Era of Activism

Migliozzi Era of Activism

Period: Jan 1, 1960 to Dec 31, 1975

Publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

Sep 27, 1962

Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962.The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement. The book documented detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, particularly on birds. Carson said that DDT had been found to cause thinner egg shells and result in reproductive problems and death, though this was not actually mentioned in her book but discovered by later researchers.

Publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique

Feb 17, 1963

often cited as the founding moment of second-wave feminism. The book highlighted Friedan's view of a coercive and pervasive post-World War II ideology of female domesticity that stifled middle-class women's opportunities to be anything but homemakers.

Congress passes the Clean Air Act

Mar 30, 1963

This act dealt with reducing air pollution by setting emissions standards for stationary sources such as power plants and steel mills. It did not take into account mobile sources of air pollution which had become the largest source of many dangerous pollutants. Once these standards were set, the government also needed to determine deadlines for companies to comply with them. Amendments to the Clean Air Act were passed in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1969.

Publication of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed

Mar 30, 1965

Nader's 1965 publication, Unsafe at Any Speed was an exposé of the safety features of the Chevy Corvair. Nader's campaign against the Corvair showed that he believed not only that the Corvair was dangerous but that General Motors (GM) knew it was. Nader convinced liberal Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff into investigating whether GM had lied about what it knew in testimony before Congress. Nader alleged that he had inside sources and documents that would reveal this conspiracy.

NOW is founded

Jun 30, 1966

NOW's official priorities are pressing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will guarantee equal rights for women; achieving economic equality for women; championing abortion rights, reproductive freedom and other women's health issues; supporting civil rights for all and opposing racism; opposing bigotry against lesbians and gays; and ending violence against women.

UFW’s Nationwide Boycott of grapes picked on nonunion farms

Aug 22, 1966

Next, the UFW focuses on the Perelli-Minetti wine grape operation. Workers walk out on strike. The union succeeds through a boycott of its products. The UFW negotiates union contracts with the Christian Brothers and Almaden wineries. Also that year the UFW engages in farm worker walkouts in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, battling violent strikebreaking tactics by the Texas Rangers.

Woodstock

Aug 15, 1969

The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was a rock festival held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. For many, it exemplified the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era". Many of the best-known musicians of the time appeared during the rainy weekend, captured in a successful 1970 movie, Woodstock.

First Earth Day celebration

Apr 22, 1970

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour.I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. Express concern about land, rivers, lakes, and air

The EPA is established

Dec 2, 1970

The mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is "to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment--air, water, and land--upon which life depends." Citizens of any country, whether they consider themselves conservative or liberal, should be in favor of such a program. Many corporations have taken notice of the EPA, and not always in an approving and enthusiastic manner. But the EPA's contributions far outweigh any bad press about being too political or too stringent,

Supreme Court rules to legalize abortion in the Roe v. Wade case

Jan 22, 1973

A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life. Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and overbroadly infringing those plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Protesters from the AIM take over the reservation at Wounded Knee

Feb 27, 1973

On Feb. 27, 1973, traditional members of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribe and activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a protest designed to draw attention to the deplorable living conditions on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the corrupt rule of Richard Wilson, head of the tribal council. The site of a terrible massacre of Lakota Indians in 1890, Wounded Knee was chosen for its symbolic importance.