These are war stories, the intended audience of which is the young organizers of today, many of them the children and grandchildren of his friends and heroes in the sixties.

in the Sixties,” is steeped in the mellower light of reminiscence, though, given Davis’s attraction to moments of catalytic disruption and unrest, the scenes are lit by muzzle flash rather than hearth glow. Davis’s new book, “ Set the Night on Fire: L.A. canon as anything that Carey McWilliams wrote in the forties or Joan Didion wrote in the seventies. He returned to Los Angeles in 1968, at which point he joined the Communist Party.ĭavis, who lives in San Diego, is the author of “ City of Quartz” and “ Ecology of Fear,” two books that, by fiercely and exuberantly defining the shadow side of sunstruck Los Angeles, have become as central to the L.A. Why don’t you go organize some white kids against racism or something?’ ” The Watts Rebellion happened two months later, and Davis was swept into its vortex and spit out in Austin, Texas.

When Davis went to meet her for coffee, he told me recently, “She very gently put her hand on my knee and said, ‘I think we can do this ourselves. The leader of the protest movement was Jackie Robinson’s mother. He wasn’t a student, but he had been sent by Students for a Democratic Society to help organize protests of the 210 Freeway, which was being constructed through a historically black neighborhood in Pasadena. troops to the Dominican Republic, Mike Davis arrived in Los Angeles.

After burning his draft card, in Oakland, to protest President Lyndon B.

Mike davis set the night on fire