Bywaters, Thomas Fouser, Don WGBH Educational Foundation Harrington, Michael Bond, Julian Lynd, Staughton Fouser, Donald Rosen, Milt Hall, Gus Epton, Bill

Description

Episode Number: 2The so-called New Left has all but dominated page one of the nation's newspapers for the past few years. Its members lie down in front of troop trains, collect blood to give to the North Vietnamese, maintain that this country is run by a power structure of big business, and a few national politicians. They constitute the more militant of the civil rights groups. And yet, these groups, generally young and often students or just out of college, are in a strong tradition of radicalism in this country, the most notable examples of which are Thoreau and the abolitionists. The episode draws a distinction between the young radicals in this tradition and the dogmatic communist radicals of the Communist Party USA or Progressive Labor, the so-called pot left. Interviewed are Gus Hall, general secretary, Communist Party USA; Milt Rosen, co-founder, Progressive Labor; Bill Epton, Progressive Labor Party candidate for the New York Legislature, recently convicted on a charge of criminal anarchy against the state and now in prison; Staughton Lynd, professor at Yale, philosopher of the New Left, whose trip to Hanoi has created an international incident; Michael Harrington, director of the League for Industrial Democracy; Julian Bond of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, who was elected to the Georgia Legislature and was refused a seat by the Legislators. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) The growing wave of radical movements in the United States today both on the left and the right are examined in...

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