No Radical Hangover: Black Power, New Left, and Progressive Politics in the Midwest, 1967-1989.

Abstract

“No Radical Hangover” recovers the history of left-wing progressivism in the Midwest from 1967 to 1989. In response to the limited achievements of the New Left and black power revolutionary politics, left-wing progressives combined radical analyses of the 1960s urban rebellions, policing, the Vietnam War, and deindustrialization with pragmatic and reformist political strategies such as coalition-building, lobbying, policymaking, and electoral politics.

The study is organized around five case studies illustrating how progressives sought to address particular “focal points” for action—Detroit Reverend Albert Cleage’s attempt to take power after the 1967 rebellion, the city’s anti-police brutality campaign during the early 1970s, the Indochina Peace Campaign’s movement to end U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE) and the Ohio Public Interest Campaign (OPIC) attempts to respond to deindustrialization and economic recession during the late-1970s and early-1980s.

“No Radical Hangover” reveals the existence of a consequential left-wing progressive politics during the 1970s and 1980s. Progressives in Detroit and Ohio organized successfully around issues of police killings and war and empire. These campaigns successfully won debates around these issues in public discourse and rallied a coalition of different groups and constituencies to achieve their goals. Consequently, left-wing progressive activists did not succumb to sectarianism, neither did they focus on a narrow “identity politics.”

This study also uncovers the struggles that left-wing progressives experienced in their efforts to enact racial and economic justice. OPIC and DARE failed to implement their visions of economic democracy, but it was not due to a lack of political imagination. Rather, DARE and OPIC suffered from a lack of political power, especially in the economic realm. They were, however, successful in devising and articulating alternatives to deindustrialization.

Studying progressive politics in the Midwest during the 1970s and 1980s from comparative, social movement, intellectual, political, and urban perspectives allows one to see how movements against war and empire and police brutality help inform the resurgence of campaigns to confront plant closings.