Power to the People
A conversation with Fred Turner and Iain Boal On the occassion of the publication Power to the People , edited by Geoff Kaplan, Fred Turner and Iain Boal will discuss Turner’s contribution, “Bohemian Technocracy & The Countercultural Press.” Related to his 2006 book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner surveys the conflicting visions of California’s current cultural investments in a technological future and its history of social liberalism and activism. Iain Boal is the co-editor of West of Eden : Communes and Utopia in Northern California and Afflicted Powers : Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, two seminal texts exploring the critical legacy of the radical left. “In the 1960s, a media revolution was afoot as explosive as the revolutions taking place in the streets of Chicago and Paris, Prague and Mexico City. With the increased availability of cheap offset printing, countless groups linked to the antiwar, civil rights, and various liberation movements were able to spread their messages through both elaborately designed newspapers and visually plainspoken broadsheets. Ranging from the psychedelic pages of the San Francisco Oracle , Haight-Ashbury’s paper of choice, to the fiery editorials of the Black Panther Party Paper , these papers were remarkable for their do-it-yourself ethos, their fervent belief in freedom of expression, and their staunch advocacy of both a politically radical and countercultural lifestyle.” Event at 5pm