Reframing 1968 American Politics, Protest and Identity Edited by Martin Halliwell and Nick Witham

Captivating, interesting book this one by Edinburgh University Press: Reframing 1968 American Politics, Protest and Identity Edited by Martin Halliwell and Nick Witham.

Intense, charismatic, in this eleven essays divided in three parts: Politics of Protests, Spaces of Protests and Identities of Protests, explained what that symbolic year, the 1968, meant to the USA. And the world.

At first analyzed the New Left, the radicalization, the fight against Vietnam war, but also other rights, for example for black people, women and other minorities.

That year was chaotic, convulsive, with two tremendous assassinations: the one of reverend Martin Luther King for the rights of black people and the one, two months later, of Bob Kennedy. The consequent escalation of the Vietnam War brought other tensions.

People, in particular youngest ones didn't like anymore the old left. The new one, had as mottoes: "We are the vanguard of fantasy", "All power to the imagination!"

The US were seen as an imperialistic society, racist and not in grade to present rights to everyone. A place without peace, and a country that in a way or in another had to change.

The US didn't just experience pacifistic movements like the one started by King. There were also Malcom X, and the Black Panther Party. The New Left appeared in the USA at the beginning of the 1960s and became more radical after the sad assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The New Left composed mainly by white people recognized white supremacy as an extreme defect for the society. 
Everyone were ready to embrace, if opened-minded, Marxism, Leninism in a so-called peaceful form. And, everyone supported the Vietnamese rejecting a war like the one started by the USA. A war that would have put psychologically down the US forever.

Although current situation is mutated, this society is in turmoil as well and new and strongest movements were born just few months ago in a historical moment at first seen as "passive" of emotions and fights.
From the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment in the workplace, passing through the #Never Again movement created by some students after a mass shooting in their school  in Florida on Valentine's Day for fighting against the right of  buying entire arsenals of guns, in particular war ones in when people have mental illnesses, trying to let know this problem at the public opinion  for a best regulation on matter, or the Women's March protest started when the new President Donald Trump was elected.

There are some differences, because during the 1960s priorities were other ones.

Which ones?
Women rights, gay rights, black people rights, right to live in peace in a country without an endless war in a distant and unknown country like Vietnam was.

Situation changed after 1968? Students and people bettered the existent situation?
Well, not immediately. Nixon expanded the war where possible in Indochina, Cambodia, Laos with great negative repercussion for the US troops.

The most important anti-war protest the one organized in October 1967. 100.000 people protested at the Lincoln Memorial.

1968 with the time influenced literature.  Robert Stone published Prime Green in 2007 telling his experience as an active participant in Californian protests. He wrote in his book: "In some ways the world profited and will continue to profit by what we succeeded in doing. Measuring ourselves against the masters of the present, we regret nothing except our failure to prevail."

Other memoirs were written by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Angela Davis.

World was protesting as well. A young boy, Jan Palach killed himself in Prague in 1969, because he fought against the occupation of the Soviet Regime.


Which were places of protests?
Cities, in particular squares, but also universities, schools where ideas could be shared and spread with more intensity outside.

The President of Columbia University on April 12 1968 wrote: "Our young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority... and they have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destructive."

Not all students at the university were in grade to let know to the rest of the world their ideas receiving support. It depended where schools, universities were located.
Urban students were the luckiest ones. In rural areas students could not search for help, in general, in the outside community.

Cinema was inspired by 1968 with great and iconic movies.

Fascinating analysis, the book is for everyone, and very interesting. Reading this book you'll understand better this part of still young American History.
After all the iconic 1968's message was this: fighting everyday and forever for some right.

Yesterday like today.

I thank Edinburgh University Press for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori