Alliance of Libertarian Activists (ALA) was a libertarian student organization primarily located in the San Francisco Bay area, mostly active at University of California, Berkeley, established in 1965–1966, and considered the first campus group to adopt the term “libertarian.”[1][2] ALA gained members from both the purged Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) Moïse Tshombe chapter and the Cal Conservatives for Political Action (CCPA) at UC Berkeley, which was a continuation of the 1964 Cal Students for Goldwater, both founded and first chaired by Dan Rosenthal.
[4] The ALA engaged the New Left on issues of civil rights, promoted sexual freedom, arranged radio programs that focused on libertarian philosophy, counter-picketed San Francisco Bay Area anti-Vietnam Demonstrations until they became “explicitly ‘anti-imperialistic,’” passed resolutions against and picketed the John Birch Society offices, opposed the draft and the compulsory nature of Social Security, railed against laws banning LSD and marijuana, and supported the constitutional rights of native Americans.
[3] Since the administrators at Berkeley had banned political tables and literature on campus, conservative and libertarian students became early supporters of free speech in the battle over censorship.
[13] In November 1966, the CCPA voiced opposition to Chancellor Roger Heyns’ proposal to relocate future political rallies away from the famous FSM Sproul Hall steps to a less prominent area.
They could no longer work with conservatives because “their goals were too different and similarities too superficial.”[15] By 1966 the charter for the Moise Tshombe YAF chapter was pulled by national YAF because of its support for the legalization of drugs and prostitution, which made them the “first libertarian deviationists from YAF.”[16] The Moise Tshombe YAF chapter was also purged, according to Rosenthal, for picketing the San Jose headquarters of the John Birch Society, carrying signs that read: “Buckley si, Welch no.”[17] The picketing caused Paul Nichols, a member of the Berkeley Birch Society, to accuse the CCPA of being part of Berkeley’s radical atmosphere and that “The CCPA is not really conservative.”[18] One of the crucial issues that drove the CCPA towards an explicitly libertarian direction arose over philosophical conflicts concerning the morality of the Vietnam War.
They issued a strict anti-interventionist declaration that focused on domestic and foreign policies, prescribed in their 1966 “Berkeley Statement,” along with language that spoke in negative terms in what governments must not do, considered as a pioneering approach that was launched to pacify both minarchists and anarcho-capitalists libertarians.
Rosenthal left Berkeley in 1967 to launch a business career, becoming involved in the Silver & Gold Report publication, and later the publisher of The Libertarian Forum, edited by Murray Rothbard.