The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms. Some see the New Left as an oppositional reaction to earlier Marxist and labor union movements for social justice that focused on dialectical materialism and social class, while others who used the term see the movement as a continuation and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans.
The New Left by
As the contributors to this anthology revisit the sixties to identify its ongoing impact on North American politics and culture, it becomes evident how this legacy has blended with, and influenced today's world-wide social movements, in particular, the anti-globalization movement, and the'Right to the City'movement: the successes and failures of civil society organisations as they struggle for a voice at all levels of decision-making are examined, as are the new movements of the urban disenfranchised--the homeless, the alienation of youth, the elderly poor. Apart from evoking memories of past peace and freedom struggles from those who worked on the social movements of the 1960s, this work also includes a number of essays from a rising generation of intellectuals and activists, too young to have experienced the 1960s firsthand, whose perspective enables them to offer fresh insights and analyses. Contributors include: Dimitrios Roussopoulos, Andrea Levy, Anthony Hyde, Jacques Martin, Mark Rudd, Katherina Haris, Gregory Nevala Calvert, Natasha Kapoor, and Tom Hayden.
Black Against Empire by
In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the United States, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in sixty-eight U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world.Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence.
The Black Panther Party in a City near You by
This is the third volume in Judson L. Jeffries's long-range effort to paint a more complete portrait of the most widely known organization to emerge from the 1960s Black Power Movement. Like its predecessors (Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party [2007] and On the Ground: The Black Panther Party in Communities across America [2010]), this volume looks at Black Panther Party (BPP) activity in sites outside Oakland, the most studied BPP locale and the one long associated with oversimplified and underdeveloped narratives about, and distorted images of, the organization.The cities covered in this volume are Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. The contributors examine official BPP branches and chapters as well as offices of the National Committee to Combat Fascism that evolved into full-fledged BPP chapters and branches. They have mined BPP archives and interviewed members to convey the daily ups-and-downs related to BPP's social-justice activities and to reveal the diversity of rank-and-file BPP members'personal backgrounds and the legal, political, and social skills, or baggage, that they brought to the BPP. The BPP reportedly had a presence in some forty places across the country. During this time, no other Black Power Movement organization fed as many children, provided healthcare to as many residents, educated as many adults, assisted as many senior citizens, and clothed as many people. In point of fact, no other organization of the Black Power era had as great an impact on American lives as did the BPP. Nonetheless, when Jeffries undertook this project, chapter-level scholarly investigations of the BPP were few and far between. This third book, The Black Panther Party in a City Near You, raises the number of BPP branches that Jeffries and his contributors have examined to seventeen.Contributors: Curtis Austin, Judson L. Jeffries, Charles E. Jones, Ava Kinsey, Duncan MacLaury, Sarah Nicklas, John Preusser.
The Young Lords by
Against the backdrop of America's escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city's racist policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising socialist vision for a new society, skillful ability to link local problems to international crises, and uncompromising vision for a new society riveted the media, alarmed New York's political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young Lords.Utilizing oral histories, archival records, and an enormous cache of police surveillance files released only after a decade-long Freedom of Information Law request and subsequent court battle, Johanna Fernandez has written the definitive account of the Young Lords, from their roots as a Chicago street gang to their rise and fall as a political organization in New York. Led by poor and working-class Puerto Rican youth, and consciously fashioned after the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords occupied a hospital, blocked traffic with uncollected garbage, took over a church, tested children for lead poisoning, defended prisoners, fought the military police, and fed breakfast to poor children. Their imaginative, irreverent protests and media conscious tactics won reforms, popularized socialism in the United States and exposed U.S. mainland audiences to the country's quiet imperial project in Puerto Rico. Fernandez challenges what we think we know about the sixties. She shows that movement organizers were concerned with finding solutions to problems as pedestrian as garbage collection and the removal of lead paint from tenement walls; gentrification; lack of access to medical care; childcare for working mothers; and the warehousing of people who could not be employed in deindustrialized cities. The Young Lords'politics and preoccupations, especially those concerning the rise of permanent unemployment foretold the end of the American Dream. In riveting style, Fernandez demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of popular urban culture in the age of great dreams.
Herbert Marcuse: an Aesthetics of Liberation by
When capitalism is clearly catastrophically out of control and its excesses cannot be sustained socially or ecologically, the ideas of Herbert Marcuse become as relevant as they were in the 1960s. This is the first English introduction to Marcuse to be published for decades, and deals specifically with his aesthetic theories and their relation to a critical theory of society. Although Marcuse is best known as a critic of consumer society, epitomised in the classic One-Dimensional Man, Malcolm Miles provides an insight into how Marcuse's aesthetic theories evolved within his broader attitudes, from his anxiety at the rise of fascism in the 1930s through heady optimism of the 1960s, to acceptance in the 1970s that radical art becomes an invaluable progressive force when political change has become deadlocked. Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation, in which art assumes a primary role in interrupting the operation of capitalism, made him a key figure for the student movement in the 1960s. As diverse forms of resistance rise once more, a new generation of students, scholars and activists will find Marcuse's radical theory essential to their struggle.
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.
Black Panthers for Beginners by
A crowd of onlookers gawked from the sidewalk as four young black men dressed in black leather jackets and berets leaped from a Volkswagen, each of them wielding shotguns with bandoliers strapped across their bodies. The young men surrounded two white police officers who had accosted a black man and had him spread-eagled against a building.The young men did not say a word as the police officers watched them nervously, their eyes fixed on the shotguns. One of the young men held a large law book in his hand…This was the Black Panther Party in ideal action. The real story—the whole story—was both more and less heroic.So begins Black Panthers For Beginners. The late 1960s, when the Panthers captured the imagination of the nation's youth, was a time of regulation. While their furious passage was marked by death, destruction and government sabotage, the Panthers left an instructive legacy for anyone who dares to challenge the system.Herb Boyd has done exhaustive research, examined the claims of all parties involved, and boiled the story down to “the truth.” We believe this is the most truthful book on the market, but each Panther has his or her own story to tell. We suggest that you check out the stories of all the Black Panthers
The Young Lords, also known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO) or Young Lords Party (YLP), was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. The group aims to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-determination for Puerto Rico, Latinos, and colonized ("Third World") people. Tactics used by the Young Lords include mass education, canvassing, community programs, occupations, and direct confrontation. The Young Lords became targets of the United States FBI's COINTELPRO program.
Herbert Marcuse, popularly known as "Father of the New Left", was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and then at Freiburg, where he received his PhD. He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research – what later became known as the Frankfurt School. In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism and popular culture, arguing that they represent new forms of social control.
Herbert Marcuse by
The Legacy of Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader is a collection of brand new papers by seventeen Marcuse scholars, which provides a comprehensive reassessment of the relevance of Marcuse's critical theory at the beginning of the 21st century.Although best known for his reputation in critical theory, Herbert Marcuse's work has had impact on areas as diverse as politics, technology, aesthetics, psychoanalysis and ecology. This collection addresses the contemporary relevance of Marcuse's work in this broad variety of fields and from an international perspective. In Part One, veteran scholars of Marcuse and the Frankfurt school examine the legacy of various specific areas of Marcuse's thought, including the quest for radical subjectivity, the maternal ethic and the negative dialectics of imagination. Part Two focuses on a very new trend in Marcuse scholarship: the link between Marcuse's ideas and environmental thought. The third part of this collection is dedicated to the work of younger Marcuse scholars, with the aim of documenting Marcuse's reception among the next generation of critical theorists. The final section of the book contains recollections on Marcuse's person rather than his critical theory, including an informative look back over his life by his son, Peter.