 | |
| Type | web/print journal |
|---|---|
| Format | web, magazine |
| Editor | Thomas Good / NLN Editorial Collective |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Political alignment | New Left |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Website | nextleftnotes |
Next Left Notes (NLN) is an independent radical publication and weblog connected to the 2006 re-incarnation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). NLN began producing print versions in March 2008 - to mark its 4th anniversary.
Next Left Notes was founded in March, 2004, by Thomas Good, its current editor. [1] [2] Good and other NLN contributors were one source of the refoundation statement of SDS in January 2006. [3] [4]
Next Left Notes differs from New Left Notes , the publication of SDS in the 1960s from which it takes its name, in that it is not officially connected with SDS - although Good and other members of the NLN "collective" are members of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), the non-student entity that emerged from SDS at the National Convention in Chicago, Illinois in 2006. [5]
Contributors have included 1960s SDS veterans (Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Paul Buhle, [6] Mark Rudd) and young people who are involved in the new SDS (Allison Van Doren, Brendan Dunn, Brian Kelly, [7] Pat Korte) and members of pacifist (Frida Berrigan, David McReynolds) and labor activist groups (Penny Rosemont of Charles H. Kerr, various members of the Industrial Workers of the World [8] ).
According to Next Left Notes, [9] their role in the movement is to cover the New Left actions, conferences and other aspects of the struggle. They provide news articles on left wing events in the United States, [10] as well as commentary and photographic galleries.
Like the 1960s magazine New Left Notes, the publication's contributors and readers are largely New Left and anti-authoritarian.[ citation needed ] The articles written for NLN support participatory democracy and direct action. The original New Left Notes motto, "Let the People Decide", appears on the NLN masthead. [11]
Some writers outside the new SDS have criticized Good and NLN as "militant", "sectarian" and too close to former members of the Weather Underground. [12]
NLN has published as both a web based news site and, since March 2008, as a print publication. [13] Its content, along with an increasing amount of video and photographic work, is largely released under the GNU General Public License. [14]
Thomas Emmet Hayden was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his role as an anti-war, civil rights, and intellectual activist in the 1960s, authoring the Port Huron Statement and standing trial in the Chicago Seven case.
Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired law professor and a former leader of the radical Weather Underground. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.
The National Guardian, later known as The Guardian, was a left-wing independent weekly newspaper established in 1948 in New York City. The paper was founded by James Aronson, Cedric Belfrage and John T. McManus in connection with the 1948 Presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace under the Progressive Party banner. Although independent and often critical of all political parties, the National Guardian is thought to have been initially close to the ideological orbit of the pro-Moscow Communist Party USA, but this suspected association quickly broke down in the course of several years.
The history of the socialist movement in the United States spans a variety of tendencies, including anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, Marxists, Marxist–Leninists, social democrats, Trotskyists and utopian socialists. It began with utopian communities in the early 19th century such as the Shakers, the activist visionary Josiah Warren and intentional communities inspired by Charles Fourier. Labor activists, usually British, German, or Jewish immigrants, founded the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1877. The Socialist Party of America was established in 1901. By that time, anarchism also rose to prominence around the country. Socialists of different tendencies were involved in early American labor organizations and struggles. These reached a high point in the Haymarket affair in Chicago which started International Workers' Day as the main workers holiday around the world, Labor Day and making the eight-hour day a worldwide objective by workers organizations and socialist parties worldwide.
The Days of Rage demonstrations were a series of violent actions taken over a course of three days in October 1969 in Chicago, organized by the Weatherman faction of the counterculture-era group Students for a Democratic Society.
Carl Preston Oglesby was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1966.
The New American Movement (NAM) was an American New Left multi-tendency socialist and feminist political organization established in 1971.
Jeff Jones is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) is a United States student organization representing left wing ideals. It takes its name and inspiration from the original SDS of 1960–1969, then the largest radical student organization in US history. The contemporary SDS is a distinct youth and student-led organization with over 120 chapters worldwide.
Terry Robbins was an American far left activist, a key member of the Ohio Students for a Democratic Society, and one of the three Weathermen who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
Brian Flanagan is an Irish-American former member of the American radical left organizations Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weather Underground Organization (WUO).
The Rag was an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas from 1966–1977. The weekly paper covered political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing antiwar movement, the sexual revolution, gay liberation, and the drug culture. The Rag encouraged these political constituencies and countercultural communities to coalesce into a significant political force in Austin. As the sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the first underground paper in the South, The Rag helped shape a flourishing national underground press. According to historian and publisher Paul Buhle, The Rag was "one of the first, the most long-lasting and most influential" of the Sixties underground papers. In his 1972 book, The Paper Revolutionaries, Laurence Leamer called The Rag "one of the few legendary undergrounds."
John Gregory Jacobs was an American student and anti-war activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader in both Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman group, and an advocate of the use of violent force to overthrow the government of the United States. A fugitive since 1970, he died of melanoma in 1997.
Paul Merlyn Buhle is a (retired) Senior Lecturer at Brown University, author or editor of 35 volumes including histories of radicalism in the United States and the Caribbean, studies of popular culture, and a series of nonfiction comic art volumes. He is the authorized biographer of C. L. R. James.
Radical America was a left-wing political magazine in the United States established in 1967. The magazine was founded by Paul Buhle and Mari Jo Buhle, activists in Students for a Democratic Society and served during its first few years of existence as an unofficial theoretical journal of that organization. During the 1970s and 1980s, the magazine changed to take on more of an academic Marxist flavor. With contributions from academics dwindling during the decade of the 1990s, the magazine was terminated in 1999.
Howard Norton Machtinger is a former director of Carolina Teaching Fellows, a student teacher scholarship program at the University of North Carolina. He is an education and civil rights activist, a teacher, a forum leader, and a political commentator. Machtinger is a former member of Students For a Democratic Society and Weatherman.
The Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) was a student activist group in the southern United States during the 1960s, which focused on many political and social issues including: African-American civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, worker's rights, and feminism. It was intended, in part, to be SDS for Southerners and SNCC for white students – at a time when it was dangerous for SDS to attempt to organize in the Deep South and when SNCC was starting to discuss expelling white volunteers. It was felt that students at the traditionally white and black colleges in the South could be more effectively organized separately than in an integrated student civil rights organization; however, this was controversial and initially opposed by advisors like Anne Braden. Sue Thrasher and Archie Allen of the Christian Action Fellowship were among the founders of the group, with the support of Bob Moses and others. At its inception, the group had close ties to controversial Louisville, Kentucky radicals Carl and Anne Braden and their organization, the Southern Conference Education Fund, but a deliberate effort was later made to put some distance between the SSOC and the Bradens to avoid the appearance that the SSOC was a Communist front.
Thorne Webb Dreyer is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture, New Left, and underground press movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas, where he edits the progressive internet news magazine, The Rag Blog, hosts Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM, and is a director of the New Journalism Project.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy." From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion-rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms. Some see the New Left as an oppositional reaction to earlier Marxist and labor union movements for social justice that focused on dialectical materialism and social class, while others who used the term see the movement as a continuation and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.
