*Memories and Implications of 1960s Movements: Challenging Dominant Structures of Power & Solidarity in Academia and Social Movements

• In Event: What love and solidarity look like at a neoliberal/imperial university? Teaching Palestine, Third Worldism and gender justice

Abstract

This paper addresses the historical resonance of a momentous period of challenge to dominant structures of power in academic arenas and social movements, attempting to create alternative decolonial educational and political practice. Highlighting the spirit of 1968, this paper will focus on the early decades of the 1960's when social movements around the world created an atmosphere of urgency and change, challenging government and traditional entrenched power holders and legitimizing social movements as driving forces for political and social changes, and qualitatively changing our notion of freedom, empowerment and social justice. Popular power expressed in long forgotten, marginalized ideas became popularized and embraced by millions from Palestine to Puerto Rico and within Indigenous, Black, Latino and Asian communities of the US and throughout the world. I will focus on anti-colonial framework of internationalist struggles in 1960s; central debates in Black Struggle, Civil Rights, Black Power, Southern Freedom Campaign and intersection with international struggles from Vietnam to Palestine; Cuban Revolution/Chinese Revolution, New era, New perspectives; 1968 SFSU student strike, nationwide impact and international reflections from Paris to Tunisia. Ocean-Hill Brownsville struggle for decolonial/relevant education; Crisis of liberalism in the North. Progress, setbacks and rise of neoliberalism corporate universities; Angela Davis, Attica Prison uprising, Leila Khaled. Central America, South Africa nuclear disarmament intersection with Palestine.

Author

• Jamie Veve