Why did the FBI keep tabs on high school students?

[Music] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy. So about a week ago, I'm doing my thing, my thing being scouring the Internet for truths about the United States because there is always, always, something I may have missed, something that has just happened, something that has just come to light. And I found this article by N. Historian named Dr. Aaron Fountain, Jr. Oh, so my name is Aaron Fountain, an I.M.A. historian of 20th century American History and recently published a book on high school student activism in 1960s and 70s. Aaron's book is called High School Students Unite, Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI surveillance in post-war America. And that article of his, it was titled newly declassified records, Suggest parents collaborated with the FBI to spy on their rebellious teens during the 1960s. So yeah, I had to talk to Aaron. [Music] Visually responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds because progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. [Music] So Aaron Fountain discovered that the FBI was surveilling high school students in the 1960s, and that parents would sometimes be the ones tipping the FBI off. And this was something that not many people knew, including some of the very students who were being surveilled. So first I wanted to know why Aaron was focusing on high school students and their activism in the 1960s to begin with. Oh, let me just say I was not an activist in high school because I attended eight different schools in three states, so not really possible. However, it really started by accident. I came across a book by political scientist Richard Ellis called to the pledge. And in several pages in one chapter he talks about junior high and high school students who sat during a pledge of allegiance as a form of political protest in the 1960s and 70s. And it made me just wonder what was the stories behind those court cases. So during that process I saw so many passing references to high school students involved in civil rights and antivian and I wore activism. So maybe asked, well, how did the Vietnam War effects, teachers and administrators and I wrote a paper on the San Francisco Bay area on that very topic. And yeah, doing my doctoral dissertation on high school student activism in the San Francisco Bay area, but the book, however, that I publish is nationwide. And in terms of what is actually going on in the country at this time, I know that the 1960s or the civil rights era can be this kind of catch all term for, you know, social, political, global unrest and activism and change. But Aaron, can you just paint us a picture of how this period of time precipitated high school civic action? Well, in 1960s you have a record number of teenagers enrolled in secondary school. I know high school is now like a universal experience, but prior to the 1960s, less than half of the adult population in the United States had a high school diploma. It was not as important to get a good paying job. However, after World War II, receiving a secondary education became much more important in our understandings of modern citizenship and to be a productive member in society. But also coming out, you know, you have the civil rights movement and you get the burgeoning anti-VNL war movement and its teenagers who are participating in both movements and they bring these partisan politics to campus and they start to clash with administrators who were determined to keep those type of activities off campus. Not to upset parents, not to upset the school board because you know you want to keep your job if you're a administrator. And it just is constant clash going back and forth between whether students have constitutional rights to engage in political activism, have free speech into campus newspaper, etc. and school administrators who look at students more paternalistic and parents who argue that school just as democratic as a household. You know, punish your kid and put them on trial. Just, you know, you do whatever your parents tell you. So that's what comes out and over time you get this very unique brand of high school student arachialism. And there's two moving parts of this ideology. The first one is that high school students constitute an oppressed group analogous to poor people, minorities, and women. And second is that you couldn't truly reform society unless you first reform the high schools. Did you get the sense that these students were aware that they were a member of an oppressed group? Oh, yeah. When you read the underground newspapers, leaflets, flyers are calling their schools prisons and concentration camps. They refer to them as like factories that just turn out future soldiers to go into the Vietnam War. And anyone who is like, well, are we citizens? Do we have like free speech to write to assemble, freedom of the press? And then this occurs gradually. It's not like an overnight realization. And I know that college campus activism was a major media focus in the civil rights era. Were high school students coming into this on their own? Or was this something they were, you know, borrowing from their older counterparts? So high school student activism then and now is hyper local. Students are largely responding to issues that affect their everyday lives. And when you think about controversies that occur in a school, it usually does a spill out beyond like a school board or individual campus. It remains confined to that. So because they're hyper local, they're not seen as national stories. However, by 1968, and especially in 69 and 70, there was a lot of reports on student uprisings in high school. And there is like credibility behind that. There was a family record number of like student walkouts, boycotts, protests, and citizens or whatever after Dr. King's assassination in 1968, students start to form more independent student organizations and underground newspapers have a sharper network by 1968. However, it was not a spillover effect. Now, I should say high school students are not adversarial to college students. They actually work alongside them when there's a lot of distrust. So for a 16 year