''Rising Up Angry'' was a radical youth movement organized as a
militant
The English word ''militant'' is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Lat ...
community organization
Community organization or community based organization refers to organization aimed at making desired improvements to a community's social health, well-being, and overall functioning. Community organization occurs in geographically, psychosocially ...
based in working class communities in Chicago, parallelling but not part of the
Weatherman Underground and
Revolutionary Youth Movement
In the United States, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) was the section of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party (United States), Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Most of ...
currents in New Left politics at the end of the 1960s.
Description
They published a monthly newspaper also called ''Rising Up Angry'' from 1969 to 1975, describing itself as "a revolutionary organization committed to building a new man, a new woman, and a new world," with the masthead motto "To love we must fight." RUA took their name from the lyrics to the song "
Shape of Things to Come" in the 1968 movie ''
Wild in the Streets
''Wild in the Streets'' is a 1968 American dystopian comedy-drama film directed by Barry Shear and starring Christopher Jones, Hal Holbrook and Shelley Winters. Based on the short story "The Day It All Happened, Baby!" by Robert Thom, it ...
''. The membership of the organization was of local blue-collar youth recruited out of the neighborhood subcultures called by the paper "
greasers," a term used at the time to describe disaffected white youths stuck nostalgically in the subculture of the 1950s (''see'' ''
Grease'').
Members were mostly working class youths with union ties and socialist leanings who were disappointed with the efforts of perceived elitist and working class-disconnected groups like the
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships a ...
.
Rising Up Angry's newspaper was distributed throughout the Chicago area by volunteers focusing their distribution on high schools, union halls, university campuses; mostly a youth market. It encouraged radical dissent and featured profiles of figures such as
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African American revolutionary, Islam in the United States, Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figur ...
and
Fred Hampton
Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist and revolutionary socialist. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and c ...
,
John Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger (; June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster during the Great Depression. He commanded the Dillinger Gang, which was accused of robbing twenty-four banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprison ...
,
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut "Champion" Barrow (March 24, 1909May 23, 1934) were American outlaws who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, committing a ser ...
, reviews of the
Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...
,
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris (; Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American and Ghanaian singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th c ...
and
The Wild Bunch
''The Wild Bunch'' is a 1969 American epic revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns an aging outlaw gang ...
, mixing political and cultural commentary with politically oriented cartoons by Aaron Fagen and others, montages, discussions of motorcycles and custom cars, and histories of labor activism and guerrilla warfare.
"Rising Up Angry"
by Euan Hague. ''Area Chicago''. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
See also
* List of underground newspapers of the 1960s counterculture
This is a partial list of the local underground newspapers launched during the Sixties era of the hippie/psychedelic/youth/counterculture/New Left/antiwar movements, approximately 1965–1973. This list includes periodically appearing papers of g ...
Notes and references
Links
'Rising Up Angry - Chicago Area'
Newspapers established in 1969
Publications disestablished in 1975
Defunct newspapers published in Chicago
Newspapers published in Illinois
{{Illinois-newspaper-stub