"The Civil Rights Movement of the 1990s?": The anti-abortion movement and the struggle for racial justice

In 1964, Claude and Jeanne Nolen, who were white, joined an interracial NAACP team intent on desegregating local restaurants in Austin, Texas as a test of the recently passed Civil Rights ACt. Twenty-five years later, the Nolens pleaded "no contest" in a courtroom for their continued social activism. This time the issue was not racial segregation, but rather criminal trespassing for blockading abortion clinics with Operation Rescue. The Nolens served prison sentences for direct action protests that they believe stemmed from the same commitment to Christianity and social justice as the civil rights movements.Despite its relationship to political and cultural conservatism, the anti-abortion movement since Roe v. Wade (1973) was also a product of the progressive social movements of the turbulent sixties. Utilizing oral history interviews and organizational literature, the article explores the historical context of the anti-abortion movement, specifically how the lengthy struggle for racial justice shaped the rhetoric, tactics, and ideology of the anti-abortion activists. Even after political conservatives dominated the movement in the 1980s, the successes and failures of the sixties provided a cultural lens through which grassroots anti-abortion activists forged what was arguably the largest movement of civil disobedience in American history.     

“Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics”: Ambivalence and Controversy in the Discourse of the Greek Left on rebetiko

This paper explores the interrelations between politics and music as they appear in the ongoing debate about the rebetiko genre, within the intellectual circles of the left‐wing movement in the post‐war era. Through the analysis of the rebetika texts and biographical material, the ambivalent attitude of the Greek Left movement about the political context and the class affiliation of rebetiko are exposed. The Left saw popular music as a pedagogic means for inculcating class‐consciousness among the masses and promoting optimistic utopian images of a possible communist future. In the framework of this politically motivated consideration, the attempt of left‐wing intellectuals to interpret and evaluate the rebetiko genre led to various ambivalences and controversies within the Left movement.     

The rise and fall of “individualism” before and after the May Fourth Movement

Abstract

“Individualism” was one of the most important philosophical trends in the May Fourth era, heavily influencing youths seeking personal liberation and independence. However, not long after the May Fourth Movement, positive associations with individualism gradually receded. Compared with devotion to “nation” or “society,” the quest for individual independence was repeatedly criticized as almost synonymous with “selfish.” There were two reasons for this: first was opposition stemming from a traditional Chinese respect for collectivism; second was that individualism had become the theoretical basis for private capitalist production following the First World War and its founding values were coming under increased scrutiny. As the Second World War unfolded, the fight for survival benefitted the promotion of collectivist values and the idea of social organisms. Individualism declined and eventually became supplanted by a heavily politicized form of collectivism.