Akwesasne Notes, 1972
American Indian Movement
Akwesasne Notes was a newspaper founded in 1969, amid a surge in Native American activism, by Ernest Benedict of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, which straddles the U.S. and Canadian border along the St. Lawrence River. The paper, which continued publication through the mid-1990s, became the largest and most influential Native American newspaper in the world. Editors explained the purpose of the newspaper: "Akwesasne Notes supports the efforts of people to re-investigate their own processes of survival - their culture. We are advocates of social justice processes which focus on reuniting people with their community and their land base, and which attempts to resist the exploitation of land, animal, water, and human beings." (volume 16, number 4)
Akwesasne Notes,
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1972
newspaper
Akwesasne Notes, vol. 5, no. 2, Early Spring (April) 1973
American Indian Movement
Akwesasne Notes was a newspaper founded in 1969, amid a surge in Native American activism, by Ernest Benedict of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, which straddles the U.S. and Canadian border along the St. Lawrence River. The paper, which continued publication through the mid-1990s, became the largest and most influential Native American newspaper in the world. Editors explained the purpose of the newspaper: "Akwesasne Notes supports the efforts of people to re-investigate their own processes of survival - their culture. We are advocates of social justice processes which focus on reuniting people with their community and their land base, and which attempts to resist the exploitation of land, animal, water, and human beings." (volume 16, number 4)
This issue of Akwesasne Notes focuses on the first month of the occupation of Wounded Knee. In February of 1973, more than 200 Native American activists, many members of the Oglala Sioux people, led by members of the American Indian Movement, including Russell Means (Oglala Sioux) and Carter Camp (Ponca), began an occupation of Wounded Knee, a town on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The group opposed the tribal administration of Richard Wilson and protested the failure of the U.S. government to live up to its treaty obligations. Wounded Knee also had tremendous symbolic importance, as it was the site of an 1890 massacre of 150-300 Native Americans by U.S. military forces. The activists occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days, exchanging regular gunfire with U.S. Marshalls, FBI agents and other law enforcement. The occupation attracted international media attention, as well as broad support from other New Left activists and organizations, brought the struggles of Native people to a wider popular audience and helped spur further activism among indigenous people. A.I.M. leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means were indicted on criminal charges related to the occupation, but, ultimately, those charges were dismissed in a federal court, citing prosecutorial misconduct.
Articles include first-hand reports from the occupation, broader historical context related to Wounded Knee and the Pine Ridge Reservation and reprints of editorials about the occupation. In addition, articles explore police harassment, intimidation and violence against Native American and Chicano activists participating in a unity conference in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, as well as conflict between indigenous activists and law enforcement outside the Custer, South Dakota Court House and conflict in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Early Spring (April) 1973
underground press
White Lightning, no. 13, February 1973
New Left
Based in the Bronx, New York, and founded in 1971, White Lightning was a revolutionary community organization made up of whites and dedicated to serving the people. The group was founded by ex-addicts who had participated in Logos, a residential drug treatment program in the Bronx that used the “Therapeutic Community Model” for treating drug addiction, which emphasized “intense, confrontation group sessions.” Interestingly, drug treatment programs were one of the few places where black, white and Latino people came together, which provided a unique opportunity for radical activists. After leaders of Logos attempted to convert the organization from a treatment program into a lifelong utopian community, activists led by Gil Fagiani, who feared it was evolving into a cult, formed a break-away group called “Spirit of Logos.” The organization was influenced by the activism of the Young Lords and viewed drug addiction as the result of racism and poverty, rather than individual pathology and focused their work on unjust drug laws, the defunding of drug treatment programs, slum lords, drug pushers and addicts, organized crime, corrupt police, as well as what they saw as drug companies plundering African American, Latino poor white neighborhoods in New York City. In 1971, the group split along racial lines, with black and brown members refusing to work with white members. While the African American and Latino group soon dissolved, about a dozen white activists formed a new group and called themselves “White Lightning.” They targeted the white working-class and put out a monthly newspaper. As Fagiani explained years later, “We believed it essential to support the liberation struggles of people of color. We joined picket lines organized by the mostly Mexican American United Farm Workers Union, as well as demonstrations against the massacre at Attica State Prison and the political repression directed at the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and the American Indian Movement… White Lightning viewed the following questions as critical: How could we get working-class whites to see they had a stake in left politics? How could we convince them to look at people of color as their logical allies instead of their natural enemies?” White Lightning members also explored the histories of discrimination and class oppression faced by white ethnic groups in America as a way to build solidarity across racial lines. Like many groups in the early-1970s, White Lightning ultimately succumbed to sectarian divisions and disbanded.
This issue of White Lightning includes articles that focus on a city-wide rent hike; sports revolt; “People’s Grapevine,” which offered brief reports on other activism in the city; Lincoln Detox; abortion; housing as a human right; the war in Vietnam; socialist housing; women in prison; government attacks on working people and immigrants; comix.
