Environmental movement in the United States in the context of "Murray Bookchin"

Murray Bookchin (/ˈbʊktʃɪn/; January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. Influenced by G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Peter Kropotkin, he was a pioneer in the environmental movement. Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ecology and urban planning within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban affairs, and social ecology. Among the most important were Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982), and Urbanization Without Cities (1987). In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary anarchist movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called "communalism", which seeks to reconcile and expand Marxist, syndicalist, and anarchist thought.

Bookchin was a prominent anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and advocate of social decentralization along ecological and democratic lines. His ideas have influenced social movements since the 1960s, including the New Left, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and the democratic confederalism of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. He was a central figure in the American green movement. An autodidact who never attended college, he is considered to be one of the most important left theorists of the twentieth century.

The Cuyahoga River (see § Pronunciation) is a river located in Northeast Ohio that bisects the City of Cleveland and feeds into Lake Erie.

As Cleveland emerged as a major manufacturing center, the river became heavily affected by industrial pollution, so much so that it caught fire at least 14 times. When it did so on June 22, 1969, news coverage of the event helped to spur the American environmental movement. For many Americans, the Cuyahoga's burning helped connect urban decay with the environmental crisis at the time in many American cities. Since then, the river has been extensively cleaned up through the efforts of Cleveland's city government and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). In 2019, the American Rivers conservation association named the Cuyahoga "River of the Year" in honor of "50 years of environmental resurgence".

Walter Philip Reuther (/ˈruːθər/; September 1, 1907 – May 9, 1970) was an American leader of organized labor and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history. He considered labor movements not as narrow special interest groups but as instruments to advance social justice and human rights in democratic societies. He leveraged the UAW's resources and influence to advocate for workers' rights, civil rights, women's rights, universal health care, public education, affordable housing, environmental stewardship and nuclear nonproliferation around the world. He believed in Swedish-style social democracy and societal change through nonviolent civil disobedience. He cofounded the AFL-CIO in 1955 with George Meany. He survived two attempted assassinations, including one at home where he was struck by a 12-gauge shotgun blast fired through his kitchen window. He was the fourth and longest serving president of the UAW, serving from 1946 until his death in 1970.

As the leader of five million autoworkers, including retirees and their families, Reuther was influential inside the Democratic Party. Following the Bay of Pigs in 1961, President John F. Kennedy sent Reuther to Cuba to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Fidel Castro. He was instrumental in spearheading the creation of the Peace Corps and in marshaling support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Fair Housing Act. He met weekly in 1964 and 1965 with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House to discuss policies and legislation for the Great Society and war on poverty. The Republican Party was wary of Reuther, leading presidential candidate Richard Nixon to say about John F. Kennedy during the 1960 election, "I can think of nothing so detrimental to this nation than for any President to owe his election to, and therefore be a captive of, a political boss like Walter Reuther." Conservative politician Barry Goldwater declared that Reuther "was more dangerous to our country than Sputnik or anything Soviet Russia might do."