[act-ma] 10/17 Author Presentation: Untold History of America's New Left (7:00 p.m. encuentro 5)

[Suren Moodliar]

 Hillbilly Nationalists, Radical Greasers, & Black Power

*Monday, October 17, 2011, 7:00 p.m.* The historians of the late 1960s have
emphasized the work of a small group of white college activists and the
Black Panthers, activists who courageously took to the streets to protest
the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class
whites have tended to be painted as spectators, reactionaries, and, even,
racists. Most Americans, the story goes, just watched the political
movements of the sixties go by.

James Tracy and Amy Sonnie <http://mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=560>, who have
been interviewing activists from the 1960s for nearly ten years, reject this
old narrative. In five tightly conceived chapters, they show that poor and
working-class whites, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and the Black
Panther Party, started to organize significant political movements against
racism and inequality during the 1960s.

Their book explores an untold history the New Left. Challenging the Right
for the allegiance of white workers, a diverse network of new political
groups helped to redefine community organizing at a pivotal moment in the
history of the United States, collaborating with their better known
colleagues in SDS and the Black Panthers.

These organizations kept the vision of an interracial movement of the poor
alive by working arm in arm with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Puerto Rican
Young Lords and, in so doing, gave rise to a generation of community
organizers. In the best tradition of people's history, Tracy and Sonnie
bring these diverse and groundbreaking movements alive.

Venue: encuentro 5 - 33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111 see
http://www.encuentro5.org @encuentro5 (on twitter)
http://www.facebook.org/encuentro5
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