Liberated Guardian, November 25, 1970
New Left
The National Guardian was a radical, left newsweekly published out of New York City from 1948-1992. The paper was established by James Aronson, Cedric Belfrage, who were committed activists for the Progressive Party and Henry Wallace presidential campaign, as well as John McManus and Josiah Gitt, both liberal newspaper men, though Gitt quickly dropped out. In addition to the Progressive Party, the newspaper also held ties with American communists and the labor movement. The Cold War took a toll on the newspaper, with the decline of the Progressive Party and the rise of McCarthyism in the U.S. During the post-WWII era, the newspaper focused coverage on opposition to the Cold War and militarism, support for emerging anti-colonial struggles around the world, defense of those targeted by McCarthyism, advocacy for the black freedom movement. The newspaper continued to hold a cozy relationship with the Communist Party U.S.A., though it did break with the group over some issues, particularly support for independent political action beyond party control. The 1960s-era brought a new period of political rancor within the editorial ranks of the newspaper. In the end, the periodical changed leadership and renamed itself The Guardian. The Guardian took an increasingly Maoist line, supporting armed struggles against colonialism. During this period, the newspaper attempted to forge ties with SDS and SNCC, writing that "The duty of a radical newspaper is to build a radical movement.” "We are movement people acting as journalists," the Guardian′s staff now proudly declared. The Liberated Guardian formed out of a workers strike at The Guardian newspaper in New York City in the Spring of 1970. The Liberated Guardian was notable for it strong stand in favor of armed struggle. An ideological and political split within the ranks of the Liberated Guardian staff led to the newspaper’s demise in late-1973. The original Guardian pressed on and took on a more hard-line Marxist-Leninist ideology in the late-1970s, eroding that newspaper’s reputation for investigative journalism. Readership and support for The Guardian declined through the 1980s and the paper ceased publication in 1992.
In this issue, articles focus on Malcolm X’s assassination; Black Panther Party; Timothy Leary and armed struggle; the privatization of imperial intervention; local short reports on revolutionary struggle in the U.S.; liberation struggle in Uruguay; draft counseling; the Seattle Liberation Front; the War Measures Act in Canada; Quebec independence movement; police repression in Canada; Palestinian liberation; lessons from the Jordan wars; the CIA in Israel; review of the film Finally Got the News, on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; labor strike at Fiat in Italy; black workers in the auto industry; corporations that make antipersonnel munitions; report on peace talks in Paris; tenants rights; local briefs; indigenous people in Columbia and armed struggle; letters to the editor.
Liberated Guardian Worker's Collective
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
November 25, 1970
underground newspaper
RAT Subterranean News, February 6-23, 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. In early 1970, women’s liberation activists took over RAT and turned it into a women-only periodical to challenge sexism within the New Left. This issue is the first after the take-over of RAT and covers a wide range of topics, including Afeni Shakur and the Panther 21; letters to the editor; women’s take-over of RAT; feminist critique of the New Left; the ambush of New York police in Harlem; the emergence of strong women leadership in the Weather Underground; Kathleen Cleaver in Algeria; sabotage; theft and activism; Boston students protesting a lecture by S.I. Hayakawa; Berkeley women take-over of karate class; a Gay Liberation Front protest at a San Francisco radio station; gas masks; women challenging doctors on abortion; sex and sexism; “Are Men Really the Enemy?” exam; John Sinclair release from prison; Palestinian women and armed struggle in Jordan; obscenity trial against Che; women in China; a Stockton, California, housewives strike; poetry; film review of “Prologue…”
R.A.T. Publications, Inc
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
February 6-23, 1970
underground press
To Whom Does Palestine Belong?
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
This poster was created by Palestinian artist, Mohamad El Farah, in 1970, as a part of a poster series for Fatah, the Palestinian nationalist movement. It juxtaposes an image of Golda Meir with Ayesha Audi and asks, “To Whom Does Palestine Belong?”
Golda Meir was born in Kiev, but emigrated to the United States with her family when she was a small child. She grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was active in Zionist politics as a teenager. In 1921, Meir and her husband moved to Palestine, where she played a variety of important roles in the emergence of the new Israeli state. During the first two decades of Israel’s existence, Meir served as Labor Minister (1949-1956) and Foreign Minister (1956-66), and in 1969, after a brief retirement, she was elected as the nation’s Prime Minister, a position she held until 1974.
Less is known about Ayesha Audi. She was born in Palestine in 1944 and later became a school teacher. Audi was a pan-Arabist and ultimately joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Marxist-Leninist, revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967. In the late-1960s, Fatah began to launch operations inside Israel. In 1969, Audi placed two bombs in West Jerusalem, killing two people. In response, Israeli forces destroyed Audi’s family’s home, imprisoned her and tortured her. Audi was released from Israeli prison in 1979, as a part of a prisoner swap where 76 jailed Palestinians were exchanged for captured Israeli Defense Force soldier, Avraham Amram. She then lived in Jordan and became a member of the Palestinian parliament in 1981.
Many New Left activists viewed the Palestinian liberation struggle as the vanguard of the broader Third World liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Mohamad El Fara
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1970
poster