the isla vista 'bank burners' ten years later: notes on the fate of student activists

215

The Isla Vista "Bank Burners"

Ten Years Later: Notes on the

Fate of Student Activists*

Santa Barbara

This paper reports on on-going research into the "fate" of the student activists of the sixties. In

depth study of a small number of cases reveals strong continuities in all cases in adherence to the core-values of the student movement and to radical beliefs, but with considerable loss of commitment to the activist stance by many of our interviewees. It appears that some of this gap between values and action can be attributed to a reduction in feelings of political efficacy and to disillusionment with the possibilities for radical transformation of American society. Another primary continuity is their

continuing refusal to settle for conventional identities and institutional ties. These former activists continue to assert the right to autonomous self-development, which was a major theme of student

protest. We also discuss some of the personal and political history behind these themes: political events of1969-1970, student activists' experiences during that period and their pathways of personal development and change through the seventies.

Ten years ago last February the Bank of America branch in Isla Vista, California ?

the youth community adjacent to the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California ? was burned to the ground during a mass student riot. Sparked by ghetto like housing conditions, the adamant refusal of UCSB's administration to consider student demands for an open hearing in the tenure review case of a popular faculty

member, police mistreatment of local residents and widespread anger over the draft and Vietnam War, the uprising lasted three days. Two more riots followed in the next 12 weeks. A student was killed by police. Scores were injured. More than 900 arrests were made (Flacks and Mankoff, 1970; R. Smith, 1971; Potter and Sullivan, 1970; Santa Barbara Citizen's Commission on Civil Disorder, 1970).

The Isla Vista rebellion was one of the most violent events of a school year marked

by a level of political violence unprecedented in recent American history. This year was

itself the climax of a decade of student protest, culminating in the May, 1970 actions in

response to the invasion of Cambodia, "without doubt one of the most explosive

periods in the nation's history and easily the most cataclysmic period in the history of

higher education since the founding of the Republic" (Sale, 1974: 635). What began 10

years earlier with pacifism and idealism at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North

*Thanks to Rebecca James for typing the manuscript and to OtiUa Alvidrez, Cynthia Garcia, Diane Tilden and

Ann Witkower for helping to transcribe the interviews. Part of this research was supported by a grant-in-aid

from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

JACKWHALEN RICHARD FLACKS University of California,

SOCIOLOGICAL FOCUS

August, 1980

Voll3No.3

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216 SOCIOLOGICAL FOCUS

Carolina, ended in sudden death in Kent, Ohio, and Jackson, Mississippi.

Although only a decade has passed since this upheaval, most of us feel an odd and

perhaps painful distance from those events. We are living in a present with its very recent past described in a television special on the sixties as "like a foreign country;"1 a

present disconnected from its source, a tumultuous past that several years later seems

totally deflated, history that requires an effort at recall The significance of those

events for our lives and our society has been obscured, particularly by media cliches

and stereotypes.2 And, as Charles Tilly has remarked concerning the speed at which

our violent history is forgotten, "the memory machine has a tremendous capacity for

destruction of the facts" (Tilly, 1979: 86).

Certainly contributing to this historical amnesia is the fact that, despite the

enormous amount of research and interpretive analysis that was done on the student

movement of the sixties, little systematic work has been undertaken since that time to

investigate its outcome or aftermath. For all our attention that was directed to the

causes and features of student protest, we know very little about its consequences. For example, while the work of Keniston (1968; 1971), Coles (1964: 173-238), Sale

(1974) and the research reported by Flacks (1967; 1971), Solomon and Fishman (1964a;

1964b), Wood (1974) and Haan, Smith and Block (1968), to name just a few, told us

much about the interdependent historical and social psychological roots of student

protest and the political socialization of its participants, much less is known about the

continued personal development of those who were or still are involved in New Left

activities. Indeed, as Keniston (1968: 354) has observed, relatively little has been

written in general about the effects upon personal character of political involvement; most writings assume the relationship is only one way (see also Killian, 1973: 36). We

need to focus more on the continuous interplay of the personal and the social, of history and consciousness.

As one effort to bridge some of that distance and investigate some of the

consequences of student protest, we have been interviewing people who were active in

the white student movement in Isla Vista at the time of the riots; specifically, those

radicals who were tried for burning the bank or for leading the campus protests that led

up to it. Our interest is not so much in retrieving and reconstructing the past, however, as it is in the relationship of past to present. The biographies of the student activists of

the sixties form a thread of real experience that connects that period with the eighties. Most importantly, it is through reviewing their experiences that we may glean some of

the historical significance of the student movement; in this case, its impact on the lives

of those who were caught up in it.3 The work in which we are currently involved is directed toward following through

on earlier research on the social psychology of student protest, toward pursuing the

question of how some of the interwoven factors that shaped both the emergence of the

movement and the personal development of its members enter into the continuing

development of young radicals who are now young adults.

Before reporting on the procedures and some of the results of our work to date,

however, it will be useful to briefly review the limited amount of research that has been

done on the fate of student activists. The approach earlier research has taken and the

nature of its findings shaped both the methodology and general orientation of our own

work.



FATE OF STUDENT ACTIVISTS 217

RESEARCH ON GENERATIONAL REVOLT

One possibly significant effect of a major social struggle is its potential for

profoundly shaping the political consciousness of participants. A crucial factor that must be considered in this regard when examining the student movement is its youth based, generational character.

Karl Mannheim (1972) and others who have drawn on his seminal work [see Bengston and Black (1973); Berelson et al. (1954); Berger (1960); Heberle (1951); Goertzel (1972); Zeitlin (1967) ] have suggested that the years in which individuals make the transition from youth to the adult world are crucial for the development of a

political consciousness that can have lasting consequences through their life cycle. Cultural and political movements that begin among youth may be then carried forward in time by what Mannheim (1972:119-20) has described as self-conscious generational units: relatively small groups of persons for whom the youthful experience has become a central and permanent theme. In this way the impact of historical events on youth may in turn have a significant social influence in later years, as Fendrich and Krauss

(1978: 252) argue:

The real significance of student protest may lie neither in what it indicates about the earlier political socialization process of activists, nor in the immediate results that it may achieve. Rather, participation in student protest may be a potent socialization experience in its own right, with

enduring consequences for the adult political identities and activity of its participants. And although relatively small in number, if former student protesters remain highly active politically and committed to reforming or restructuring social institutions, they may have disproportionate and

possibly significant impact on the political process_The New Left may have more impact in the 1980's than on the 1960's.

