OB Rag

Last updated
OB Rag - early March 1974 - Vol 4 No 8 Vol4no8.jpg
OB Rag - early March 1974 - Vol 4 No 8

The OB Rag (originally the OB People's Rag) was an underground newspaper published between 1970 and 1975 [1] in the Neighborhood of Ocean Beach, San Diego, California, United States. The O in the title is also a peace symbol. Other San Diego underground newspapers that dealt with similar issues include the San Diego Free Press and The San Diego Door .

Contents

The original staff was a small collection of activists who lived in a collective house on Etiwanda St in Northeast Ocean Beach. Most of the original group were recent graduates of the University of California and veterans of the anti-war movement expressing Vietnam War opposition. The collective published Volume 1 Number 1 in September 1970. [2] A major early issue for the OB Rag was the fight to save Collier Park on land that had been donated to the City by David Charles Collier. A riot in Collier Park on March 28, 1971 was covered in detail by the Rag. [3]

Beginning in 1972 OB Rag staff and local radical worked from 'The Red House' [4] on 5113 Cape May. The house was the target of paramilitary vigilantes calling themselves the Secret Army Organization (SAO) who allegedly fired shots into the house. The OB Rag was subjected to arrests by local police, [5] and harassment and spying by the FBI. Shots were fired into an activist house at 2014 1/2 Abbott St in Ocean Beach, by the San Diego Police. [6]

Revival

The OB Rag was revived twenty-six years later with paper editions published in Ocean Beach between 2001 and 2003 by members of the Ocean Beach Grassroots Organization (OBGO). [7] The OB Rag has been online at OBRag.org since 2007. In June 2011 members of the OB Rag helped relaunch the San Diego Free Press as an online publication. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weather Underground</span> American far-left militant organization, 1969–77

The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mission Beach, San Diego</span> Community of San Diego in California

Mission Beach is a community built on a sandbar between the Pacific Ocean and Mission Bay. It is part of the city of San Diego, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underground press</span> Publications produced without the official approval of a dominant group

The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant group. In specific recent Asian, American and Western European context, the term "underground press" has most frequently been employed to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in India and Bangladesh in Asia, in the United States and Canada in North America, and the United Kingdom and other western nations. It can also refer to the newspapers produced independently in repressive regimes. In German occupied Europe, for example, a thriving underground press operated, usually in association with the Resistance. Other notable examples include the samizdat and bibuła, which operated in the Soviet Union and Poland respectively, during the Cold War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocean Beach, San Diego</span> Community of San Diego in California, United States

Ocean Beach is a beachfront neighborhood of San Diego, California.

Liberation News Service (LNS) was a New Left, anti-war underground press news agency that distributed news bulletins and photographs to hundreds of subscribing underground, alternative and radical newspapers from 1967 to 1981. Considered the "Associated Press" for the underground press, at its zenith the LNS served more than 500 papers. Founded in Washington, D.C., it operated out of New York City for most of its existence.

The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines that operated from 1966 into the late 1970s. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine.

<i>Los Angeles Free Press</i> Defunct American underground newspaper

The Los Angeles Free Press, also called the "Freep", is often cited as the first, and certainly was the largest, of the underground newspapers of the 1960s. The Freep was founded in 1964 by Art Kunkin, who served as its publisher until 1971 and continued on as its editor-in-chief through June 1973. The paper closed in 1978. It was unsuccessfully revived a number of times afterward.

<i>The San Diego Door</i>

The San Diego Door, was an underground newspaper that thrived from January 1968 to August 1974 in San Diego and San Diego County, Southern California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Elliott</span>

Jon Elliott is an American liberal talk radio personality, formerly featured on Air America Radio.

<i>Berkeley Tribe</i> United States underground newspaper (1969–1972)

The Berkeley Tribe was a radical counterculture weekly underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1972. It was formed after a bitter staff dispute with publisher Max Scherr and split the nationally known Berkeley Barb into new competing underground weeklies. In July 1969 some 40 editorial and production staff with the Barb went on strike for three weeks, then started publishing the Berkeley Tribe as a rival paper, after first printing an interim issue called Barb on Strike to discuss the strike issues with the readership. They incorporated as Red Mountain Tribe, named after Gallo's one gallon finger-ringed jug of cheap wine, Red Mountain. It became a leading publication of the New Left.

<i>Space City</i> (newspaper)

Space City! was an underground newspaper published in Houston, Texas from June 5, 1969 to August 3, 1972. The founders were Students for a Democratic Society veterans and former members of the staff of the Austin, Texas, underground newspaper, The Rag, one of the earliest and most influential of the Sixties underground papers. The original editorial collective was composed of Thorne Dreyer, who had been the founding "funnel" of The Rag in 1966; Victoria Smith, a former reporter for the St. Paul Dispatch; community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan; and radical journalists Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald.

