Michael Munk

A historical guidebook of social dissent in Portland, Oregon, Michael Munk’s The Portland Red Guide links notable radicals, their organizations, and their activities to physical sites in the city.

With the aide of maps and numerous photos, Munk tells the stories history books exclude, stories of working class people and organizations who fought against repression and injustice. The book is a testament to Portland’s rich history of individuals who insisted on a better justification for their lives than the quest for material wealth; instead, they dedicated themselves to offering alternative visions of how to organize our economy and society.

Both a guidebook and an informal history, The Portland Red Guide will expand readers’ perspectives of their city and their past. The book is divided by physical or topical entries and loosely grouped into the following chronological periods:

• Nineteenth Century (Utopians and Marxists)
• 1900–1930 (Wobblies and Socialists)
• 1930s (Unions and Commies)
• WWII–1960 (McCarthyism and Cold War)
• 1960–1973 (Peaceniks and Civil Rights)
• 1974–Present (Identities, Protests, and Environment)

For more information: ooligan.redguide@pdx.edu

ISBN: 978-1-932010-15-2
5″ x 8 ½”, softcover
256 pages
$16.95

About the Author

Michael Munk

Michael Munk was born in Prague in 1934 and escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia to Portland in 1939. He graduated from Hillside School, Lincoln High School, Reed College, and received an MA in political science from the University of Oregon. While a student, he worked as a casual longshoreman on the Portland docks, sold tickets at the Holladay Bowl’s summer concerts, and drove a truck during wheat harvests in the Paulouse. His political activity began in the 1950s, when Michael became a local opponent of nuclear testing as well as a promoter of a Portland concert by Paul Robeson. As vice president of the Young Democrats of Oregon, he worked to win their endorsement of US recognition of China, and was in efforts to prevent the firing of a philosophy professor by Reed College. In 1959, he was ordered to leave Oregon by the federal government, whose domination of South Korea he witnessed as a member of the US Army.

After Michael’s military service, he was the national affairs editor of the leftist New York news weekly, the National Guardian. After receiving his PhD in politics from New York University, he taught political science for more than twenty–five years at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Roosevelt University in Chicago, and Rutgers University, before returning to Portland.

Since his return, Michael has published on local radical history and culture in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, the Pacific Northwest Quarterly, and Science & Society. His column, Our Radical Past was a monthly feature in the Portland Alliance for several years. Prior to The Portland Red Guide, his most recent articles include John Reed: Political Provocateur in Portland Monthly (September 2006) and McCarthyism Laid to Rest? in Reed Magazine (Spring 2006).

Visit Michael’s website: www.michaelmunk.com

Praise

Whoop! Whoop! I’m impressed by how many names from Portland’s past have not made it into our official histories and public memorials. Some were good friends of mine. Local history is too often overlooked. Good work, Mike.
— Bud Clark, Mayor of Portland, 1985–1992

A roller-coaster ride through Portland’s radical past. Who knew that being on the losing side of just about everything could be so much fun?
— Phil Stanford, Portland Tribune columnist, author of Portland Confidential

Michael Munk did a terrific job of researching local leftist and labor struggles usually ignored by conventional historians and the commercial media.
— Gene Klare, columnist, Northwest Labor Press, and former reporter at the pre-strike The Oregonian and the Portland Reporter

Michael Munk is the Lewis and Clark of Portland’s radical past, leading his readers on a voyage of discovery through a long-lost and wonderfully evocative historical terrain. I only wish the Red Guide had been around in the days when I was one of those Portland radicals he writes about with such knowledge (and affection).
— Maurice Isserman, author of If I Had a Hammer: the Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left, and former staffer at the Willamette Bridge and The Portland Scribe

What fun to learn all the ordinary places have a not-so-ordinary history. Some will call The Portland Red Guide subversive, others will welcome it as the sweet breeze of revelation, but all will have to admit it adds a fascinating new layer to appreciating Portland. Even those Portlanders who think they know their city’s past will likely find themselves shocked at the wealth of radical Portland history related in this volume. One hopes it becomes as ubiquitous as cell phones in Portland pedestrians’ hands.
— Sandy Polishuk, author of Sticking to the Union: An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila

Going to these addresses can bring to mind what has gone before and perhaps, encourage more resistance today. I had no idea so much has happened in Portland. And reading the names of people who struggled and whom I worked with brought up lots of memories.
— Sandra Ford, former wife of Black Panther Party leader Kent Ford