Herman Benson, who died July 2 just a week shy of what would have been his 105th birthday, spent most of those last 90 years fighting for improved conditions for workers and greater democracy in the unions that represented them—and without worrying about offending labor's establishment in doing so.
His essence could be distilled in a letter he sent to this newspaper in October 2010 that was addressed to Mayor Michael Bloomberg when Mr. Benson was 95 and still working as the secretary-treasurer of the Association for Union Democracy, which he founded in the early 1970s.
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