The San Diego Free Press was an underground newspaper founded by philosophy students of Herbert Marcuse at the University of California, San Diego in November 1968, and published under that title biweekly until December 1969, when it became the weekly Street Journal starting with its 29th issue. The paper's contents were a mix of radical politics, alternative lifestyles, and the counterculture, reflecting in part Marcuse's Frankfurt School Marxist/Freudian ideas of cultural transformation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorne Webb Dreyer</span> American journalist(born 1945)

Thorne Webb Dreyer is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture, New Left, and underground press movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas, where he edits the progressive internet news magazine, The Rag Blog, hosts Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM, and is a director of the New Journalism Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Charles Collier</span> American lawyer

David Charles Collier, commonly known as D. C. Collier or as "Charlie" and sometimes given the honorary title of "Colonel", was an American real estate developer, civic leader, and philanthropist in San Diego, California, during the early years of the 20th century. He is best known as the organizer and director of San Diego's Panama California Exposition (1915–16). He was also a prime developer of several areas of San Diego as well as La Mesa and Ramona. In his day he was described as "San Diego's foremost citizen."

Wonderland was a beachfront amusement park in the Ocean Beach neighborhood of San Diego, California from 1913 to 1916. It was the first amusement park in San Diego.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movement for a Democratic Military</span> Anti-war and GI rights organization during the Vietnam War

The Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM) was an American anti-war, anti-establishment, and military rights organization formed by United States Navy and Marine Corps personnel during the Vietnam War. Formed in California in late 1969 by sailors from Naval Station San Diego in San Diego and Marines from Camp Pendleton Marine Base in Oceanside, it rapidly spread to a number of other cities and bases in California and the Midwest, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Long Beach Naval Station, El Toro Marine Air Station, Fort Ord, Fort Carson, and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">G.I. coffeehouses</span> Antiwar coffeehouses near U.S. military bases during and after the Vietnam War

GI coffeehouses were coffeehouses set up as part of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War era as a method of fostering antiwar and anti-military sentiment within the U.S. military. They were mainly organized by civilian antiwar activists, though many GIs participated in establishing them as well. They were created in numerous cities and towns near U.S. military bases throughout the U.S as well as Germany and Japan. Due to the normal high turnover rate of GIs at military bases plus the military's response which often involved transfer, discharge and demotion, not to mention the hostility of the pro-military towns where many coffeehouses were located, most of them were short-lived, but a few survived for several years and "contributed to some of the GI movement's most significant actions". The first GI coffeehouse of the Vietnam era was set up in January 1968 and the last closed in 1974. There have been a few additional coffeehouses created during the U.S. led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pacific Counseling Service</span> Antiwar GI counseling service organization during the Vietnam War

The Pacific Counseling Service (PCS) was a G.I. counseling service organization created by antiwar activists during the Vietnam War. PCS saw itself as trying to make the U.S. Armed Forces "adhere more closely to regulations concerning conscientious objector discharges and G.I. rights." The Armed Forces Journal, on the other hand, said PCS was involved in "antimilitary activities", including "legal help and incitement to dissident GIs." PCS evolved out of a small GI Help office started by a freshly discharged Air Force Sergeant in San Francisco, California in January 1969. The idea rapidly caught on among antiwar forces and within a year PCS had offices in Monterey, Oakland, and San Diego in California, plus Tacoma, Washington. By 1971 it had spread around the Pacific with additional offices in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Okinawa, the Philippines, as well as Tokyo and Iwakuni in Japan. Each location was established near a major U.S. military base. At its peak, PCS was counseling hundreds of disgruntled soldiers a week, helping many with legal advice, conscientious objector discharges and more. As the war wound down, ending in 1975, the offices closed with the last office in San Francisco printing its final underground newspaper in 1976.

The Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market is a food cooperative located at 4765 Voltaire street in the Ocean Beach community of San Diego, California. It was previously called the Ocean Beach People’s Food Store. People’s started as a retail store at 4859 Voltaire Street, selling natural foods and household products. The current co-op is member-owned, but open to the public, and focuses on offering locally grown organic food.

References

  1. "About The O.B. People's Rag. (Ocean Beach, Calif.) 1970-1975". Library of Congress.
  2. "1st OB Rag History". OB Rag. 29 October 2007.
  3. "Collier Park". OB Rag.
  4. "Centennial Celebration od OB's Famous Red House". San Diego Free Press.
  5. "Berkeley Barb Nov 19-25 1971 - Screws Turn Screws in Dago". Independent Voices.
  6. "OB Under Siege". OB Rag. 22 February 2009.
  7. "How OBGO brought back the Rag and the "California Energy Crisis"". OB Rag. 10 June 2014.
  8. "About the San Diego Free Press". San Diego Free Press.