Fighting Authoritarianism

Fighting Authoritarianism
Author: Britt Haas
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0823278018

During the Great Depression, young radicals centered in New York City developed a vision of and for America, molded by their understanding of recent historical events, in particular the Great War and the global economic collapse, as well as by the events unfolding both at home and abroad. They worked to make their vision of a free, equal, democratic society based on peaceful coexistence a reality. Their attempts were ultimately unsuccessful but their voices were heard on a number of important issues, including free speech, racial justice, and peace. A major contribution to the historiography of the era of the Great Depression, Fighting Authoritarianism provides a new and important examination of U.S. youth activism of the 1930s, including the limits of the New Deal and how youth activists continually pushed FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, and other New Dealers to do more to address economic distress, more inclusionary politics, and social inequality. In this study, author Britt Haas questions the interventionist versus isolationist paradigm in that young people sought to focus on both domestic and international affairs. Haas also explores the era not as a precursor to WWII, but as a moment of hope when the prospect of institutionalizing progress in freedom, equality, and democracy seemed possible. Fighting Authoritarianism corrects misconceptions about these young activists’ vision for their country, heavily influenced by the American Dream they had been brought up to revere: they wanted a truly free, truly democratic, and truly equal society. That meant embracing radical ideologies, especially socialism and communism, which were widely discussed, debated, and promoted on New York City college campuses. They believed that in embracing these ideologies, they were not turning their backs on American values. Instead, they believed that such ideologies were the only way to make America live up to its promises. This study also outlines the careers of Molly Yard, Joseph Lash, and James Wechsler, how they retracted (and for Yard and Lash, reclaimed) their radical past, and how New York continued to hold a prominent platform in their careers. Lash and Wechsler both worked for the New York Post, the latter as editor until 1980. Examining the Depression decade from the perspective of young activists highlights the promise of America as young people understood it: a historic moment when anything seemed possible.

The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York

The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York
Author: Stephan Cohen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2007-11-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135905681

Between 1966 and 1975 North American youth activists established over 35 school- and community-based gay liberation youth groups whose members sought control over their own bodies, education, and sexual and social relations. This book focuses on three groundbreaking New York City groups -- Gay Youth (GY), Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), and the Gay International Youth Society of George Washington High School (GWHS) -- from the advent of gay liberation in NYC in 1969 to just after its dissolution and the rise of identity politics by 1975. Cohen examines how gay liberation -- with its rejection of stultifying sex roles, attack on institutional oppression, connection between personal and political liberation, celebration of innate androgyny, and resolute anti-war and anti-capitalist stance -- shaped understandings of sexual identity, membership criteria, organization, decision-making, the roles of youth and adults, and efforts to effect social change.

Mexican American Youth Organization

Mexican American Youth Organization
Author: Armando Navarro
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 1995
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0292755570

Among the protest movements of the 1960s, the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) emerged as one of the principal Chicano organizations seeking social change. By the time MAYO evolved into the Raza Unida Party (RUP) in 1972, its influence had spread far beyond its Crystal City, Texas, origins. Its members precipitated some thirty-nine school walkouts, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and confronted church and governmental bodies on numerous occasions. Armando Navarro here offers the first comprehensive assessment of MAYO's history, politics, leadership, ideology, strategies and tactics, and activist program. Interviews with many MAYO and RUP organizers and members, as well as first-hand knowledge drawn from his own participation in meetings, presentations, and rallies, enrich the text. This wealth of material yields the first reliable history of this extremely vocal and visible catalyst of the Chicano Movement. The book will add significantly to our understanding of Sixties protest movements and the social and political conditions that gave them birth.

