Portland Red Guide: Sites & Stories of Our Radical Past

Description:

A historical guidebook of social dissent, Michael Munk's The Portland Red Guide describes local radicals, their organizations, and their activities in relation to physical sites in the Rose City. With the aid of maps and historical photos, Munk's stories are those that history books often exclude. The historical listings expand readers' perspectives of the unique city and its radical past. The Portland Red Guide is a testament to Portland's rich history of working-class people and organizations that stood against repression and injustice. It honors those who insisted on pursuing a better justification for their lives rather than the quest for material wealth, and who dedicated themselves to offering alternative visions of how to organize society.

Brief description:

The author, Michael Munk (1934-2021), was a political scientist who spent more than two decades tracking leftist radicals throughout Portland's history. Born in Prague and fleeing Nazi occupation in 1939, he was a true local who graduated from Reed College and earned his PhD in politics from New York University. Munk's fascination with Portland's early twentieth-century labor upheavals and political firebrands made him the perfect author for the guide. He documented the city's radical and labor history in a way that makes these legendary characters come alive. The Portland Red Guide was considered Munk's magnum opus. Following his death in 2021, the campaign serves to cement his legacy as a devoted documentarian of Portland's dissident history.

Review Quotes:

Praise for the first edition of The Portland Red Guide: Sites & Stories of our Radical Past:

"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. Former reporter, pre-strike The Oregonian and the Portland Reporter

"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." -- Bud Clark, former Mayor of Portland, 1985-1992 "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 "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