Neoliberalism and the Struggle for American Democracy Since the 1960S Dawson Barrett University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2013 "To Avoid the Unimaginable": Neoliberalism and the Struggle for American Democracy Since the 1960s Dawson Barrett University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Barrett, Dawson, ""To Avoid the Unimaginable": Neoliberalism and the Struggle for American Democracy Since the 1960s" (2013). Theses and Dissertations. 74. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/74 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “TO AVOID THE UNIMAGINABLE”: NEOLIBERALISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SINCE THE 1960s by Dawson Barrett A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2013 ABSTRACT “TO AVOID THE UNIMAGINABLE”: NEOLIBERALISM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SINCE THE 1960s by Dawson Barrett The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2013 Under the Supervision of Professor Joe Austin This study explores the structural, tactical, and strategic legacies of 1960s era activism on subsequent American social movements. Specifically, this project explains how the ascendancy of neoliberal policies on both national and global scales has dramatically shifted opportunities for social change. Case studies for these developments include Earth First! and the punk rock movement during the 1980s, the Student-Farmworker Alliance in the 1990s, and a variety of anti-war organizations in the 2000s. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The 1960s: A Movement of Movements 19 SECTION I: NEOLIBERALISM Chapter 2: The “Reagan Method” and Direct Action Activism 53 Chapter 3: Resistance Cultures and Counter-Institutions 91 SECTION II: GLOBALIZATION Chapter 4: Neoliberal Globalization and the Global Justice Movement 119 Chapter 5: The “War on Terror” and the Global Peace Movement 149 Conclusion 193 Epilogue: Bailouts, Austerity, and Occupy Everything 205 Bibliography 213 Curriculum Vitae 233 iii iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Projects of this size are rarely actually the work of one person, and this one is not an exception. If it were not for the assistance, encouragement, and influence of a variety of scholars, workers, colleagues, family members, and friends, I would never have completed it. First, I would like to thank the librarians and workers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, the Wisconsin State Historical Society, the University of Illinois, the University of Washington, and New York University, for facilitating my research, as well as Kamala Parks, Branwyn Bigglestone, Chris Boarts, Esneider, Bill Fletcher, and Jean Eisenhower, for sharing their stories with me. I must also thank the UWM graduate school, whose 2012 fellowship provided me the space to finish my dissertation on my own terms. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the UWM History Department for years of encouragement, guidance, and employment – foremost to Anita Cathey, as well as to Joe Austin, Aims McGuinness, Rob Smith, Joe Rodriguez, Rachel Ida Buff, Carolyn Eichner, Jee-Won Schally, Steve Meyer, Cary Miller, Matt Dalstrom, David Hoeveler, and Michael Gordon, among others. Additional thanks are owed to my colleagues, friends, and readers Beth Robinson, Joe Walzer, John Terry, Melissa Seifert, Bill Reck, and Jacob Glicklich. Our “radical reading group” holds a special place in my heart. I also owe a tip of my hat to my many wonderful History 404 students, whose feedback and interest shaped these pages more than they know. Nicolas Lampert and my friend Mark Rudd also provided comments and challenges to this project that were both insightful and rewarding. v Much of the thinking about this project was informed by organizing experiences at UWM. To that end, I owe a great many thanks to the founding members of Milwaukee Students for a Democratic Society, namely Beth Robinson, Jay Burseth, Brian Averill, Spencer Chumbley, Dana Schultz, Jeff Flashinski, and Melody Hoffman. I am equally grateful to the members of the organization Act Everywhere, in particular Kevin Suemnicht, Kyle Schulz, Kristin McCrory, Cullom Cahill, Bryan Wysocki, Ellyn Thompson, Jackie Dreyer, and honorary members Madeline Gardner and Joshua Kahn Russell. I am continually inspired by what you have accomplished and by the important work that you do. With some redundancy, I would also like to acknowledge the UWM students who were unjustly assaulted by police in March 2010 while demonstrating against rising tuition (and the students and faculty who stood with them in the weeks that followed), as well as the students, teachers, and workers who protested on campus and traveled to Madison almost daily during February and March 2011 in order to express opposition to the state government’s attack on public education and workers’ rights. Though losing battles thus far, the stands that people took, or refused to take, during those two cold winters permanently altered my worldview. Lastly, I would like to thank my family for their constant support and my many friends who hosted me in cities all over the country while I conducted research. This project is dedicated to those who continue to struggle to create a better world, despite terrible odds. vi If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable. - Students for a Democratic Society, 1962 vii viii 1 INTRODUCTION: THE SHIFTING POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE NEOLIBERAL ERA 1960s Movement of Movements Neoliberalism 1980s Direct Action Movements Neoliberal Globalization 1990s Global Justice Movement The War on Terror 2000s Anti-war Movement Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by logging companies and corporate ranchers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves over to powerful broadcasters and large corporate interests without a dime going into the public trust…As markets are touted as the driving force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power should reside in markets and corporations rather than in governments (except for their support for corporate interests and national security) and citizens. Citizenship has increasingly become a function of consumerism and politics has been restructured as "corporations have been increasingly freed from social control through deregulation, privatization, and other neoliberal measures." - Henry Giroux, “The Terror of Neoliberalism”1 2 For several weeks in February and March 2011, tens of thousands of people – more than 100,000 on peak days– marched through the streets of Madison, Wisconsin to protest the state’s new “Budget Repair” bill. Despite Governor Scott Walker’s threats to mobilize the Wisconsin National Guard, the protestors –including labor activists, teachers, students, firefighters, and police officers– maintained an around-the-clock occupation of the state’s capitol building. Concerned citizens also provided seventeen hours of public testimony on the bill and symbolically blockaded the offices of state representatives in order to keep them from voting. On February 16, forty percent of Madison’s public school teachers called in sick, forcing the district to cancel classes for the day. On February 17, as protests spread throughout the state, students at Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School organized a walkout and marched four miles to join a demonstration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The same day, the state’s fourteen Democratic senators fled to neighboring Illinois, in order to deny a quorum. Meanwhile, solidarity demonstrations were held in every state capital in the country.2 The “Wisconsin Uprising,” widely cited as Madison’s largest protest since the Vietnam War, ultimately could not stop passage of the bill. It did, however, draw national scrutiny to the newly elected governor’s proposals. Walker had presented the bill as a necessary fix for the state’s $100 million budget deficit – a shortfall, it turned out, that he himself had created the previous month. Included among the bill’s many inflammatory provisions were increased barriers to maintaining labor unions and the effective elimination of collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of state workers. Walker’s agenda was much more extensive, however. It included handouts to energy corporations through “no-bid” contracts, decreased accountability for corporate 3 negligence through tort reform and the repeal of the state’s Equal Pay Act, and the loosening of regulations on the state’s telecommunications and high-interest loan industries. Walker also cut more than $1 billion from the state’s K-12 and university education systems, while encouraging the privatization of public education through charter schools and voucher programs.3 As this was happening, several other states, including Ohio, Indiana, and New Jersey, were also pushing legislation to undercut workers’ rights. Moreover, additional new bills from Wisconsin legislators mirrored controversial immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama, as well as the “Stand Your Ground” justifiable