Although it’s rare in the contemporary world of letters, Davis comes
from the working class. Born in 1946 in Southern California, he grew up
in a blue-collar town just outside of Los Angeles. His father was a
meatcutter who suffered a heart attack after the family moved to an area
near San Diego. After his father’s death, Davis dropped out of high
school to work at a meat company to support the family. It was during
this time that his radicalization began in earnest, though as he notes,
his father had set him on this path several years earlier. In Davis’s
introduction to/The//Bending Cross/, the 2007 rerelease of Ray Ginger’s
biography of Eugene Debs, he mentions that he first read the book in
these years: “Thanks to the powder-blue ‘55 Chevy that I plowed into a
wall while street racing with drunken teenage friends,” he was stuck in
the hospital when his father gave him a copy of it.
After returning to school and graduating, Davis landed a full
scholarship to Reed College, only to get kicked out for living in his
girlfriend’s dorm. By that point, the upheavals of the 1960s were in
full swing. Cut loose from college, he moved to Los Angeles and threw
himself into activism, burning his draft card in 1963 and joining
Students for a Democratic Society in 1964. By the following year, Davis
had risen up through the ranks of the organization and was serving as
its LA regional organizer.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mike-davis-old-gods-set-night/
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