People's Movements, People's Press : The Journalism of Social Justice Movements

America has a long history of protest and rebellion. In People’s Movements, People’s Press, Bob Ostertag recounts the history of the alternative print media that has arisen out of five social movements—abolition, woman suffrage, environmental, gay liberation, and Vietnam antiwar. By telling the story of the newspapers and magazines of these movements, the author shows the power of the written word to mobilize activists behind a political cause.

Ostertag provides a kind of people’s history of these social movements by explaining the effect that these publications have had on both the writers and their readership. The newspapers and journals were lively forums in which to argue, express enthusiasm or frustration, mobilize, and educate. People’s Movements, People’s Press saves these publications, some with print runs of only a few hundred, from being forgotten by a new generation of readers and activists. Ostertag also chronicles the rise of well-known publications like the Liberator, Sierra, and the Advocate.

Concise, accessible, and appropriately urgent, People’s Movements, People’s Press is an important book of journalism history as well as a call to arms for young activists ready to change their world.

Bob Ostertag has written widely on political subjects, particularly those concerning Latin America. He is an associate professor of technocultural studies at the University of California at Davis and lives in San Francisco.