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https://rozsixties.unl.edu/files/original/175e49a73940a503d7e3ac0cec58bb3e.png
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Newsreel Films
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Newsreel Films
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Newsreel Films on YouTube
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
ca. 1960s and 1970s
Format
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film
Description
An account of the resource
Roz Payne was involved in Newsreel Films from the group's inception in New York in 1967. Newsreel created a series of short films documenting various aspects of 1960s-era activism. The items in this collection provide links to each of the Newsreel Films that are currently available to view free on the web.
________
Roz Payne offered the following brief reflection on Newsreel Films in 2002:
"In 1967 a group of independent filmmakers, photographers, and media workers formed a collective to make politically relevant films sharing our resources, skills, and equipment. As individuals we had been covering many of the events that we considered news, demonstrations, acts of resistance, and countless inequities and abuses. Sometimes films were made and sometimes not. Most often they were made too late and did not go to the people who could use them best.
We met in a basement in the lower eastside of New York and later at the alternate U, then more basements until we got an office. The only news we saw was on TV and we knew who owned the stations. We decided to make films that would show another side to the news. It was clear to us that the established forms of media were not going to approach those subjects which threaten their very existence.
I was a school teacher in New Jersey who shot photos. My marriage with Arnold Payne, Mr. Muscle Beach Jr. had broken up, I left a little house on the Palisades, overlooking the boats on the Hudson River right over the Spry sign across from 96th Street. I would sit looking at the burning windows of the NYC skyline as the sun set. That fire and the fire from a GI's Zippo lighter on the straw of a Vietnamese hut helped ignite me. I moved to New York City.
Walking down Second Ave and 10th Street with my camera one afternoon Melvin Margolis , a wild looking hippie stopped me and said, ‘Hey, your a photographer and there's a meeting tonight of all the political film people. You have to go. It is very important. Make sure that you go. I'm not kidding.’ I showed up that night, to the first meeting of Newsreel.
About 30 people met weekly to talk about films, equipment, and politics. I think we were great because we came from various political backgrounds and had different interests. We never all agreed on a political line. We broke down into smaller groups to work on the films. The working groups included anti-Vietnam-war, anti-imperialist, high school, students, women, workers, Yippies, Third World, and the infamous sex, drugs and party committee.
We wanted to make two films a month and get 12 prints of each film out to groups across the country. We wanted to spark the creation of similar news-film groups in other major cities of the United States so that they would distribute our films and would cover and shoot the events in their area.
The first film I worked on was the 1968 student take-over of Columbia University. The students had taken over 5 buildings. We had a film team in each building. We were shooting from the inside while the rest of the press were outside. We participated in the political negotiations and discussions. Our cameras were used as weapons as well as recording the events. Melvin had a W.W.II cast iron steel Bell and Howell camera that could take the shock of breaking plate glass windows.
Newsreel worked to expand the awareness of events and situations relevant to shaping the movement. Our films tried to analyze, not just cover; they explored the realities that the media, as part of the system, always ignores.
In 1967 the FBI started the Counter-intelligence program to try to destroy African Americans, especially the Black Panther Party and the New Left. We worked with Third World groups. We produced various films that these groups could use to tell their stories and to use in organizing in their own communities and workplaces, hopefully serving as catalysts for social change.
Newsreel not only made films but we were among the first to distribute films made in Cuba, Vietnam, Africa, and the Middle East.
As Newsreel grew, we spread out, opened offices and distribution centers across the country. We had offices in San Francisco, Detroit, Boston, Kansas, Los Angeles, Vermont, and Atlanta. We made films and distributed our films in the hope that the audiences who saw them would respond to the issues they raised. We wanted people to work with our films as catalysts for political discussions about social change in America and to relate the questions in the films to issues in their own communities.
We had many struggles in Newsreel around class, women, political education, cultural and worker politics, the haves and have nots. It was hard to hold to the correct political line. Little by little the groups changed from film-maker control to worker control, to women control, to third world control. Today, Third World Newsreel is in New York, California Newsreel is in San Francisco, and there is a Vermont Newsreel Archives.
