[2] As an assistant to civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, Kahn helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, during which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

A leader in the Socialist Party of America, Kahn supported its 1972 name change to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA).

His father, a member of the Communist Party USA, became President of the Transport Workers Local 101 of the Brooklyn Union Gas Company.

[2][8] At Brooklyn College (CUNY), the undergraduate students Kahn and Horowitz joined the U.S. movement for democratic socialism after hearing Max Shachtman denounce the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary:[9] Shachtman described rolling Russian tanks ... defenceless Hungarian workers and students fighting back with stones ... a heroic people's crushed hopes, and ... our democratic socialist links to those hopes.

[2] Harrington had joined Shachtman after working with Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker's house of hospitality in the Bowery of Lower Manhattan.

[17][18] He had a short relationship with a member of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL): Although everyone active in the movement was aware of it, [before 1956] he was never explicitly out of the closet.

"[19]Tom Kahn was "very good looking, a very attractive guy" according to longtime socialist David McReynolds,[17] who was also an openly gay New Yorker.

He introduced me to Bach and Brahms, and to the importance of maintaining a balance in life between the pursuit of our individual pleasures and engagements in, and responsibility for, the social condition.

[2] However, cohabiting in Rustin's apartment proved unsuccessful, and their romantic relationship ended when Kahn enrolled in the historically black Howard University.

Kahn and Carmichael helped to fund a five-day run of Three Penny Opera, by the Marxist playwright Berthold Brecht and the socialist composer Kurt Weill: "Tom Kahn—very shrewdly—had captured the position of Treasurer of the Liberal Arts Student Council and the infinitely charismatic and popular Carmichael as floor whip was good at lining up the votes.

[24][26] Kahn (along with Horowitz and Norman Hill) helped Rustin and A. Philip Randolph to plan the 1963 March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

[29] Kahn's The Economics of Equality LID pamphlet gave an "incisive radical analysis of what it would take to end racial oppression".

Along with other LID members Rachelle Horowitz, Michael Harrington, and Don Slaiman, Kahn attended the LID-sponsored meeting that discussed the Port Huron Statement.

[39] The clause's removal effectively invited "disciplined cadre" to attempt to "take over or paralyze" SDS, as had occurred to mass organizations in the thirties.

I never did quite get all the organizational acronyms straight—YPSL, LID, SP, SDA, ISL—but the key words were "democratic", "labor", "young" and, until events redefined it away from their understanding, "socialist".

But that is because American foreign policy eventually became just such a mixture, thanks in part to those "Yipsels" (Young People's Socialist League), with Tom Kahn as provocateur-at-large.

[47]Kahn worked as a senior assistant and speechwriter for Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, AFL–CIO Presidents George Meany and Lane Kirkland, and other leaders of the Democratic Party, labor unions, and civil rights organizations.

His proposal was rejected by the majority, who criticized the war's conduct and called for a negotiated peace treaty, the position associated with Shachtman and Kahn.

[48] Harrington handed former SDS activist and New York City journalist Jack Newfield a speech by AFL–CIO President George Meany.

Addressing the September 1972 Convention of the United Steelworkers of America, Meany ridiculed the Democratic Party Convention, which had been held in Miami: We heard from the gay-lib [gay-liberation] people who want to legalize marriage between boys and boys, and between girls and girls ... We heard from the people who looked like Jacks, acted like Jills, and had the odor of Johns [customers of prostitutes] about them.This gay-baiting taunt was attributed to Kahn by Harrington, and repeated by Newfield in his autobiography.

In 1980 AFL–CIO officer Lane Kirkland appointed Kahn to organize the AFL–CIO's support for the Polish labor-union Solidarity, which was maintained and indeed increased even after protests by the USSR and Carter administration.

The AFL–CIO sought approval in advance from Solidarity's leadership, to avoid jeopardizing their position with unwanted or surprising American help.

This effort has elicited from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria the most massive and vicious propaganda assault ... in many, many years.

The ominous tone of the most recent attacks leaves no doubt that if the Soviet Union invades, it shall cite the aid of the AFL–CIO as evidence of outside anti-Socialist intervention.

In formulating this position, our first concern was to consult our friends in Solidarity ... and their views are reflected in the statement unanimously adopted by the AFL–CIO Executive Council: The AFL–CIO will support additional aid to Poland only if it is conditioned on the adherence of the Polish government to the 21 points of the Gdansk Agreement.

Only then could we be assured that the Polish workers will be in a position to defend their gains and to struggle for a fair share of the benefits of Western aid.

[4] Both parties and President Ronald Reagan supported a non-governmental organization, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), through which Congress would openly fund Solidarity through an allocation in the State Department's budget, beginning in 1984.

The NED's first president was Carl Gershman, a former director of Social Democrats, USA and former U.S. Representative to the United Nations committee on human rights.

Working with leaders from member unions, Kahn helped to draft resolutions that represented consensus decisions for nearly all issues.

[8] Kahn died from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Silver Spring, Maryland on March 27, 1992, at the age of 53, after having been cared for by his partner and supported by his friends and colleagues.