1970s: The Decade the Bay Area Changed America

The 1970s marked a turning point in American culture, nowhere more vividly than in the Bay Area. As the hippie counterculture receded, many of its ideals evolved into new movements that reshaped American life amid a growing conservative backlash. Fifty years ago, Mother Jones channeled the region’s activist spirit through principled journalism. Personal computing went mainstream, consolidating utopian vision of networked information to Silicon Valley’s consumer product. Environmental consciousness, feminism, racial equality, and the LGBTQ rights movement gained new political momentum and institutional representation — from the passage of CEQA to the election of Harvey Milk.

This conversation brings together Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery, writer and public intellectual Rebecca Solnit, Stanford historian of Silicon Valley Fred Turner, and longtime LGBTQ activist Gwenn Craig to explore a moment of pivotal convergence of journalism, technology, social movements, and civic imagination during the 1970s. Drawing on firsthand experience and decades of cultural coverage, they will reflect on how this remarkable period transformed our region and its lasting legacy in American politics, media, and culture fifty years later.