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.
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