1968/2008

“History does not usually suit the convenience of people who like to divide it into near periods, but there are times when it seems to have pity on them. The year 1968 almost looks as though it had been designed to serve as some sort of signpost. There is hardly any region in the world in which it is not marked by the spectacular and dramatic events which were to have profound repercussions on the history of the country in which they occurred and, as often as not, globally. This is true of the developed and industrialized capitalist countries, of the socialist world, and of the so-called ‘third world’; of both the eastern and western, the northers and southern hemispheres.” - Eric Hobsbawm, ‘1968 - A Retrospect,” in Marxism Today (May 1978), p.130 (p.4 Imagination of the New Left)

“The global impact of revolutionary movements which have succeeded in seizing political power is widely recognized. Few observers would question the fact that the revolutions of 1776 in the US, 1789 in France, and 1917 in Russia have had profound and long-lasting repercussions. The ruptures of social order in 1848, 1905 and 1968 may not have toppled dominant institutions, but even in ‘failure’ they marked the emergence of new values, ideas, and aspirations which became consolidated as time passed.”
George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left (pp10-11)

“In 1968, the Third Industrial Revolution announced itself with the publication of the double helix, (which revolutionized the knowledge surrounding DNA), the marketing of the first microcomputer, an Apollo 8’s rounding of the moon. The space-age production of the modern world, made possible by the by the global centralization of resources and modern technology, has engengered an increasing division of labor, and in 1968, new oppositional forces emerged in the most developed capitalist countries: the new working class (technicians, employed professionals, off-line office workers, service workers and students). As the First Industrial Revolution produced the working class and the Second a landless peasantry, so the Third created the new working class. In 1968, their aspirations for a decentralized and self-managed global civil society transcended the previous calls for liberty, equality, and fraternity in 1789; for jobs, trade unions, and employment security in 1848; and for land, peace, bread and voting rights from 1905 to 1917.” - George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left (p17)

Symbolic Dates from 1968

with Election Dates from 2008 mixed in

January
5 Prague Spring

30 Tet Offensive Begins in 1968, lasts until February 24

February

5 Illinois - Presidential & State/Federal Primary in 2008
Illinois - CD-14 Special Election Primary in 2008

12 LBJ wins the Primary

16 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam

24 Tet Offensive Ends

March
8 Illinois - CD-14 Special Election in 2008

22 Eight students occupy the Admin offices of Nanterre in France, kicking off the events of May 1968

April

4 MLK Assasiinated

6 - A shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including 17-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.

April 23-April 30 - Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

May
14 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the State of Israel

17 - The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.

19 - General elections are held in Italy.

June

1 - Helen Keller, American spokeswoman for deaf and blind, dies 1968 (b. 1880)

3 - Radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol as he enters his studio, wounding him.

5 - U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.

July
10-13 Green Party - Presidential Nominating Convention (Chicago, Illinois) 2008

17 - Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d’état.

23-July 28 - African-American militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio.

August
5-8 - The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President and Spiro Agnew for Vice President.

20 - The Prague Spring of political liberalization ends, as 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia.

22-30 - Police clash with antiwar protesters in Chicago, Illinois outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President, and Edmund Muskie for Vice President.

September
6 - Swaziland becomes independent.

October
2 - Tlatelolco massacre: A student demonstration ends in a bloodbath at La Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, Mexico, 10 days before the inauguration of the 1968 Summer Olympics.

2 - Marcel Duchamp, French artist, dies 1968 (b. 1887)

16 - In Mexico City, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 2 African-Americans competing in the Olympic 200-meter run, raise their arms in a black power salute after winning the gold and bronze medals for 1st and 3rd place.

November
4 General Election 2008

December

22 - Mao Zedong advocates educated youth in urban China to be re-educated in the country. It marks the start of the “Up to the mountains and down to the villages” movement.

24 - Apollo Program: U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole. The crew also reads from Genesis.

January
5 New Congress sworn in. 2009
20 Presidential Inauguration Day 2009