Raising Them Right

Raising Them Right
Author: Kyle Spencer
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0063041383

A riveting behind-the-scenes account of the new stars of the far right—and how they’ve partnered with billionaire donors, idealogues, and political insiders to build the most powerful youth movement the American right has ever seen In the wake of the Obama presidency, a group of young charismatic conservatives catapulted onto the American political and cultural scenes, eager to thwart nationwide pushes for greater equity and inclusion. They dreamed of a cultural revolution—online and off—that would offer a forceful alternative to the progressive politics that were dominating American college campuses. In Raising Them Right, a gripping, character-driven read and investigative tour de force, Kyle Spencer chronicles the people and organizations working to lure millions of unsuspecting young American voters into the far-right fold—revealing their highly successful efforts to harness social media in alarming ways and capitalize on the democratization of celebrity culture. These power-hungry new faces may look and sound like antiestablishment renegades, but they are actually part of a tightly organized and heavily funded ultraconservative initiative to transform American youth culture and popularize fringe ideas. There is Charlie Kirk, the swashbuckling Trump insider and founder of the right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA, who dreams of taking back the country’s soul from weak-kneed liberals and becoming a national powerbroker in his own right. There is the acid-tongued Candace Owens, a Black ultraconservative talk-show host and Fox News regular who is seeking to bring Black America to the GOP and her own celebritydom into the national forefront. And then there is the young, rough-and-tumble libertarian Cliff Maloney, who built the Koch-affiliated organization Young Americans for Liberty into a political force to be reckoned with, while solidifying his own power and pull inside conservative circles. Chock-full of original reporting and unprecedented access, Raising Them Right is a striking prism through which to view the extraordinary shifts that have taken place in the American political sphere over the last decade. It establishes Kyle Spencer as the premier authority on a new generation of young conservative communicators who are merging politics and pop culture, social media and social lives, to bring cruel economic philosophies, skeletal government, and dangerous antidemocratic ideals into the mainstream. Theirs is a crusade that is just beginning.

White American Youth

White American Youth
Author: Christian Picciolini
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-10-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316522910

As featured on Fresh Air and the TED stage, a stunning look inside the world of violent hate groups by a onetime white supremacist leader who, shaken by a personal tragedy, abandoned his destructive life to become an anti-hate activist. Raw, inspiring, and heartbreakingly candid, White American Youth explores why so many young people lose themselves in a culture of hatred and violence and how the criminal networks they forge terrorize and divide our nation. The story begins when Picciolini found himself stumbling through high school, struggling to find a community among other fans of punk rock music. There, he was recruited by a notorious white power skinhead leader and encouraged to fight with the movement to "protect the white race from extinction." Soon, he had become an expert in racist philosophies, a terror who roamed the neighborhood, quick to throw fists. When his mentor was sent to prison, sixteen-year-old Picciolini took over the man's role as the leader of an infamous neo-Nazi skinhead group. Seduced by the power he accrued through intimidation, and swept up in the rhetoric he had adopted, Picciolini worked to grow an army of extremists. He used music as a recruitment tool, launching his own propaganda band that performed at white power rallies around the world. But slowly, as he started a family of his own and a job that for the first time brought him face to face with people from all walks of life, he began to recognize the cracks in his hateful ideology. Then a shocking loss at the hands of racial violence changed his life forever, and Picciolini realized too late the full extent of the harm he'd caused. "Simultaneously horrifying and redemptive" (AlterNet), White American Youth examines how radicalism and racism can conquer a person's way of life and how we can work together to stop those ideologies from tearing our world apart. *An earlier edition of this book was published as Romantic Violence

After the Rebellion

After the Rebellion
Author: Sekou M. Franklin
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2014-07-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0814760015

