The Hidden 1970s
320 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paperback
Release Date:24 Sep 2010
ISBN:9780813548746
The Hidden 1970s
Histories of Radicalism
Edited by Dan Berger; Introduction by Dan Berger
Rutgers University Press
The 1970s were a complex, multilayered, and critical part of a long era of profound societal change and an essential component of the decade before-several of the most iconic events of "the sixties" occurred in the ten years that followed. The Hidden 1970s explores the distinctiveness of those years, a time when radicals tried to change the world as the world changed around them.
This powerful collection is a compelling assessment of left-wing social movements in a period many have described as dominated by conservatism or confusion. Scholars examine critical and largely buried legacies of the 1970s. The decade of Nixon's fall and Reagan's rise also saw widespread indigenous militancy, prisoner uprisings, transnational campaigns for self-determination, pacifism, and queer theories of play as political action. Contributors focus on diverse topics, including the internationalization of Black Power and Native sovereignty, organizing for Puerto Rican independence among Latinos and whites, and women's self-defense. Essays and ideas trace the roots of struggles from the 1960s through the 1970s, providing fascinating insight into the myriad ways that radical social movements shaped American political culture in the 1970s and the many ways they continue to do so today.
This powerful collection is a compelling assessment of left-wing social movements in a period many have described as dominated by conservatism or confusion. Scholars examine critical and largely buried legacies of the 1970s. The decade of Nixon's fall and Reagan's rise also saw widespread indigenous militancy, prisoner uprisings, transnational campaigns for self-determination, pacifism, and queer theories of play as political action. Contributors focus on diverse topics, including the internationalization of Black Power and Native sovereignty, organizing for Puerto Rican independence among Latinos and whites, and women's self-defense. Essays and ideas trace the roots of struggles from the 1960s through the 1970s, providing fascinating insight into the myriad ways that radical social movements shaped American political culture in the 1970s and the many ways they continue to do so today.
For readers interested in Red Power, Brown Power, women's liberation, peace movements, queer politics, and the white left, this important volume offers new perspectives and information that is not available elsewhere. The essays, by a mix of emerging scholars and scholar-activists, offer views of the recent past that should reshape the consensus about the 1970s to focus on activism, organizing, and violence from above and below.
Important and insightful, The Hidden 1970s boldly reimagines a decade that remains understudied and misunderstood.
This collection examines various radical movements of the 1970s and the sweep is wide-ranging. Among the most telling presentations are those discussing sexual abuse, Puerto Rican independence, gay liberation, and the pacifist underground. Recommended.
Dan Berger has gathered fourteen studies of radical movements and offers a brief history of each movement's rise and life course, its current identity, and its influence. This is a well-creafted and successful book. I recommend it to scholars of social movements, for use in the classroom, and to persons committee to social action.
‘Out of the dull and ahistorical haze of the alleged 'post-civil rights' period arrives The Hidden 1970s, a measured and explosive reminder of the temporary nature of social quiescence and the permanent possibility of radical social crisis. This book offers more than memories and lessons—it awakens an urgent embrace of the kind of political courage and fearlessness that can short-circuit the prevailing liberal-conservative consensus. Dan Berger has assembled a living history of voices that will follow and alter us.’
The Hidden 1970s provides exceptional insight into the trajectory of radical organizing in the post-1960s decades as well as how the legacies of these struggles continue to affect radical organizing today.
The essays in Dan Berger’s finely edited collection showcase organizations and issues rarely discussed in mainstream historical analyses of the 1970s. Together they offer a fine, usable history of radical activism that moves beyond the tired assumption that 'identity politics' dissolved the Left and the radical activism of the 1960s.
This exciting volume takes readers to the city neighborhoods, prison yards, contested lands, and factory floors where men and women both sustained and expanded upon left-wing activist traditions during a period of political and economic retrenchment. Tightly organized and accessibly written, this collection is essential reading, not only for those interested in gaining a new perspective on the decade of the 1970s, but for anyone who cares about the fate of radicalism in the neoliberal era.
