I swear this was already posted but maybe search is broken. Check out these badasses and products of the 70s left. Im gonna talk about them a little bit because the wiki page is woefully incomplete, but this is from memory so I might get some names and details a bit wrong. After WW2, Appalachia, generally known as the area around the mountain range on the east coast of the US, suffered a mass economic downturn caused by a drop in the price of coal, the main thing mined in the area (this downturn continues to this day and the region remains one of the poorest areas in the United States). In response to many miners getting laid off, they traveled to live in urban centers, especially Chicago. Unfortunately there was also no work in these places, so they, along with everyone else there, remained in the ghettos. Initially organized when members of the Black Panthers and Students for a Democratic Society walked into an Appalachian-frequented bar and demanded to see the n******. The bar quickly went silent before someone yelled that there werent any there. The Panthers responded by asking them why they were being treated like ones then. A beautiful friendship was born. The new organization named itself the Young Patriot Organization. They adorned themselves with Confederate flags, claiming the South Would Rise Again, just this time with their oppressed brothers and sisters around the United States. They viewed the Civil War as a fight between the feudalistic slave-holding southern planting class and the newly industrialized capitalist north and not a war the people created, so the Confederate flag was no more or less offensive than the stars and stripes today(the first part is a common Marxist position today, though I dont personally know any that would defend the use of the flag outside of the specific confines of the left at that time). They immediately joined the Rainbow Coalition, formed by radical socialist groups in Chicago and led by the citys branch of the Black Panther Party and its leader Fred Hampton. I highly recommend looking into the Rainbow Coalition as well, since it was so frightening to the Daley political machine in Chicago that the police drugged and assassinated Fred Hampton in his sleep at home. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Patriots_Organization
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 20:33:54 +0000