Student Power, Democracy and Revolution in the Sixties, by Nick Licata
Review by Dave Gamrath
Former Seattle City Council President Nick Licata’s new memoir Student Power, Democracy and Revolution in the Sixties, tells his story of becoming politically active during his college days from 1965-1969, and includes many useful political lessons he learned from these turbulent times.
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Book Review:
Nick Licata retired from the Seattle City Council after eighteen years of service. In his new memoir, Student Power, Democracy and Revolution in the Sixties, Licata tells the story of how he initially became politically active during college at Bowling Green State University (BG), a conservative school in north central Ohio. His was there during the tumultuous second-half of the 1960s, when Baby Boomers were first becoming young adults, the Vietnam war was raging, and a new student power movement was born.
When Licata entered BG he was quite conservative, but he soon discovered a small bohemian crowd at the school. It was this crowd that inspired Licata to become politically active. But he was never a revolutionary. Rather, his big issue was much tamer: letting students have a say in the school rules that impacted them. Gradually, Licata became a campus leader advocating for student’s rights, expanding student powers and exposing wasteful Administration spending. He constantly sought methods to motivate other students towards political activism and participatory democracy.
Licata describes the student power movement as giving him “a sense of hope that marked the sixties and shaped my life,” and that it left “a legacy that permanently improved our society.” In the 1960s, students began to question historical norms, and to believe they “could make a difference on campus and across the country”. They began to demand societal changes. Licata describes the sixties counterculture in extensive detail, and its “underlying belief in humankind’s ultimate goodness.”
Licata joined a national student group that pushed for change, called Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, and helped to form a chapter at BG. SDS organized rallies and marches to end the war in Vietnam. Local governments thought of SDS as radicals and feared them. Licata became President of his school’s SDS chapter in his junior year. SDS membership grew across the nation, and with growth SDS became more extreme. Although Licata opposed extremism, he describes how SDS became synonymous with students rioting. Internal friction led to SDS dissolving by the end of the decade.
Licata’s prime focus was on student government, and he worked to get students to “develop the skills to be thoughtful citizens both on and off campus.” He continuously worked to promote free speech and freedom of assembly. In his senior year, Licata ran for student body president as an outsider, and surprisingly won. As president he helped to write a new Student Bill of Rights and contributed to other advancements for students. As a budding activist, and as class president, Licata learned many political insights that would help him throughout his long political career. It’s fitting that the book is published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in that, although a quick and enjoyable memoir, it also serves as a textbook for aspiring future politicians. Licata’s insights are too numerous to list here, but include many simple concepts for political success. These alone are worth the read.
Licata’s book delves into many of the hot button topics of the sixties. The war in Vietnam was arguably at the top of the list. Licata describes how opposition to the war increased during his college years, and how students, directly impacted due to the military draft, led the opposition. Licata also describes how the issues of race and racism gained attention, and how Black students slowly began to reshape the university. This was an example of what Licata was advocating, displaying “how students could reshape their political environment if they were willing to rise to the challenge.” Protests gradually led to ethnic studies courses being offered at universities around the country. The issue of women’s rights also became a hot topic. Historically, female students endured far more restrictive rules than males. In 1969 the Women’s Liberation Movement arrived at BG. In time, women gained rights more equal to men.
Interspersed throughout the book, Licata shares fun stories of learning to hitchhike, the rise of the drug culture, and other life-lessons that college students of that time went through. In the summer after his graduation, Licata went to Woodstock, having no idea just how big this event would be. Advertised as “Three Days of Peace and Music”, Licata had his own crazy experience there. But Licata states that the festival was “the embodiment of the peace and love ethos that permeated the sixties.” He shares a quote that “the Woodstock generation brought hope for a much more peaceful, clean and fair world”, and writes that “all we had to do was sustain that hope for the rest of our lives.” Licata considered Woodstock to be “the most successful political expression of the sixties.”
I enjoyed this memoir. Although at times the stories were quite funny, the primary thrust of the book is to share political lessons. It’s arguably more critical today than it was back then, that citizens become and remain politically active, and Licata’s simple lessons will be useful to both experienced and new activists.
Finally, I’d like to see a sequel written. I couldn’t help but think that, if Baby Boomers created an ethos of peace, love and fairness as they bloomed into adulthood, then what went so wrong as Boomers aged into leadership roles? Sure, lifelong activists such as Licata worked for social justice, but overall, from 1980 through today, America has taken a severe turn to the right, beginning with President Reagan. The wealth-gap and inequality have exploded. An outrageously expensive and needless war was waged in the Middle East for twenty years. Whereas President Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency and many new environmental regulations, these acts have been severely weakened, and climate change denial has inhibited needed, urgent changes. With Baby Boomers in charge, an ethos of peace, love and fairness has given way to an increasingly divided country, hatred of fellow Americans soaring, and our democracy truly in peril. How did the youthful hope of the sixties end up here? What led the Baby Boomer Generation to fail us so badly? A sequel telling this story could serve instructional towards turning America back towards the ideals of the sixties.
Reviewer Opinion:
A fun, enjoyable read.
Reviewer Rating of Book:
Thumb up.