How many were organizin'?

November 14, 2006 4:30 PM

Google-fu is failing me -- I am trying to hunt down a quote about the number of full-time activists during the sixties...

I read something, somewhere, sometime about how the number of full-time, organizing activists during the sixties was actually suprisingly small, considering the amount of work that got done. Can anyone thing of where this might have been, or give me any stats? Thank you!

posted by jennyjenny to grab bag (5 comments total)

Not an answer, but an interesting piece by Bernadine Dohrn includes this quote: "Sixties activism was almost always small, isolated, surrounded by hostile, angry crowds."
Indeed, there were very few full timers. Whole universities were mobilized by just a few, if any, working full time.
posted by beagle at 4:59 PM on November 14, 2006

You seem to be taking a reductionist approach to an issue that doesn’t essentially lend itself to that methodology. If you want to persist in your folly, you could look up human beings who fronted for groups like the Yippies, SDS, SNC, the Black Panthers, etc. You could get numbers that way.
posted by Huplescat at 5:38 PM on November 14, 2006

My father was a "full time activist" for civil rights in Tennessee, he however was paid as a "missionary" by the United Methodist Church so it might be difficult to pin down just how many people were doing his sort of work.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:51 PM on November 14, 2006

Sorry, on review, that looks more than a bit harsh and self serving.
posted by Huplescat at 5:52 PM on November 14, 2006

This page, an excerpt from Mick Armstrong's book One, Two Three, What are We Fighting For?, includes the line:

The success of revolutionary socialists at La Trobe poses a very important question: how was it possible for such a relatively small number of activists (on most campuses at best two or three per cent of students) to have such a decisive impact – to set the political tone on campus after campus?

posted by cerebus19 at 5:58 PM on November 14, 2006