Outline or Essay
The Rise of Law and Order
the reactions to the 1960s
The Seeds of Conservatism
1968 Democratic Convention
...Led to
More open democratic primaries
Democratic Party fragmented
…and Assured Nixon victory
The phrase “asian american” originated from Yuji Ichioka
There was a strategic benefit of organizing as a large group under shared experiences vs. keeping specific racial divisions
-Nixon was “opening up” US relations with China, but Asian Americans wanted to dissuade imperialist moves
--racially-motivated murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 was a flashpoint to organize around, clearly things were not solved
-is there a divide between asian and asian american today?
1968 San Francisco State Strike demands included:
"S. F. State, a community college, exists in a moral vacuum, oblivious to the community it purports to serve. It does not reflect the pluralistic society that is San Francisco--it does not begin to serve the 300, 000 non-white people who live in this urban community in poverty, ignorance, despair. The Chinese ghetto, Chinatown, is a case in point. 1. S. F. State has a Chinese language department that isolates the “Chinese Experience” as a cultural phenomenon in language that 83% of the Chinese in the U. S. don’t speak. Realistically, we can expect that a Chinese woman living in the ghetto, who speaks Cantonese, cannot explain to the scholar that she is dying of tuberculosis because she speaks a “street language” while the scholar mutters a classical poetry in Mandarin. S. F.State does not teach Cantonese. 2. Chinatown is a ghetto in San Francisco, there are approximately 50,000 Chinese of whom the vast majority live in Chinatown. It is an area of old buildings, narrow streets & alleys, and the effluvia of a great many people packed into a very small space. At present, more than 5, 000 new Chinese immigrants stream into this overpopulated ghetto each year, an area already blessed with a birthrate that is rising, and will rise more. Tuberculosis is endemic, rents are high and constantly rising, city services are inadequate to provide reasonable sanitation, and space is at such a premium as to resemble the Malthusian ratio at in most extreme. There are no adequate courses in any department of school at S. F. State that even begin to deal with the problems of the Chinese people in their exclusionary and racist environment."
TWLF SF State CollegeStudent Demands:
1. That a School of Ethnic Studies for the ethnic groups involved in the Third World be set up with the students in each particular ethnic organizations having the authority and control of the hiring and retention of any faculty member, director, and administrator, as well as the curriculum in a specific area of study.
2. That 50 faculty positions be appropriated to the School of Ethnic Studies, 20 would be for the Black Studies Program.
3. That in the Spring semester, the College fulfill its commitment to the non-white students by admitting those that apply.
4. That in the Fall of 1969, all applications of non-white students be accepted.
5. That George Murray and any other faculty person chosen by non-white people as their teacher be retained in their position.
(George Murray was an English Department lecturer who was dismissed for his participation in the Black Panther Party. SF State Strike Committee. On Strike: Shut It Down. 1968. p. 3.)
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Nixon to the Rescue
1 hour 23 minute mark
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COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program)
Both AIM and Black Panther Party (and Young Lords, a Puerto Rican group) would be damaged by cointelpro, which would find ways to jail leaders of both movements or undercut group’s message and authority.
J Edgar Hoover famously approved the FBI tapping of MLK Jr’s phones, leaked a recording of him having sex with a woman not his wife, sent an anonymous “suicide letter” that told him to kill himself rather than face the public scandal of the tape.
Leonard Peltier of AIM was accused of first-degree murder and is still serving 2 life sentences despite Amnesty International listing his trial as unfair
Even beyond COINTELPRO, others would face criminal charges to distract from their activism – famously Angela Davis
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in 1972 Nixon was apprehensive about running again. His opponent, George McGovern, had tried to shepherd the many new social movements under the New Left into the Democratic Party fold. In 1972 the Democratic Party would also consider Shirley Chisolm, the first woman and first african american to run for a major party nomination. But McGovern would win out, and he most famously promised to have soldiers out of Vietnam in 90 days Nixon got scared, so he played to voter fear – fear that McGovern would bring hippies, drugs, and radicalism into the white house. Nixon won, carrying every state except MA and DC. But some of his winning tactics would soon come to attention…
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“Peace with Honor”
Defuse cold War by Peaceful coexistence
End war in Vietnam 3-Front Approach:
Peace Talks
Vietnamization of War
Increased bombing
Draft Lottery begins
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
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Watergate Scandal
Watergate:
A few days before the election in 1972, 5 men were arrested trying to break into the Democratic Party Headquarters, trying to bug the place (secretly record). Several of these men would be connected to CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) (terrible acronym). After months of trials, aides quitting or resigning, Nixon was finally implicated through some recordings which included some missing minutes of tape that certainly made him look more guilty. With a Democrat majority congress and fewer friends on the Republican side, he resigned rather than going through impeachment. Gerald Ford would take his place, although he wasn’t even Nixon’s elected VP (Spiro Agnew resigned already). Ford’s first move would be to pardon Nixon to prevent further investigation/embarrassment for Nixon.
The huge significance to come out of this is not about Nixon’s legacy – it’s about the legacy of scandal, which made people really distrust gov’t and demand more transparency, independent journalism, freedom of information act (est. 1967), etc.
