In 1969, the Young Patriots Organization (YPO) emerged out of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood to organize poor white people against capitalism and white supremacy. They worked alongside the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Puerto Rican Young Lords in the Original Rainbow Coalitions. The YPO embodied the politics that sought to build multiracial working-class unity while respecting the self-determination and autonomy of their comrades of color.

Join YPO co-founder Hy Thurman, Amy Sonnie and James Tracy, co-authors of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing, Expanded Anniversary Edition, (Melville House Publishing) in conversation with Rampant Magazine.

Get the new, expanded Anniversary Edition of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing from Melville House Publishing here: https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/hillbilly-nationalists-urban-race-rebels-and-black-power

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Speakers:

Amy Sonnie is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).

Hy Thurman is a co-founder of the Young Patriots Organization and author of Revolutionary Hillbilly: Notes From the Struggle at the Edge of the Rainbow (Regent Press).

James Tracy is co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).

Moderator:

Eric Kerl is a Kentuckian living, working, organizing, and writing in Chicago. He is the author of White Bred: Hillbillies, White Trash, and Rednecks against White Supremacy (forthcoming from Haymarket Books) and is on the editorial collective of Rampant Magazine.

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This event is co-sponsored by Rampant Magazine, Melville House Publishing, Howard Zinn Book Fair, and Haymarket Books.