The Long Sixties: Clash of Radicalisms

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Clash of Radicalisms: Jews and People of Color at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College American Studies 3212 Professor Jocelyn Wills May 23, 2018 Jesse Brennan Clash of Radicalisms: Jews and People of Color at Brooklyn College The Long 60s is marked by the confluence of multiple streams of social and political activism by different groups, each clamoring for change and demanding attention

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Blacks and Jews in Melee at Brooklyn College

NEW YORK TIMES May 5, 1971 A fight between black and white students, the latter mem bers of the Jewish Defense League, was broken up shortly after noon yesterday on the Brooklyn College campus by 100 city policemen and college se?? guards after a 20‐ minute free‐for‐all in

JDL View on Black Radicals

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Left-Wing vs. Right-Wing Jews

In this archival source from the Brooklyn College Library, we see a radical left-wing student saying in 1971 that reports about oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union was "Zionist propaganda."

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Black Panther Antisemitism

From 1969, a hysterical Black Panther rant about Israel. Why this ferocious and racist attack on Jewish self-determination? Finding a pretext for radical resentment regarding rent dispute with Jewish landlords?

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Jewish Panthers in Israel

Mizrahi Jews (Jews with parents from Iraq and Morocco) formed the Israeli Black Panthers in 1971, influenced by the American Black Panthers. They believed they faced racial discrimination and oppression in Israeli society.

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1970 NYC Hard Hat Workers vs. Students

In 1970, a group of "hard hats" or structural iron workers got into a battle with anti-war student protestors in lower Manhattan. New York has some ugly riots in its history. One of the strangest is the Hard Hat Riot, a clash between construction workers and war protesters in May

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1960’s Italian American Radicals vs. Black Panthers

Joe Columbo formed the Italian American Civil Rights' League which teamed up with Meir Kahane's JDL against black radicals. However, Meir Kahane put some distance between himself as Michael Imperiale who he saw as a racist. Michael Imperiale was the founder of the "North Ward First Aid Squad" an accused

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1969 Radical Gay Riot vs. Police Bigots

The Stonewall Rebellion in NYC signalled the start of the gay pride movement, which has continued its progressive and liberation movement until this day. Here we had oppressive Irish (as seen through the phrase "paddy-wagon") and Italian Catholic lower-middle class cops facing down a rebellion of an ethnic/class multitude

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Next Year in Jerusalem

This is the record in the jukebox at the student center that led to a near riot at Brooklyn College in 1971. (passage from The Story of the Jewish Defense League by Meir Kahans, pg 280).

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1977 Jewish Protesters vs. Neo-Nazis

Skokie march pressented holocaust survivors with the spectacle of full regalia Nazis goose stepping and Heiling. It was a big free speech case in the United States.

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1968 Rioting Police vs. Student Protestors

Irish-American Mayor Daley was quite a bigot, referring to Senator Abraham Ribicoff as a "Jew Sonovabitch." Senator Abraham Ribicoff was the Senator who at the Chicago Democratic Convention said Daley's police forces were using "Gestapo tactics." So here the conflict is between upper-middle class and lower-middle class White Ethnics, each

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Latino vs. Jew

Radical Black and Latino resentment against Jewish students that were earmarked money to protest the Neo-Nazi march through Skokie Illinois in 1977, a town with a large Holocaust survivor population. While it seems quite obvious to me at first glance that genocide is much worse then a housing discrimination, apparently

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Rebels Without a Cause?

Sidney Hook was an old left figure who was quite critical of the excited student protestors who justified their havoc by talking about Vietnam. In Sidney Hook's opinion, there was a bloodbath going on in Korea in the early 1950s and segregation in the 1940s, yet students weren't running around

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Jewish-Black Clash

In 1971, a Jewish-Black riot over JDL members trying to play Israeli music on the jukebox in the student canteen, which they tried to play music on after Meir Kahane made an inflammatory speech.

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Jewish Pride

A proud display of Jewish identity, this seemingly innocuous gesture would lead to heated debates on the Brooklyn College campus, such as the Israeli-Palestinian Teach-In or the brawl between black and Jewish students over the use of the jukebox playing Israeli music a few years later.

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JDL vs. Black Panthers

The JDL releases a parody of New Left ideas such as “ending all wars”, mocking the demand for bilingual education and open admissions. This document was found in the Brooklyn College archives. Apparently the radical African-American organization made an antisemitic speech in 1968. And the minority students had delivered their

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Latino vs. Jewish

Latino Student Radicals consider Brooklyn College “racist” for not having Latino-Studies programs. Gold who is named here might have found it a bit offensive because Jews experienced quotas at WASPy Universities where they weren’t let into the college at all. It wasn’t just a lack of Jewish-Studies programs.

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What caused the Clash of the Radicalisms?

One might wonder why the different identity "the Movement" of Progressivism and Social Justice sometimes devolved into bitter feuds with eachother and with radical Right-Wing groups? What happened to the Keynesian Consensus? What happened to the Rockefeller Republicans? What caused all this turmoil? The Right? Left? Who? Answer: the WAR

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Radical Black vs. Radical Italian Clashes

In 1967, a Riot broke out in Newark NJ after reports circulated about police beating a Black man. Death(s) 26 were killed, 727 injured, and 1,465 arrested during the "Long, Hot Summer." Newark was one of the first black majority cities in the United States. Its industrial base

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The Complicated History Between Blacks and Jews

One August morning in 1967, Will Maslow, executive director of the American Jewish Congress and a civil rights activist, opened the newsletter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the group famous for organizing sit-ins and the Freedom rides. Maslow felt hurt and betrayed when he noticed a feature titled

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Jewish Feminists

Joyce Antler is the author of Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women's Liberation Movement, forthcoming from NYU Press Jewish women were a prominent presence in the radical wing of the feminist movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s—only no one knew it. Participants in this fiery and transformative

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March on Selma King and Heschel

Martin Luther King, Jr. listening to a transistor radio in the front line of the third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to campaign for proper registration of black voters, March 23, 1965. Ralph Abernathy (second from left), Ralph Bunche (third from right) and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (far right)

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Radicalization in 1960s Madison, Wisconsin: One Participant's Reflection

From Solidarity February 27, 2012 by Patrick M. Quinn The three most radicalized university campuses during the late 1960s were Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of California at Berkeley. What follows is an account of the radicalization in Madison during the years 1962 to 1971 based

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The Young Lords

The Young Lords was a Puerto Rican group of radicals, virtually took over parts of New York City in the 1960s and early 1970s fighting for self-determination for Latinos and against racial discrimination and inequality. What started as a turf gang on the streets of Chicago in the fall of