An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s

by Jennifer Frost

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002
Community organizing became an integral part of the activist repertoire of the New Left in the 1960s. Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that came to be seen as synonymous with the white New Left, began community organizing in 1963, hoping to build an interracial movement of the poor through which to demand social and political change. SDS sought nothing less than to abolish poverty and extend democratic participation in America.
Over the next five years, organizers established a strong presence in numerous low-income, racially diverse urban neighborhoods in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, and Boston, as well as other cities. Rejecting the strategies of the old left and labor movement and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, activists sought to combine a number of single issues into a broader, more powerful coalition. Organizers never limited themselves to today's simple dichotomies of race vs. class or of identity politics vs. economic inequality. They actively synthesized emerging identity politics with class and coalition politics and with a drive for a more participatory welfare state, treating these diverse political approaches as inextricably intertwined. While common wisdom holds that the New Left rejected all state involvement as cooptative at best, Jennifer Frost traces the ways in which New Left and community activists did in fact put forward a prescriptive, even visionary, alternative to the welfare state.
After Students for a Democratic Society and its community organizing unit, the Economic Research and Action Project, disbanded, New Left and community participants went on to apply their strategies and goals to the welfare rights, women’s liberation, and the antiwar movements. In her study of activism before the age of identity politics, Frost has given us the first full-fledged history of what was arguably the most innovative community organizing campaign in post-war American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Jennifer Frost is associate professor of history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She is the author of An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s and Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism.

Reviews

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a funny story. A bunch of dudes decide to drop out of university to ask unemployed men to get together and start a revolution. Meanwhile, the women who came with them end up helping those infamous welfare mothers to demonstrate for neighborhood improvements and more transparent social work agencies. Slowly, the penny drops for the men, who realize that having a few beers with the unemployed isn't leading to anything but a hangover. After a few local successes, the students realize the revolution is still a long way off. Meanwhile, riots pop off in the black neighborhoods, black power advocates tell the white students to eff off, the women and homosexuals realize they have their own oppressions to deal with and the boys decide protesting the Vietnam War is more fun. The welfare mothers, left holding the bag as always, keep on keeping on. This book didn't say anything earth shattering about the ERAP programs, but it does a great job of taking all the little bits and pieces you get out of other 60s histories to chart a coherent narrative. If you are thinking of setting up some radical neighborhood advocacy or services, this book will help you to avoid certain pitfalls, like not having clear goals or the classic never taking a break.

[Nigel Tskitishvili · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent look at the failures and successes of the 1960s New Left

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good history. Since the student movements didn't make huge waves til later in the 60's, you don't find it in many places.

[James Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost a perfect book, but needed a little more race analysis.