Spirit of Logos
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
February 1973
underground press
White Lightning, undated, ca. 1971
New Left
Based in the Bronx, New York, and founded in 1971, White Lightning was a revolutionary community organization made up of whites and dedicated to serving the people. The group was founded by ex-addicts who had participated in Logos, a residential drug treatment program in the Bronx that used the “Therapeutic Community Model” for treating drug addiction, which emphasized “intense, confrontation group sessions.” Interestingly, drug treatment programs were one of the few places where black, white and Latino people came together, which provided a unique opportunity for radical activists. After leaders of Logos attempted to convert the organization from a treatment program into a lifelong utopian community, activists led by Gil Fagiani, who feared it was evolving into a cult, formed a break-away group called “Spirit of Logos.” The organization was influenced by the activism of the Young Lords and viewed drug addiction as the result of racism and poverty, rather than individual pathology and focused their work on unjust drug laws, the defunding of drug treatment programs, slum lords, drug pushers and addicts, organized crime, corrupt police, as well as what they saw as drug companies plundering African American, Latino poor white neighborhoods in New York City. In 1971, the group split along racial lines, with black and brown members refusing to work with white members. While the African American and Latino group soon dissolved, about a dozen white activists formed a new group and called themselves “White Lightning.” They targeted the white working-class and put out a monthly newspaper. As Fagiani explained years later, “We believed it essential to support the liberation struggles of people of color. We joined picket lines organized by the mostly Mexican American United Farm Workers Union, as well as demonstrations against the massacre at Attica State Prison and the political repression directed at the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and the American Indian Movement… White Lightning viewed the following questions as critical: How could we get working-class whites to see they had a stake in left politics? How could we convince them to look at people of color as their logical allies instead of their natural enemies?” White Lightning members also explored the histories of discrimination and class oppression faced by white ethnic groups in America as a way to build solidarity across racial lines. Like many groups in the early-1970s, White Lightning ultimately succumbed to sectarian divisions and disbanded.
This issue of White Lightning includes articles that focus on heroin addicts; the decision to create White Lightning newspaper; a critique of Logos; methadone; the power of the rich; the experienced of drug treatment; the political evolution of an addict; Spirit of Logos platform; comix.
Spirit of Logos
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1971
underground newspaper
RAT Subterranean News, June 5-19, 1970
New Left
RAT Subterranean News was published in New York, starting in March of 1968 and was edited by Jeff Shero, Alice Embree and Gary Thiher, who had come North from Austin, Texas, where they worked on The Rag, another important underground paper. Whereas the East Village Other represented the counterculture point of view, RAT had a left political orientation. This issue covers a wide range of topics, including reflections on Vietnam; a Weather Underground communiqué; women’s oppression in Puerto Rican culture; an interview with FBI informant George Demmerle; organizational structure and principles of The Feminists; brief reports from Ceylon and France; a review of the case of Sam Melville, Jane Alpert and Dave Hughey; a Sylvia Plath poem, “The Jailer”; gynecology and sexism; labor politics in Argentina; feminism and the media; report from the Conference for Women event, titled, “Liberation – from What?”; political prisoners; city planning on the Lower East Side of New York; Dionne Donghi; American Indian Movement seizure of B.I.A. land; Panther 21 trial; ads and personals; poetry.
RAT Subterranean News
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
June 5-19, 1970
underground press
Movement, March 1969
New Left
The Movement was an underground press newspaper based in San Francisco, California. This issue, the "Huey P. Newton Birthday Edition,” was published in March of 1969. In a 3 page spread there is an interview with Bobby Seale about the status of Huey Newton's case, police brutality incidents in the Los Angeles area and questions regarding the Community Survival Programs of the Black Panthers. Also in this issue are multiple articles highlighting the student movement at various universities around the country, including Berkeley, Columbia, Yale, New York University, and San Francisco State University; a statement and manifesto from the American Deserters Committee for American Deserters living in Montreal, Canada; as well as various statements that cover other movements including the American Indian Movement (AIM). This issue ends with a poem from Ho Chi Minh's prison diary.
The Movement Press
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
March 1969
underground press
Palante, March 30, 1972
Puerto Rican Independence Movement
Palante was a bi-monthly, bilingual newspaper produced by the Young Lords Party. This issue features a statement from the people of Hawaii thanking the Young Lords for their aid, articles about coal mining survivors of the Cobriza massacre in Peru, a prisoners conference in New York, protests of inhumane conditions at Rikers Island Prison, police brutality, Native American rights, the arrest of Gabriel "TBA" Torres, Puerto Rican nationalist Robert Delgado, labor unrest, a letter of support for the Black Liberation Army, the Young Lords' 13 Point Program, and statement of support for former SNCC chairman H. Rap Brown, as well as information on his trial.
