At the same time, workers throughout the country were beginning to organize for better wages and working conditions. There was a growing movement among the economically oppressed to band together for solidarity and bargaining strength, and photographers were directly participating in these activities. Shortly before Group 64 was formed, Edward Weston went to a meeting of the John Reed Club, which was founded to support Marxist artists and writers. These circumstances not only helped set up the situation in which a group of like-minded friends decided to come together around a common interest, but they played a significant role in how they thought about their effort. Group 64 was more than a club of artists; they described themselves as engaged in a battle against a "tide of oppressive pictorialism" and purposely called their defining proclamation a manifesto, with all the political overtones that the name implies.
