During 1968, in France, Italy, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and all over the world, there were immense uprisings against the status quo. This fall, we will study this watershed period (1968-1974) considering the achievements and failures of the Left in the 1960s. How ready was the Left to face the imposition of neoliberalism, one aspect of capital’s response to these uprisings?
During 1968, in France, Italy, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, and all over the world, there were immense uprisings against the status quo. This fall, we will study this watershed period (1968-1974) considering the achievements and failures of the Left in the 1960s. How ready was the Left to face the imposition of neoliberalism, one aspect of capital’s response to these uprisings?
Thomas M. Grace details how the National Guard killings of antiwar students at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, were not a mere tragic anomaly. Rather they were grounded in a tradition of student political activism that extended back to Ohio’s labor battles of the 1960s.
This reading group, designed to accompany Interference Archives’ exhibit Finally Got The News will explore some of the key liberation movements of the 1970s U.S. through the lens of written documents included in the exhibition, as well as excerpts from publications by the activists and intellectuals who led, chronicled and theorized about them. This is not a nostalgia trip, but an opportunity to critically examine some important and often-overlooked threads of our collective history in order to inform our own politics of liberation in the 21st century.
“The free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” ― Herbert Marcuse
“Disaffiliation was deliberate, and conscious, even self-conscious, among the demonstrators who appreared in the fifties—unavoidably, disaffiliation is a prerequisite of protest.” —Jeffrey Nuttall, Bomb Culture