HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Social issues and calls to action

On college and university campuses, student activists fought for the right to exercise their basic
constitutional rights, especially freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Many counterculture activists
became aware of the plight of the poor, and community organizers fought for the funding of anti-poverty
programs, particularly in the South and within inner city areas in the United States.

Environmentalism grew from a greater understanding of the ongoing damage caused by industrialization,
resultant pollution, and the misguided use of chemicals such as pesticides in well-meaning efforts to
improve the quality of life for the rapidly growing population. Authors such as Rachel Carson played key
roles in developing a new awareness among the global population of the fragility of our planet, despite
resistance from elements of the establishment in many countries.

The need to address minority rights of women, gay people, the disabled, and many other neglected
constituencies within the larger population came to the forefront as an increasing number of primarily
younger people broke free from the constraints of 1950s orthodoxy and struggled to create a more
inclusive and tolerant social landscape.

The availability of new and more effective forms of birth control was a key underpinning of the sexual
revolution. The notion of "recreational sex" without the threat of unwanted pregnancy radically changed
the social dynamic and permitted both women and men much greater freedom in the selection of sexual
lifestyles outside the confines of traditional marriage. With this change in attitude, by the 1990s the ratio of
children born out of wedlock rose from 5% to 25% for Whites and from 25% to 66% for African-Americans.

Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, and the protracted national divide between supporters and opponents of the war, were
arguably the most important factors contributing to the rise of the larger counterculture movement.

The widely accepted assertion that anti-war opinion was held only among the young is a myth, but
enormous war protests consisting of thousands of mostly younger people in every major US city, and
elsewhere across the Western world, effectively united millions against the war, and against the war policy
that prevailed under five US congresses and during two presidential administrations.

Western Europe
The counterculture movement took hold in Western Europe, with London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome and
Milan, Copenhagen and West Berlin rivaling San Francisco and New York as counterculture centers.

The UK Underground was a movement linked to the growing subculture in the US and associated with the
hippie phenomenon, generating its own magazines and newspapers, fashion, music groups, and clubs.
Underground figure Barry Miles said, "The underground was a catch-all sobriquet for a community of like-
minded anti-establishment, anti-war, pro-rock'n'roll individuals, most of whom had a common interest in
recreational drugs. They saw peace, exploring a widened area of consciousness, love and sexual
experimentation as more worthy of their attention than entering the rat race. The straight, consumerist
lifestyle was not to their liking, but they did not object to others living it. But at that time the middle classes
still felt they had the right to impose their values on everyone else, which resulted in conflict."

In the Netherlands, Provo was a counterculture movement that focused on "provocative direct action
('pranks' and 'happenings') to arouse society from political and social indifference".

In France, the General Strike centered in Paris in May 1968 united French students, and nearly toppled the
government.

Kommune 1 or K1 was a commune in West Berlin known for its bizarre staged events that fluctuated
between satire and provocation. These events served as inspiration for the "Sponti" movement and other
leftist groups. In the late summer of 1968, the commune moved into a deserted factory on Stephanstraße
in order to reorient. This second phase of Kommune 1 was characterized by sex, music and drugs. Soon, the
commune was receiving visitors from all over the world, including Jimi Hendrix.

Social and political movements

Ethnic and Racial movements

Activist Richard Aoki at a Black Panther Party rally

Further information: Civil Rights Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, Asian
American Movement, Nuyorican Movement, and Dialoguero

The Civil Rights Movement, a key element of the larger counterculture movement, involved the use of
applied nonviolence to assure that equal rights guaranteed under the US Constitution would apply to all
citizens. Many states illegally denied many of these rights to African-Americans, and this was partially
successfully addressed in the early and mid-1960s in several major nonviolent movements.[86][87]

The Chicano Movement of the 1960s, also called the Chicano civil rights movement, was a civil rights
movement extending the Mexican-American civil rights movement of the 1960s with the stated goal of
achieving Mexican American empowerment.

The American Indian Movement (or AIM) is a Native American grassroots movement that was founded in
July 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[88] A.I.M. was initially formed in urban areas to address systemic
issues of poverty and police brutality against Native Americans.[89] A.I.M. soon widened its focus from
urban issues to include many Indigenous Tribal issues that Native American groups have faced due to
settler colonialism of the Americas, such as treaty rights, high rates of unemployment, education, cultural
continuity, and preservation of Indigenous cultures.[89][90]

The Asian American movement was a sociopolitical movement in which the widespread grassroots effort of
Asian Americans affected racial, social and political change in the US, reaching its peak in the late 1960s to
mid-1970s. During this period Asian Americans promoted antiwar and anti-imperialist activism, directly
opposing what was viewed as an unjust Vietnam war. The American Asian Movement differs from previous
Asian-American activism due to its emphasis on Pan-Asianism and its solidarity with US and international
Third World movements.