An essential examination of black youth activism since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act What happened to black youth in the post-civil rights generation? What kind of causes did they rally around and were they even rallying in the first place? After the Rebellion takes a close look at a variety of key civil rights groups across the country over the last 40 years to provide a broad view of black youth and social movement activism. Based on both research from a diverse collection of archives and interviews with youth activists, advocates, and grassroots organizers, this book examines popular mobilization among the generation of activists—principally black students, youth, and young adults—who came of age after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Franklin argues that the political environment in the post-Civil Rights era, along with constraints on social activism, made it particularly difficult for young black activists to start and sustain popular mobilization campaigns. Building on case studies from around the country—including New York, the Carolinas, California, Louisiana, and Baltimore—After the Rebellion explores the inner workings and end results of activist groups such as the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Student Organization for Black Unity, the Free South Africa Campaign, the New Haven Youth Movement, the Black Student Leadership Network, the Juvenile Justice Reform Movement, and the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer campaign. Franklin demonstrates how youth-based movements and intergenerational campaigns have attempted to circumvent modern constraints, providing insight into how the very inner workings of these organizations have and have not been effective in creating change and involving youth. A powerful work of both historical and political analysis, After the Rebellion provides a vivid explanation of what happened to the militant impulse of young people since the demobilization of the civil rights and black power movements—a discussion with great implications for the study of generational politics, racial and black politics, and social movements.

The DREAMers

The DREAMers
Author: Walter J. Nicholls
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-09-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804788693

On May 17, 2010, four undocumented students occupied the Arizona office of Senator John McCain. Across the country a flurry of occupations, hunger strikes, demonstrations, and marches followed, calling for support of the DREAM Act that would allow these young people the legal right to stay in the United States. The highly public, confrontational nature of these actions marked a sharp departure from more subdued, anonymous forms of activism of years past. The DREAMers provides the first investigation of the youth movement that has transformed the national immigration debate, from its start in the early 2000s through the present day. Walter Nicholls draws on interviews, news stories, and firsthand encounters with activists to highlight the strategies and claims that have created this now-powerful voice in American politics. Facing high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment across the country, undocumented youths sought to increase support for their cause and change the terms of debate by arguing for their unique position—as culturally integrated, long term residents and most importantly as "American" youth sharing in core American values. Since 2010 undocumented activists have increasingly claimed their own space in the public sphere, asserting a right to recognition—a right to have rights. Ultimately, through the story of the undocumented youth movement, The DREAMers shows how a stigmatized group—whether immigrants or others—can gain a powerful voice in American political debate.

America Dreaming

America Dreaming
Author: Laban Carrick Hill
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0316078832

Laban Hill, author of the acclaimed Harlem Stomp, is back with an in-depth exploration of America in the 1960's and the young people who built a new world around them and changed our society significantly. Like Harlem Stomp, America Dreaming is an educational and visual look into a time of energy and influence. Covering subjects such as the civil rights movement, hippie culture, black nationalism, and the feminist movement, Hill paints a sprawling picture of life in the '60's and shows how teenagers were on the forefront of the societal changes that occurred during this grand decade.

We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns

We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns
Author: Tracy Sugarman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2009-07-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780815609384

No one experienced the Freedom Summer of 1964 quite like Tracy Sugarman. As an illustrator and journalist, Sugarman covered the nearly one thousand student volunteers who traveled to the Mississippi Delta to assist black citizens in the South in registering to vote. He interviewed these activists, along with local civil rights leaders and black and white residents not directly involved in the movement, and drew the people and events that made the summer one of the most heroic chapters in America’s long march toward racial justice. In We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns, Sugarman chronicles the sacrifices, tragedies, and triumphs of that unprecedented moment in our nation’s history. Two white students and one black student were slain in the struggle, many were beaten and hundreds arrested, and churches and homes were burned to the ground by the opponents of equality. Yet the example of Freedom Summer—whites united with heroic black Mississippians to challenge segregation—resonated across the nation. The United States Congress was finally moved to pass the civil rights legislation that enfranchised the millions of black Americans who had been waiting for equal equal rights for a century. Blending oral history with memoir, We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns draws the reader into the lives of the activists, showing their passion and naïveté, the bravery of the civil rights leaders, and the candid, sometimes troubling reactions of the black and white Delta residents. Sugarman’s unique reportorial art, in word and image, makes this book a vital record of our nation’s past.