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...

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...

The Generation Gap on the Cover of LIFE Magazine

The May 17th 1968 cover story of LIFE Magazine was "The Generation Gap," which was published in a longer form the same year. What happens when a raggedy radical-type college student and his 42-year-old ad man uncle get together and dabble in each other's spheres, shooting the breeze (amongst other things) with observations about their respective lifestyles and philosophical takes on everything from politics to culture? You get one of the most boring books to hit the paperback racks... Sources: Book Review , Blog to Comm The gap , Trove, National Library of Australia

Ulrike Meinhoff publishes the declaration "From Protest to Resistance"

Editor-in-chief of the radical left-wing magazine, Konkret, Ulrike Meinhoff, publishes a declaration in an editorial of the May 1968 issue of Konkret, called: “Vom Protest zum Widerstand” [From Protest to Resistance]. The boundary between protest and resistance was crossed, but ineffectively nonetheless, and that which happened can still repeat itself. The power structures have not been changed. Resistance was exercised. Positions of power were not taken over. Therefore was it all just meaningless, escalating, terrorist, apolitical, impotent violence? The fun is over. “Protest is when I say I don’t like this and that. Resistance is when I see to it that things that I don’t like no longer occur.” Sources: Ulrike Meinhof Calls for a Move from Protest to Resistance (May 1968) , German History in Documents and Images. Konkret Magazine , Wikipedia.

Occupation of L'Odéon Theatre in Paris Ends As Police Clear Building

The student occupation of the Od é on Theatre in Paris was ended after a month, as police expelled 208 young men and women who had taken over the national theater on May 14. The expulsion came peaceably as 132 people voluntarily left on the promise that they would not be arrested. The other 76 were brought out forcibly but then released as soon as they got outside. Sources: Wikipedia Tartuffes à l’Odéon , Anti-K

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