Dan Georgakas
Dan Georgakas (born 1938) is an American anarchist poet and historian. In 1966 he was a founding member of the anarchist group Black Mask, which later became Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers.
Along with Malay Roychoudhury in India, Gordon Lasslett in Australia, Carl Weissner in Germany and Jeff Nuttall in Britain, Georgakas built up a communicative group of writers and poets which he called a bunch of Creative Vandalists.[1]
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[2]
His book Detroit I Do Mind Dying presents a history of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Alongside histories of the Civil Rights and Black power movements which concentrate their attention on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party, the book by Georgakas and Marvin Surkin focus on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as a significant expression of black radical thought and activism amongst auto-workers in the 1960s. It is a text of political economy and historical sociology tempered by a passionate commitment to the struggles which were waged by its central actors.
Works
- Dan Georgakas, Friederike Poessnecker, Carl Weissner: Manifesto for the Grey Generation. [Carl Weissner's] Panic Press, Heidelberg, Germany, 1966.
- Harlem, 1964; Millenium. Roma, Tip. Centenari. [1966?]
- Dan Georgakas (editor): Z. An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry. Smyrna Press, New York 1968
- Dan Georgakas, Nick Sperakis: E. P. Talking. Smyrna Press, New York 1969. E.P. being Ezra Pound. Broadside.
- Dan Georgakas, Marvin Surkin: Detroit, I Do Mind Dying. A Study in Urban Revolution. St. Martin's Press, 1975.
- Dan Georgakas, Lenny Rubenstein: The Cineaste Interviews. Lake View Press, Chicago 1983.
- Stewart Bird, Dan Georgakas, Deborah Shaffer: Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW. Lake View Press, Chicago 1985.
- Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas (editors): Encyclopedia of the American Left. Garland, New York/ St. James, London 1990. Latest edition: Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford 1998.
- Dan Georgakas, Gary Crowdus: The Cineaste Interviews, Vol. 2. Lake View Press, Chicago 2002.
References
- ↑ In India his letters have been archived and published in The Little Magazine Library & Research Centre, Kolkata.
- ↑ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post