens Party (United States)

Citizens Party (United States)

The Citizens Party was a political party in the United States. It was founded in Washington, D.C. by Barry Commoner, who wanted to gather under one umbrella political organization all the environmentalist and liberal groups which were unsatisfied with President Carter's administration. The Citizens...

 candidate for United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 in Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

.

List of works

• John Dewey, a Marxian critique [Chicago] Revolutionary workers league, U.S. 1942 written under the pseudonym
  Pseudonym
  A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
  
  Sid Okun
• Left, Right, and Center (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1949): explains some of the anomalies of the American labor movement
• The Counterfeit Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952): why Stalinism, despite its corrupt nature, nonetheless appeals to millions of people in the non-communist world
• A World in Revolution (1956): revolutionary movements around the word, based on extensive travels
• The Crisis of American Labor (1959)
• Working Men (1960): a history of labor, for young people
• Africa, Awakening Giant for young people
• The Futile Crusade: Anti-Communism as American Credo (1964): how American foreign policy was being hobbled by equating liberalism and socialism with communism
• A Country Is Born (1964): the story of the American Revolution, for young people
• Radicalism in America (1966): a history of the American left from 1620 to the present
• What Unions Do
• Poverty: America's Enduring Paradox (1969): poverty and anti-poverty programs from the Renaissance to the Great Society
• The Military Industrial Complex (Kahn and Averill, 1970)
• The Forging of the American Empire (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1971): American intervention and imperial expansionism throughout its history
• The Labor Wars (New York: Doubleday, 1973): the struggles of the labor movement from the Molly Maguires to the 1930s
• Poverty, Yesterday and Today (1973) a history of poverty for young people
• The Promise and Pitfalls of Revolution (1974)
• The Day Before Doomsday (New York: Doubleday, 1977): On the dangers of nuclear war
• The Unrepentant Radical (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980): Autobiography
• The Bomb (New York: Dutton, 1982): a history of the arms race, for young people
• The Maginot Line Syndrome: America's Hopeless Foreign Policy (Ballinger, 1982)
• The Permanent War (New York: Schocken, 1987): a shadow, unaccountable American government is committed to maintaining a permanent state of militarism
• Vietnam: War on Two Fronts