About this Event
A Panel Conversation on the Resurgence Youth Movement
A conversation with Maggie Wrigley, Paul Leake, Abigail Susik, and Sean Lovitt on The Resurgence Youth Moment, 1964-1967: Teenrevolt, Surrealism, Anarchism, Friday, January 16th, 6 PM @ Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, 155 Avenue C, Manhattan.
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The Resurgence Youth Movement (RYM), an anti-racist and anti-imperialist anarchist affinity group active in the Lower East Side between 1964 and 1967, demanded a “World Revolution of Youth.”
Co-founded by Jonathan Leake (b. NY, 1946) and Walter E. Caughey (b. TX, 1943-d. NY, 1967) at the ages of 17 and 21, respectively, the RYM comprised a small group of teen and youth activists who sought to build on their existing involvement in and exposure to the Libertarian League, the Industrial Workers of the World, and News and Letters Committees.
Active primarily in New York, with some activities in Chicago and San Francisco, RYM published a mimeographed zine, coordinated efforts among old and new left networks, and carried out a series of direct actions. Their zine Resurgence (twelve issues; September/October 1964–March 1967) was founded after a meeting in Detroit with Marxist theorist and activist Raya Dunayevskaya, who encouraged the group and gave them the hand-cranked mimeograph machine that later produced the journal.
The RYM called for the disintegration of the State, the complete destruction of bourgeois society, and a total surrealist-psychedelic revolution of the mind and body. “The Resurgence Youth Movement…advances the new anarchism of body, mind and soul, the psychedelic alchemies of revolution,” RYM wrote in their “Guerilla Manifesto” (Resurgence 6, 1967). Their activities continued until August of 1967, when Walter Caughey was stabbed to death in New York in an unsolved M**der that many believe was politically motivated.
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This is part of a series events on the history of the Resurgence Youth Movement.
An exhibition at Interference Archive -- curated by Abigail Susik and Sean Lovitt with Interference Archive: Brooke Darrah and Amelia Langas -- runs January 15- May 15, 2026 following the 2023 publication of an anthology of selections of all twelve issues of Resurgence from Eberhardt Press (Portland, OR). Included in the exhibition are original and reproduced items from the Leake Family Archives (Jonathan Leake and Paul Leake), the collection of Maggie Wrigley and the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, and Interference Archive. Leake’s activities in the New York squatter punk scene are also documented.https://interferencearchive.org/exhibition/resurgence-youth-movement-1964-67-teenrevolt-surrealism-anarchism/
EXHIBITION OPENING NIGHT WITH THE CURATORS: Thursday, January 15th,7 PM @ Interference Archive, 314 7th Street Brooklyn, NY 11215
CONVERSATION WITH MAGGIE WRIGLEY, PAUL LEAKE, ABIGAIL SUSIK, AND SEAN LOVITT: Friday, January 16th, 6 PM @ Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, 155 Avenue C, Manhattan
ALSO, join us for a public lecture at Woodbine's new space: Saturday, January 17th, 6 PM @Woodbine. New address TBA, Manhattan
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS), 155 Loisaida Avenue, New York, United States
USD 0.00