The major research that has been done on the fate of student activists has been directed almost exclusively at exaniining this particular issue. In a series of papers, James Fendrich and his colleagues (Fendrich and Tarlau, 1973: Fendrich, 1974, 1977; Fendrich and Krauss, 1978) have made an effort to determine if sixties student

protesters have indeed become a distinctive political generation-unit. Are they now

"keeping the faith," "dropping out," or "pursuing the good life" (Fendrich, 1977)? Based on a mail questionnaire survey (taken in 1971) of 28 former male, white civil

rights activists and other students who were not politically active at universities in the South in the early 1960s, this research has found that former activists are heavily concentrated in professional and human service occupations, apparently rejecting occupations offering status or financial reward in favor of those that promised humanistic service, autonomy, and creativity. Most identified themselves as liberals or

radicals, followed political events in the media, and were members of anti-war, civil

liberties, environmental, or other political groups. Many were still participating in demonstrations and other protest actions. Compared to the non-activists, the former activists were much further to the left politically. Fendrich (1974:115) concludes that his results "strongly suggest that college activists of the early 1960's retain their distinctiveness as a generational unit even today-The former civil rights activists have not matured into moderate young adults, nor have they become disillusioned and

dropped out."4




A few studies done prior to Fendrich's research provide some support for his

conclusions. Michael Maidenherg and Philip Meyer (1970) of the Detroit Free Press

surveyed Berkeley Free Speech Movement participants in 1969, five years after they

were arrested for the Sproul Hall occupation. In a secondary analysis of this research,

Abeles and Keniston (1973: 11) state: "These data suggest that far from losing their

radicalism, the ovenvhelming majority of the sampled FSM arrestees had retained or

even increased their radicalism [since] the Sproul Hall sit-in." This survey also found 33

percent of the respondents still enrolled in school and, of those employed (50% of the

sample), 40 percent were teachers or social workers. Maidenberg and Meyer (1970)

suggested, though, that in some cases radical activity had slowed or even stopped

under the pressure of earning a living and raising a family. (Fendrich [1974] also found

marriage and especially children to be a constraining influence on continued activism.)

Demerath et al.(1971) conducted a follow-up study in 1969 of white students who

had participated in an SCLC civil rights project in 1965. Interviewing (by telephone) 40

of the 166 activists they had first studied four years earlier, these researchers found 23

still active in New Left and reformist causes. All were found to be radical or liberal and

retained an emotional involvement with the movement. Demerath et al. (1971) also

described these 40 men and women as disillusioned about the effectiveness of radical

politics, but Fendrich (1974) suggests, in a comment on this research, that they were

not disillusioned with leftist causes in general (and the level of their continued

involvement seems to support this), and therefore may have been reacting to the

resistance of Black Power advocates to continued white participation in the civil rights

movement.

Finally, the most recent study is that of Nassi and Abramowitz (1979), who

recontacted (using mail questionnaires) 15 former Free Speech Movement actists in

1977, 11 years after they had initially been interviewed. They found a high degree of

general continuity in radical beliefs, with some mild tempering, but also with a

"striking reduction in the level of their political activity" (Nassi and Abramowitz,

1979: 27). Nine were married, social service and creative occupations predominated over other job categories, and there was no strong evidence of upward mobility. They

earned a good deal less income than would be expected, given their background and

educational level. Taken together, these studies do not lend support to the prediction of a maturation

effect on student radicals, that is, the suggestion that they would become more

conservative politically and follow quite conventional lifestyles and careers in their

post-student lives (e.g., Lipset and Ladd, 1972). Instead, the post-student political

behavior and attitudes of former activists, and their vocational commitments, have

been significantly affected by their movement involvement.5

ADDITIONAL ISSUES AND QUESTIONS

There are some problems with these particular studies, however.. First, the data

were collected in the late sixties or early seventies, with the exception of the Nassi and

Abramowitz (1979) study. The student movement and New Left were still relatively

active at that time, although the 1970-71 academic year saw a decline in the level of




campus protest from the May, 1970 peak. The pre-1972 studies are therefore unable to

examine the later effects on the lives of activists of the collapse in the seventies of the mass movements of students and blacks ? movements that literally defined political commitment in the sixties. The gap between convictions and political activity found by Nassi and Abramowitz (1979) in their research suggests that this problem is an

important one.

Second, this research has focused completely on the initial constituency, the first wave of white student activists, those who were radicalized in the early and middle

sixties. These activists first became politically involved during the pacifism and reform

phase of student protest or during the first real mass confrontation action ? the Sproul Hall sit-in. They were largely the "young intelligentsia" and children of the liberal, "humanistic sector" of the middle class (Flacks, 1967 and 1972; Keniston, 1968;

Friedman, 1973). The years 1967 to 1970 were years of increasing militancy, political violence, and repression (Gurr, 1979; Flacks, 1971), during which the movement

expanded to include large numbers of "conventional" middle class young people (Mankoff and Flacks, 1972) as well as "culturally alienated" (Keniston, 1968: 345-48),

previously apolitical youth. The post-movement, post-student lives of those who were

radicalized during this phase ? the "second wave" ? have not been investigated. By

1969, a year before the Isla Vista bank burning, 67 percent of the FSM arrestees

studied by Maidenberg and Meyer (1970) and most of the former activists questioned

by the other researchers were already living post-student lives.

Third, in examining the aftermath of student protest we should be interested not

only in the formation of political consciousness and generational units in youth, but

also the struggle of young activists as youth and as a definite type of youth, primarily white, middle class college students.

Until the sixties, the emergence of sharp generational conflict and the mass

uprising of privileged youth had been virtually absent in capitalist democracies. Most

university students in such societies have been conservative, fully integrated into the

established order, and ready to assume elite roles without significant strain. Youths

who have felt estranged or radical have expressed their dissatisfaction not by revolt of

the youth, but by joining movements of political reforms and cultural renovation led by adults. Further, while it is certainly the case that many Americans have experienced American society as repressive, unjust, and corrupt, they have responded to that

experience not as youth, but as Indians, blacks, workers, and farmers. Since its

inception, American society has experienced extensive and militant protest and

rebellion, but rarely if ever has such activity been carried on by those who defined

themselves as youths (even if many of those who have been most active in such

struggles tended to be young) (Flacks, 1971; Starr, 1974; Altbach and Peterson, 1972;

Orum, 1972). The white youth revolt (and youth consciousness) of the sixties has been the basis

of extensive discussion, debate, and criticism. Here we can only point out that

whatever one's interpretation of the sources and nature of this phenomenon the fact

that most New Left activists embraced self-conscious, youth-oriented identities and

lifestyles as a political act is undeniable. You do not have to accept the view that

middle class American youth have become a permanent "new opposition," nor adopt




the quixotic "greening of America" visions of Reich (1970) or Rozsak (1969), in order to

recognize that during the sixties many young people ? a minority among their

contemporaries to be sure, but an enormously influential one ? did indeed become an

important and self-conscious political force as youth* An important and unexamined

issue is the impact of this middle class youth consciousness (and its rejection of middle

class adulthood) on the post-movement lives of activists. What dilemmas and

possibilities did it create or lead to?