"Its founding principle of coalition politics emphasizes solidarity among Asians of all ethnicities, multiracial
solidarity among Asian Americans as well as with African, Latino, and Native Americans in the United States,
and transnational solidarity with peoples around the globe impacted by U.S. militarism."[91]
and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of
Puerto-Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as
Nuyoricans.[92] It originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in neighborhoods such as Loisaida, East
Harlem, Williamsburg, and the South Bronx as a means to validate Puerto Rican experience in the United
States, particularly for poor and working-class people who suffered from marginalization, ostracism, and
discrimination.

Young Cuban exiles in the United States would develop interests in Cuban identity, and politics.[93] This
younger generation had experienced the United States during the rising anti-war movement, civil rights
movement, and feminist movement of the 1960s, causing them to be influenced by radicals that
encouraged political introspection, and social justice. Figures like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were also
heavily praised among American student radicals at the time. These factors helped push some young
Cubans into advocating for different degrees of rapprochement with Cuba.[citation needed] Those most
likely to become more radical were Cubans who were more culturally isolated from being outside the
Cuban enclave of Miami.[94]

Free Speech

Main article: Free Speech Movement

Much of the 1960s counterculture originated on college campuses. The 1964 Free Speech Movement at the
University of California, Berkeley, which had its roots in the Civil Rights Movement of the southern United
States, was one early example. At Berkeley a group of students began to identify themselves as having
interests as a class that were at odds with the interests and practices of the University and its corporate
sponsors. Other rebellious young people, who were not students, also contributed to the Free Speech
Movement.[95]

New Left

Main article: New Left

The New Left is a term used in different countries to describe left-wing movements that occurred in the
1960s and 1970s in the Western world. They differed from earlier leftist movements that had been more
oriented towards labour activism, and instead adopted social activism. The American "New Left" is
associated with college campus mass protests and radical leftist movements. The British "New Left" was an
intellectually driven movement that attempted to correct the perceived errors of "Old Left" parties in the
post–World War II period. The movements began to wind down in the 1970s, when activists either
committed themselves to party projects, developed social justice organizations, moved into identity politics
or alternative lifestyles, or became politically inactive.[96][97][98]

Herbert Marcuse, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, was an influential libertarian
socialist thinker on the radical student movements of the era[99] and philosopher of the New Left.[100]

The emergence of the New Left in the 1950s and 1960s led to a revival of interest in libertarian socialism.
[101] The New Left's critique of the Old Left's authoritarianism was associated with a strong interest in
personal liberty, autonomy (see the thinking of Cornelius Castoriadis) and led to a rediscovery of older
socialist traditions, such as left communism, council communism, and the Industrial Workers of the World.
The New Left also led to a revival of anarchism. Journals like Radical America and Black Mask in America,
Solidarity, Big Flame and Democracy & Nature, succeeded by The International Journal of Inclusive
Democracy,[102] in the UK, introduced a range of left libertarian ideas to a new generation. Social ecology,
autonomism and, more recently, participatory economics (parecon), and Inclusive Democracy emerged
from this.

A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred in western nations during the 1960s and 1970s.[103]
Anarchism was influential in the counterculture of the 1960s[104][105][106] and anarchists actively
participated in the late 1960s students and workers revolts.[107] During the IX Congress of the Italian
Anarchist Federation in Carrara in 1965, a group decided to split off from this organization and created the
Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the 1970s, it was mostly composed of "veteran individualist anarchists
with a pacifism orientation, naturism, etc, ...".[108] In 1968, in Carrara, Italy the International of Anarchist
Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference held there in 1968 by the three
existing European federations of France, the Italian and the Iberian Anarchist Federation as well as the
Bulgarian federation in French exile.[109][110] During the events of May 68 the anarchist groups active in
France were Fédération anarchiste, Mouvement communiste libertaire, Union fédérale des anarchistes,
Alliance ouvrière anarchiste, Union des groupes anarchistes communistes, Noir et Rouge, Confédération
nationale du travail, Union anarcho-syndicaliste, Organisation révolutionnaire anarchiste, Cahiers socialistes
libertaires, À contre-courant, La Révolution prolétarienne, and the publications close to Émile Armand.

The New Left in the United States also included anarchist, countercultural and hippie-related radical groups
such as the Yippies who were led by Abbie Hoffman, The Diggers[111] and Up Against the Wall
Motherfuckers. By late 1966, the Diggers opened free stores which simply gave away their stock, provided
free food, distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts, and performed works of
political art.[112] The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers led by Gerrard
Winstanley[113] and sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism.[114] On the other hand,
the Yippies employed theatrical gestures, such as advancing a pig ("Pigasus the Immortal") as a candidate
for President in 1968, to mock the social status quo.[115] They have been described as a highly theatrical,
anti-authoritarian and anarchist[116] youth movement of "symbolic politics".[117] Since they were well
known for street theater and politically themed pranks, many of the "old school" political left either ignored
or denounced them. According to ABC News, "The group was known for street theater pranks and was
once referred to as the 'Groucho Marxists'."[118]

Anti-war

Eugene McCarthy, anti-war candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency in 1968