Editor Dan Berger’s book The Hidden 1970s overflows with unheralded stories of social movements, each one from that
misunderstood and oft-maligned era in radical history (and geography)—the 1970s. Both the profound breadth of 1970s social movements and the equally broad range of movement tactics are well-represented in this edited volume.
Dan Berger is the author of Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity and the coeditor of Letters from Young Activists.
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations: North American Leftist Organizations in the 1970s
Introduction: Exploding Limits in the 1970s by Dan Berger
Part One: Insurgency
1. Improvising on Reality: The Roots of Prison Abolition by Liz Samuels
2. Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self-Defense by Victoria Law
3. "The Struggle is for Land!": Race, Territory, and National Liberation by Dan Berger, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
4. Canada's Other Red Scare: The Anicinabe Park Occupation and Indigenous Decolonization by Scott Rutherford
Part Two: Solidarity
5. "A Line of Steel": The Organization of the Sixth Pan-African Congress and the Struggle for International Black Power, 1969-1974 by Fanon Che Wilkins
6. How Indigenous Peoples Wound Up at the United Nations by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
7. "Hit Them Harder": Leadership, Solidarity, and the Puerto Rican Independence Movement by Meg Starr
8. Unorthodox Leninism: Workplace Organizing and Anti-Imperialist Solidarity in the Sojourner Truth Organization by Michael Staudenmaier
Part Three: Community
9. Play as World-making: From the Cockettes to the Germs, Gay Liberation to DIY Community Building by Benjamin Shepard
10. "We Want Justice!": Police Murder, Mexican American Community Response, and the Chicano Movement by Brian D. Behnken
11. Rising Up: Poor, White, and Angry in the New Left by James Tracy
12. The Movement for a New Society: Consensus, Prefiguration, and Direct Action by Andrew Cornell
13. Hard to Find: Building for Nonviolent Revolution and the Pacifist Underground by Matt Meyer and Paul Magno
14. "The Original Gangster": The Life and Times of Red Power Activist Madonna Thunder Hawk by Elizabeth Castle
Notes on Contributors
Index
List of Abbreviations: North American Leftist Organizations in the 1970s
Introduction: Exploding Limits in the 1970s by Dan Berger
Part One: Insurgency
1. Improvising on Reality: The Roots of Prison Abolition by Liz Samuels
2. Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self-Defense by Victoria Law
3. "The Struggle is for Land!": Race, Territory, and National Liberation by Dan Berger, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
4. Canada's Other Red Scare: The Anicinabe Park Occupation and Indigenous Decolonization by Scott Rutherford
Part Two: Solidarity
5. "A Line of Steel": The Organization of the Sixth Pan-African Congress and the Struggle for International Black Power, 1969-1974 by Fanon Che Wilkins
6. How Indigenous Peoples Wound Up at the United Nations by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
7. "Hit Them Harder": Leadership, Solidarity, and the Puerto Rican Independence Movement by Meg Starr
8. Unorthodox Leninism: Workplace Organizing and Anti-Imperialist Solidarity in the Sojourner Truth Organization by Michael Staudenmaier
Part Three: Community
9. Play as World-making: From the Cockettes to the Germs, Gay Liberation to DIY Community Building by Benjamin Shepard
10. "We Want Justice!": Police Murder, Mexican American Community Response, and the Chicano Movement by Brian D. Behnken
11. Rising Up: Poor, White, and Angry in the New Left by James Tracy
12. The Movement for a New Society: Consensus, Prefiguration, and Direct Action by Andrew Cornell
13. Hard to Find: Building for Nonviolent Revolution and the Pacifist Underground by Matt Meyer and Paul Magno
14. "The Original Gangster": The Life and Times of Red Power Activist Madonna Thunder Hawk by Elizabeth Castle
Notes on Contributors
Index
Related Titles
AntoloGaia
Queering the Seventies, A Radical Trans Memoir
By Porpora Marcasciano; Translated by Francesco Pascuzzi and Sandra Waters; Foreword by Sara Galli and Mohammad Javad Jamali
