Jon Wiener is a longtime Contributing Editor at The Nation and host and producer of “Start Making Sense,” the magazine’s weekly podcast. He is an Emeritus Professor of U.S. history at UC Irvine, and his books include Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files, and How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America. His latest book, co-authored with Mike Davis, is Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties and he recently agreed to talk about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties?
The book was Mike Davis’s idea, conceived more than a decade ago—he had written about the Sunset Strip riots of 1966-67, which opened up the issue of other forms of Los Angeles protest during the sixties—especially the Black civil rights struggle, and then the Chicano movement. And then, of course, the anti-war movement, the women’s movement, gay liberation, and the counterculture.
How long did it take you to do the necessary research and then write Set the Night on Fire?
Fortunately many of the key archival sources are online now—the L.A. Times, the L.A. Free Press, even the Free Venice Beachhead Underground Weekly. We spent about three years researching and writing.
What was the most interesting or surprising thing that you learned during your research?
The biggest surprise was how young the protesters were in L.A., especially in the later sixties—high school kids and even junior high kids took to the streets by the thousands to demand better schools and an end to racist policing in L.A.
Acts of social and political unrest had happened sporadically in Los Angeles in previous decades. Why do you think so many different protests happened in Los Angeles during the 1960s and continued into the early 1970s?
The Civil Rights movement in the South, starting with the Freedom Rides of 1960, was a great inspiration to young activists in L.A.; repression by the LAPD played a key role in leading to protest; and of course, the Vietnam war reached a peak in the mid-sixties, which moved white middle-class young people to take action.
Do you see any parallels between the Los Angeles protests of the 1960s and the current political unrest/protests? Any major divergences? Are you surprised that, 50 years later, many of the same issues are still being protested?
The focus on police violence remains a central issue in L.A., but Black Lives Matter is so much better organized, so much bigger, and so much more effective than anything in the sixties. Cutting the police budget was unimaginable until last month. But the underlying issues of jobs and housing remain a huge problem for lots of people in L.A.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
I’m finishing Ben Ehrenreich’s Desert Notebooks—a wonderful and totally original book he wrote while living in Joshua Tree. I loved Tom Lutz’s novel Born Slippy and James McBride’s Deacon King Kong. I’ve started Allissa Richardson’s Bearing Witness While Black, about African Americans shooting the smartphone videos that have inspired the recent protest movement. And I’m eagerly awaiting Jody Armour’s N*gga Theory.
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been? What is your answer?
The Question: how do you explain the rapid rise, and even more rapid fall, of the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968? The Answer: the rapid rise stemmed from the urgency of the Vietnam war and the collapse of the anti-war forces inside the Democratic Party; the fall had a single cause: the party’s presidential candidate that year: Eldridge Cleaver. It turned out he was not 35, and the Constitution says the president has to be at least 35. So the party ended up with no candidate on election day.
What are you working on now?
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial of the leaders of the anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. It’s the subject of a big Aaron Sorkin feature film on Netflix this fall, with Sasha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman. I did a book on the trial, which New Press plans to reissue—so I’m still back in the sixties.