Finally, even within the focus of previous research ? the impact of events in youth on political consciousness in later life ? there are additional issues that need to be

explored. For example, it seems likely that both disillusionment and withdrawal, as

well as involvement in conventional lifestyles, have been present to some extent in the

post-movement lives of even the most "still committed" activists. While there is

substantial evidence for generation-unit continuity among former student radicals, a

key issue in understanding how and why individuals develop in particular ways is the

relationship between persistence and change in their lives, the "complex dialectic of

growth" (Keniston, 1968: 221). In this regard, we know very little of the details of

former activists' lives and the everyday social context within which political beliefs or

values are expressed, struggled over, rejected. Are what we could call "New Left

values" present in sentiments and behaviors not usually considered "political"? Furthermore, the process of change that individuals went through during the seventies

has yet to be systematically studied.

FROM QUESTIONS TO METHOD

These problems and questions led us to decide against simply replicating or

updating previous survey research. We decided to treat that research as a point of

departure for a qualitative study of a small number of cases using a life history, intensive interview approach. Such a methodology is especially suited to deal with

many of the issues we have raised (cf. Becker, 1970). From this perspective the findings of earlier research are "markers" (D. Smith, 1979) of an underlying reality that needs to

be explored by learning how it was personally experienced. As was noted in the introduction, we have interviewed men and women who were

Isla Vista-UCSB activists during the 1970 rebellion. All are white. All were members of

the Radical Union, a loosely-structured group that was the major radical organization for white students on campus. All were arrested for burning the bank or related campus

protests. (No one, incidentally, was convicted of burning the bank. All were able to

provide evidence they were not involved. Two did serve time for misdemeanor

convictions, however). We have interviewed 11 people at great length (an average of

five hours each). Material was gathered not only on their post-1970 lives but also on

their pre-movement biographies and movement experiences. These individuals were

chosen on the basis of a dimensional sample (Arnold, 1970) that included roughly the same number of men and women, leaders and "rank-and-file," and "still politically active" and "withdrawn from organized politics" respondents. We were as interested in this "withdrawn" group as we were in the more committed individuals. Previous

research has concentrated much more of its analysis on the latter.7




The following sections of the paper are a preliminary report on this research. We

hope to expand our sample in the coming months. Moreover, it is difficult to summarize

the rich detail of life history material in a relatively short paper. For example, because

of space limitations the interesting relationships we have found between pre-movement and post-movement development are not addressed. In what follows, we have tried to

present the experiences and feelings of these men and women in their own words

wherever possible. The format used here is an effort to construct a "collective

biography" (cf. Keniston, 1968: 22), emphasizing recurrent issues and common themes, but also using contrast and comparison so that different paths of development can be

discerned. As this is a small, non-random sample with no control group, generalizing in terms

of the distribution of these themes and paths of development or drawing firm causal

connections is risky. That is not our central concern, however. The general distribution

of radicalism and the overall continuity of radical orientations within the political

generation of the sixties has been fairly well documented. We are interested in the

details and different types of political orientations, as well as the ambiguities and

contradictions, within this general picture, and in producing what Wieder and

Zimmerman have aptly described as "empirically warranted, theoretically relevant

description" (1976: 339).

THEMES OF POLITICAL EXPRESSION

Several of the Isla Vista radicals are still very politically active ? in their

communities, at their jobs, and through some of the organizations and single issue

movements (such as the ecology and anti-nuclear power movements) that are the

fragmented political legacy of the New Left. Represented among them are all of the

political tendencies in the Left today. In some cases they have been able to tie their

jobs and politics together: One woman works as a doctor in environmental health and

safety for a progressive labor union, another as a paralegal in a left-liberal law firm. One

man who has continued to live in Isla Vista has worked ? and sporadically at that ?

only at political or social service-related jobs, pursuing a sort of "professional activist"

lifestyle. Further, all of the people we interviewed (both presently active and relatively

active) are still bitterly critical of American society a decade after the Bank of America

was reduced to a charred hulk. To a large extent all in the sample still hold radical or

left-liberal beliefs. There are few regrets and no disavowals or repudiations of student

protest or their participation in it. Even the one person with whom we spoke who is now

quite critical of the Left ? although even harsher towards the Right ? stressed: "I feel

very proud of a lot of the things we accomplished. I feel it was a world historical time

that will be remembered in a positive kind of way forever."

In addition, the women's liberation movement and the political struggles within

the Radical Union over sexism appear to have had a strong impact on the post-student lives of both men and women. The men describe themselves as profoundly affected, in

terms of their attitudes and ways of relating to people, by this aspect of the sixties New

Left. The women, all of whom participated in a women's group that they set up to




provide mutual support as well as collective voice with the R.U., feel that this involvement was one of the most important influences on their personal growth, then and now. For example, one woman stated: "That was very important to me, it was

important in my consciousness, my development of self. I think [it was] because we

talked about each other as people, not just as radicals. We saw ourselves as developing personally and radical action as outgrowth of that, so it was not just an intellectual

thing we were talking, but it was more of a, oh- more from our gut, you know? Sort of a

gut reaction."

A central theme, therefore, is a strong continuity in their political attitudes. Professed attitudes are not the same as political action, however. If several are still

quite active, others are not. And for some, political involvement does not even play a

minor role in their lives. Nevertheless, another central theme is that political concerns

and, perhaps more fundamentally, a social conscience seem, in one way or another, features of the lives of all.

Some have tried in various ways to practice largely depoliticized and very personal versions of the values they once expressed through intense political commitment. A

postdoctoral student in the physical sciences, who has refused to pursue job opportunities in private industry, hoping instead for a morally justifiable way to use his skills, described his feelings in this manner: "I don't have any active political interest right now. That doesn't mean I don't take any interest. There's always a

newspaper nearby. I despise television but I always watch the news. I'm sort of on the

fringes right now ? and I know that inside me it's still there, waiting until some day when the time is right. What I'm trying to say is, it's on the edge but it's part of me. It

may be ultimately, someday I will start ? I don't know, I just don't know."

(Struggling to reconcile past and present, private and public, he gropes for a solution and comes up empty-handed: "I just don't know.")

Another illustration: A woman who works as a nurse in a veteran's hospital vows

never to work for a private hospital, never to take a supervisory job. She is highly critical of the American medical system, the racial and class prejudice that she sees as

dominating her work environment and the rigid hierarchy of authority in nursing (and health care in general) that goes with it. Yet she has no political involvements. She has never been active in any of the radical health care organizations (such as Medical Committee for Human Rights). Her friends are not "political." Still, she seems to take stands where they can be found. Or perhaps where they find her. Although she notes "I've quit telling people that I've been involved in radical politics at all because people are immediately turned off" and avoids politically charged confrontations at work, she also described numerous instances where she did act on the basis of strong political and moral convictions or where she felt her activist experiences played a large part in

shaping her responses. These are cases, then, of discontinuity in public political commitment but with

clear indications of the persistence of many of the core values which characterized the student movement: egalitarianism, anti-authoritarianism, a humanitarian sense of social justice. They are not seeking out opportunities to publicly express these values but find themselves living day-to-day in terms of them. In other words, continuity in values is evident, but for many there is a considerable loss of commitment to the




activist stance.

