SET the NIGHT on FIRE Civil Rights Movement Compelled Political Skills) Were As Much a L.A
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mated these strengths but the Party (and kept their acquired SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE civil rights movement compelled political skills) were as much a L.A. in the Sixties community leaders to engage in part of this picture as the racial a masquerade about fair hous- tension, the hitch-hiking teens, ing, employment, and so on, and the nightlife that—thanks in insisting things were somehow part to lefty nightclub owners— getting better. helped turn rebelliousness into a Mike Davis and Jon Wiener veritable music of rebellion. Verso ($34.95) Johnny Otis—band leader, mul- tiracial local TV and radio star, Radio station KPFK brought and columnist for local black a wide-open Pacifica radio. newspapers—might be as good The tabloid Los Angeles Free a personal symbol as any for the Press brought the underground struggle soon to unfold. Future press, or actually made the Black Power and Brown Power underground press, because leaders were already attending founder Art Kunkin (a protégé local colleges. School integration of Pan Africanist thinker CLR had supposedly begun, although James) showed how an avowedly in practice it mostly had not. freaky, left-wing community tabloid could garner a mass L.A. Police Chief William H. audience of a quarter million Parker personified everything readers. Though not everyone they were up against. Like a was freaky! The congealing of a figure out of a noir novel, Parker left-wing Catholic community, was at once an extortionist with empowered by the farm workers’ secret files on political oppo- struggles among Latino neigh- nents and rivals, intimate rela- bors nearby and the Second Vati- tions with the mob, and a taste can Council far away, likewise for publicity. The Left, including added to the sense of massive Los Angeles CORE (Congress of potential changes. Racial Equality) and the Black Muslims, as well as a succession 1965 was the year of the Watts Ri- of moderate reform groups, of- ots. L.A. changed or might have fered him welcome targets. Los changed, but the sense of “Black Angeles Democrats rightly feared violence” held strong. And the A few years ago, a splendid book youngsters in the suburban that white backlash could drive next year saw major blunders on of Los Angeles murals described sprawl to Chicano Teamsters them from elected office and it the Left, not for the last time. At young neighborhood residents breaking strikes. was never clear whether they a major peace rally in La Brea as they looked wonderingly at wished to offend the real estate Park, preceding the big anti-war the faded images of Chicano When the saga begins, in 1960, lobby with a tough anti-discrim- march, H. Rap Brown spent his self-identification and struggle: Los Angeles is in many ways a ination law on housing—the rhetoric on Israel instead of Viet- what are these, where did they Southern or South-inflected city. most precious of all resources in nam. Happily, Muhammad Ali come from? A glorious as well as Racial barriers ruled, some- the booming region. came on next, freshly convicted painful chapter in the past of one thing understood well by those of draft evasion, a simply tremen- of the world’s great cities is now African-Americans arriving from Add the Vietnam War and the dous figure of the time. Soon, on view again in Set the Night the South during and after World explosion seems, in retrospect, the L.A. Red Squad attacked On Fire, a work rich with history War II. But it was also a zone to have been inevitable. But it the crowd of 10-15,000 (mostly important to all of us today. of heavy hypocrisy. Liberal- would always have a certain L.A. peaceful, middle-class white ism could be awfully good for vibe—as the 1966 Buffalo Spring- people) in what the authors call Two veteran authors allow them- growth. field hit “For What It’s Worth” “one of the country’s biggest selves vast detail to tell about us captured—of restlessness and Democratic strongholds.” about the cradle of “countercul- The Left had previously been undefined alienation, shadowed ture,” in all the far-flung rebel- powerful and influential in by a paranoid and heavily armed LBJ was shaken. Public sympathy lious meanings of the term. It is Southern California, from the police force. The mostly Jewish, for the LAPD’s continual attacks also the story of L.A.’s contested movie industry to the labor middle-aged women who had on Black people was shaken. racial space, with contradictions movement to ethnically divided survived the virtual demise of Politics radicalized, if incremen- ranging from radicalized white communities. The red scare deci- the once-powerful Communist tally. A newly organized, deeply 22 rain taxi | nonfiction sincere, but