In 1972, myself and others moved to Vermont. We continue to distribute Newsreel films, shoot videos, use computer graphics, and maintain a film, photo, and document archive. With the easy accessibility of video cameras thousands of people are making their own documents to tell the stories of what is happening around them. I am shooting history of retired FBI agents that worked on COINTELPRO against Don Cox, an exiled Black Panther and the white women who helped him. I teach History of the Sixties, Civil Rights Movement, Women, and Mycology at Burlington College."
In 2019, another original Newsreel Film member, Marvin Fishman, remembered a slightly different version of some of the events Roz related above:
“Roz invariably reminded me that it was her chance encounter with me on 14th Street that led to her attending that meeting [rather than Melvin Margolis]. Melvin, Marvin . . . I always nodded in agreement with her when she reminded me of that, but honestly, my memory is vague on that street encounter, though I always accepted it as true because she seemed so certain. I leave open the possibility that she indeed met Melvin earlier in the day, and that our meeting on 14th Street happened later on, when she was searching for the meeting address. But I do remember bringing her upstairs to the Free School, the site of the meeting.”
Fishman went on, “Also omitted [from Roz’s narrative] is the earlier, actual very first meeting, which was held on December 22, 1967, in Jonas Mekas’ Filmmakers Cinematheque. This is the date and place of what I consider the beginning of the collaborative undertaking among filmmakers. More than 30 people attended. Coincidentally, if I remember correctly, this is the date that Universal Newsreel, a service of Hollywood’s Universal Pictures, closed down.
Perhaps more important for Newsreel’s history, is that the narrative on the website does not mention why the meetings at the Cinematheque and then at the Free School were held. That is, what brought all the filmmakers together to that meeting which led to the formation of Newsreel? In fact, the catalyst for that meeting was the Pentagon Demonstration. To omit this fact is to omit the precipitating event, the traumatic historic milestone which led a disparate bunch of filmmakers and others to unite.”
According to filmmaker and activist, Danny Schechter, “Working in decentralized film collectives in several cities, [Newsreel] produced many, many films, mostly shot on 16 mm. Most were in black and white, as gritty and realistic as the subjects they depicted. These were films of civil rights and civil wrongs, of uprisings in communities and on campuses, about the Vietnam War and the war at home against it. They are in some cases angry films, as alienated from the forms of traditional newscasts as anything that has been produced in our country. Some of the films were produced in the spirit of similar work underway in Cuba and Vietnam. Some were American originals - bringing the voices of change and changemakers to the social movements of the era. These films were revolutionary in spirit and commitment.
These are films that deserve to be seen and learned from. They are part of a dissenting tradition of American film-making. They are also a record of the emotions that made the 60's what they were. Some were agit-prop. Some captured important moments of history. Most were populist in spirit - while others were more intellectual but not in the sense of the ‘intellectual property’ everyone talks about today. These film makers did not seek individual credit or promote themselves as Hollywood wanabees - although some did end up making commercial films. They preferred anonymity and a democratic approach to film making that may seem naive in world where production is characterized by craft unions and a star system.”
The UCLA Film & Television Archive adds, “Shunning the professional polish of mainstream productions, Newsreel embraced the aesthetic of raw immediacy that was prevalent in the newly flourishing underground press, rock music, cinema verité and poster art. The student movement (Columbia Revolt), racism (Black Panther) and Vietnam (No Game; People's War) were among the subjects Newsreel addressed. Feminist consciousness-raising efforts were documented in films such as The Woman's Film, produced collectively by women, and Makeout. Films made in association with Newsreel were strongly influenced by the film style of Santiago Alvarez, who headed Cuban newsreel production units after the 1959 revolution. His films, such as L.B.J. and Now omitted narration in favor of collages of found materials, stills, newsreel footage and fragments from speeches.”
Among the items in this collection is also a 7-page journal article, "Newsreel: Film and Revolution," written by Bill Nichols for Cinéaste in 1973. The article provides a different introduction to Newsreel Films. Nichols also completed an M.A. Thesis by the same title at UCLA in Theater Arts in 1972. That thesis runs more than 300-pages and can be found online for those interested in a much more in-depth exploration of the history of Newsreel:
https://billnichols99.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/newsreel-film-and-revolution.pdf
_________
The following is a list of Newsreel films made and/or distributed by the group during the 1960s-era with a brief description after each one written by Roz Payne. It is reprinted from Roz Payne's website:
Amerika
Against the background of the November 1969 Anti-Vietnam War demonstration in Washington DC., footage from all over the world.
