Using over twelve thousand previously classified documents made available through the Freedom of Information Act, David Cunningham uncovers the riveting inside story of the FBI's attempts to neutralize political targets on both the Right and the Left during the 1960s. Examining the FBI's infamous counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) against suspected communists, civil rights and black power advocates, Klan adherents, and antiwar activists, he questions whether such actions were aberrations or are evidence of the bureau's ongoing mission to restrict citizens' right to engage in legal forms of political dissent. At a time of heightened concerns about domestic security, with the FBI's license to spy on U.S. citizens expanded to a historic degree, the question becomes an urgent one. This book supplies readers with insights and information vital to a meaningful assessment of the current situation. There's Something Happening Here looks inside the FBI's COINTELPROs against white hate groups and the New Left to explore how agents dealt with the hundreds of individuals and organizations labeled as subversive threats. Rather than reducing these activities to a product of the idiosyncratic concerns of longtime director J. Edgar Hoover, Cunningham focuses on the complex organizational dynamics that generated literally thousands of COINTELPRO actions. His account shows how--and why--the inner workings of the programs led to outcomes that often seemed to lack any overriding logic; it also examines the impact the bureau's massive campaign of repression had on its targets. The lessons of this era have considerable relevance today, and Cunningham extends his analysis to the FBI's often controversial recent actions to map the influence of the COINTELPRO legacy on contemporary debates over national security and civil liberties.

Annotation. Drawing upon thousands of pages of primary source documents, Cunningham examines COINTELPRO's surveillance of both right and left-wing social movements in the 1960s-1980s

This is the landscape of At Last There Is Nothing Left To Say, Matthew Good's debut book of stories. Taking the form of an artist's journal, Good's tales grind through dark, often violent places animated by voices warped by hallucination and flesh chafed by reality. From the ramblings of an opium-riddled adventurer to treatises on life from a mind rattled by the world; from the tragic end of a teen queen to a day in the life of a rock star; from the execution of the Self by the Other to the pull between rules and freedom, this is a landscape located halfway between imagination and reality, a world that rocks between imagination and reality, a world that rocks between sleep and wakefulness, sanity and insanity, sobriety and inebriation.

Economic justice has long been the core goal of community organizing. In the past decade, often below the radar screen of national politics, effective movements have emerged within neighborhoods and, more importantly, at the regional level. This Could Be The Start of Something Big provides a vivid account of some of these efforts and is an important contribution to new thinking about progressive politics.― Paul Osterman, NTU Professor of Human Resources and Management, MIT Sloan School For nearly two decades, progressives have been dismayed by the steady rise of the right in U.S. politics. Often lost in the gloom and doom about American politics is a striking and sometimes underanalyzed phenomenon: the resurgence of progressive politics and movements at a local level. Across the country, urban coalitions, including labor, faith groups, and community-based organizations, have come together to support living wage laws and fight for transit policies that can move the needle on issues of working poverty. Just as striking as the rise of this progressive resurgence has been its reception among unlikely allies. In places as diverse as Chicago, Atlanta, and San Jose, the usual business resistance to pro-equity policies has changed, particularly when it comes to issues like affordable housing and more efficient transportation systems. To see this change and its possibilities requires that we recognize a new thread running through many local efforts: a perspective and politics that emphasizes "regional equity." Manuel Pastor Jr., Chris Benner, and Martha Matsuoka offer their analysis with an eye toward evaluating what has and has not worked in various campaigns to achieve regional equity. The authors show how momentum is building as new policies addressing regional infrastructure, housing, and workforce development bring together business and community groups who share a common desire to see their city and region succeed. Drawing on a wealth of case studies as well as their own experience in the field, Pastor, Benner, and Matsuoka point out the promise and pitfalls of this new approach, concluding that what they term social movement regionalism might offer an important contribution to the revitalization of progressive politics in America.

THE MAKING AND MEANING OF RADIOHEAD'S GROUNDBREAKING, CONTROVERSIAL, EPOCHDEFINING ALBUM, KID A. In 1999, as the end of an old century loomed, five musicians entered a recording studio in Paris without a deadline. Their band was widely recognized as the best and most forward-thinking in rock, a rarefied status granting them the time, money, and space to make a masterpiece. But Radiohead didn't want to make another rock record. Instead, they set out to create the future. For more than a year, they battled writer's block, intra-band disagreements, and crippling self-doubt. In the end, however, they produced an album that was not only a complete departure from their prior guitar-based rock sound, it was the sound of a new era-and it embodied widespread changes catalyzed by emerging technologies just beginning to take hold of the culture. What they created was Kid A. Upon its release in 2000, Radiohead's fourth album divided critics. Some called it an instant classic; others, such as the UK music magazine Melody Maker, deemed it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory... whiny old rubbish." But two decades later, Kid A sounds like nothing less than an overture for the chaos and confusion of the twenty-first century. Acclaimed rock critic Steven Hyden digs deep into the songs, history, legacy, and mystique of Kid A, outlining the album's pervasive influence and impact on culture in time for its twentieth anniversary in 2020. Deploying a mix of criticism, journalism, and personal memoir, Hyden skillfully revisits this enigmatic, alluring LP and investigates the many ways in which Kid A shaped and foreshadowed our world.

The decade comes alive in this whirlwind ride through the Sixties that begins in Brooklyn and ends at Woodstock. The meadow outside Bethel, New York, is eerily empty and silent. Yesterday it held half a million cheering people, and only a few hours ago, the closer, Jimi Hendrix, recast the “Star Spangled Banner” as a firefight in the Mekong Delta. Mark Berger’s been here the whole time. Arriving four days early, he helped set up kitchens and paths. During the festival, he worked to calm kids tripping out on bad acid, maneuvered a water truck through a sea of spectators, and fell in love, twice. Woodstock was the Sixties condensed into seventy-two hours, and proof that peace and love could turn a potential disaster into a mythic celebration of life. Now, it’s decision time: Does he drop out and move to a commune in New Mexico or return to Brooklyn and become a teacher? Something’s Happening Here begins in Brooklyn eight years earlier, in 1961, where Berger, determined to be true to himself, pledges to live his life boldly. With buddies like Zooby, Bird, and Spider, he experiences the thrilling fear of joy rides and the roller coaster of mind-altering drugs. He’s swept up in the energy of revolutionary writers and musicians and connects with the counterculture’s spirit. Scenes abound, from catching the Coasters at a Brooklyn R&B club to digging Allen Ginsberg reading his poetry in a Tennessee steak house to having only a second to talk his way out of being sent to Vietnam. At Woodstock it all comes together—who he is, what he believes, and which path he has to take. Berger’s vivid storytelling brings the moments to life with an immediacy that show you why something’s happening here. “Mark Berger’s memoir of the 1960s and its climactic event, the Woodstock Music Festival, is so richly evocative in its detail and presence, you’ll swear you were there.” — T. C. Boyle, author of Outside Looking In: A Novel “In concise and thoughtful episodes, Mark Berger has recreated his entrancing and eye-opening experiences through the years that culminated in the extravaganza of Woodstock. Fresh, honest, by turns gentle and wry, this is a rare and engaging firsthand look at an important time in our cultural history, with all its delirious ideals and sheer energy.” — Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t: Stories

Examines the pervasive presence of surveillance and how surveillance technologies alter the performance of everyday life