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Rat Subterranean News, New York's second major underground newspaper, was created in March 1968, primarily by editor Jeff Shero, [1] Alice Embree and Gary Thiher, who moved up from Austin, Texas, where they had been involved in The Rag .
Rat immediately attained national notoriety for its exclusive inside stories from the Columbia University student uprising in the spring of 1968. Its notoriety grew further when two staff members (one of which was star reporter Jane Alpert) were arrested in connection with a series of non-lethal bombings of corporate offices and military targets in late 1969. Its reputation took a new turn when it was done over as a feminist magazine in 1970. The first women-only issue was published in January 1970 with the headline "Women Seize Rat! Sabotage Tales!". [2] In its new incarnation as Women's LibeRATion, it lasted into the fall of 1970.
While the East Village Other , published a few blocks away, represented the countercultural "establishment" with its relatively relaxed culture-oriented content, Rat embodied the raging far-left politics of the late Sixties. Unlike the orthodox Marxist press, however, it still represented the spirit of hippiedom. Its stripped-down, straightforward design (created by Bob Eisner, later a leading designer of mainstream papers) marked a sharp break with the baroque psychedelia of EVO and other first-generation underground papers. Its relatively austere aethetics were relieved by cartoons, including covers by Robert Crumb and clippings from 1940s poultry magazines found on the street and used as decorations.
Among the memorable contents were original contributions from William S. Burroughs, [3] an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, and insightful front-line reports on the Weather Underground's seizure of SDS written by Shero and others. There were regular in-depth stories on the Young Lords, a militant Puerto Rican youth movement, and the Black Panthers — with a focus on New York's own Panther 21 terrorism trial, and well as news of the ongoing sagas of Huey Newton, Afeni Shakur, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver. Jane Alpert wrote on her own experiences in the notorious New York Women's House of Detention after she was arrested for involvement in the bombings. Like most underground papers, Rat shared articles through the Underground Press Syndicate, allowing regular coverage of distant events like the Native American takeover of Alcatraz Island — and of course, looming over everything, the Vietnam War. Rat also shared articles with Come Out! , a gay liberation newspaper in NYC, published by the Gay Liberation Front. [4]
While most pages of Rat serve as two-dimensional museums of its own era, its ecological writings are far-sighted even now. The Apollo 11 Moon landing was seen through a mirror, in a grand color centerfold, sponsored by the Sierra Club, headlined "Towards A More Moon-Like Earth" — probably written and designed by Jerry Mander and/or David Brower and/or Paul Simon aka Paul Zmeiwski. Coming hard on the heels of UPS reports from the bloody struggles over People's Park, this manifesto provided a radical planetary overview for the nascent ecology movement. As this came to Rat in the form of a paid advertisement from a national organization, it presumably appeared in several other papers at the same time. Further thoughts on this subject came from the famously ex-Marxist Murray Bookchin, a regular Rat contributor whose left-anarchist take on eco-politics anticipated (and influenced) the socially engaged anti-globalization movement that emerged in 1999. Some of his articles appeared under pseudonyms.
Robin Morgan's essay "Good-Bye to All That" (a title borrowed from Robert Graves), which appeared in the first women's issue, may be the only item first published in Rat that has survived on the fringes of mainstream culture, and is still available in anthologies of feminist writings.
Rat's modest newsstand sales came mostly from "straight" people looking for offbeat entertainment and sex. [5]
Rat was published during a period of layout innovation and had a dramatic look of jumbled letters and strong imagery. Stat camera reproduction of paste-ups composed of often "swiped" graphic elements, and letraset type, were fast and affordable. Contributing designers included Van Howell and Joe Schenkman. This largely forgotten period of innovation in communication is remembered for its association with period (mainly punk) music graphics and concert flyers, and for many campus publications and activist flyers. It is somewhat similar to the later desktop publishing revolution.
Before 1970, Rat was deeply involved in "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" as well as revolutionary art and politics. The July 1–15, 1968 featured a naked woman on the cover, with a man drawing an armed soldier on her chest. [6] E.L. (photo editor Elliot Landy) commented inside, "Last time we ran a naked chick on the cover (4th issue) we temporarily doubled our circulation. Thought we'd do it again . . . obviously though that isn't a naked chick peering at you, gun belt around her neck, rifle in her arms, and garbage can by our side; that's our art director doing his thing on the model — which is really what this newspaper is all about anyway." [6] This comment is made in reference to the cover of the April 5–18, 1968 issue, credited to Elliot Landy, featuring the head and torso of a naked woman with a drawing of an armed rat across her body. [7]
In the next issue Jeff Shero offered his own thoughts: "Sex is the magic commodity in New York. Every time we print a nude on the cover circulation jumps five thousand" and in the following issue someone wrote: "Two weeks ago we put tits on the cover and commented that the previous cover we did with tits doubled our circulation. It happened again, not quite double but a considerable increase in sales—the paper sold out on many, many newsstands."
Profits from Pleasure, a pornographic tabloid, published separately by one of Rat's founders, may have paid some of Rat's printing bills. [8] Covert sources of income are rumored to have included personal donations from the poet W. H. Auden. Printing bills sometimes went unpaid, During lean periods, Rat would find new printers willing to take on the legal and financial risks of publishing New York's most notorious paper. During most of 1969, Rat came out of the legendary Septum Printing plant of Oceanside, NY. [9] Rat's financial news from "The Street" charted market fluctuations in the street prices of various drugs.
Rat was perhaps responsible for the most peculiar footnote in the history of rock music. Some recent internet writers have claimed that Rat was the source of the 1969 "Paul is Dead" rumor, which had millions examining Beatles albums for cryptic clues that Paul McCartney was actually dead and a replacement Paul had taken his place.
