Days of Rage
Reflections on the radical movements of the 1960's
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Days of Rage
I recently finished “Days of Rage” by Bryan Burrough, which details the rise and fall of radical 1960s and 70s revolutionary movements.
Those of us who didn’t live through these times, tend to compartmentalize this era of American history into three boxes: the Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement, and the rise of a rock and roll hippie counterculture. We go off of “vibes”.
I know it was a wild, chaotic, optimistic, and norm-shattering time in history, but I didn’t quite grasp how insane it truly was.
What I appreciate about Burrough’s writing in “Days of Rage”, is that he is not out to make a specific ideological point. He maintains a well-researched “fly on the wall” perspective, doing his best to remain objective, to tell the cautionary tales of the utopian radicalists, Marxist students, and black and Puerto Rican nationalists that brought “the struggle” into the lives of ordinary Americans.
Those who remember these times will attest—things were crazy. We sit on a knife edge of cultural and political contempt for each other now, we imagine that this is the most polarized and broken our culture has been. This is not the case. Armed struggle and insurrection have always been a part of the American character. What “Days of Rage” shows, is that the birth of underground radical movements happened in a time that is very analogous to right now. But unlike today, where so much of our pent-up anger and frustration manifests in online trolling and performative social media activism, the radicals of the Baby Boomer generation felt compelled to show the world they existed in the only way they knew how; boots on the ground protest, violence, and terror.