60s New Left: National and International

A New Left Begins
2nd sessions
Beginning Tuesday, May 2 — sessions continue through July
with Mitch Abidor, Jenny Brown, Michael Pelias and others

May 2, a reading and discussion of Marat/Sade. Watch the film if you have the opportunity
May 9 and 16, RD Laing, counter-psychiatric / anti-psychiatry. The Politics of Experience and more. Presentations and discussion with Michael Pelias on May 9 and May 16.
May 23 and 30. Paris. May, 1968. These talks will investigate the events May 68 in France through an analysis of the writings of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of the most important and interesting of its leaders, as well as the experiences of rank and file militants interviewed by Mitch Abidor for his forthcoming oral history, May Made Me.
Mitchell Abidor is the principal French translator for the Marxists Internet Archive and has published several collections of his translations, among them Jean Jaurès’ Socialist History of the French Revolution and A Raskolnikoff by Emmanuel Bove, and previously untranslated works by Victor Serge and Daniel Guerin, as well as writings from the French Revolution, are forthcoming. His May Made Me will appear in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the May events in France.
June 6 and 13. The music didn’t die. A look at the many cultural influences of the first generation born with the bomb and mutually assured destruction from day one. An overview and music and a reading and discussion of Jeff Nuttal’s Bomb Culture.
The growth of Women’s liberation and the experience of the growth of this mass movement in the 1960s and what this meant for the new left. Jenny Brown from National Women’s Liberation will select and help focus these our discussion at dates to be determined.
Jenny Brown is an organizer with National Women’s Liberation and has been involved in feminist theory and organizing since 1988, first with Gainesville Women’s Liberation in Gainesville, Florida and then with the Redstockings Women’s Liberation Archives for Action, a movement think-tank and archive based in New York. She co-authored the Redstockings book, Women’s Liberation and National Healthcare: Confronting the Myth of America and the Labor Notes book How to Jump Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers along with numerous essays and articles. She was also a co-chair of a Labor Party Local Organizing Committee in Gainesville, Florida and is a former editor of Labor Notes.