There was an exclusive interview with Jimi Hendrix, and another with John and Yoko during their Toronto "bed-in" to promote peace. It seems probable that Frank Zappa was inspired by a sign painted on the front window of Rat's 14th Street office, originally the previous tenant's advertisement reading "photostats made while you wait," now neatly altered to proclaim "Hot Rats made while you wait," in early March 1969; Zappa's first solo album appeared in October with that title in similar typography.
"Hot Rats" ended soon after the takeover by W.I.T.C.H. — Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell — and its sister groups turned RAT into Women's LibeRATion. [10] With a new staff of politically charged women, this newspaper was one of the first second wave feminist newspapers in the United States. The collective of women involved with the takeover is listed as Jill Boskey, Jane Alpert, Larelei B., Ruth Beller, Pam Booth, Valerie Bouvier, Naomi Glauberman, Carol Grosberg, Sharon Krebs, Robin Morgan, Jayce Pelcha, Daria Price, Judy Robinson, Miriam Rosen, Barbara Rothkrug, Judy Russell, Lisa Schneider, Martha Shelley, Brenda Smiley, Christine Sweet, Judy Walenta, and Cathy Werner, and Sue Simensky [2] (who is also credited with cover art for the newspaper [11] ). A few male staff also stayed after the takeover to help briefly with production until they were asked to leave. [2]
It is noteworthy that the percentage of the paper devoted to reporting would-be revolutionaries' warfare with the state actually increased following the women's takeover, as did a tendency toward hard-left politics and Maoist graphics. The fiery Women's LibeRATion was a far cry from the safely upward-mobile feminism associated with the National Organization for Women and Ms. magazine a few years later. Issues of workplace discrimination and sexual harassment were already a major concern, however. A poem about office work by Marge Piercy, Metamorphosis into Bureaucrat, appeared in the women's Rat of March 7, 1970, containing the lines "Swollen, heavy, rectangular/ I am about to be delivered / of a baby /zerox machine." Other articles featured reprints of material about the Young Lords Party, as well as coverage of the Young Lords takeover of Lincoln Hospital. [12]
According to the Rat Subterranean News website, a book with accompanying eBook including original articles and graphics from RAT is in production in 2016. [13] [14] This book will allow the reader to relive that turbulent period and will have special sections on Woodstock, the takeover of Columbia University and the Trial of the Chicago Eight that resulted from the demonstrations during the Democratic Convention there in 1968.
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.
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.
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 East Village Other was an American underground newspaper in New York City, issued biweekly during the 1960s. It was described by The New York Times as "a New York newspaper so countercultural that it made The Village Voice look like a church circular".
Steve Clay Wilson was an American underground cartoonist and central figure in the underground comix movement. Wilson attracted attention from readers with aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of lowlife denizens, often depicting the wild escapades of pirates and bikers. He was an early contributor to Zap Comix.
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.
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.
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.
Jane Lauren Alpert is an American former far left radical who conspired in the bombings of eight government and commercial office buildings in New York City in 1969. Arrested when other members of her group were caught planting dynamite in National Guard trucks, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy, but a month before her scheduled sentencing jumped bail and went into hiding.
The Chicago Seed was an underground newspaper published biweekly in Chicago, Illinois from May 1967 to 1974; there were 121 issues published in all. It was notable for its colorful psychedelic graphics and its eclectic, non-doctrinaire radical politics. Important events covered by Seed writers and artists were the trial of the Chicago Eight, Woodstock, and the murder of Fred Hampton. At its peak, the Seed circulated between 30,000 and 40,000 copies, with national distribution.
The Rag was an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas from 1966–1977. The weekly paper covered political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing antiwar movement, the sexual revolution, gay liberation, and drug culture. It encouraged these political constituencies and countercultural communities to coalesce into a significant political force in Austin. As the sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the first underground paper in the South, The Rag helped shape a flourishing national underground press.
Initially called "The Proud Eagle Tribe," the communiqué from the Women's Brigade of the Weather Underground pledged to "build a militant women's movement that commits itself to the destruction of Amerikan imperialism" and exploit "the man's chauvinism" as a "strategic weakness."
Mother Right was a 10-page manifesto written in 1974 by Jane Alpert, a former Swarthmore College student, radical leftist feminist and associate of the Weather Underground Organization.
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.
The Austin Sun was a biweekly counterculture newspaper that was published in Austin, Texas, between 1974 and 1978.
Old Mole was a radical New Left oriented underground newspaper published in Cambridge, Massachusetts from September 1968 to September 1970. Old Mole was continued by a second volume titled The Mole, which published five issues from November 1970 to April 1971. Printed biweekly in a 16-page tabloid format, Old Mole was based for most of its existence in a storefront and basement office on Brookline Street in Central Square. Selling for 15 cents, 47 issues were published in all, with press runs averaging 8000 to 10,000 copies. Subscriptions were free to prisoners and soldiers.
The women's liberation movement was a political movement born in the 1960s from Second-Wave Feminism.
Come Out! was an American LGBT newspaper that ran from 1969 to 1972. It was published by the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), a gay liberation group established in New York City in 1969, immediately following the Stonewall riots. The first issue came out on November 14, 1969, it sold for 35 cents, and 50 cents for outside of New York City. Its run only lasted for eight issues. Its tagline for the first paper was: "A Newspaper By And For The Gay Community".
Earth magazine was a counterculture magazine published in the 1970s. It later became Earth News, an alternative news agency for radio stations. Former staffers from Earth later formed a number of alternative news agencies of their own, all of which survived into the 1980s.
note— links to a dead site.
