The Youth Culture

1. The Youth Culture • The young Americans from the political left wanted to create a new community of “the people”, which would rise up to break the power of the elites and force the nation to end the war, pursue racial and economic justice and transform its political life, this vision of liberation found expression through the efforts of blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, women and gays to define and assert themselves, by 1970 half the American population was under 30 - largest generation of youth in American history

2. The Youth Culture • The New Left was a large, diverse group of women and men who challenged the political system, embraced black cause and other minorities, many drawn to Marxist theory, the Civil Rights movement led many to question their assumptions about the basic values and institutions of American life

3. The Youth Culture • Students for Democratic Society issued the Port Huron statement expressing their disillusionment with society, principle organization of student radicalism

4. The Youth Culture • Free Speech Movement created turmoil in Berkeley as students challenged campus police, produced a strike - issues over the right of students to pass out literature and recruit volunteers for political causes on campus, protested impersonal character of modern university, antiwar movement, inflamed and expanded the challenge to the universities

5. The Youth Culture • 1969 Berkeley students battle over effort to build “People’s Park”: weeks of impassioned and often violent conflicts between the administration and students, campus completely polarized, 85% of the students supported the cause

6. The Youth Culture • Most campus radicals were rarely if ever violent but the image of student radicalism in mainstream culture was one of chaos and disorder, based on actions of relatively small groups of militants, the Weatherman were a violent offshoot of SDS, responsible for a few cases of arson and bombing

7. The Youth Culture • Many supported the ideas of the SDS and other groups on certain issues, above all the Vietnam War, students tried to drive out training programs for military officers and bar military recruiters from college campuses, the October 1967 march on the Pentagon demonstrators were met by a solid line of armed troops, the Spring Mobilization of April 1968 attracted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators

8. The Youth Culture • Draft card burnings became a common place, some simply refused induction, thousands fled to Canada and Sweden, not until 1977 when President Carter issued a general pardon to draft resisters and a far more limited amnesty for deserters, did the Vietnam exiles begin to return to the country in substantial numbers

9. The Youth Culture • Counterculture openly scornful of the values and conventions of middle class society, drugs, permissive view of sexual behavior, the Counterculture challenged the structure of modern American society, attacking its banality, its hollowness, its artificiality, its materialism and its isolation from nature, Hippies dominant in Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, the new creed seemed to suggest the first responsibility of the individual is cultivation of the self, the unleashing of one’s own potential for pleasure and fulfillment.

10. The Youth Culture • Theodore Roszak The Making of Counter Culture was a significant document of the era, captured spirit of the movement, Charles Reich’s The Greening of America mentioned the Consciousness III, the self would be the only reality

11. The Youth Culture • Long hair and freakish clothing became the badge not only of hippies and radicals, but also for an entire generation

12. The Youth Culture • Rock’s influence began to spread with the popularity of the Beatles, by the late 1960s the Beatles abandoned their once seemingly innocent and simple style for a new, experimental approach that reflected the growing popular fascination with drugs and Eastern religions, Rock began to reflect the iconoclastic values of its time, themes of anger, frustration and rebellion, A powerful symbol of the fusion of rock music and the counterculture was the great music festival at Woodstock, NY in the summer of 1969

13. The Youth Culture • Those who attended movies saw a gradual disappearance of the banal, conventional messages and instead they saw explorations of political issues, of new sexual mores, of violence, of social conflict

14. The Youth Culture • Television began to turn to programming that reflected the social and cultural conflict

15. The Mobilization of Minorities • Native Americans were the least prosperous, least healthy, least stable group in the nation, smallest, highest unemployment rate, life expectancy lower, suicides more frequent. Aboriginal Territories and Modern Reservations of Western Indian Tribes

16. The Mobilization of Minorities • In 1953 two laws passed established the policy of Termination, federal government withdrew all official recognition of the tribes as legal entities, made them subject to the same local jurisdictions as white residents, encouraged to assimilate to larger society, results were the tribes grew weaker, disaster for tribes, failure for the reformers, widespread corruption and abuse, in 1958 Eisenhower barred further Termination without consent of the affected tribes

17. The Mobilization of Minorities • National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) began fighting for self-determination, the Democratic administrations of the 1960s made modest efforts to restore at least some degree of tribal autonomy, funneling of war on poverty money to tribal organizations through the community action program

18. The Mobilization of Minorities • Declaration of Indian Purpose stressed “the right to choose our own way of life”, gathered in Chicago to discuss ways of bringing all Indians together, people began writing books drawing renewed attention to the wrongs inflicted on the tribes by white people in past generations.