old, somebody who was 20 year old is like old. In fact, somebody people by hand, they told me like, yeah, they organized a narrow like 2021, but as teenagers, we thought they were just old guys. So I mean, teenagers, they definitely align with adults, but for the most part, they seek assistance from them. They're not letting them run their affairs. So as teenagers, they don't have access to like media and printing press. So they have to go to them for that type of help. High school student activists and when it reaches the national attention, this is already a full-blown movement. In fact, teenagers learn that there is a movement fomending from high schools by about a year or two before the national press does. You know, it is hard enough for practiced adults to organize and find consensus and then do something with that in terms of civic action. How did high school students who maybe did not yet have any kind of experience with that figure out how to do it? I'll be honest, there are just as messy as adults are. There's a lot of ideological divisions. I mean, not to mention there are kids. So as a person who I interviewed told me that, you know, there was jealousy. There was romance. You like, you wanted to sew and sew like me or not. There was like immaturity and some of the males and some independent student groups were quite sexist to their female counterparts. So it's all really messy at the end of the day. But what brings them together is that they all agree that, okay, we have to reform to school. So like, you can generally get a consensus among students to like reform dress code like students, regardless whether they were political or not, just did not like the fact that girls could wear pants and boys had to keep their hair at a certain length and the bands against afros. So, you know, no student group or underground newspaper or protest gets like the majority of support, but they do get enough support to trigger a pretty vigorous reaction from people in power. Yeah. And we're going to get to that. But in terms of what actually, you know, got these students that reaction, what were they activating around? You know, was it about national issues, you know, the Vietnam war, civil rights, or was this about what was going on in their own schools? So it's actually a mix of both. So one thing that was pretty common is that students would ask their school principals to allow like an anti-war speaker to come speak at the school to balance out a visit from a military recruiter. And they had various assesses and shortcomings when it came to that. So, but you see these like, you know, there's national issues, but get is in this local context and the same thing with like, you know, black power, a lot of students, there's a lot of similarities between a lot of black student protests, what are asking for like, you know, black teacher, black administrative, black history courses to be taught in schools and so food. However, a lot of overlap, there are also local concerns too. So they want to like, you know, doors on the bathroom stalls, which is very basic concern. You know, they ask for like police officers to be removed from campus in many urban school districts. This is when you start to see school administrators become much more reliant on law enforcement to handle every day disciplinary matters. Or they'll ask for like, access to a stadium that's adjacent to the school. So it's similar in a lot. A lot of these protests are quite similar and they're reacting to a lot of national stuff is always shaped by what's ever going on locally. So it's a combination of both that they're reacting to. Okay, law enforcement in schools. Why was it that administrators were turning to this outside force to navigate what was going on in their classrooms and hallways? That's the main point in my book. I talk about like the expansion of student rights coincided with the modernization of school security. So school police, there's a history going back to 19, the mid 1950s when two-sense Arizona's the first school district to experiment with a school resource officer. But by the 1960s, especially with urban uprisings, you have a lot of protests that are coming down to high school, a lot of racial protests. So you have desegregation and desegregated schools or schools that were newly integrated get a lot of racial violence. And you also in those schools, you get a lot of protests coming from black students, Latino students, age of students, and white students. It's what later America students too. So in response with all the social unrest coming from high school, you get a lot of pressure from parents, from teachers, school administrators, as well as the local newspapers in whatever respective city demanding that order needs to be maintained in the high school. So school administrators, they don't initially bring cops into school. They try like hall monitors at parents patrol or they lock the doors on campus, the key quote-unquote outside agitators out. And increasingly what you start to see is that police officers in the department in many cities start to patrol schools. But also you get undercover cops too. At the NYPD and the New Orleans Police Department were quite open about the fact that they had young officers with sherubek appearances, masquerading themselves as seniors who would attend school and eventually investigate student activists. I can only imagine what it may feel like to learn that the person who you thought was a friend or an ally is actually an officer in disguise investigating you. Who were these students? You know, I know your book tells the stories of so many individuals in this era. Can you share a story about someone who really stood out to you? Oh yeah, one of my favorite characters in my book is Bruce Triggs, a kid from New York City. All American Boy Scout. You know, it's from a Jewish background. World War II is quite celebrated in this household. And you know, he joins the Boy Scouts and he believes in a very young age that the United States is, you know, a more example of a good force for the world that they could do no wrong. And what happens is that his family moves the Queens and he attends a different school where he meets