Sidney Lens (1912–1986), also known by his birth name Sid Okun, was an American 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 with a new introduction by Howard Zinn; and an autobiography, Unrepentant Radical.
Formerly a member of Hugo Oehler's Revolutionary Workers League, Lens was active in retail worker unions in Chicago and in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. In 1967, he was among more than 500 writers and editors who signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse to pay the 10% Vietnam War Tax surcharge proposed by president Johnson.
Lens was an editor of The Progressive.
In 1980, Lens was the Citizens Party (United States) candidate for United States Senate in Illinois.
John Dewey, a Marxian critique [Chicago] Revolutionary workers league, U.S. 1942 written under his birth name, Sid OkunLeft, Right, and Center (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1949): explains some of the anomalies of the American labor movementThe Counterfeit Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952): why Stalinism, despite its corrupt nature, nonetheless appeals to millions of people in the non-communist worldA World in Revolution (1956): revolutionary movements around the word, based on extensive travelsThe Crisis of American Labor (1959)Working Men (1960): a history of labor, for young peopleAfrica, Awakening Giant for young peopleThe Futile Crusade: Anti-Communism as American Credo (1964): how American foreign policy was being hobbled by equating liberalism and socialism with communismA Country Is Born (1964): the story of the American Revolution, for young peopleRadicalism in America (1966): a history of the American left from 1620 to the presentWhat Unions DoPoverty: America's Enduring Paradox (1969): poverty and anti-poverty programs from the Renaissance to the Great SocietyThe 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 historyThe Labor Wars (New York: Doubleday, 1973): the struggles of the labor movement from the Molly Maguires to the 1930sPoverty, Yesterday and Today (1973) a history of poverty for young peopleThe Promise and Pitfalls of Revolution (1974)The Day Before Doomsday (New York: Doubleday, 1977): On the dangers of nuclear warThe Unrepentant Radical (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980): AutobiographyThe Bomb (New York: Dutton, 1982): a history of the arms race, for young peopleThe 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 militarismVietnam: War on Two Fronts