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Stagflation
Causes
Rising Social Welfare Programs costs
Vietnam War
No major tax increases
Stiff foreign competition
Rising oil costs and scar
Growing unemployment
Economic depression/stagflation – combination of inflation and higher unemployment (remember highest of great depr was 25%, 2009 it was 10%). A couple of different economic things going on – US auto industry was collapsing as foreign import cars were becoming more desirable, US-made were not staying competitive. US companies were also starting to export manufacturing jobs to other countries. In the early 70s Nixon took the US off the gold standard. Lastly, “oil shocks” came when OAPEC (oganization of arab petroleum exporting countries) set an embargo against the US for its aid to Israel’s Yom Kippur War. The US had to find other sources for its oil, which was much more expensive. Gas prices would double (29-55 cents a gallon), cost per barrel quadrupled. The embargo was in part so shocking to Americans because it was a tactic they had used but rarely experienced against them. Consumers were asked to ration and go without, something that wasn’t supposed to happen outside of war time (except remember, Vietnam was still going on)
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The End of the Muscle Cars
The 1980’s: waking up hungover?
Unfinished Business – the Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment made discrimination based on sex illegal. It was passed by congress in 1972 but would never be ratified by all states, to this day. Prominent critic Schafely and conservative women were the most vocal in saying that gender difference was not a bad thing and that the ERA would strip women of their opportunities to be wholesome housewives. Take for example this quote: "Since the women are the ones who bear the babies and there's nothing we can do about that, our laws and customs then make it the financial obligation of the husband to provide the support," she said in 1973. "It is his obligation and his sole obligation. And this is exactly and precisely what we will lose if the Equal Rights Amendment is passed.”
Subsequent feminist movements would ask, did they do enough? What forms of inequality still exist and is there a better way to confront them?
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“Save Our Children” and anti-LGBT rhetoric
”As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.”
-Anita Bryant
The New Right was not just about federal political power – it also focused on local elections and on cultural power. You might remember the Young Americans for Freedom college-based club in the 1960s and 70s – these groups continue but religious groups, esp megachurches and televangelism (evangelical Christian-based television, with emphasis on conversion and conservative biblical interpretations). So the “moral majority” arm of the Republican base had a lot of campaigns, notably against abortion, but also against LGBT people.
One of the most famous examples came from Miami-Dade County, which in 1977 passed an ordinance banning discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation. A conservative group formed to fight the ordinance, especially operating in suburbs outside the Miami metro area, calling the ordiance “metro’s gay blunder”. They called their campaign “Save Our Children”, and talked about how LGBT people were a danger to children, whom they might convert to homosexuality or might even assault. There was always particular hysteria about teachers, and what gay or lesbian teachers might do in a classroom. And of course they needed a spokesperson – that would be Anita Bryant, beauty queen turned orange juice model, turned professional gay-basher. When their campaign was successful in repealing the anti-discrimination law, it would serve as a model for other cities (though not always successfully – CA turned down a proposition to automatically fire gay teachers).
Protest to Bryant was diverse; her attacks were so personal, so psychological against LGBT people that she’d become infamous. And in that context, I’m going to share what I consider to be one of the few truly significant moments of 1977. Now there would be marches against her and this rhetoric, and particularly efforts to compare her to Hitler. But there is one protest strategy that would become iconic among the LGBT community… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-A2Ql81WTY
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Rise of the moral majority
Economy Free Of Govt
Overturn Roe V Wade
Creationism
Prayer In Schools
Women’s Submission to Husbands
Communism= Pagan Totalitarianism
What emerges politically out of this frustration is a new Republican wing trying to shed image of Nixon/moderation. Instead of the ”silent majority”, they become very loud critics, esp of government as it was – considered to be too big, bumbling, expensive. Start calling themselves the “moral majority”, Reagan as leader. But mad people do not automatically form political coalitions – Reagan specifically united big and small business under promises to deregulate (big business didn’t have to automatically go with big gov’t); upper-mid class suburbanites treated as “victimized by taxes” rather than beneficiaries of entitlements (remember post-WW2 suburb growth!); white working class voters saw a vote for him as patriotic, part of ”culture wars” [see cartoon – how can blue collar unions and big business agree on a candidate?!); solidified the South’s republican status after in-flux civil rights period.
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Reagan, Reagan, Reagan… the man and the myth
Trickle Down/Reaganomics
Reaganomics – belief in cutting taxes, even if it meant continuing gov’t deficit. Popular with a lot of his constituents, both upper class businesspeople and middle class. Trickle down economics implied that cutting taxes of the rich would encourage more spending, competition, investment, and job creation. Besides cutting taxes, he also cut regulations (and the gov’t revenue sometimes generated by that). Though Congress was originally skeptical, they complied. Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan would say the cuts “takes the sand out of Congress’ sandbox”. He would later have to reform his plan and make it more bipartisan because it was enlarging the deficit so much faster than anticipated. Economists still debate the success of his plan or if it really paid out as well as it should have; income increases across the board under Reagan would reverse under Bush
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The fall of labor unions
Reaganomics in the longer-term
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People magazine featured Gaetan Dugas as Patient Zero in 1987. This marked up copy, anonymously mailed to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, exemplifies negative reactions.
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The Rainbow Coalition
The ascent of the Individual and The Myth of Multiculturalism
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