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Counterculture Timeline: The Seventies: Punks and Anti-Nuclear as the Economy Declines 1977-1979
    EVENTS   ARTS
1977   Dollar plummets (to 270 yen at the end of 1977)

TransAlaska pipeline completed

Transportation Department announces seat belts required by 1984

Carter ?renews draft evader amnesty

Carter declares energy conservation the "moral equivalent of war"

Urban Development Action Grant: public redevelopment investment must be matched with private investment

China: Gang of Four falls

July: unemployment in U.K. 1 million (get # for 76)

Worst weather extremes of the 20th century: North, East, South cold; West in last worst year of drought

Artists migrate to TriBeCa, New York

Oldest children who came of age during the changes of the Sixties
(born 1957, turned 5 in 1963, turned 10 in 1968) start turning 20


  1977

MUSIC / CINEMA / PUBLISHING

PUNK ROCK - first Big Year
*Clash
*Talking Heads

*Elvis Costello
*Patti Smith: first album
*Peter Tosh: first solo
*Lynyrd Skynyrd killed in plane crash
Fake Beatles put together
Aug 16 - Elvis Presley dies (42)
Saturday Night Fever continues & becomes hit
McCartney: Mull of Kintyre (UK only release - not to US)

Rocky Horror Show starts at U.C. Theater, Berkeley

Annie Hall
Close Enctrs of the Third Kind
Star Wars (George Lucas first? film)
The Turning Point (MacLaine, Bancroft)
Julie (Redgrave, Fonda)
(Goodbye Girl)
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000: Alain Tanner
Werner Herzog: Stroszek (when was LA intro??)
?Man of Marble - Andrzej Wajda

The Women's Room - Marilyn French
Games Mother Never Taught You (Corporate Gamesmanship
for Women) - Harragan
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the
Rainbow Is Enuf: Ntozake Shange
Amory Lovins: Soft Energy Paths
Food First (the book)
Rainbook (Resources for Appropriate Technology)
Goodbye to the Flush Toilet - Stoner (Rodale)
A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
David Werner: Where There is No Doctor
The Moosewood Cookbook - Mollie Katzen

?burn out phenomenon noticed
(goat cheese, Brooke Shields)
jogging
Jan   Carter austerity, human rights campaign - explain xx
 
when?   Carter recommends abandonment of 18 porkbarrel dam projects

 
Jan
23-30
  Roots on television, watched by 36 million  
Jan 27   Vatican bars women from Catholic priesthood

 
Feb 25   Eighth biggest tanker oil spill, west of Honolulu 99,000 tons
(Hawaiian Patriot); 50 mile long oil slick

 
Mar   Carter ends travel restrictions to Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, and lifts ban on spending US dollars in Cuba

Greens get first media attention in France with 12% win

 
Mar 11   United?? Farmworkers & Teamsters sign agreement, California (after 10 years of discord)

 
spring   UC Berkeley demonstrations for divestment from South Africa

 
Apr 11   Parents of 5 "Moonies" denied custody

 
Apr 18   Carter presents Energy Plan: calling for "moral equivalent of war", asks Congress to pass laws penalizing gas-guzzling cars & granting tax incentives for energy-efficient homes

 
Apr 22   UK: North Sea oil spill

 
May   US unemployment down to 7% - lowest in 29 months

 
May 1   Paris, France: last of the Fifth Republic & United left (lost elections one year later; won and then last four years ?later)

 
May
1-2
  1,414 arrested as Clamshell Alliance occupies construction site of nuclear power plant at Seabrook, New Hampshire

 
May 13   La Pasionaria returns to Madrid, 34 days after the Communist Party is legalized in Spain

 
May 13   500 demonstrators arrested at Seabrook demonstration found guilty of trespass

 
Jun 7   Dade County, Florida vote repeals anti-gay ordinance (singer Anita Bryant is active in campaign against repeal)

 
June 17   EPA approves Seabrook

 
June 26   Marches throughout US in support of gays
100,000 San Francisco, tens of thousands in New York


