fuck the LAPD

Every movement, protest, progressive thought and push for equality in Southern California stemmed from this time period. Not to discredit any other era but this book encapsulates the perfect culmination of civil unrest and unjust governing to show how the 1960's were the decade most things came to a tipping point. Not just that but the movements started in this time period directly translate to today. A lot of the injustice hasn't stopped it's just changed shapes. The detail of almost every event described is excruciatingly meticulous & important since a lot of the meetings and riots had characters that collided and overlapped. The blowouts were the most intriguing. Kids today get their education from things they read online and what their friends share. Back then you spent 8 hours in school "learning" and if it wasn't anything that interested you, you probably checked out. To organize and fight against curriculum is something I've never heard of. And although it wasn't the most successful it did allow kids to be heard in a way I cannot see today's generation organizing on such a scale. The Watt's riots were a dark and terribly sad time period but completely justified. To conclude all that with it became another marketable, commercialized fair ruined the spirit the Watt's festival initially represented. That broke my heart. The fire was there in the 60's because that was such an unruly lawless yet over policed part of Los Angeles History (all masked behind Hollywood and being the epicenter of entertainment) that they created their own media platforms to tell the truth. The LA Free Press. oh my god! That chapter was really wild too. This book has everything and it just is full of real history and shapes the world that Los Angeles has become. You can't know where you're going without knowing where you've been. So many stories within the 640 pages (the rest is just notes & citations)

Nearly 800 pages of detail about the leftist movements and counterculture that flourished -- or not -- in Los Angeles in the 1960s and early 1970s. I would have liked more depth, but the breadth of coverage is amazing. I loved the black and white photos, and I miss The Free Press.

Insanely detailed history of social movements in LA during the 1960s (and slightly beyond) by two not only accomplished historians, but more importantly, participants in the radical movement documented.

It would have been useful for there to have been more examples of labour movement history, and sometimes their analysis could lean slightly too much the liberal side for my liking (for example, criticising La Raza Unida Party for refusing to endorse progressive Democratic election candidates). However, the focus on black and Chicano liberation movements, and specifically within that the movements of high school students, was much appreciated. By laying out this history and the contradictions these movements embodied, there’s so much we can learn for today. And perhaps the most important lesson is: fuck the LAPD.

A compelling history of the people uniting and making themselves heard!

Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties addresses inequality on so many fronts: racial divides, sexual diparity, and the early battles of gay pride. The sixties spawned so many cultural movements, it's shocking to find the stories from Los Angeles less well known. Davis and Weiner have used their own memories as a basis to start digging into how racial inequality was entrenched in L.A. at all levels, their interviews with notable figures providing crucial insight into just how the government and police went about segregating society by restricting housing, education, and even painting justice in shades of white, brown, and black. The truth laid bare in this book reveals a history of police brutality against the people that has never been more necessary than right now. This depiction of corrupt government and a biased justice system completely undermining the very values the United States claims to stand upon is a very pointed reminder where the power in a democracy lies; more people could learn from the story told in these pages of urban uprising and peaceful protest.

Há momentos em que depois de ler um livro se estabelece uma relação com o autor. Este fez-me ter um carinho especial pelo Mike Davis.
O livro em questão é uma das mais belas odes que se pode fazer a uma cidade e a uma década de tantos ricos ensinamentos e luminosas jornadas de luta, mas que tantas vezes são postas dentro de roupagens shantis shalala e mainstream.
O Mike Davis escreveu um livro que, ao recolher as memórias de tantos momentos que caíram no esquecimento e parecem hoje quase estapafúrdios, ajuda a equiparmo-nos com uma arma fundamental: a esperança num mundo novo, cientes da longa marcha rumo à emancipação em que agora procuramos levar a tocha :')
O Mike Davis memo escreveu um livro de mais de 700 páginas só de movimentos sociais numa cidade numa década e no intro ainda reclama dos editores não o deixarem falar de coisas importantes :')
O Mike Davis é o tipo de pessoa que se pode dar ao luxo de meter nas notas de rodapé dos mais variados movimentos e dizer "foi assim, sei porque tava lá" :')
Camionista, dirigente sindical, comunista, antirracista.
Que a terra te seja leve e de quem trabalha.

Split into eight sections, “Set the Night on Fire” by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener recounts L.A.’s history and the revolts that occurred in the 1960’ s by different communities and movements. The book details minority groups such as African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics and their movements for equality as they try to find their place in a city that they called home. The book is long, topped off at 800 pages which was a lot to cover in a few sittings, but it goes into great detail of various events that happened all over the city. Set the Night on Fire is largely written in chronological order by that given chapter’s event. It recounts blatant examples of discrimination towards minority groups and even police cover ups from brutality as well as promotions of officers who were racist.

Urban social-political history at its best. Argues that the political activism of 1960s Los Angeles was built upon a substratum of rebellion against youth curfews, closed beaches, disciplinary vice principals, draft boards and racist cops. The national and even international spontaneous anti-authoritarianism that defined a generation was also very much about place-specific grievances and personalities. A portrait of “the Movement” in its Los Angeles specific context. While bracingly written, the cast of characters is somewhat dizzying, recreating the characters in student movements at various regional comps and high schools, owners of clubs and catering to noncomformists, and with a particularly deep dive into the internecine politics of Black radicals, notably the war between Ron Karenga’s US and the Black Panthers — always with the menace of the white Establishment, the political authorities in Sacto and DC, and their corrupt and violent police and rightwing white thug supporters. The book is at its best in showing the often visions factional divisions within both the radical movement and the establishment power structure, vividly describing the independent power of the Catholic Church hierarchy, the LAPD, the LA city council vs the Board of Supervisors vs the Mayor vs Sacramento. The establishment bad guys are not a monolith, nor are the resisters a disciplined brigade. Like Los Angeles itself, the narrative sprawls in all directions, a series of tenuously interconnected local stories colliding in space and place. Instead of a clear picture, the cumulative effect is kaleidoscopic (or perhaps psychedelic) in its rendering.

As always with Mike Davis narratives, the narrative is fundamentally about the heroic resistance to The Man, but the political viability of various radical strategies is never really assessed in seriousness. Radicals are good guys, and their failures are always ultimately because of elite perfidy. Even though the book documents how the parts of the Movement that succeeded did so by finding a common cause with political liberals, it never draws a general political conclusion from this, for to do so would require moving off of the romantic attraction to macho radicalism. In this sense the muscular prose mirrors the political attitude, promoting a militant but ultimately musclebound form of political posturing. Despite this, there are many brilliant set pieces, and it will certainly be the definitive tome for decades to come on Los Angeles politics in the 1960s.

Great reminder that ours is not the only period of high conflict. Fantastic LA stories of the not so distant past. Many of the issues are still with us today.

Extraordinary

ate and left zero crumbs

Good information, with some slight errors or oddly argued passages here and there, and sloppily put together. It reads more like an encyclopedia of topics that each really deserves its own dedicated book. Chapters end abruptly, often just as they're starting to get interesting. There's no sense of building up a narrative or view of history between chapters. Davis and Wiener take the very unusual route of waiting until the last few pages of an 800 page book to introduce their thesis. And as a friend pointed out, there's so many names. Names names names names names names names.