Uploaded November 2014 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
The end of the 1960s saw the intensification of the struggle against the US war in Vietnam and for Black liberation. Martin Luther King Jr was murdered; after a fractious convention, the predominantly student organization Students for A Democratic Society split into at least three different organizations; the Black Panthers were under military attack from law enforcement and Richard Nixon was president. Women, tired of filling secondary roles in society and the Movement, were organizing around their specific oppression. Meanwhile, gay women and men had taken their struggle into the streets. The counterculture was becoming politicized in reaction to State repression and political organizing within its ranks. And this was just what was happening in the United States. Ron Jacobs provides a radical synopsis of this period in hopes of sparking a lively discussion.
Ron Jacobs is a leftist activist, library worker and writer. His published works include The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground, a political crime fiction trilogy called The Seventies Series and a collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His articles, essays and reviews appear regularly in Counterpunch (online and print), Dissident Voice, and numerous other journals around the world. His latest book, Daydream Sunset: The Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies will be published in 2014.
To learn more about the Center of Marxist Education, see facebook.com/CenterForMarxistEducation
The end of the 1960s saw the intensification of the struggle against the US war in Vietnam and for Black liberation. Martin Luther King Jr was murdered; after a fractious convention, the predominantly student organization Students for A Democratic Society split into at least three different organizations; the Black Panthers were under military attack from law enforcement and Richard Nixon was president. Women, tired of filling secondary roles in society and the Movement, were organizing around their specific oppression. Meanwhile, gay women and men had taken their struggle into the streets. The counterculture was becoming politicized in reaction to State repression and political organizing within its ranks. And this was just what was happening in the United States. Ron Jacobs provides a radical synopsis of this period in hopes of sparking a lively discussion.
Ron Jacobs is a leftist activist, library worker and writer. His published works include The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground, a political crime fiction trilogy called The Seventies Series and a collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His articles, essays and reviews appear regularly in Counterpunch (online and print), Dissident Voice, and numerous other journals around the world. His latest book, Daydream Sunset: The Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies will be published in 2014.
To learn more about the Center of Marxist Education, see facebook.com/CenterForMarxistEducation