students who smoke marijuana, who are involved in like the anti-war movement. And he eventually dates a girl on high school who was an anti-war activist. She introduced him, she grabbed her and he asked like, hey, he's a communist, isn't he? She's like, you bet he is. And his head, he's like, this is just too much. I can't support a communist. Are you crazy? And what happens is that he eventually goes to an anti-war conference where a schism occurs and normally as he recalls, most people will be turned off, but he was just blown away. But the turning point is when he attends the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and when the riot breaks out, he finds himself, he gets punched in the face by a police officer. And from, while he was already kind of gradually shifting, that was the catalyst. And then he comes back to New York as a full-blown radical and helped find a New York high school student union, which leads to a pretty chaotic year in New York City schools in 1968 and 1969. So that's definitely one of my favorite characters that write about the person who goes from being a very all-American boy scout to a political radical. Alright, so we got to talk about the FBI. Because kids like Bruce Triggs were clearly setting the adults in the room on it. And we're going to get to that after a quick break. So food delivery services have been around for a while and I've tried a lot of them and I loved some and I hated others. I will say that green chef is the trusted authority on clean eating. They deliver only real farm-sourced ingredients. So for my choice, I chose the Mediterranean option because I want to live another thousand years. And the standout to me was the fish. Oh, I've had some much trouble fishing my life. Specifically in this box, the salmon with red peppers and olives. Because I don't live by a fishmonger. There isn't one in my town. And salmon, salmon my whole life, it's been a gamble. This salmon from green chef, these were vacuum sealed. They were gorgeous cuts of fish. The kind I literally could not get at my local grocery store. And also I haven't made a fish in all of dish and maybe ever. So I learned something and that means it was a good day. So if you're interested in having someone else handle your meal planning and your grocery shopping in an organic, affordable, varied way, give green chef a try. Just head to greenchef.com/50Civics. That's 5-0 C-I-V-I-C-S. And use code 50Civics to get 50% off your first month. And then 20% off for two months with free shipping. Again, that is code [email protected]/50Civics. Many years ago, never mind how many, but I wasn't high school. My very wise friend informed me that I should stop acquiring so much flimsy, follow part in the wash, fast fashion. This was, by the way, before the term fast fashion had properly entered the lexicon, so he probably just said junk. And that I should instead invest in high quality clothes that I could wear year after year. Now, there are two reasons that I did not do this at the time. One, I believe I was like 16 years old, two when I heard "invest" and "high quality" in the same sentence. I really heard two expensive for the likes of you. Now here I am some years later, and there's finally a path to exactly the kind of quality over quantity my buddy Pete was talking about. And that is quince. Quince makes wardrobe staples that last. We are talking 100% European linen, 100% silk, organic cotton, Mongolian cashmere, high quality fabrics, well made clothes, the stuff that you can reach for year after year. As I speak, I am wearing my quince organic cotton boyfriend sweater, something that I reach for week after week. And it has been years. High school hanna could not even imagine something holding up for this long, let alone keeping its shape, and it's not just a warm softness and color like this puppy has. And because quince works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, I did not end up paying fancy retail or brand markup prices for this. So Pete was right. I don't need a ton of clothes, I just needed the clothes that I love that last year after year. And you can have the very same right now. Go to quince.com/sivics for free shipping in 365 day returns. That is a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com/sivics for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/sivics The oath and the office is a politics law and democracy podcast hosted by constitutional scholar Corey Brecht Schneider and Sirius XM host John Fugelsing. Each week they break down the biggest political stories, three constitutional lens in plain English for a broad audience. It's smart, accessible and focused on how power actually works. The oath and the office is available wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube with full video episodes each week. We're back. You're listening to civics 101. And civics 101 by the way is a non-profit podcast. And maybe one day we should make an episode that gets into the specifics of what a non-profit really is. But the main point here is that we are not making a profit for ourselves or for anyone else. Whatever money we receive is used to pay our journalists and pay the people who keep New Hampshire public radio functioning and make sure we have the basic gear to record people's voices and share those voices with the public. Our whole reason for existing is to share with you what is happening in the world now and what happened in the world in the past so that you can better understand your world. So if you have the ability to contribute to that effort, please consider making a donation at civics101podcast.org. You can just click the red bar at the top of the homepage to do that. And just to shout out to the many, many listeners who have already done that who make sure that we can do this work every day. You know, you are a proof positive that the world is not all about profit. It is also about people, education, and civic empowerment. Alright, back to the show. I am talking with Erin, found in junior, historian, and author of High School Students Unite, Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Post-War America. Erin put in an immense amount of work to figure out