Ken Germanson, a longtime labor historian, knows the story of the working man and woman inside and out. He remembers delivering newspapers when gas, sugar, milk and butter were rationed during World War II. He got his professional start as a reporter, got involved in the Newspaper Guild while at the Milwaukee Sentinel, and then moved on to jobs with other unions, including as assistant to the international president of the Allied Industrial Workers Union, now part of the Steelworkers Union. Although he’ll always be a union man, he retired from labor work in 1992 and had a second career in social services. At Community Advocates, he worked on efforts to prevent child abuse, provide health care to low-income families and stop gun violence. He’s been involved in a variety of community groups, including one that tried to improve race relations in a far south side neighborhood in the 1960s.  Now in his 80s, he’s retired but still passionate about social justice and still blogging. A recent post on Advoken’s Blog discusses how socialism, which has been back in the news in recent years, was prominent in Milwaukee around the turn of the last century and largely tied to labor. In 2014, Ken was awarded the city’s Frank P. Zeidler Community Service Award.