The Final Countdown: America’s Last Chance to Save the Labor Movement The Final Countdown: America’s Last Chance to Save the Labor Movement March 8, 2021 “I still believe in ideals. I am not for a return to that definition of Liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few. I prefer and I am sure you prefer that broader definition of Liberty under which we are moving forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man than he has ever known before.” In this 1934 Fireside Chat, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in no uncertain terms, proclaimed the democratizing and equalizing power of organized labor in the United States. In the face of the largest economic crisis in history, with millions of Americans out of work and impoverished, union strength grew to unprecedented levels.