Alinsky would not apologise for working with Communists at a time when, in his opinion, they were doing "a hell of a lot of good work in the vanguard of the labor movement and ... in aiding blacks and Okies and Southern sharecroppers." "Anyone", he remarked, "who was involved in the causes of the thirties and says he didn't know any communists is either a liar or an idiot". They were "all over the place, fighting for the New Deal the CIO and so forth".