Some of this distance between values and action can be traced to disillusionment with the possibility of realizing the dreams and hopes they once so optimistically shared. "As the years have passed my thinking about political questions has become more and more confused; I mostly have questions now, and almost no answers, about what should be done," a former Radical Union, leader who is now a social science

graduate student said. "Primarily I feel not apathy but frustration ? frustration with

my own inability to feel the way I did, to feel sure and directed." Even one of the most

politically active persons with whom we talked shared some of these emotions: "I still

have the same goals, but I don't expect the chances of them coming about are as good. I expect less. I don't expect what I really want to see, 'socialism with a human face,' will really come about. It's just not going to happen that way."

There is also uncertainty in these accounts over what particular actions might even

be effective, a loss of any strong sense of political efficacy: "mostly questions, and

almost no answers, about what should be done." Another woman said "I think what I

was involved in was effective because it was part of a whole nationwide movement. I

think burning down the Bank of America was effective, and I'm glad I was part of that

whole movement. But right now, doing things like that, it's self-defeating. I don't have

the grandiose ideas about a revolution that I did then." Even less militiant actions are

questioned: "I've thought about going to a few demonstrations ? I just don't know

how effective they are. If I felt it was really going to be effective, if I felt it was really

going to change something for me, I would certainly go." Those who did go to

demonstrations sometimes found them "depressing," as another woman put it. "The

spirit is gone, the vitality was gone. It was sad. I remember I went to the big peace march in 1969 in San Francisco and, oh! that was the most incredible experience. I

don't remember how many people, but thousands and thousands of people marching

through the streets, and all different kinds of people. And it was really very moving. And 10 years later, you have to face 250 people and it's just. . . ,

" she stopped,

apparently at a loss for words. How could you even describe the difference? Finally: "A

comparison between the two is superfluous." Again, even those former Isla Vista activists who are still politically involved

shared many of these feelings of uncertainty and confusion about strategy and then

own effectiveness. For instance, where they are effective locally some nonetheless feel

frustrated over the difficulty in connecting local struggles to larger national issues and

movements. Where they are involved in national organizations they find it hard to

establish and maintain the kind of local ties and "roots" ? a word we heard quite often ? which they see as both personally and politically essential. It is critically important to note, however, that these sorts of problems and dilemmas have not stopped these

particular individuals from remaining active: "You do it because it's the right thing to

do, regardless of what the impact, the results are." Here the sustaining power of the

core values is dramatically evident; activism is felt to be a moral obligation.

Overall, then, our interviews suggest that, in terms of politics, former student

activists have not turned their backs on their past or most of the values; what has

changed is the sense of efficacy ? of clear connection between political action and

moral outcome ? that seemed so strong for them at the moment of mass protest.




These findings, when combined with earlier research, lend further support to the

argument that the student radicals of the sixties have not substantially moderated

their political convictions in their post-movement lives. Some are still involved in Left

politics; those who are not still maintain a social conscience and political concerns that

appear to be a direct result of their participation in student protest. More importantly,

however, the in-depth study of a limited number of cases shows that there is a mix of

political changes and continuities in their current lives, a dialectic of development that

reflects: (1) the collapse of the New Left as an organizational force and the resulting

uncertainty and loss of efficacy for its members; and (2) an effort to express core values

of the movement in everyday life even where political involvement is avoided.

ADULTHOOD VS. AUTONOMY

We suggested earlier in this report that revolt by privileged young people as youth, rather than as attached to or following adult radical organizations or broader political trends in the society, was virtually absent in the United States until the sixties. A

critical element of this rebellion was the emergence of what could be described as a

mood of alienation from adulthood. During the sixties it became very clear that the

established social structure did not appear open to the anti-authoritarian,

communalistic, egalitarian values prevalent among students and other youth (Flacks,

1967). Additionally, the aspirations of these youth for self-fulfillment and social

transformation were in direct opposition to the society's normative expectations

regarding their acceptance and smooth transition into middle class adult life. Block

(1978: 43) has put it this way:

Members of the [New Left| generation thought themselves to be on a conveyor belt that led precisely to the kind of constraining adulthood their parents were living. . . . The New Left generation

responded to these pressures with enormous anger, feeling that the conveyor belt was taking them to

something that was little better than an early death. This anger, rooted in the refusal to reproduce their parents' adulthood, was the deepest source of the New left's psychological energy. The not-so

hidden agenda of the Sixties was the refusal of adulthood ? a refusal captured in the classic phrase ? "Don't trust anyone over thirty."

The student movement embodied its own aspirations and expectations concerning the personal future of its participants. A self-conscious and articulated goal of the

movement was to mobilize value commitments that ran counter to those prevailing

among middle class adults, and to encourage the development of lifestyles and

vocations that could serve as alternatives to dominant cultural patterns. The men and women we interviewed frequently expressed these types of

sentiments when describing their own process of radicalization and the close

relationship between their politics and their lifestyle. Living in the rather unique Isla

Vista youth ghetto, isolated by geography and culture, was of course especially conducive to youth consciousness. The riots and subsequent invasion of the

community by police fostered the politicization of the local youth culture.

In these terms, the student movement on a personal level can be seen as a revolt

against conventional adult roles. In this sense it was also in part an effort to redefine

youth, not as a stage of preparation for adulthood, but as an agency for the creation of a




"lifetime of personal change, an adulthood of continuing self-transformation"

(Keniston, 1971: 314).8 We wish to emphasize that it was not adulthood in the abstract that was resisted, in some sort of ahistoric oedipal conflict, but rather what adulthood

represented in corporate capitalist society. Political activism was seen as the only

possible alternative to this "early death": "It is only when the pull of involvement

finally wrenches you in some way from the accustomed routine of privateness, from the

doubts and ambiguities and compromises, day in day out, of life in America that it is

possible to have a sense of oneself, and to feel alive," wrote Free Speech Movement

activist Gerald Rosenfield in 1965.9 Many others would echo these words in the years to come.

More broadly, the movement represented a struggle for free personal development, often expressed as "the right to control our own lives" ? in short, for self autonomy

?

as well as a movement for radical social change. The two were seen as necessarily linked: activists' anger and frustration directed at obstacles to the kind of people they wanted to become were fused with struggles for the kind of society they wanted to

create. For example, one of our respondents described a slowly boiling frustration over

both the political situation and his own personal situation that was finally translated

into activist politics when he began attending Radical Union meetings: "I had very

funny feelings about the country, about our society, because I felt very uncomfortable

in it. I went sour on the whole fucking country. I didn't like my position, I didn't like

where I was going to be. It just seemed like it was lacking something." He felt he was

still living his parents' dreams and was resentful of the fact that they and his teachers

had decided "this is where we're going to point this boy; you know ? Go! Go get it!" It

was at this time that he started to "shake the whole thing for good," to break out of the

past and really "search for myself." The other respondents had similar ties between

personal and political struggles in their lives.10 If a central thrust of the student movement was a rejection of what was perceived

as the cultural and personal wasteland of middle class adulthood, countered by a search

for meaningful personal alternatives, then the impact of this struggle on activists'

post-movement careers assumes particular importance.