19. The Mobilization of Minorities • By the 1970s almost no films or TV westerns any longer portrayed Indians as brutal savages attacking peaceful white people, Dartmouth College ceased referring to its athletic teams as the “Indians”, National Indian Youth Council promoted the idea of Indian nationalism, intertribal unity

20. The Mobilization of Minorities • American Indian Movement, established by a group of young militant Indians, drew its greatest support from those Indians who lived in urban areas but soon established a big presence on the reservations as well

21. The Mobilization of Minorities • 1968 Congress passed the Indian Civil Rights Act guaranteed reservation Indians many of the protections accorded other citizens by the Bill of Rights, legitimacy of tribal laws within reservations, made a symbolic protest by occupying Alcatraz Island by claiming the site “by right of discovery”, in response to the pressure the Nixon administration appointed a Mohawk-Sioux to the position of Indian Affairs

22. The Mobilization of Minorities • At the Protest at Wounded Knee members of AIM seized and occupied the town for 2 months demanding radical changes in the administration of the reservation and instating that government honor treaty obligations

23. The Mobilization of Minorities • US vs. Wheeler the Supreme Court confirmed that tribes had independent legal standing and could not be terminated by the congress, County of Oneida vs. Oneida Indian Nation supported Indians claims to 100,000 acres in upstate New York

24. The Mobilization of Minorities • Indian Civil Rights Movement fell short of winning full justice and equality, nor resolve internal conflicts, goals of Indians were to defend tribal autonomy, protect the right of Indians to remain separate and distinct, equality to win Indians a place in society equal to that of other groups, Pan-Indianism was the effort to persuade Indians to transcend tribal division and work together as a single Greater Indian America

25. The Mobilization of Minorities • Latinos were the fastest growing minority, Puerto Ricans migrated to eastern cities, south Florida substantial Cuban population, successful and increasingly assimilated, • Marielitos were the second wave of Cuban immigrants, less easily assimilated, poorer, also contained a large number of criminals

26. The Mobilization of Minorities • By 1960 there were substantial Mexican-American neighborhoods in American cities with the largest being in Los Angeles, Mexican Americans: the largest Latino group, with 90% working in cities, Wealthy Cubans in Miami filled influential positions in the profession and local government, in the Southwest Mexican Americans elected their own leaders to seats in Congress and to governorships

27. The Mobilization of Minorities • Most newly arrived Mexican Americans and other Hispanics were less educated and hence less well prepared for high-paying jobs, the fact they could speak little English also limited their job opportunities, Operation Wetback was the government effort to deport the illegals, failed, many worked in low-paying service jobs, few if any benefits, impossible obstacle to move out of blue collar jobs

28. The Mobilization of Minorities • Chicanos were young Mexican-American activists: advocated form of nationalism

29. The Mobilization of Minorities • Cesar Chavez created an effective union of itinerant farm workers • Untied Farm Workers was largely a Chicago organization, launched a prolonged strike against growers to demand recognition of their union, increase wages and benefits

30. The Mobilization of Minorities • Bilingualism argued that non English speaking Americans were entitled to schooling in their own languages, only way to overcome the language barrier, confirmed by the Supreme Court • Opponents argued that the costs and difficulty of bilingualism, danger to students ability to assimilate

31. The Mobilization of Minorities • Newly assertive ethnic groups rejected the idea of the melting plot: less willing to accept the standards of the larger society • Advocated cultural pluralistic society, preserve sense of their own heritage • Older European immigrant groups liked to believe that they had advanced in the American society by adopting the values and accepting the rules of the country to which they had moved and by advancing within it on its own terms