what was going on, re-students, and the federal Bureau of Investigation during the post-war era, during the 60s and the 70s. And given the fact that I had never heard of the FBI surveilling high school students before, I wanted to know what first tipped Erin off. Oh, yeah. Well, it came across when I was going to run on a ground newspaper from Palo Alto, California, and there was a group called the United Student Movement. And in the interview, the two people who are interviewer, or several, I don't forget how many, they kind of bragged about being spied on by the FBI. It's teen agents like, we're bad, you know what? So I submitted a for you a request on that very group, was towed nothing existed. So when I got to graduate school, I wrote a seminar paper on a New York High School Student Union, which is actually in a book, and a former member gave me about 80 some pages of memorabilia, and two of those pages were the group's FBI file. My jaw immediately dropped because I'm like, oh, when I long suspected, it's finally confirmed. So I went to a professor who gave me a for you template, and I submitted one on the New York High School Student Union, but realized I was too late because all the files were destroyed in 79, 2010, and April 2014. I had just submitted that request August of that very year. So realizing that okay, the National Archives of Recommendations actively destroyed documents. Let me submit for your request on all the groups I know about I immediately got positive results from Milwaukee, Minnesota, El Paso, Texas, including the United Student Movement when I towed, when I originally towed nothing existed. And yeah, over time, it wasn't like a eureka moment. I would start to expand and I submitted for your request on high school underground newspapers and schools that had civil unrest or racial violence. And I started to look at suburban and rural areas and over the course of 10 years, I found well over 370 high school groups under some form of surveillance or counterintelligence operation. Now, if you count the amount of students who as young as 14 who had enough of the I file, as well as police departments, the US military and state legislators who spy on teenagers, then that number is well over 600, but even as an undercount. And Aaron, I know that you have submitted over 2000 Freedom of Information Act requests, FOIA requests in pursuit of this information, meaning essentially that this was not common knowledge, right? It was not something that everyone was aware of. What has been the reaction so far when you have told people that the FBI was surveilling them? It has varied, actually. Some people say, wow, that's kind of pathetic. Like, FBI was spying on teenagers. Others are not surprised because they were around at the time. Number one, one comment I saw was somebody's like, I knew it when I shared an FBI file because one thing about the FBI file, remember some school administrators, parents and students who are informants. I remember one person's like, you know, I can see school administrators and even students serving as informants, but the parents, wow, that is quite shocking. In fact, most people I interviewed, everybody was shocked that parents were informants. They weren't as surprised as school administrators were. And some were suspicious whether students were informants, but for the longest time, I only had one example. So I thought it wasn't anomaly. It wasn't until like eight years later that I came across multiple files showing me like, oh, this was actually more widespread and I had assumed the notion. The notion of a parent, you know, ratting you out to Herbert Hoover, right, or expressing concern to the FBI is really kind of beyond my comprehension. I think if my mother had said to me, I'm calling the FBI on you when I was in high school, I would have said like, ha ha, yeah, good luck with that, you know. Could you give us a sense of how or why a parent would feel that calling the FBI writing a letter to the FBI was a remotely reasonable response when a kid started to get activated, right, started to speak out or organize around what was going on in their school or what was going on in their country. Yeah, that's a good question. So nationwide when high school student activism reaches peak, the largest consensus amongst people was that this was a master plan by some outside agitators, who these outside agitators were it changed over time and mid 1960, they were just communists. And by 1968 and to early 1970, they were SDS, the Black Panther or whatever local political group that existed in whatever locale and parents interestingly they start contacting the FBI is early as 1965 when students are organizing against the Vietnam war. They're mostly white middle upper middle class parents, but it's also for the understand what the FBI symbolize in the 1960s, popular culture lionized it going back to 1930s. I mean, they were you could read about the FBI in comic books and listen to them on radio station. See, on television and films and all of them this still existed a present day. I recently watched the Wolf on Wall Street. It was a scene that exemplifies the FBI as being an incorruptible crime fighting organization. What is it that you think that we did or do I don't get it? Well, I Jordan, I can't discuss and ongoing investigation. No, I get that. And so within that context, parents unsurprisingly, a minority parents start to contact the FBI, they either wrote letters to them sometimes directly to Jay Agahoevur, they made phone calls anytime and nights on time at midnight. In fact, I recently got an FBI file. This is not a book from Madison, Wisconsin and a father. He serves as an informant of very interesting way. His boy talks openly about a political group he's involved in in Madison, Wisconsin called the high school student for social justice. And he listens to him and what the boy doesn't know is that he relays all that information to the FBI and the FBI agrees that only contact the father when he's at work so the son doesn't suspect anything. And they all express concerns that it wasn't that their children they thought were committing like criminal acts. They just thought they were all being