Liberty or Death (International Protest)

Following the Parisian May 1968 revolt and the Democratic Convention riots in Chicago later that year, Liberty or Death was put together by Mary Beach and “freaked out & zapped” by her partner Claude Pélieu for City Lights Books in 1968. The edition was released as an ‘international protest’ and was dedicated to countercultural revolutionaries as varied as The Movement of March 22, 1968, the Czech Resistance and Ed Sanders. Through Mary Beach, Claude Pélieu and their friends the edition voices the radical thought of the period and documents the violent protests of 1968 on both sides of the Atlantic.

Liberty or Death contains a firsthand account of the Parisian May 1968 revolt by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a letter to the Village Voice by Jean-Jacques Lebel, an interview with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Jean-Jacques Lebel and Jean-Louis Brau, contributions by Claude Pélieu, Mary Beach, Carl Weissner and Allen Ginsberg, and a series of photographs of the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and Grant Park by Jeffrey Blankfort. With hindsight, this edition is a historic and rare document of the counterculture, at the time distributed by City Lights Books in a print run of some 750 copies only. Only one copy available.