"Working-Class New York is the moving story of the creation by workers and their allies of a local social democracy, remarkable in its ambitions and achievements, and the ways it came crashing down. With a keen eye for historical detail and a firm grasp of the intricacies of New York City politics, Freeman shows how the anti-communist purges of the 1950s decimated the ranks of the labor movement and demoralized its idealism, and how the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s dealt a crushing blow to liberal ideals as the city's wealthy elite made an audacious grab for power." "A work of cultural and social history, Working-Class New York is a chronicle of a dream that died but that may yet rise again, and a celebration of the sophistication, energy, and inventiveness of ordinary New Yorkers."--BOOK JACKET.