1968 REBELLION

Pasolini a Venezia nel 1968 (foto Biennale ASAC ) As a life-long Communist Party of Italy (PCI) member, Pasolini's Marxist positions politically may have been farther left than the student movement of the 1960s. However, in his poem called "The PCI to the young generation" [Il PCI ai giovani], he appeared to criticize the protestors and side with the police in the lines: When yesterday at Valle Guilia you came to blows with the policemen I sympathized with the policemen! Because the policemen are the children of the poor However, in other examinations of the poem, it is not believable that Pasolini sided with the right-wing or the police actions themselves... he seemed to be making note of the self-contradictory nature of the current struggle, which featured the students: You have daddy’s boy faces You were born with silver spoons in your mouths. However Pasolini is also fairly clear: We obviously are in agreement against the police i...

Student Protests Erupt in Poland, "Marzec 1968"

Marzec 1968 Protests in Poland. Beginning on March 8th, 1968, in Warsaw, student protests began to fill the streets. There was a spirit of reform and freedom felt in solidarity with the ongoing Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia. However, the government reaction was swift and severe. The participants of the 8 March rally were met with violent beatings from ORMO volunteer reserve and ZOMO riot squads just as they were about to go home. The disproportionately brutal reaction of the security forces appeared to many observers to be a provocation perpetrated to aggravate the unrest and facilitate further rounds of repression, in the self-interest of political leaders. [Wikipedia] In the following days, the protests grew in number and frequency, spilling over into the cities of Kraków, Lublin, Gliwice, Katowice, Łódź, Wrocław, Gdańsk, and Poznań. The reactionary forces of the government turned the crackdown into an anti-Zionist campaign...

The “Battle on Tegeler Way” [Schlacht am Tegeler Weg] was a violent confrontation between the police and demonstrators. The demonstrators were mainly connected with the SDS [Students for Democratic Society] and the APO [Anti-Parliamentary Opposition], who had called for a protest on November 4, 1968 at Tegeler Way in Berlin-Charlottenburg. In addition to students, many workers and rockers were been among the demonstrators. This street battle is considered a major turning point in the history of the APO in the '68 movement and went down in the history of the political left in Germany. At the Battle of Tegeler Weg 130 police officers and 22 demonstrators were seriously injured. Sources: Schlacht am Tegeler Weg Wikipedia The long and winding May of 1968 (6): German student movement by Julius Gavroche, April 3, 2018 Schlacht am Tegeler Weg (NDR, 1988), Youtube Video

Students Protest the US Aircraft Carrier Arrival at Sasebo Japan

Zengakuren Protests circa 1968-69 (c) Watanabe Hitomi Ongoing protests by student groups in Japan, had been agitating against the Japanese government's close ties to the US Military campaign in Vietnam. Many of these young Japanese, loosely affiliated with the National coalition known as Zengakuren , (All-Japan League of Student Self-Government), wanted to mount a large-scale show of resistance to the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier at the time of it's arrival to the naval base at Sasebo. In the words of Ogumi Eiji : The 1968 student uprising started suddenly. In October 1967, a small group of sect activists clashed with police near Tokyo's Haneda Airport, in an effort to prevent Prime Minister Satō Eisaku from traveling to South Vietnam. Students wearing plastic construction helmets and wielding two-by-fours overpowered lightly armed police. Images of the violent confrontation, in which one student activist was killed, were broadcast on national televis...

Hippies permitted to work for US Post Office

January 30th, 1968: Assistant Postmaster General Richard Murphy ruled that hippies could continue to work for the United States Postal Service "but they must have neat haircuts and get rid of their beards and sandals " and wear proper attire. According to Murphy, the largest number of hippies worked at post offices in San Francisco and some had been " walking their routes barefooted with shaggy beards, hair down to their shoulders, and wearing everything from bearskin coats to dungarees ." Hunter Thompson claimed that hippies could make a living in the post office: " The Post Office is a major source of hippy income. Jobs like sorting mail don’t require much thought or effort. A hippy named Admiral Love of the Psychedelic Rangers delivers special-delivery letters at night ." sources: "News Briefs— National", Chicago Tribune, January 31, 1968, p3 via Wikipedia Miles, Barry. Hippie. New York: Sterling, 2004. Thompson, Hunter. ...

Student Takeover at Howard University Turns the Tables of History

During the occupation of the Administration Building. The first major take-over of a college campus in 1968 took place not at Columbia University, but actually at Howard University, the mainly African-American campus located in Washington, D.C. The four-day takeover of the Administration Building, which ultimately led to the shutdown of the school, took place March 19 through March 23, 1968, and was a response to the university’s threats to expel nearly 40 students accused of disrupting the Charter Day Convocation that took place on March 1st, 1968. On that day, students who had been mounting a series of protests to demand the resignations of the University President Nasbrit and a more African-American curriculum, jumped the stage while Nasbrit was handing out honorary degrees. As a result, the event was shut down and 39 students were made subject to disciplinary hearings. The disruption of the Charter Day event was related to the previous year on March 21st 1967, when...

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