 
July   Record US trade deficit (13th consecutive monthly deficit)
26% rise in oil imports is said to be major factor


 
July 13   9:34 pm New York City black-out to July 14

 
Aug 10   Son of Sam captured after 6 murders, 7 wounded

 
Sept 12   Stephen Biko dies in prison, South Africa

 
Sept 20   Vietnam finally admitted to United Nations

 
Oct   US trade deficit 3.1 bill (first time over 3 bill in history)

 
Oct 12   University of California vs Bakke - anti-affirmative action (trial starts - filed Sept 19) explain xx

 
Nov 4   United Nations votes South African arms embargo

 
Nov 5   Carter vetoes Tennessee Clinch River Breeder Reactor

 
Nov 18   KKK members convicted of 1963 bombing of Birmingham church in which four young black girls were killed

 
Nov 19   (Egypt President? Sadat visits Israel)

 
Dec 7   FBI finally releases JFK assassination files due to requests under Freedom of Information Act

 
Dec 10   First 61 of 300 Americans held in Mexican prisons on drug charges released in prisoner exchange

 
Dec 14   (Farmers strike announced)  


1978   "Dollar crisis" - dollar devalued 20% in foreign exchange (xx I was in Europe)

Engineering recession

Koreagate

Coors boycott starts after 20-month strike is broken

Dennis Banks granted asylum from extradition to South Dakota by Jerry Brown (Half a million letters to Governor Brown urge sanctuary)

American Indian Religious Freedom Act: right to use peyote as a religious sacrament in Native American Church meetings by Native Americans

when? ERA Washington D.C. march
when? 20,000 anti-nuclear at United Nations

1978-1979 Santa Monica rent control campaign
(when was Tom Hayden elected?)

Sirius Community founded, Amherst, Massachusetts

Holocaust on tv
Birth Control pill side effects
Free Base (cocaine derivative)
Test-tube baby
Proposition 13 (California)
Boat people
Faneuil Hall, Boston, a150-year-old wharf building, re-opens refurbished as a marketplace and becomes the model for numerous other similar projects

Terry Schoonhoven: "1978-79" east side of a former apartment building on Windward Avenue in Venice. An exact mirror image of the tatty storefronts and walkways of the beach-side enclave, the "St. Charles Painting" froze a moment for eternity, while the world it faithfully reflected slowly changed. [I remember this from much earlier!]

  1978

MUSIC / CINEMA / PUBLISHING

Stayin' Alive - BeeGees

*second Big Year of Punk

*Joni Mitchell: Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
?Warren Zevon second album?

Interest in traditional blues rekindled by George Thorogood, Roomful of Blues, & The Fabulous Thunderbirds 1978-80

Coming Home
Deer Hunter
Blue Collar
Grease (the movie)
Woody Allen: Annie Hall and Interiors
An Unmarried Woman
The Buddy Holly Story
Dylan's Renaldo and Clara movie
Kristofferson all over the media
(Animal House)
(Superman)

Muddling Toward Frugality - Warren Johnson
The Unsettling of America - Wendell Berry
One Straw Revolution - Masanobu Fukuoka
Spiritual Midwifery - Ina May Gaskin
The Vegetarian Epicure, Book II - Anna Thomas
The Briarpatch Book
Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional
Anthology of North America - Peter Berg (Planet Drum)

The Incredible Secret Money Machine - Don Lancaster
The Pregnancy After 30 Workbook - Brewer (Rodale)
Gyn/Ecology - Mary Daly
Linus Pauling: Vitamin C, the Common Cold, and the Flu
In Search of Enemies (A CIA Story) - John Stockwell

?Immanuel Velikovsky: Worlds in Collision

Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - radio show starts in U.K.