In this regard, a primary impression one has about the Isla Vista radicals is that in

the last decade their lives have been ones of continuing flux and restlessness. There is

very little evidence of "settling down": only one is married, none have children and a

few have an established career. Only three of the 11 have worked at the same job for

more than two or three years. Their average income is under $11,000 a year. They are

living an adult life that lacks most of the traditional "anchors" and commitments of

adulthood in our culture. Further, it is described by them as a chosen way of life.

It is this theme in the biographies of former student activists that is overlooked in

a narrow focus on political convictions. The suggestion that they have had to reconcile

politics with the demands of family and work (cf. Fendrich, 1974 and Maidenberg and

Meyer, 1970) therefore seems off the mark, at least for these 11 individuals; the

demands of middle class adulthood were being personally resisted despite the collapse of their political movement. Thus, a primary continuity in the lives of our respondents is their continuing refusal to settle for conventional identities and institutional ties.

A critical discontinuity, however, is that these struggles for "meaningful




identities" are no longer experienced as part of a collective endeavor. The sense of

shared grievances and, most importantly, common struggle that politicized identity and lifestyle, transforming what had been private troubles into public issues, has

dissolved. Personal stands on issues of autonomy or simply, as one woman put it, "just

being me" are just that: painfully personal despite their social basis.

Another way of putting all this is to say that they continue to assert the right to

autonomous self-development.11 While some find possibilities for this within

frameworks of political action, others use private means. Indeed, withdrawal from

political involvement is itself an assertion of autonomy. In the sixties, the quest for

autonomy contributed to political mobilization. In the seventies, the same quest, for

many, obviously worked against such mobilization.

Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to characterize these 11 Isla Vista activists'

lives as withdrawn and isolated searches for self-fulfillment. None have immersed

themselves in retreatist or escapist movements such as drug subcultures, the "new

therapies," or religious cults. Even those individuals who have consciously chosen to

focus on their personal lives insteadnf political involvement are concerned with helping others, building close relationships with their friends, getting to know people of other

ages, developing capacities to share their lives. This theme emerged again and again in

our interviews. They are not the "new narcissists." They want to live "socially

responsible" lives working as ministers, nurses, scientists, or writers who are at least

making some contribution to the public good, although again it is often a social

responsibility that avoids organized public commitments.

VISIONS OF THE APOCALYPSE

The present lives of our former student activists cannot be fully understood without examining the period of intense movement involvement.

We can take the violent and convulsive days of 1970 as a starting point for post movement experiences. By the opening months of that year radicals in Isla Vista ?

and many other places as well ? were convinced, as a woman expressed it, that "for us

there was no future ? revolution was the future." There was a feeling that our society was on the verge of an apocalyptic upheaval. This was a very vague sense of impending revolution, however. They had no plans or models of what might happen, only a

conviction that something had to give. As one person remarked: "In this whole time

period, like leading up to the bank burning and the riots, there was this sense that we were all embarking on some path that was ultimately leading toward revolution, of whatever nature, and it was very undefined. During all those demonstrations and riots there was a sense that revolution was imminent, it was just around the corner, the downfall of the state was coming." "The present seemed overwhelmingly important," another recalled. "It seemed like every day the world was in a crisis. Since everything in the world was going to change so much, the future seemed academic. There was a

shit storm acomin', as what's his name says." Others were sure they would have to go underground or go to prison

? or perhaps even die in the streets. Even for those who did not see revolution as "just around the corner," there was

still an expectation of increasing conflict: "I certainly had a sense that things were




building inexorably towards a climax. I didn't really believe the movement could be

defused. I assumed things were going to get hotter and hotter, and that's what was

certainly governing most of my actions. I certainly wasn't thinking we were going to

win in five or 10 years ? I know I was thinking protracted struggle, but I just had a

sense of ever-escalating conflict." There were others who had similar expectations of

escalation, but instead of an expanding Left foresaw the possibility of a virtual

takeover by the Right, perhaps even fascism.

While this may seem wildly romantic or irrational now, remember that Isla Vista

went through three major riots in 90 days during that year. A large percentage of its

population was arrested. All of the people we interviewed were singled out for arrest

(some on charges that carried sentences of up to 40 years). The community was

occupied by special police tactical squads and National Guard troops. UCSB was

forced to close down temporarily. The national scene, especially when viewed from the

battlefield of Isla Vista, seemed equally explosive. Kirk Sale (1974:635) has suggested: "Political violence at the end of the sixties may not have brought about a revolution ?

but it was the closest thing to it an ongoing society could imagine. Or perhaps endure."

For Isla Vistans, isolated and under attack from all quarters in their youth-ghetto-by the-sea, it must have felt awfully like The End. Ronald Reagan, then governor of

California, proclaimed: "If it takes a bloodbath let's get it over with. No more

appeasement." A few made provisions for "the inevitable" with rifle practice in the

hills, planning armed resistance and preparing their minds and bodies for guerilla war

against fascism. If revolution was the only meaningful future, then a totalistic radical

identity was the only meaningful life. "Alienation from adulthood" sprang from events

as well as from values. Yet apocalyptic predictions did not come to pass. As the smoke of the battles of

1970 cleared, it became evident that escalating civil strife was not likely and that the

totalistic revolutionary posture adopted by many New Leftists was self-destructive

and only seemed to heighten the already isolated position of the student protesters.

Instead, the New Left and the anti-war movement had to move beyond the campus and

transcend its limited class base if the goals and values it embodied were to survive and

have a chance of realization.

While the student protest movement and the New Left faced a political crisis,

young activists faced a personal crisis that was inseparable from this. As Kenneth

Keniston poignantly remarked a dozen years ago, young radicals had tied their

personal fates to the fate of their movement (1968: 217-18, 223):

This linkage means that predictions about their future are extraordinarily difficult. Although they are psychological adults, they have not made the institutional commitments that give stability and

predictability to the lives of most adults. Having chosen neither occupation nor family, they remain

free to develop as most of their contemporaries have not. Yet paradoxically, by their involvement in

a movement that is highly dependent on national and international history, they have put their fates

more directly in the hands of politics and history than are the fates of most of their contemporaries.

Furthermore, increasing age alone will mean they cannot remain "young radicals" indefinitely, and

the passage of years will require new adaptations. In all these respects, despite their openness to the

future, their futures will be unusually tied to events over which they have no control... if their

movement fails to prosper, they too may falter.

For the Isla Vista radicals, the future had to be lived through after all, with little




thought having been given to real alternatives. Unlike the student activists of the early

sixties, this second wave of activists had been radicalized during a period when

militancy and total commitment appeared to be the only possible choice. Their

geographic and social isolation, their rejection of middle class adulthood and belief in

the immediacy of revolution, and their class background complicated and contributed

to this crisis. How could they make the transition to non-student radical identities and

a reconstituted adulthood? Could they avoid being lured into the kinds of privileged, elite roles they had been socialized to enter? What other options are available to middle

class youth estranged from both the mainstream of society and an adulthood they now

had to face? These were the issues they confronted.

