Liberation (magazine)

Liberation Magazine (1956–77) was a monthly magazine, of the New Left compared with Dissent and Studies on the Left.[1]

Early days

Liberation was founded, published, and edited by David Dellinger and A. J. Muste from 1956 to 1975 out of New York. Muste brought funding from the War Resisters League.[2][3]

For Bayard Rustin, another of the magazine's editors, the magazine was a major commitment of time and energy, raising money and meeting every week with Muste.[4] He wrote to Martin Luther King,[5] who later wrote for the magazine. The June, 1963 issue contained the first full publication of "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and the first version with that title. Dellinger, Muste and Rustin were, to greater or lesser extent, all Quakers.

The New Left

The New Left positions of the magazine compared with Dissent and Studies on the Left.[6]

The magazine supported the Cuban Revolution, with the article C. Wright Mills' "Listen Yankee",[7] leading to Roy Finch's resignation from the editorial board.[8]

The magazine supported SDS, and anti-Vietnam War.[9]

The magazine supported unilateral Nuclear disarmament, Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) organizers, and worked as a clearinghouse of activists, non-violence.[10]

Louis Ginsberg, father of Allen Ginsberg, had a poem published in it.[11]

Later

In the 1970s it became increasingly "collectivized." By 1977 the magazine was edited by Jan Edwards and Michael Nill out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following Dellinger's departure, it went the way of most left publications of that era and concentrated on the personal as political. It presumably ceased publication not long thereafter. For many years, though, Liberation was a thoughtful and provocative addition to the pacifist left. In addition to occasional theoretical pieces, it also focused on investigative journalism. In early 1965, for example, it ran long articles by Vincent Salandria challenging the conclusions of the Warren Commission, and in 1975 it published an important article by Fred Landis on psychological warfare by the CIA in Chile.

Dave Dellinger graduated from Yale and then served time in prison for refusing to register for the draft in World War II. He was subsequently arrested numerous times for pacifist demonstrations. Dellinger was a leading figure in the movement against the war in Vietnam. At the age of 54 he was the oldest member of the Chicago Eight, the group that was indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and incitement to riot at the Democratic convention in August 1968. His autobiography is entitled From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (Pantheon, 1993).[12]

References

  1. ↑ Staughton Lynd, Andrej Grubačić, Denis O'Hearn (2008). Wobblies & Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History. PM Press. ISBN 978-1-60486-041-2.
  2. ↑ James Tracy, ed. (1996). Direct Action: radical pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-81127-7.
  3. ↑ Frank Kusch (2001). All American Boys: draft dodgers in Canada from the Vietnam War. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-97268-4.
  4. ↑ John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, New York: Free Press, 2003, p. 216.
  5. ↑ Stewart Burns, Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
  6. ↑ Staughton Lynd, Andrej Grubacic, Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History, PM Press, 2008, p. 36.
  7. ↑ "April 9, 2007". The Nation. Retrieved 2011-05-24.
  8. ↑ Sam Dolgoff, The Cuban Revolution: A Critical Perspective, Black Rose, 1976.
  9. ↑ Nigel Young, An Infantile Disorder?: The Crisis and Decline of the New Left, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
  10. ↑ Howard Brick, Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s, Twayne, 1998.
  11. ↑ Allen Ginsberg (ed. Bill Morgan), The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, Da Capo Press, 2008, p. 243.
  12. ↑ "Liberation Magazine". NameBase. Archived from the original on 2012-01-16. Retrieved 2011-05-24.