A SOCIALIST MEMOIR FROM THE 1960s:
THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY IN AMERICA 1960-1968

Author & activist BARRY SHEPPARD
discusses his new book,
The Party: A Political Memoir (Resistance Books, 2005)

Tuesday, July 5 at 7:30 pm
New World Resource Center
1300 N. Western, Chicago
773-227-4011

The Party: A Political Memoir ranges from 1960 to 1973, the period of radicalization known as "The Sixties". Walking picket lines for Black civil rights, helping to organize the anti-Vietnam-war movement, interviewing Malcolm X, meeting the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, defending the Cuban revolution, collaborating with socialists worldwide including in Australia, India, France and Japan— Barry Sheppard has lived a life enriched by contact with and involvement in popular struggles around the world.

Barry Sheppard was a member of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party for 29 years and a central leader for most of that time.

"Youth today who are repulsed by all the hypocrisy around them will find in Barry Sheppard's journey…the story of a life committed to social justice, that is, to democracy and human values."
-- Peter Miguel Camejo, Green Party candidate for governor of
California in 2002 and 2003 and Ralph Nader's running mate in 2004 presidential election.

"Sheppard's detailed account reminds us of the important role that the Marxist left played in organizing the hundreds of thousands who marched against the [Vietnam] war, a story which has been absent from more conventional accounts."
-- James Petras, Brazilian Landless Workers Movement activist and author of numerous books, including Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century (2001)

"Essential reading for anybody trying to understand revolutionary politics over the past half-century."
-- Louis Proyect, Marxmail.org

"Extraordinary and indispensable…Full of vivid portrayals of party leaders and others. An important chapter is devoted to the revolutionary Black leader Malcolm X and his evolution from a separatist religious leader with a strong revolutionary thrust to a revolutionary internationalist leader of the Black "nation within a nation" in the US and spokesperson for the oppressed everywhere."
-- Fred Feldman, Green Left Weekly, Australia

"This is an important book, certainly for anyone interested in the history of the U.S. Left, but especially for today....It is a valuable source for scholars and activists… Sheppard conscientiously seeks to connect the activities of the SWP to the larger historical contexts: the Cold War, the Hungarian revolution, the Algerian war for independence, developments in the Middle East, the "thaw" in the
USSR, the mass slaughter of leftists in Indonesia, the Vietnam conflict, the so-called Cultural Revolution in China, the May­June 1968 student-worker rebellion in France, the ill-fated Prague Spring that reached for "socialism with a human face," and more."
-- Paul LeBlanc, The Labor Standard

"Barry Sheppard's The Party: A Political Memoir…deserves to be read and studied by everyone who wants to understand the radicalization [of the Sixties]—and above all everyone who wants to understand what lessons the Sixties can teach socialist organizers today…[Sheppard] became a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, editor of its newspaper, and its representative at international events. He traveled widely, including accompanying the SWP's 1968 presidential
candidate to Vietnam, taking the party's antiwar message to U.S. troops."
-- Ian Angus, Seven Oaks magazine

Sponsors: Solidarity-Chicago Chapter
Democratic Socialists of America-Chicago
Open University of the Left
Chicago Socialist Party
(list in formation)