THE PROCESS OF CHANGE: PERSONAL INTERESTS VS. COLLECTIVE IDENTITY

A variety of personal and political responses to these issues can be traced,

following the paths some of the Isla Vista activists have taken from the explosive 1970

period to the present day. While limitations of space prevent us from presenting a full

array of cases here, we can provide illustrations of important themes that are observed.

The "apocalyptic vision" had been terrifying to many Isla Vistans. The violence

and brutal police reaction led to fears for their own safety. Some of our interviewees left

Isla Vista and withdrew from organized political commitment during or immediately

following the riots. Their personal crises were experienced even before the problem of

broadening the base of the Isla Vista-centered movement was being seriously discussed. One man, mirroring fairly widespread community fears of that time,

remarked: "After I got arrested I got very scared and intimidated. I knew I was in over

my head. I had this great paranoia. I faced 36 years in a state prison and I was very

frightened." In some of these cases, the movement failed as a community of support in the face

of the risk and fears activism inevitably produced. "I really felt that while we were all

supposedly brothers and sisters struggling together in the revolution, there was very

little sensitivity among the people," one woman recalled. Most importantly: "I was

scared. I was really unhappy with the kind of support I was getting or not getting from

other people."

Significantly, these individuals have tended to direct their subsequent lives in a

search for that elusive community, although meeting with different degrees of success.

For example, the woman quoted above states: "You know, I probably still am in quest for community. I really want a sense of community, that whole tribal sort of spirit

?

just a real strong bond where you reach beyond just being an individual, and you really have to try to work and cooperate with other people. And I really like that, but I

haven't found it." In contrast, the respondent who was so frightened by his arrest and

the rioting feels he has now found "real community" and places his commitments

firmly within it. This is how he describes his current life: "Here, in this social, friendly,

young-influenced, out-of-the-way gorgeous spot [in northern California] I am learning,

primarily, about people. There is trust among the residents. It's not easy to explain ? I

can't yet ? but I have been readily accepted into different groups and bits of private




information are shared. The situation here, with unlocked doors and the desire to

include, is not unique, I'm sure. But there is a certain sense of feeling free to live the

way one wants to, however one might want to experiment. As for my politics, my

proximity to situations dictates my degree of involvement. I'm primarily involved with

local issues ? the environment, the library, and other cultural cutbacks and projects in

this district." Here it appears a more lasting communalism has been re-established, linked to the practical politics of community development.

The level of political activism is closely tied to the sense of community in these

cases. Where one person's situation provides a supportive environment, a new

friendship group, and issues that have personal meaning, leading to renewed political involvement rather than continued withdrawal, the other individual is still in quest for

such a place and reports no current political involvements.

Leaving Isla Vista during the 1970 upheaval was not always a form of political withdrawal, however. For example, one of our interviewees transferred to another UC

campus after the bank burning but maintained a high level of political involvement.

She describes her decision as based on intersecting personal and political concerns: "I

wanted to become a doctor and people were very critical of my wanting to go to medical

school. The feeling was that you should first of all devote most of your time to politics. There was so much going on in this country that there was a sense that you couldn't

afford to pay attention to details of a personal life. I had a lot of questions in my own

mind about whether or not it was the right thing to do. But I sort of felt more than

anything else I didn't want to close off my options ? and I really believed, and I told

people, you got to have good doctors, doctors that will go to work in ghettos, that will

take care of gunshot wounds. I was [also] having increased doubts about some of what I

saw going on around me, in terms of my feeling like some people who were supposedly on my side were acting irrationally .... attacking policemen, getting a little carried

away on the destructive side of things." While she also felt that "you need to go through violence to achieve revolutions," it

seemed to lack any strategic direction: "On some level I wondered to myself what we

were achieving, if anything." Here we see issues of personal importance (her ambition

to become a doctor, her doubts about these ambitions) interwoven with tensions within

the movement (personal life vs. revolutionary commitment, violence vs. non-violence)

and in turn with the political events of that period. Her solution was to move away, to

"just gain a little bit of a better perspective on what I was doing." After transferring, she met a number of people who were interested in health related political issues and

was able to closely tie her personal interest in medicine and her political values together for the first time. She stayed politically active in college and medical school and is still

very involved in leftist causes. Rather than enter private practice after gaining the

M.D., she has worked in public hospitals and in the labor movement on environmental

and work related health problems. The activists who remained for a time in Isla Vista after the riots subsequently

moved out of that community into the city of Santa Barbara or, turning inward, tried

to build Isla Vista "community power." (The financial assistance of the University and

Bank of America to Isla Vista community development played a role here that the

radicals generally saw as a "buy off" effort ? although the results today are a good




deal more ambiguous. Many Isla Vista community institutions were created, often in

opposition to the university's wishes, that now are potential resources for political mobilization.) By 1972, former UCSB activists had started alternative newspapers aimed at a broad spectrum of the populace, organized a legal collective, participated in

several local election campaigns, and undertook other efforts to go beyond student

protest. Some of these projects have survived, others were left behind in favor of still

further political experiments. The development of institutions provided an opportunity for activists to fuse needs

for personal development with continuing political involvement. This linkage was

difficult to sustain over time, however. For some who initially participated in these

political experiments, involvement became an inadequate basis for sustaining identities grounded in political commitment; the personal seemed increasingly at odds

with the political. This was sometimes described in terms of "burning out": "I felt

tremendously burned out, tired of the whole thing. It's like, there's no way that you could do any more. I guess 'cause we had done so much. And that's what I think part of

it was, we had gone through the whole school year and we didn't really have anything that we could put our fingers on and say4okay, this is what we've accomplished.' It was

just like we'd run a race, it was finished and that was it."

Although these remarks suggest a growing anxiety over the effectiveness of

political action as such, what seems more likely is that the ability of the movement to

compel people to put collective ahead of personal interest was being undermined. Here

is how one of our respondents described the heady feeling of collective responsibility and identification they experienced at the height of mass protest: "I think there was a

real sense of selflessness that the whole movement experienced, generated. It was a

tremendous sense of purpose generated, we were remaking a new society ? but I think

it was more just the pure energy that was being generated by being involved in this massive movement. It was captivating and contributed to our ability to not be so very

concerned with what happened to me as an individual." As mass protest declined, the social basis for selflessness was threatened. One way

to restore such commitment is through disciplined organization ? and many New

Leftists did gravitate toward old and new Leninist-style organizations that based themselves on democratic-centralist discipline. None of those we have so far interviewed took this path. Instead, the decline of mass action led many of our interviewees to become more aware of personal needs. Politics, for some, now appeared as an obstacle to autonomy: "Could I be completely political? I decided I couldn't ?

it's just not me. I had to find my own identity." Those who did gradually withdraw from activist roles often returned to school and

pursued vocational directions they had planned prior to their involvement in student

protest. As we have pointed out, however, their lifestyle and orientation to these

occupations were deeply influenced by their movement participation. An ethic of social

responsibility, a critical perspective on work and its larger social purpose, and a

reluctance to make personally compromising institutional commitments appear to be characteristic of all those we have interviewed, including those who have embarked on

seemingly conventional careers.