indoctrinated or sometimes they thought children that were of their own were being indoctrinated by some quote-uncle sinister force. So it's really this concern. I mean, I know an archetymbrary eyes is seen as obscene. I've always you do that to your own kid. But for a bitty to parents, they just thought that every institution had failed to keep their kids safe. And the FBI was their last and best resource. And when you say surveillance, what does that practically mean? Are we talking FBI agents hanging out in some unmarked vehicle outside of the school with binoculars? Like what does surveillance actually mean when it comes to the FBI and high school kids? That's a good question. It's a variety of things they will like, you know, cut out newspaper clipens and I you know, clip them onto some poster as a paper police officers, parents, students and administrators with confiscate underground newspapers and other published materials and forward them to the FBI, which is why in a book I call the FBI unintentional archivist because a lot of documents they collect. I've never seen anywhere else. One agent in Los Angeles, a mask rated himself as a graduate student from UCLA writing a paper about underground newspaper. So he calls a kid who's now a college student and he our college and the kid just tells him everything about the underground newspaper and he has no idea that a person on the other line is an FBI agent. What is it about the actions of these teenagers that makes adults around them act in this way? Yeah, it's really just the extent of their organizing. I say these independent student groups, they weren't just like some of the work groups are like three people but for the most part they were like citywide or metropolitan wide groups. They would have members from across public and private schools across the city and surrounding suburbs and he created underground newspapers, which were really sophisticated. They would have like a photographer field corresponders who if there was a high school having uprising it would actually send their correspondent there and interview students. So so much like written material so much sophisticated organizing that is believed that there is just no way in a world teenagers are in their own or doing all this and somebody has to be pulling the strings. I've seen letters to the editors, what else they like this is just way too sophisticated for our kids to write. Yeah, and to your point, right. This is the beginning of high school as these standard for American teenagers. It is a new world when you have this many young people being brought together in the same place, finding their voice through both education and through community. Can you talk a little bit about what these disparate movements actually ended up accomplishing what came out of this student activism. Yeah, it's a short term and long term goals. So short term a lot of schools would definitely did hire like black teachers and got black and Latino principles and they started teaching black history courses. I think it's important we think about black history that with that came because of the demands from high school students themselves and what they just given to them. So the combination of very hyper local like for example, Berkeley high school till this day is still has a black studies department and it was the first one in the nation. Right to light sex education ready to stop kicking girls out of school because they were pregnant, which was a wise bread practice in the 1960s. Of course not to father only the girl who got pregnant. So the school districts they passed high school Bill of rights bill. So these Bill of rights bills kind of really embedded the notion of student rights in the school. So like empowered school councils gave more freedom to life. Student press gave students due process right so they can actually contest suspensions and exposions without it being arbitrarily decided. So the hyper local initiative but the long standard one is definitely the notion that students have constitutional rights in schools that has to be respected so long as they don't cause a disruption is still gets debating or whatnot but prior to 1969 that was not a notion that most people could comprehend whether a minor had constitutional rights. We're back you're listening to civics 101. I am talking with Aaron fountain junior historian and author of high school students unite teen activism education reform and FBI surveillance in post war America. What about high school students today do you think that they can have the same impact on their schools and their communities. Now students today still will like you know support like labor disputes. I remember to get Madison Wisconsin. There was a janitor who was a father of a kid at the school and he lost his job after a speed with a student protest and he got his job back. So there are things like that in students today still protest against book bands or I've seen incidents and then making like freedom schools. Challenging was taught in the curriculum. I do think it's important to understand and not all students are on the left. There definitely are students on the right and they're free to believe whatever they want. So any protest I'm talking about is always a counter demonstration or a countermeasure to whatever students are trying to achieve and sometimes students on the right are pretty successful as well again near the bands. Yeah, I mean I'm thinking about the fact that even today we are seeing students organize we are seeing them stage school walkouts in order to protest immigration and customs enforcement. The fear that our peers go through every single day. It has to be vocalized and what we're doing right now is vocalizing that fear that we've been carrying for months. And I wonder you know just thinking about the title of your book high school students unite exclamation point. Would you say that you are pro student activism. Oh, yeah, I'm pro people my quote Diane Nash who made a statement that I whole hardly agree that one of the issues with the civil rights movement is that it's often viewed as a Dr. King movement and not as a people movement. And when it's viewed as a people