"Garry Trudeau" (?syndicates Doonesbury)
Jan   Trade deficit jumps to 26.7 billion (eek! is this right)
(could this be 2.67?) - 4x the 1976 deficit
due to oil import increase
(76-34 bill; 79-44.3 bill)


 
Feb 11   AIM Longest Walk starts from Alcatraz

Lois Gibbs brings U.S. to awareness of Love Canal toxicity (near Niagara Falls, New York) (& residents evacuated this year) -- was this Feb 11??

 
Mar 5   China adopts new constitution stressing economic development over revolutionary ideology

 
Mar   Japan, Germany try to prop up the dollar

 
Mar 16   Third biggest tanker oil spill off Portsall, Brittany, France 223,000 tons
(Amoco Cadiz); soiled 100+ miles of beaches, huge numbers of urchins, clams, and
small crustaeceans died and 20,000 migrating birds


 
Apr 7   Carter defers production of neutron bomb

 
May 21   4,300 rally at Bangor Naval Base, Wash to protest U.S. Trident

 
May 27   40 meditators attend U.N. Disarmament Session's Mobilization for Survival (convened May 23)

 
June   Trade deficit 2.24 bill, smallest since Sept 77 but 24th consecutive month

 
June 6   Proposition 13 passed - California (xx explain)

 
summer   [Europe first visit xx]

 
June 15   Supreme Court rules TVA may not complete Tellico Dam (based on the endangered Snail Darter)

 
June 28   Supreme Court upholds affirmative action programs in general, but orders Alan Bakke admitted to UC Davis Medical College

 
July 17   AIM Longest Walk arrives Washington, D.C.

 
July 25   First test tube baby born (U.K.)

 
Aug 15   ERA deadline extended by Congress to June 30, 1982

 
Aug 22   Sandanistas capture of Nicaragua National Palace starts revolution

 
Sept   Taz (Die Tageszeitung) starts publication in Germany

 
Sept
5-17
  Carter Camp David Sadat/Begin summit -> Accords (Egypt / Israel)  
Oct 13   Sid Vicious (former Sex Pistol bandmember) kills girlfriend, Chelsea Hotel, New York

 
Oct 15   Carter Energy Package

Congress deregulates airlines


 
Oct 20   End of worst week in Stock Market's history
drops 59.08 to 838.01


 
Oct
25-30
  Record dollar lows - Dollar drops to 178 yen end Oct
Meanwhile, gold at record high of 245/ounce


 
Oct 31   Stock Market drops to 792.45, lowest since Apr 13

 
Nov 18   Jim Jones' Peoples Temple mass suicide, Jonestown, Guyana - 911

 
Dec   China: Third plenum of the 11th Communist Party Central Committee - opens door to outside world and embraced a process of pragmatic development which came to include private ownership, stock markets, foreign-managed enterprise

 
Dec 16   City of Cleveland defaults

 
Dec 17   OPEC raises oil prices 14.5% (12.70 -> 14.54/barrel)

 
Dec 31   Graham's Winterland's last concert (Grateful Dead & Blues Bros.)  
         


1979   U.S. Stagflation of 1978-1980 continues, dollar continues decline of 1978-1980
12% inflation due to massive energy cost increases
Housing prices start to rise
Gold price goes to record high of 400/ounce
(Steel lay-offs)

(Volcker appointed to head Federal Reserve Board)

None of US military services meets its recruiting quota

Dictators overthrown: Masie of Equatorial Guina, Bokassa of the Central African "Empire"

Oil spills in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico

when? Anti-nuclear Washington D.C. march

when? Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) signed (U.S. Senate never ratifies)

?Dave Foreman founds Earth First!

Grameen Bank for micro business loans started in India

Over 1000 Shramadama work camps in Sri Lanka

KSAN progressive radio staff quits for good

1978-1979: Santa Monica rent control campaign

Dollar-a-gallon gas

  1979

?U.S. reaches Zero Population Growth?

