1960-1973: The Revolution of Youth, The Swinging Sixties - Research Paper Example

The 1960’s are a decade remembered for student protests and youth-based counter-culture movements, whose slogan ‘never trust anyone over thirty’ points to the definition of a generation that was born after World War II and experiencing the rising escalation of the cold war, the nuclear age, and the anti-colonialism movement collectively for the first time as a global community based in modern mass media communications. When the student riots of the 60’s are remembered, it is necessary to highlight the global nature of the movements, and how demonstrations in one country would inspire and fuel further demonstrations in other countries. This is not surprising, as a main issue during the decade was the escalation of military conflict by the United States in Vietnam, and this based in the geo-political machine of cold war power structures clashing globally. The Marxists, such as Che Guevara, internationalized their struggle through solidarity and emphasized co-operation between student activist groups that were trans-national. However, the overriding issue of the 60’s if looked at in terms of the politics of the majority of the world’s population, was the anti-colonial struggle in Africa, Asia, South America, and other regions. Just as the student movements rejected American imperialist action in Vietnam, so too they allied themselves with the liberation movements of the colonial world, and saw reflections of them in America with the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Therefore, it is not surprising that the most active year for student riots was 1968, the year in which MLK and RFK were both assassinated in America, when the Eastern block under Soviet occupation in Hungary & Czechoslovakia rose up, when the ghettoes of Paris were aflame with riot, and the student campuses all over the world – Berlin, Mexico City, Argentina, Zimbabwe all demonstrated in solidarity for the same international causes. The 60’s represents the coming of age of the world’s first globalized generation, and this is symbolic of the new representation of the planet as seen from the moon, an activism based in planetary awareness and issues. “1968: Workers join Paris student protest - French workers have joined student protests in Paris for the first time with a one-day general strike. About 800,000 students, teachers and workers marched through the French capital demanding the fall of the government under Charles de Gaulle and protesting at police brutality during the riots of the past few days.” (BBC, 1968) Even today French intellectuals and radical Leftist will point to May 1968 as a type of golden time for those who believe in radical political protest. This is similar to how “hippies” may still wax nostalgically on the “people power” of the decade. The University of Berkeley, California is famous for being a center of student protest and radicalism, the regents describe the era in this manner: “The first of these sorts of protests, that of 1964, is now known as the ‘Free Speech Movement.’ University of California President Clark Kerr long insisted that the University wouldn't interfere with student's lives off campus, but, by the same token, that students must keep their political activities off campus... Over the following months, and year, the protests spread... By this time, however, the Free Speech Movement had changed character. No longer were young, idealistic citizens fighting for their rights, but the demonstrations turned into parties. It was fun, it was cool, it was now the time of Haight-Ashbury and the hippies and drugs and rock-and-roll. Idealism -- how it all began -- was quickly forgotten when the first cast of characters were graduated. The student protests still had political purposes, of course -- and powerful ones, at that -- but the movement became increasingly radicalized.” (Berkeley, 2010) To summarize the Berkeley example in America during the 60’s on this record, during the first part of the decade, students began protesting for their own free speech, privacy, and lifestyle rights as targeted against university officials who controlled the campus. This is a reaction to university level rules and regulations, rather than a internationally radicalized movement. As America’s war in Vietnam deepened, and with escalation the number of youth 18 to 22 who were drafted, without their choice, consent, or willingness into the Army to fight abroad in a war students and parents were still actively debating the justness of in their living rooms. Consider also, during this time in the 1960’s, America’s nuclear arsenal included over 32,000 nuclear bombs the equivalent or more powerful to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – enough firepower to destroy the world multiple times. (ICAN, 2010) When the Berkeley regents chart the history of student protest, they do not go into the details of the cause of student radicalism in the late 1960’s, which is the geopolitical and war. Yet, there is also a massive change in popular culture during this period, as finally represented by Woodstock in 1969 as the apotheosis of what the student movement had become. Woodstock is not a student riot, but a post-1968 development and response of the student movement to find release where they had been unable to create political change through protest. The social creativeness of the protest of this era was not only based in street demonstration and writing, but also fashion, art, music, television, cinema, and these same vehicles of mass-media served to transport ideas internationally to further inspiration in other cultures. “Specific fashion styles developed within counter-cultural groups, often organized around pop-music styles and bands.” (Atlantis, 2010) In reading accounts of the 1968 student demonstrations around the world, “solidarity” is a slogan that is often heard and it represents the international outlook of the movements at this time, important because it shows the roots and history of modern global activism. An eye-witness to the Paris 1968 riots writes: “It is no accident that the 'revolution' started in the Nanterre faculties of Sociology and Psychology. The students saw that the sociology they were being taught was a means of controlling and manipulating society, not a means of understanding it in order to change it. In the process they discovered revolutionary sociology. They rejected the niche allocated to them in the great bureaucratic pyramid, that of 'experts' in the service of a technocratic Establishment, specialists of the 'human factor' in the modern industrial equation. In the process they discovered the importance of the working class.” (Solidarity, 1968) In summary, the student riots of the 60’s, as represented in Berkeley, Paris, Mexico City, Prague, Buenos Aires, Berlin, and other large and small college campuses across the Western world showed solidarity in a globalized sense and represent an important era in international activism. These student movements in the West also aligned themselves politically with liberation and anti-colonial movements worldwide. As the Berkeley regents conclude: “The nonviolent, peaceful spirit of student activism of 1964 had given way to violent and confrontational politics. The students were now looking for riots. Marches into Oakland ended in riots. From here, the demonstrations only get more violent. In 1967, the police have to use, extensively, chemical Mace to control the crowds which, though increasing in size, include fewer and fewer Cal students and more outsiders attracted to Berkeley looking for a good time. Campus buildings begin to get firebombed over ROTC crisis and soon the Free Huey movement (fighting for Huey P. Newton, arrested for shooting a police officer) begins. By 1969, students are demonstrating -- and still being arrested by the hundreds -- demanding the creation of a ‘Third World College.’” (Berkeley, 2010) Sources: BBC News. (1968). 1968: Workers join Paris student protest. BBC News Service, UK. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/13/newsid_2512000/2512413.stm ICAN. (2010). A Brief History of Nuclear Weapons. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Retrieved from http://www.icanw.org/history Made in Atlantis. (2010). 1960-1973: The Revolution of Youth, The Swinging Sixties. Retrieved from http://madeinatlantis.com/popular_culture/revolution/counter_culture.htm Solidarity (1968). Paris May 1968: An eyewitness account from Solidarity. Blackenednet. Retrieved from http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/disband/solidarity/may68.html Regents, Berkeley. (2010). Berkeley in the 60s. The History of Cal. Retrieved from http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/calhistory/60s.html Read More