Letters to a Young Activist, a new book by Todd Gitlin ’63, is the work of a passionate and lifelong leftist.

The president of Students for a Democratic Society during the mid-1960s, Gitlin directly addresses today’s activists in Letters. In a time of war and highly visible worldwide demonstrations, his book powerfully links today’s protests to their ’60s-era antecedents.

But the book is also the work of a college professor—Gitlin is now a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. Part history, part political science, Letters to a Young Activist is not the firebrand radicalism one might expect from a leader of the ’60s student movement.

Instead, Gitlin emerges as a reflective, weathered veteran activist. Recognizing his position as an architect of the New Left, he speaks to today’s activists as a loving but sometimes critical father. Like a palm reader, he tells his readers what qualities activists are likely to have, identifies what kinds of challenges they face, and divines what obstacles will likely be thrown in their path.

Gitlin’s fatherly knowingness is comforting and patronizing. His insights are priceless. He analyzes how the turbulent ’60s differ from our own moment, noting how the student movement of the 1960s can be both inspirational and intimidating.

Gitlin is the first to point out that his book is not an activist’s toolkit and can’t provide a roadmap for justice, peace and equality.

“Over the years, I’ve stored up ruminations, what you could call principles, about how best to be an activist,” Gitlin told The Crimson. “They aren’t things that could be considered political theories or manifestos.”

So he offers the “political wisdom” gained from years of organizing, and years of reflecting about organizing.

Gitlin acknowledges that the 1960s, through media, music and the lore of the vocal Boomer generation, has been suspended in time as a glittering era of idealism, collaboration and carnival-like counterculture. The fashion and music of the ’60s remain as ubiquitous now as then. The concrete victories of the Civil Rights Movement and the sexual revolution are, in many ways, routinized into our culture, he says.

Moreover, assasinations, riots, and Vietnam’s refusal to end make the 1960s as dark and ominous as it was bright and jubilant. And Gitlin’s movement ultimately splintered, leaving a legacy of extremism, violence and the hedonism of the 1970s in its place.

Prefacing the book in his first letter, he writes: “The sixties, like parents, are useful but also oppressive.” So in the spirit of purposeful reminiscence, he speaks of “The Movement” of which he was part.

According to Gitlin, this movement was characterized by “collectivity and animation,” — qualities that members of social justice movements today should aspire to. Today’s activists “don’t clump” like they used to and are instead divided by varied issues and by identity politics, he says. He warns against the “balkanization of the Left” by too narrow self or group definitions.

Gitlin, while recognizing the need for racial, ethnic, gender and class groups to work towards greater social equality, maintains his original emphasis on unity. The best way to achieve social equality is “as a citizen, not as one of the persecuted.”

Gitlin also hopes that today’s activists, challenging the status-quo on globalization, protesting war, fighting for living wages and against sweatshops, can find joy and originality in their work. He says he remembers when Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman rained dollar bills down on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange just to see what havoc ensued: “They were not embarrassed by a surfeit of joy.”

With joy, according to Gitlin, comes originality. He applauds the 1999 globalization protests in Seattle when Teamsters and Greens, dressed as sea turtles, marched together. He eschews purely hateful protest, no matter how heinous the injustice.