repeatedly bumbling recruitment, especially into the symptomized and symbolized a factories would close and gang Peace and Freedom Party could Marines, had been a tradition for comprehensive radical per- violence would rage anew, with not stand up to the Eugene generations. Vast marches with spective clarifi ed in 1969, as its drugs the commercial commod- McCarthy campaign, especially signs in Spanish marked a huge demise in 1973 marked the end of ity of choice. Further ahead, against the background of the transition for the community the free-wheeling underground from Reagan to Trump, the very Tet Off ensive. The Democratic and so did, in a way, the LAPD newspaper era for a moment victories of the 1960s would be Party would continue to dictate response: normally a matter of of self-infl icted defeat: Maoist treated as the work of senseless the terms of progressive politics; billy clubs and threats, this time splintering of the Left . “dopey hippies, traitorous peace self-avowed revolutionaries were began the use of gas meant for protesters, bra-burning femi- not going to get very far, except military confl icts. The fi nal chapter, “Sowing the nisms, dangerous Black radicals, in repeated, vivid moments of Future,” looks back upon a and commissars of political martyrdom. In part because of this scene of mixed picture with an author- correctness.” horror, a multi-racial, multi-gen- ity owed to the authors’ vast In a way, the rest of the saga is erational peacenik public was personal experiences as well An era so far away, and yet so already set by 1968. Chief Parker, awakened. Not (to repeat a key as research. The mayoral re- near, so glorious, and so tragic. intimate to Robert Kennedy, point) that the Democratic Party election victory of Tom Bradley The authors have chosen, I think, would fall from power because was going to be overturned. But in 1973 revealed that the ground to let fi nal judgment fall to the he threatened J. Edgar Hoover’s new leaders emerged, suspi- had shift ed. He ushered in a new reader. They have given us a princely authority, based on a ciously familiar to long-term era of business success without remarkable opportunity to think bigger haul of secrets. A fi rst observers of American Left being able to tame the police about the promise of the Left , Black mayor would be elected, politics; it was the experienced force. The famed neighborhood even in failure, to create mighty but would come to represent an left -winger Burt Corona, training of Watts, heart of the 1965 upris- moments of hope and of pride adjusted system of urban/subur- young Chicanos to lead their ing but also of hopes for change, amongst those previously given ban commercial and real estate own movement, who perhaps faded back into unprecedented anything but pride in themselves. expansion even more lucrative best exemplifi ed doing what can despair. In the era just ahead, — Paul Buhle than before. be done, working within coali- tions and not blaring revolution- Probably for some readers, the ary tones so loudly as to scare story unraveled in the last third off allies. of this monumental volume will seem more grim than otherwise. There are so many more rich But that is reading too much and moving stories here, one backward, when the reality of the of the best stretching beyond political and cultural unfolding is the framework of the book: the tremendous and unforgettable. feminist movement. In 1972, the Take the rebellious music scene. LAPD busted two staff ers of the Popular arenas were burned Women’s Self-Help Clinic on down repeatedly by right-wing charges of practicing medicine WORD Cuban terrorists, no longer in the sans license. A resulting trial pay of the CIA and uncontrolled quickly became a cause célèbre. SMITH by the FBI—but the music surged Meanwhile, a Chicana struggle and resurged, with some of our against sterilization emerged fi nest artists emerging from it alongside welfare rights organiz- and sometimes (like Janis Joplin) ing, as did a Women’s Union led destroyed by it. by a former free speech leader in Berkeley. An alliance of women The Chicano movement is artists added to the movement, described with a passion for and a trans-racial, gay-and- detail in one of the most moving straight sisterhood was trium- A virtual craft, career, & connection chapters of Set the Night On Fire. phant—for a while, anyway. conference for writers: Craft sessions, Public education, deeply racist agent meetings, career consults. at its core, now saw walkouts Another well-covered topic, October 1-4, 2020 known as Blowouts. Soon Asian-American self-conscious- the Chicano Moratorium of- ness, sparkles here with the fered a new dimension in the magazine-and-movement Gi- loft.org/wordsmith anti-war movement, in the very dra, named (of course) aft er neighborhoods where military the Japanese fi lmic monster.