Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978

by Chris Carlsson (Editor), LisaRuth Elliott (Editor)

Overview

A collection of essays spans the tumultuous decade from 1968, the year of the San Francisco State University strike, to 1978 and the twin traumas of the Jonestown massacre and the assassinations of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. This volume provides a broad look at the diverse ways these ten years shook the city of San Francisco and shaped the world we live in today. From community gardening to environmental justice, gay rights and other identity-based social movements, anti-gentrification efforts, neighborhood arts programs, and more, many of the initiatives whose origins are described here have taken root and spread far beyond San Francisco.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931404129
Publisher:	City Lights Books
Publication date:	06/14/2011
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	8.76(w) x 6.04(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

Chris Carlsson, director of the multimedia history project Shaping San Francisco (foundsf.org), is a writer, publisher, editor, and community organizer. For the last thirty years his activities have focused on horizontal communications, organic communities and public space. Carlsson was one of the founders, editors and frequent contributors to the San Francisco magazine Processed World; he also helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as Critical Mass that have spread to five continents and over 300 cities. Carlsson has edited four books, published a novel, After the Deluge, (Full Enjoyment Books: 2004) and his most recent work is Nowtopia (AK Press: 2008).

LisaRuth Elliott, co-director of Shaping San Francisco, has spent the last 20 years flexing her grassroots activist muscle in San Francisco and internationally. She has written for, edited, and produced print and web-based communications materials for San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit organizations since 1996. She has worked with communities on a broad range of human rights and human dignity issues and has engaged with the challenge of creating new possibilities out of the chaos following natural disasters in Thailand and Peru. She is currently volunteering with grassroots efforts to rebuild in Haiti. She is a dancer, a weaver, a bread baker, an everyday bicyclist, an urban farmer, and a visual artist.

Table of Contents

Shaken, and Stirred Chris Carlsson 7

On Strike! We're Gonna Shut it Down: The 1968-69 San Francisco State Strike Margaret Leahy 15

"With the Soul of a Human Rainbow": Los Siete, Black Panthers, and Third Worldism in San Francisco Dr. Jason M. Ferreira 30

"All Those Who Care About The Mission, Stand Up With Me!": Latino Community Formation and the Mission Coalition Organization Tomás F. Summers Sandoval 48

Poetry and Solidarity in the Mission District Alejandro Murguía 61

Lost Murals of the Seventies Timothy W. Drescher 71

Mujeres Muralistas Patricia Rodriguez 81

My World Incomplete/To Complete My World Roberto Vargas 92

Where Did All the Flowers Go? The View from a Street in Bernal Heights Peter Booth Wiley 95

Up Against the Bulkhead: A Photo Essay with Text Stephen Rees Peter Booth Wiley 108

My Teacher, My Friend Andrew Lam 121

Filipino Americans in the Decade of the International Hotel Estella Habal 126

"Hush Puppies," Communalist Politics, and Demolition Governance: The Rise and Fall of the Black Fillmore Rachel Brahinsky 141

The Fight to Stay: The Creation of the Community Housing Movement in San Francisco, 1968-1978 Calvin Welch 154

Reflections from Occupied Ohlone Territory Mary Jean Robertson 163

Making Sexism Visible: Private Troubles Made Public Deborah A. Gerson 170

Sometimes You Work With The Democrats, And Sometimes You Riot Tommi Avicolli Mecca 183

Coming Together: The Communal Option Matthew Roth 192

San Bruno Mountain David Schooley 209

The Farm by the Freeway Mirjana Blankenship 219

A Personal History of the San Francisco People's Food System Pam Peirce 232

Ecology Emerges Chris Carlsson 241

San Francisco Labor in the 1970s Jesse Drew 258

The Rise and Fall of the Underground Comix Movement in San Francisco and Beyond Jay Kinney 272

San Francisco Bay Area Posters: 1968-1978 Lincoln Cushing 285

Jung Sai Garment Workers Strike of 1974 Harvey Dong 303

When Music Mattered Mat Callahan 317

Contributors 329

Index 332

What People are Saying About This

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

"Militant urbanist and writer, Chris Carlsson, has brought together a brilliant collection of essays by historians and memoirists of a neglected decade that reveal the originality and solidity of social movements which, despite tragic failures, have guaranteed that San Francisco would maintain a utopian vision of what is possible. Each contribution is a jewel, storytelling at its best." --(Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of A Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975)

Richard Walker

"Ten Years That Shook the City is a brilliant palimpsest of a time and a place: San Francisco in a revolutionary decade that changed just about every part of the city and everything about how we live today. This magnificent collection brings together voices from the cutting edges of feminism, gay liberation, Latino and Asian mobilizations, environmentalism, community housing and more, and proves once again what an extraordinary city we have the good fortune to inherit." --(Richard Walker, Professor of Geography, University of California, and author of The Country in the City and The Conquest of Bread)

Dan Berger

These bottom-up histories, written both by movement veterans and younger historians, provide a fascinating look at the ways people in a pivotal city shaped a pivotal decade. From hotel workers to cultural workers, college campuses to city streets, collective living to urban gardening, this book captures the sights, sounds and desires of a city in revolt. Its pages reveal the roots of our current struggles. (Dan Berger, editor of The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism)

Editorial Reviews

"For anyone who lived through San Francisco's greatest years, the 1960s and 1970s, this book is a treasure-house of reminders, information and perspectives on what happens when a community really AWAKENS politically, ecologically and socially. No-one has ever done a better job of capturing this than Chris Carlsson in this book. For those who were not here, settle down and learn what the 60s-70s cultural revolution in the city may teach us about how we should deal with a difficult future. This is great reading for anyone." --(Jerry Mander, author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television)

Jerry Mander

"What did happen in the years following the storied 1960’s? Did political and social activism die away, move to the country, or get co-opted by the mainstream? Clearly not, as detailed in this new book of essays, edited by local community activist and historian, Chris Carlsson. Primarily first-person accounts, each chapter is chock full of stories from the front lines, written by participants who organized, agitated, and created social change in the city well into the 1970s and beyond. Currents run together from the anti-war and labor movements, gay and women’s liberation, struggles against redevelopment and racism and towards the building of cooperatives, ecological awareness, and political art and culture. Gathered together, these snapshots of activism tell a powerful story, showing how the groundwork was laid for much of the progressive movement that still exists today in San Francisco. The lessons of continuity are strong, with the foundations of many of today’s institutions and organizations rooted in the radical political and cultural movements from this time period." --(---Susan Goldstein, City Archivist, San Francisco Public Library)

San Francisco Public Library