Finally, several UC Santa Barbara radicals did not withdraw from political




activism or withdraw temporarily only to renew their commitment on more personally

compatible terms. For these still active men and women, life in the seventies has been a

continuing attempt to integrate "making history" and "making everyday life" (Flacks,

1976). They have tried to resolve personal and political dilemmas simultaneously. After

the decline of mass protest they struggled to find ? and often create ? radical

alternatives to traditional or elite social roles which would provide a day-to-day basis

for supporting a political identity. Some sought paying jobs as political organizers and

others tried to create their own self-sustaining political work by forming "vocations for

social change" style organizations and collectives. Still others have tried to be

"radicals in the professions," reconstituting professional identity along politically committed and morally accountable lines.12

In summary, an issue that emerges from all these post-movement paths of

development is that radical political commitment is fundamentally problematic for

one's individuahty. Without an adequate social basis for sustaining a political commitment linked both to personal struggles for autonomy and compelling historical

purpose, activism was experienced as increasingly in conflict with personal needs. This

dilemma is part of what Keniston has in mind when he spoke of personal "faltering" in

response to movement decline. At the same time, however, radical activism is often

necessary for the realization of self. For the young radicals of the sixties, who indeed

"tied their psychological fate to the fate of their movement" (Keniston, 1968: 217), activism was seen as the only way out of personal stagnation

? or "early death" ? as

well as the only morally acceptable response to social injustice. Those former activists

who have since followed depoliticized lives are perhaps more aware of this: "And I feel, I feel kind of ashamed of it, really, because I feel like I've sort of turned my back on

what was important to me ? and I would really like to be involved, in a small way

anyway, in some of the things I was doing. Because I got a lot of personal fulfillment

out of it. I felt like I was doing something important for other people, besides myself." Withdrawal and commitment both have their costs.

FOOTNOTES

1. This remark was made by Harry Reasoner during a 1978 CBS News Special on the year 1968.

2. Todd Gitlin's (1980b) recent study of the impact of the media on the New Left provides an excellent

analysis of how the cultural apparatus influenced both movement development and our interpretations of its

significance. (See also Gitlin, 1980a.)

3. Another focus of analysis would be to attempt to investigate the political and cultural changes in the

university and wider society that might be attributed, directly or indirectly, to the student movement. There

has been an amazing lack of research in this as well. (But see Yankelovich [1974]; Garner [1977] provides a useful

sketch of the issues involved here and some thoughtful, albeit brief comments.) There has also been a good deal

of speculative commentary concerning the New Left's contribution to what some describe as our contemporary

"culture of narcissism" (Lasch, 1979), a society increasingly concerned with "

discovery of the true self"

(Turner, 1969 and 1976) and dominated by the "me generation" (Wolfe, 1976) mentality of the seventies (see also

Bell, 1976 and Gusfield, 1979). This sort of analysis has yet to produce systematic empirical evidence on the

extent to which narcissism or the quest for identity actually prevails in the culture. (But see Turner [1975] for a

preliminary effort which challenges the notion that these sentiments are widely distributed and suggests

instead they may be located within particular social strata.) In addition, these writers have yet to convincingly

demonstrate that the New Left was a major contributing force in any broad societal shift from public to private




commitments. (For an alternative, more developmental perspective, see Block and Hirschhorn, forthcoming.)

Furthermore, empirical findings concerning the post-movement careers of sixties student activists ? discussed

in the "research on generational revolt" section below ? belie this interpretation of the nature of the New Left.

If the movements of the sixties fostered narcissism, then we would certainly expect many of their members to

have followed apolitical and privatized lives in the seventies. Our own findings also challenge these

interpretations (see especially the section on "adulthood and autonomy" below).

Taking another tack, Foss and Larkin (1976) have analyzed the aftermath of the dissident youth

movement of the 1960s in terms of post-movement groups which are its heirs. They suggest these groups ?

ranging from religious cults to Maoist sects ? "embody various aspects of the 1960s youth movement

(including the fantasy that they are dissident), but in every case have withdrawn from conflict with the larger

social order" and thus provide "the basis for accommodation to the existing order of society" (Foss and Larkin,

1976: 46). Most former New Leftists and "freaks" (or "cultural revolutionaries") have not joined these groups,

however. Furthermore, to equate social movement development with group or organizational development ?

much in the style of those who equate labor history with trade union history ? is to neglect the analysis of

forces preventing or discouraging people from affiliating with these organizations or, perhaps more

importantly, alternatives to them they have found. We must also seek to understand social change at the level

of personal experience.

4. Fendrich also mailed questionnaires to black former student activists 18 months later. For a discussion of

black-white similarities and differences in post-movement careers, see Fendrich (1977) and Fendrich and Krauss

(1978). As we are concerned with the white student movement, these findings are not directly relevant, although

certainly important and interesting. They do not contradict the findings on white activists.

In terms of cross-cultural comparisons, Ellis Krauss (1974) has carried out a longitudinal study of

Japanese former student activists who were involved in the 1960 demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan

Security Treaty. His findings are similar to Fendrich's. Fendrich and Krauss (1978) discuss these comparisons.

5. There have been numerous newspaper and magazine articles on former student radicals, usually focusing on those who were local or national leaders. While we have not conducted anything near a systematic review of

these articles, almost all the ones we have seen lend further credence to these conclusions (see, for example, Greene [1970], Goldberg [1979], Gitlin [1977] and Ross [1977]. The pieces by Gitlin and Ross are reports on an

SDS reunion in 1977). While there are, of course, some spectacular and well-publicized exceptions to the

generational continuity hypothesis ? the post-movement careers of Rennie Davis, Eldridge Cleaver and Jerry

Rubin come immediately to mind here ? these individuals were media "hyped" national figures whose

experiences were hardly similar to those of more locally based or rank-and-file activists. An examination of the

fate of radical, mass media-created heroes would itself require lengthy and separate analysis.

6. For example, the historical basis of this phenomenon has been described in terms of the creation of youth as a new stage of life which has become widespread in advanced industrial societies, largely due to the rise of

mass higher education and other related social structural changes (see, e.g., Flacks, 1971; Keniston, 1968).

Keniston (1968, 1971) and Flacks (1971) have discussed the psychological tensions endemic to the youth stage and the social contradictions generated by these developments. We can also note that all these developments and tensions were only conducive to discontent and collective consciousness. The absence of a credible adult-led

Left and the impact of major historical events ? the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggles of blacks ?

were necessary factors in mobilizing disaffected white youth for collective action as a self-conscious political force.

