Liberalism against capitalism

08-14-2023 • arclein

The Thomas D Lambros Federal Building and Courthouse is named for Judge Thomas Demetrios Lambros (1930-2019), native son of Ashtabula, Ohio, who in 1967 was appointed to the federal bench by the US president Lyndon B Johnson. The website of the US General Services Administration remembers Judge Lambros as 'a pioneer in the alternative dispute resolution movement' ?" arbitration, as it is generally known. But the people of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley might remember Judge Lambros for a different reason. Lambros presided over a fiercely contested lawsuit in 1979-80 filed by 3,500 steelworkers laid off by United States Steel Corporation's Youngstown Works plant ?" part of a wave of closures across what we now call the Rust Belt. The lawsuit was an avowedly desperate effort to compel US Steel to sell the company either to the city or else to the workers who, hopefully with federal loans, would continue to operate the