movement people consider around and ask instead of say hey can we have another Dr. King like figure come they can just sit and ask like what can I do. So yeah, I'm a big proponent student activism with many of the people I talk about a book it really shaped their career is a lot of wanting to academia. So then became I'm journalist interestingly one person started an underground newspaper became a journalist in the future. You know it came scientists and elected officials and labor organizers and a lot of that activism that they continue to their adulthood even if they don't see that activism is all rooted into their political precotiousness as a kid. So now and kids are interested in politics and issues that affect our everyday lives regardless of whether they're on a left foot or right I think you know students from both sides should get active. Is there anything else that you want to highlight from your book maybe something that you don't get asked to talk about very often. I will say one thing I was people were asked me more about was the fact of how not just national but international high school student activism was in 1960s to 70s. In this book I have a list that I worked on for over 10 years to less ones it clues the name over 500 independent student organizations and the names of over 1000 high school underground newspapers. And I did that because when I decided to focus on the San Francisco Bay area and grass school I was kind of getting a little annoyed when people say oh yeah of course or like oh yeah that that would never occur I live though. So yeah when I made a list I it includes the names of groups and papers from all 50 states including DC and Puerto Rico. But I do not have like the international aspect and I should for listeners to know that high school student activism in this period occurred on all six continents from the literature we know that it occurred in Guadalajara Panama England France Italy Finland. Ethiopia South Africa India Australia New Zealand Canada and also students to a small extent actually knew that they were part of an international protest movement from secondary schools. And there was correspondence between American teenagers and teenagers who lived in England Canada Australia New Zealand and American and Canadian teenagers actually met one another in person. Okay so how were these students communicating across borders what were they saying to each other. Oh so this is the high school underground press. Teenagers in the United States creating a national syndicate as a network to connect all the high school underground newspapers so pretty much a syndicate is a newspaper exchange. So let's say where I live is like the office of whatever group. So I have 20 subscribers from across the nation they each send me five copies of their papers I send each copy to every subscriber maybe keep like you know two to myself and send the others to like national publications and it was share articles. And this just accumulate over time to the point that they had about 700 newspapers and when you go to the archives of Temple University you see these letters as students are writing to them from across the United States Canada England Australia to Zile and Puerto Rico and asking them how do I create an underground newspaper. So this is what hey can you send me papers because I want to see what American students are writing about is it's a unique correspondence the guy who donated that collection who I interviewed in the book called the social media of the age unfortunately some of those records got destroyed he kept 50 of the Bassy to me but it got destroyed in the flood. Yeah this happens a lot but the ones that exist is this is a phenomenal collection just to see what students were discussing and what issues they asked them to talk about like police and FBI harassment other other papers and others what talk about like you know this is a current loss who that we're going for so it's a yeah fascinating collection at the add over time but again it took like five years for them to build that. Well for those who want to know more about what Aaron learned you can find high school students unite teen activism education reform and FBI surveillance in post war America wherever books are sold and stay tuned for what Aaron is working on right now it's another book. It's another book covering teenage action during the Vietnam War but this time he is going global Aaron is looking at the rules that Canada Australia even knew Zealand played and how high school students from across the world responded to the ways their nations got involved in a war that inspired millions of people to get organized and speak out. This episode was produced by me Hannah McCarthy Nick Capiti Che is my co-host Rebecca LaVoy is our executive producer Marina Hinky is our producer music in this episode comes from epidemic sound if you got something out of this episode if you learned something if you're taking what you learned and doing something with it in your world your community consider leaving us a review on whatever platform you are listening to this on help us get the word out that we are civically here for you and only you the public. Because this is after all a production of NHPR New Hampshire public radio. Sometimes it feels like red and blue states are just as divergent as post World War II East and West Germany. So what can the US learn from German political history in order to create a more perfect union. Find out on the new season of the future of our former democracy the signal award winning podcast from more equitable democracy and large media hosted by me call and call and have a real in a way that it's time to rethink democracy. So follow the future of our former democracy wherever you get your podcasts. Not all darkness is dangerous sometimes it's the doorway to becoming whole on the brand new podcast the shadow sessions hosted by me. A psychologist and trauma expert we should light on the hidden corners of the human experience through raw unfiltered conversations from the edge of healing. The shadow sessions invites you to do the deeper work that leads to real change follow the shadow sessions wherever you're listening now.