7. Further details of our interview and sampling procedures are as follows: The potential sample was made up of all those tried for burning the bank (n = 11) or arrested as a result of the campus demonstrations that

preceded the first riot by 26 days (n = 19). The 11 we have interviewed were selected from this larger group

(total n = 25, due to some individuals having been arrested both times). We did not use an interview schedule with standardized, prestructured questions and answers,

choosing instead to rely upon a relatively flexible guide that listed general questions and concerns we felt were

important to discuss. Our object was to find out what kinds of things were happening rather than what we

already believed could happen (cf. Lofland, 1971). The guide was constantly being revised and altered. The

respondents sometimes brought up topics we hadn't thought to include and the interviews were relatively unstructured and loose as far as the direction discussions might take.

Our goal was to do at least twolnterviews with each respondent. Unfortunately that proved impossible in two cases because of time and distance problems. A third individual decided to stop his participation in the

project after the first interview.




The first interview, usually lasting two to three hours, was typically devoted to the history of the

individual's political development. We tried to obtain a picture of each person's early political activities and

beliefs, the process by which they came to think of themselves as radicals, their involvement in the 1970 events ? the campus demonstrations and Isla Vista riots ? and most importantly, their post-1970 development. Materials were collected on the respondent's perceptions of persistence and change in their life, the personal meaning to them of various activities and symbols, and each individual's understanding of important decisions or pivotal events in their political development. As Becker (1970: 420-421) points out, "to understand why someone behaves as he does you must understand how it looked to him, what he thought he had to contend with, what alternatives he saw open to him." We were seeking to construct political biographies (cf. Wellman, 1977) that would illuminate both the social and moral basis of these activists' commitments and provide a framework for follow-up questioning in the second interview.

The second interview usually concentrated on the respondent's present political involvement, life-style, work-life and personal aspirations and estimate of future options. We attempted to reconstruct how their

everyday life was organized and the role politics played in it. Family background and childhood and adolescent

experiences also were explored in some detail in this interview, which also averaged about two to three hours in

length. In a few cases a third or even fourth interview was done in order to collect additional material on things we found particularly interesting or to examine issues we felt had not been adequately covered in the first two

interviews. The length of these additional interviews varied according to the subject matter. All the interviews were tape recorded, with the permission of the respondents.

Overall, five to nine hours of interviews were done with seven of the 11 respondents. Of the other four,

except for the person who dropped out after the initial interview, we anticipated that more than one meeting was unlikely and condensed the interview. In these situations we focused largely on what normally would have

been first interview topics and asked fewer questions concerning family background. We also had access to recordings of interviews done in 1974 by one of the respondents with several of

the others in our dimensional sample. These interviews, averaging about three hours in length, covered a wide

variety of topics. While concentrating on the relationship between the respondents lifestyle and their politics during the 1968-1970 period, the interviews also included extensive discussion of the background and post-1970 fate of these young men and women in both personal and political terms.

8. In addition, Keniston has characterized the major themes of the youth revolt in terms similar to those used

by Block (1978): (1) the refusal of socialization and acculturation and the concomitant emergence of youth

specific identities and youth counter-cultures; (2) the enormous value placed upon personal change, the

valuation of development itself; (3) a view of adulthood as the cessation of growth, of even "being alive"

(Keniston, 1971: 10).

9. Rosenfield's two-part article entitled "Generational revolt and the Free Speech Movement" was originally

published in Liberation, December 1965 - January 1966. This quote is taken from an excerpt of this article in

Jacobs and Landau (1966: 213-14).

10. The attempt to forge links between the personal and the political was at the center of the New Left politics and represented a sharp break from the unquestioned acceptance by the Old Left of the separation between

personal life and political activity or ideology. While it was a long journey from the early New Left emphasis on

joining "existential humanism" with "morally acceptable modes of radical change" (Jacobs and Landau, 1966:

4-7) to desperate attempts by late sixties Weather collectives to turn themselves into totally new men and

women ? people for whom politics was all ? while proclaiming "the fight to destroy the shit in us is part of

building a new society" (quoted in Sale, 1974: 583), the underlying theme is the same: personal liberation and

social liberation must be united (see also Cluster, 1979). The women's movement played the role of catalyst in

this process, as the oppression of women is grounded so deeply in everyday life and intimate relations.

"Personal life does not merely relect politics, it is politics" (Popkin, 1979: 220), they said.

11. Larry Hirschhorn's (1977, 1979) writings on developmental adulthood and Fred Block's (1978) "The New

Left grows up" paper have stimulated our thinking on these issues.

12. We would like to make two observations about the relationship of these individual political commitments

and the broader fate of the New Left. First, while these commitments have been personally sustaining they have

not led to either a reconstituted and unified New Left or a Left that has re-established its once strong roots

within the working class. The New Left ? indeed the American Left as a whole ? is still based primarily in

intellectual and student circles. The efforts to go beyond this constituency have not generated the broad-based

movement of workers, minorities, women, intellectuals, and disaffected youth that was their oft stated

objective. Even within this middle class constituency there are still significant numbers of people who are




sympathetic to leftist or left-liberal causes but who remain politically inactive, as our data illustrate.

We have not tried to systematically analyze the reasons for these particular difficulties, but the

individual experiences we have described reflect this fragmentation and isolation to some extent, as well as the

difficulties individuals face in maintaining political involvement. (A provocative and important attempt at such

an analysis has recently been made by John and Barbara Ehrenreich [1979]. Carter [1979] provides a

sympathetic commentary and elaboration on their article.)

Second, and despite the political failures of the Left, we can also ask to what extent has the Left been a

socializing force in American society. That is to say, to what extent has it influenced the development of values

of social or community consciousness and involvement, serving as a counterweight to the competitive

possessive individualism that has dominated our culture? Do our interpretations of its political and

organizational failures overlook its socializing influence and neglect its impact on political culture, and thus its

potential base for renewed strength? We have seen how the New Left influenced its members to reappropriate ideals of social commitment and moral concern in their everyday lives. It remains to be determined, however,

how these ideals have been influential beyond the lives of former activists and whether they can be translated

into collective action.

REFERENCES

Abeles, Ronald P. and Kenneth Keniston

1973 "The continued radicalism of Berkeley Free Speech Movement arrestees,"

unpublished paper. Altbach, Philip G. and Patti M. Peterson

1972 "Before Berkeley: Historical perspectives on American student activism." Pp. 13-31

in Philip G. Altbach and Robert S. Laufer

(ed.), The New Pilgrims. New York: David

McKay. Arnold, David O.

1970 "Dimensional sampling: An approach for

studying a small number of cases." The

American Sociologist 5: 147-50.

Becker, Howard 1970 "The relevance of life-histories." Pp.

419-28 in Norman K. Denzin (ed.),

Sociological Methods: A Sourcebook.

Chicago: Aldine.

Bell, Daniel 1976 The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism.

New York: Basic Books.

Bengston, V. L. and K. D. Black 1973

" Intergenerational relations and

continuities in socialization." In P. Baltes

and W. Schaie (eds.), Life-Span

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