Digging the Underground Press
Editor: As you read this, remember that your community’s underground newspaper, the original OB Rag, was part of this era. Art Kunkin, mentioned below – he was the editor of one of the West Coast’s grandparent alternative, the LA Free Press – once called the OB Rag the best, community-based underground newspapers in the country.
The Sixties’ scrappy alternative newspapers were the oxygen that kept the era’s movements going.
By Richard Greenwald / In These Times
History books rarely speak as trenchantly to contemporary issues as John McMillian’sSmoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University, February). As the cascading revolts in the Muslim world demonstrate, communication systems matter.
Communication is the oxygen of social movements, but scholars have rarely focused