MUSIC / CINEMA / PUBLISHING

Dylan: Slow Train Coming ("Dylan finds Jesus")
*Joni Mitchell: Mingus

(TV: Mork and Mindy)

The China Syndrome (Fonda)(just before Three Mile Isld - Mar 79)
Hair (the movie)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Being There
Kramer vs Kramer
Woody Allen: Manhattan
La Cage Aux Folles
Breaking Away
Picnic at Hanging Rock
The Last Wave
Nosferatu
(Rocky II) (Star Trek - the movie)
(The Electric Horseman) (Redford, Fonda)


Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff
James Lovelock Gaia hypothesis published as book
The Integral Urban House Book - Farallones Institute
Underground Houses - Roy
Godel, Escher, Bach
The Dancing Wu Li Masters (An Overview of the New Physics) -
Gary Zukaw
(A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams)
Jan 7   Pol Pot is overthrown in Cambodia --> Cambodian massacres

 
Jan 16   Shah of Iran deposed  
Feb 1   Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power in Iran ( -> oil shortages)

 
Feb 5
[Berk xx]
  (Farmers demonstrate, Wash D.C.)

 
Mar 24   Archbishop Romero, a critic of El Salvador's right and left extremists is assassinated during a sermon about peace and justice.

 
Mar 26   Israel/Egypt peace treaty signed

 
Mar 27   OPEC raises oil prices 9% to 14.546/barrel (?see Dec 17, 78) taking advantage of the drop in Iran oil production

 
Mar 28   Three Mile Island Nuclear xxx (near Middletown, Pennsylvania)

when? Three Mile Island anti-nuclear march Washington 100,000


 
Apr
1-10
  Teamsters strike  
Apr 4   (Bhutto killed, Pakistan)

 
Apr 11   Idi Amin of Uganda is overthrown

 
Apr 12   GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) signed (talks started 1973)

 
Apr 18   Lee Marvin's ex-live-in partner wins "Palimony" (based on 1976 Sup Ct ruling)

 
May 4   Margaret Thatcher elected Prime Minister of Britain

 
May 6   65,000+ Wash anti-nuclear march

 
May 8   California starts odd-even license gas distribution

 
May?   OPEC raises oil prices again (2 1/2 x)
(?ca 8 dollars/barrel to 20 dollars/barrel??)
-> dollar/gallon gas
(-> inflation (13%) + unemployment 79-80)


 
June 3   One of two biggest oil spills:
Mexico oil well blowout, 3.1 billion barrels / 600,000 tons
Bay of Campeche, near the Yucatan Peninsula;
eventually covered western half of Gulf of Mexico to Texas (finally capped Mar 24, 80)

 
Jun 7   Carter approves development of the MX missile

 
Jun 20   New York, Connecticutt, New Jersey start odd-even license gas distribution

 
Jun 28   OPEC announces oil price rise 24% to 18/barrel

 
July 5   ACLU sues FBI over 1965 murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo by KKK

 
July 17   Nicaragua: last Somoza of 46-year dynasty flees to Miami;
Sandanistas take power


 
July 18   Gold price passes 300 dollars/ounce

 
July 19   Biggest ever tanker oil spill off Trinidad and Tobago 300,000 tons
(Atlantic Empress, Aegean Captain); luckily slicks dispersed rapidly


 
Sept 29   200,000 anti-nuke lower Manhattan, New York + ca 11 other demos around US

 
Oct   1045 anti-nuclear protestors arrested in front of New York Stock Exchange

 
Oct 7   2,500 anti-nuke demonstrators attempt to occupy 2 nuclear plants under construction Seabrook

 
Oct   Federal Reserve System decides to allow more fluctuation in interest rates

 
Oct 15   El Salvador President Romero is deposed by a military coup

(Feb 81 - US admits to having sent 18 advisors to help the military junta. El Salvador leftists claim 100 US advisors.)

 
Oct 17   Mother Teresa awarded Nobel Peace Prize

 
Nov 3   KKK kill 5, wound 8 anti-Klan demonstrators in march Greensboro, NC

 
Nov 4   Iranians seize US Embassy, Tehran, take 90 hostages (65 Americans)

 

On to The Seventies: Deindustrialization 1979-1981