Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be at 5:30 pm on October 22 at Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative (426 W. Gilman).

Who We Are and What We Do

Madison has been home to a vibrant community of radical activists since at least the 1950s. The stories of their struggles against racism and imperialism and for social justice at home and abroad remain largely unrecorded. It is imperative that we record and store their memories now, so that we can benefit from their collective experience in contemporary struggles. We are activists, and we are motivated to initiate this project by a desire to use lessons learned in the past to improve our activism in the present. Collecting, transcribing, and analyzing the local histories of the left in Madison well help us adapt our efforts, as activists, to the particular dynamics of this city.

We are primarily interested in political organization and movement building. We will seek out individuals who actively participated in radical left organizations, and we want to uncover the role played by such organizations in the development of mass social movements—in particular, the civil rights, organized labor, anti-war movements. The history of the radical left in Madison—and all of the US—has been silenced. Our project will help to restore the radical left to its rightful place as a highly influential force in the social, political, and cultural history of the US.