Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

In 1980, workers at the Gdansk shipyards in Poland formed a trade union called Solidarity. Within a year, 10 million Polish men and women had joined – more than a third of Poland’s adult population, and Solidarity became much more than a traditional trade union. Under its charismatic leader Lech Wałęsa, it was a social and political movement that mobilized ordinary citizens to challenge an authoritarian communist state that for decades had been under the thumb of the Soviet Union.

Today, as the United States confronts a sweeping attack from within on the pillars of our democracy, Americans would do well to take a page from Solidarity’s playbook. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to testify before the Senate on Tuesday to justify his department’s shrunken budget and shifted ambitions, including substantial cuts to the department of democracy, human rights and labor that I oversaw under President Barack Obama.

Those cuts will undermine our ability to fight authoritarian governments and support democratic movements around the world, and are devastating and concrete evidence that the U.S. is no longer a leader for countries that aspire to a democratic future. That means the U.S. must learn from the movements it once inspired, supported and funded.

Read the full US News & World Report article.
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Michael Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Professor of Business and Society and Director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.