The Young Lords Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
March 30, 1972
underground press
Berkeley Tribe, November 20, 1970
New Left
The Berkeley Tribe was a countercultural newspaper published from 1969 to 1972 that was created following a split in the staff of The Berkeley Barb. This issue, published on November 20, 1970, includes articles on the trial of Ericka Huggins and Bobby Seale; People’s Park; Playwright John Lion; the Soledad Brothers; Quebec nationalism; government repression in St. Louis; reduction of garbage; the “Battle of Algiers” and the Panther 21; Folsom Prison strike; police brutality; an interview with Tony Martinez, a member of the "Los Siete de la Raza”; a report on the occupation of Alcatraz; and multiple calls for individuals to attend workshops for the sexual determination of men and women, as well as gay workshops in the area.
Red Mountain Tribe
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
November 20, 1970
underground press
Rat Subterranean News "Up Against the Wall"
New Left
This button was created by Rat Subterranean News, the second of two major underground newspapers coming out of New York City and features the paper's mascot. Rat was published from 1968-1970. It gained notoriety for its reporting on the siege of Columbia in 1968, the take-over of SDS by the Weather Underground, the Panther 21 trial in New York, the take-over of Alcatraz Island by the American Indian Movement and early ecology reportage. Several Rat contributors were arrested after a series of non-lethal bombings of corporate offices and military targets in late-1969 and the newspaper was overtaken by radical feminists in 1970 because of its sexism. According to an FBI report on the underground newspaper written shortly after its founding, “Only a handful of the papers strike me as having a distinct character, useful, original material, and rich, imaginative writing… The paper, named after the small, tough, and durable rodent of the underground, defined itself in a first anniversary editorial last March as an ‘experiment in participatory journalism.’”
RAT Subterranean News
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
National Lawyers Guild
Social Justice, Civil Rights
The National Lawyers Guild was established in 1937 as "an association of progressive lawyers and jurists who believed that they had a major role to play in the reconstruction of legal values to emphasize human rights over property rights." The Guild, which continues its work today, is considered "the oldest and most extensive network of public interest and human rights activists working within the legal system."
According to the NLG website, "In the 1960s, the Guild set up offices in the South and organized thousands of volunteer lawyers and law students to support the civil rights movement long before the federal government or other bar associations were involved. Guild members represented the families of murdered civil rights activists Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, who had heeded the Guild’s call to join the civil rights struggle and were assassinated by local law enforcement/Ku Klux Klan members. Lawsuits initiated by the National Lawyers Guild brought the Kennedy Justice Department directly into the civil rights struggle in Mississippi and challenged the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Guild lawyers defended thousands of civil rights activists who were arrested for exercising basic rights and established new federal constitutional protections in ground-breaking Supreme Court cases such as Dombrowski v. Pfister, which enjoined thousands of racially motivated state court criminal prosecutions; Goldberg v. Kelly, the case that established the concept of “entitlements” to social benefits that require Due Process protections; and Monell v. Department of Social Services, which held municipalities liable for brutal police officers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guild members represented Vietnam War draft resisters, antiwar activists, and the Chicago 7 after the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Guild offices in Asia represented GIs who opposed the war. Guild members argued U.S. v. U.S. District Court, the Supreme Court case that established that Nixon could not ignore the Bill of Rights in the name of “national security” and led to the Watergate hearings and his eventual resignation. Guild members defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party (including Angela Davis), the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement and helped expose illegal FBI and CIA surveillance, infiltration, and disruption tactics that the U.S. Senate Church Commission detailed in the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings and that led to enactment of the Freedom of Information Act and other specific limitations on federal investigative power."
The button reads, “…more dangerous than those… who throw the bombs.”
National Lawyers Guild
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
Button
Physical Object
For a Bicentennial Without Colonies
American Indian Movement
This broadside by the Native American Solidarity Committee pokes at the ironies inherent in the 1976 U.S. bicentennial celebration when viewed from the vantage of Native Americans.
Native American Solidarity Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1976
newsprint
broadside
Beverly Axelrod Biography
New Left
This is a brief political biography of Beverly Axelrod, who was a civil rights and social justice attorney for a variety of activists and organizations during the 1960s, including the Congress of Racial Equality, Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party, Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement, Jerry Rubin of the Yippies, the United Farm Workers, the Chicano Movement in New Mexico, and others. Axelrod also travelled to Vietnam and helped organize the first anti-war protest that featured women and children. Her correspondence with Eldridge Cleaver formed a significant basis for his book, Soul On Ice. She was also called before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Later in life she formed ACE Investigations, an investigative firm that did trial preparation for civil and criminal cases. Axelrod died in 2002 of emphysema.
ACE Investigations
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
January 7, 1998
photocopy
chronology
Wounded Knee Information & Defense Leaflet No. 4
American Indian Movement
This leaflet details the on-going struggle by the Oglala Sioux
People against the U.S. government and its representatives on the tribal council in the wake of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.
Wounded Knee Information & Defense Center
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
leaflet