Main article: Opposition to the Vietnam War

See also: Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Free
Speech Movement, Vietnam Day Committee, National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam,
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and New Zealand's nuclear-free zone
In Trafalgar Square, London in 1958,[119] in an act of civil disobedience, 60,000–100,000 protesters made
up of students and pacifists converged in what was to become the "ban the Bomb" demonstrations.[120]

Opposition to the Vietnam War began in 1964 on United States college campuses. Student activism became
a dominant theme among the baby boomers, growing to include many other demographic groups.
Exemptions and deferments for the middle and upper classes resulted in the induction of a
disproportionate number of poor, working-class, and minority registrants. Countercultural books such as
MacBird by Barbara Garson and much of the counterculture music encouraged a spirit of non-conformism
and anti-establishmentarianism. By 1968, the year after a large march to the United Nations in New York
City and a large protest at the Pentagon were undertaken, a majority of people in the country opposed the
war.[121]

Anti-nuclear

Main article: History of the anti-nuclear movement

See also: Musicians United for Safe Energy

A sign pointing to an old fallout shelter in New York City

The application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been
controversial.

Scientists and diplomats have debated the nuclear weapons policy since before the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima in 1945.[127] The public became concerned about nuclear weapons testing from about 1954,
following extensive nuclear testing in the Pacific. In 1961 and 1962, at the height of the Cold War, about
50,000 women brought together by Women Strike for Peace marched in 60 cities in the United States to
demonstrate against nuclear weapons.[128][129] In 1963, many countries ratified the Partial Test Ban
Treaty which prohibited atmospheric nuclear testing.[130]

Some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s,[131] and in the late 1960s some
members of the scientific community began to express their concerns.[132] In the early 1970s, there were
large protests about a proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl, Germany. The project was cancelled in 1975
and anti-nuclear success at Wyhl inspired opposition to nuclear power in other parts of Europe and North
America.[133] Nuclear power became an issue of major public protest in the 1970s.[134]

Feminism

Main article: Second-wave feminism

The role of women as full-time homemakers in industrial society was challenged in 1963, when US feminist
Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, giving momentum to the women's movement and
influencing what many called Second-wave feminism. Other activists, such as Gloria Steinem and Angela
Davis, either organized, influenced, or educated many of a younger generation of women to endorse and
expand feminist thought. Feminism gained further currency within the protest movements of the late
1960s, as women in movements such as Students for a Democratic Society rebelled against the "support"
role they believed they had been consigned to within the male-dominated New Left, as well as against
perceived manifestations and statements of sexism within some radical groups. The 1970 pamphlet
Women and Their Bodies, soon expanded into the 1971 book Our Bodies, Ourselves, was particularly
influential in bringing about the new feminist consciousness.[135]

Free school movement

Main article: Free school movement

Environmentalism

Main article: Environmentalism

The cover of an early Whole Earth Catalog shows the Earth as seen by astronauts traveling back from the
Moon.

The 1960s counterculture embraced a back-to-the-land ethic, and communes of the era often relocated to
the country from cities. Influential books of the 1960s included Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Paul
Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. Counterculture environmentalists were quick to grasp the implications of
Ehrlich's writings on overpopulation, the Hubbert "peak oil" prediction, and more general concerns over
pollution, litter, the environmental effects of the Vietnam War, automobile-dependent lifestyles, and
nuclear energy. More broadly they saw that the dilemmas of energy and resource allocation would have
implications for geo-politics, lifestyle, environment, and other dimensions of modern life. The "back to
nature" theme was already prevalent in the counterculture by the time of the 1969 Woodstock festival,
while the first Earth Day in 1970 was significant in bringing environmental concerns to the forefront of
youth culture. At the start of the 1970s, counterculture-oriented publications like the Whole Earth Catalog
and The Mother Earth News were popular, out of which emerged a back to the land movement. The 1960s
and early 1970s counterculture were early adopters of practices such as recycling and organic farming long
before they became mainstream. The counterculture interest in ecology progressed well into the 1970s:
particularly influential were New Left eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin, Jerry Mander's criticism of the effects
of television on society, Ernest Callenbach's novel Ecotopia, Edward Abbey's fiction and non-fiction writings,
and E.F. Schumacher's economics book Small Is Beautiful.

Also in these years environmentalist global organizations arose, as Greenpeace and World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF).

Producerist

Main article: National Farmers Organization

The National Farmers Organization (NFO) is a producerist movement founded in 1955. It became notorious
for being associated with property violence and threats committed without official approval of the
organization, from a 1964 incident when two members were crushed under the rear wheels of a cattle
truck, for orchestrating the withholding of commodities, and for opposition to co-ops unwilling to withhold.
During withholding protests, farmers would purposely destroy food or wastefully slaughter their animals in
an attempt to raise prices and gain media exposure. The NFO failed to persuade the US government to
establish a quota system as is currently practiced today in the milk, cheese, eggs and poultry supply
management programs in Canada.

Gay liberation

Main article: Gay liberation

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took
place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village
neighborhood of New York City. This is frequently cited as the first instance in US history when people in
the gay community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted them, and
became the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and
around the world.