32. The Mobilization of Minorities • The most surprising to many Americans was the effort by homosexuals to win political and economic rights and social acceptance • Not known until later that revered cultural figures such, as Walt Whitman and Horatio Alger were homosexual

33. The Mobilization of Minorities • The liberating movements of other groups helped mobilize the gay men and lesbians to fight for their own rights • Stonewall Riot was a police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay nightclub in NY, gay onlooker taunted the police and attacked them, started fire inside, rioting continued throughout Greenwich Village • Marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement: Gay Liberation Front sprang up around the country

34. The Mobilization of Minorities • President Clinton’s 1993 effort to lift the ban on gay and lesbians serving in the military met a storm of criticism from members of Congress and from within the military itself

35. The New Feminism • Sexual discrimination was so deeply embedded in the fabric of society, and so unnoticed by many of those who practiced it, that when feminists began to denounce it, many men responded with bafflement and anger

36. The New Feminism • Women began to demand a liberation of their own • Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique that cites as the first event of contemporary women’s liberation, suburbs had become comfortable concentration camp chronicled unhappiness

37. The New Feminism • President’s Commission on the Status of Women brought national attention to sexual discrimination • Equal Pay Act of 1963 barred the pervasive practice of paying women less than men for equal work • Civil Rights Act of 1964 titled to women the same legal protections against discrimination

38. The New Feminism • The reality was that increasing numbers of women had already entered the work force and were encountering widespread discrimination there, and other women were finding their domestic lives suffocating and frustrating, the conflict between the ideal and the reality was crucial to the rebirth of feminism

39. The New Feminism • National Organization for Women was the largest and most influential feminist organization, denounced exclusion of women from professions, politics and areas of American life • New Feminists were mostly younger, drew inspiration from the New Left, involved in civil rights movements antiwar

40. The New Feminism • Kate Milletts Sexual Politics signaled the new direction by complaining that every avenue of power within society is entirely within male hands-assault the male power structure • In its most radical form feminism rejected the whole notion of marriage, family, and even heterosexual intercourse, but not many women embraced such extremes

41. The New Feminism • Large numbers of women were coming to see themselves as an exploited group organizing against oppression and developing a culture and communities of their own

42. The New Feminism • In cities and towns across the country, feminists opened women’s bookstores, bars, coffee shops, founded feminist newspapers and magazines, created centers to assist victims of rape and abuse, women’s health care centers and day care centers

43. The New Feminism • In 1971, the government extended its affirmative action guidelines to include women, linking sexism with racism as an officially acknowledged social problem • The nation’s major all male educational institutions began to open their doors to women

44. The New Feminism • By the mid 1970s the two career family, where both the husband and wife held professional jobs, was becoming a widely accepted norm • Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female Supreme Court justice and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the second

45. The New Feminism • Geraldine Ferraro was the democratic vice presidential candidate • By the late 1970s the federal government was pressuring colleges and universities to provide women with athletic programs equal to those available to men

46. The New Feminism • Sally Ride the first women to travel in space

47. The New Feminism • Equal Rights Amendment approved by Congress, but never ratified by the states • Created strong new pressure on behalf of legalizing abortion • Roe vs. Wade was the theory of a constitutional right to privacy, invalidated all laws prohibiting abortion during the first trimester

48. Environmentalism in a Turbulent Society • Environmentalism entered the 1960d with a long history and relatively long history and relatively little public support, the rise of this new movement was in part a result of the environmental degradation that had become increasingly evident in the advanced industrial society

49. Environmentalism in a Turbulent Society • Ecology is the science of the inter-relatedness of the natural world • Forbes wrote problems as air and water pollution, destruction of forests, extinction of species, is not serrate isolated problems-all linked.

50. Environmentalism in a Turbulent Society • Aldo Leopold: The Sand Country Almanac: argued that humans had a responsibility to understand and maintain balance of nature-land ethic