1969 - 45 minutes
Army
US. imperialism needs massive military power capable of maintaining its markets overseas and quelling rebellions at home. This film records the training and indoctrination given to G.I.s to produce this force. The men themselves talk about who the army really serves, and the effect the indoctrination has on them, and the beginnings of resistance to the army and against the war.
Off the Pig (Black Panther)
This is one of the first films made about the Panthers. It contains interviews with Party leaders Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver describing why the Party was formed and what its goals are. It also includes footage of Panther recruitment, training and the Party's original 10 Point Program laid out by Chairman Bobby Seale.
1968 - 20 minutes
El Caso Contra Lincoln Center
La Renovacion Urban destruyo los hogares de 35,000 familias puertoriquenasde la ciudad de Nueva York para construir Lincoln Center, una vitrina cultural para las clase dominante de la ciudad. La pelicula explica la coneccion entre esta accion cotidiana y es imperlialismo corporativo norteamericano.
12 minutes
To keep the well-to-do from continuing to flee the city and depleting its tax base, city, state, and federal government, and the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Mellons finance the prestigious Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. It was built in the middle of a Puerto Rican ghetto, displacing thousands of families and a lively street culture. Upper-income families moved into high-rise apartment houses and gourmandise the "humanities," financially inaccessible and culturally irrelevant to the lives of the former residents.
11 minutes
Columbia Revolt
In May 1968, the students of Columbia University went on strike after the administrators repeatedly ignored their demand for open discussion of the university's involvement in racist policies, exploitation of the surrounding community of Harlem. This is the story of our first major student revolt, told from inside the liberated buildings.
1968 - 50 minutes
The Earth Belongs to the People
An analysis of the ecology crisis, this film dispels the myths that big business and big government have been telling the people about the world-wide ecological crisis. Is there really over-population in the world, or is there an unequal distribution of wealth and food? Do people or large industries ruin the environment? Will the earth survive for the people or for corporate profit????
1971 - 10 minutes
Garbage
Bringing the revolution to the Ruling Class, the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers export garbage from their Lower East Side ghetto to the halls of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts-all the while, New York was in its longest bitterest sanitation workers strike.
1968 - 10 minutes
High School Rising
High school corridors patrolled by narcotics agents and police, distortion of the history of black, brown, and poor white people, provoked student attacks on the tracking system. Stills, live footage and rock music. (Note: This film is not technically excellent, but it is very useful in understanding the problems occurring in most high schools across the nation today,)
1969 - 15 minutes
Los Siete de la Raza
This film is about the oppression of the Third World community in the Mission district of San Francisco. It deals specifically with seven Latino youths who were recruiting street kids into a college Brown Studies Program. They are accused of killing a plainclothesman. While they become victims of a press and police campaign to "clean-up" the Mission, their defense becomes the foundation of a revolutionary community organization called Los Siete
1969 - 30 minutes.
Available in Spanish and English. Spanish soundtrack is poor quality.
Make Out
The oppressive experience of making-out in a car...from the woman's point of view. Short and sweet. It can be shown a second time with the sound off and the male can make up his own sound track.
1969 - 5 minutes
Up Against the Wall Miss America
A now historical film about the disruption of the Miss America pageant of 1968. With raps, guerrilla theater, and original songs . Women stress the (mis)use of their sisters, by the pageant, as mindless sexual objects. Footage includes Attorney /activist Flo Kennedy.
6 minutes
Richmond Oil Strike
In January, 1969 oil workers in NorthernCalifornia struck. The local police and the Standard Oil goon squads attacked the strikers and their families, killing one and injuring others. The striking students from San Francisco State were asked to join the struggle. For the first time workers and students fight together against their common enemy.
Footage includes speeches of Bob Avakian.
People's Park
In the spring of 1969 , the Berkeley street community initiated a project to transform a barren and unused university-owned Lot into a park for the whole community to enjoy-a People's Park. Because the park threatened the control of the university and presented a challenge to the concept of private property, the police and National Guard were used to brutalize the people and destroy the People's Park.
25 minutes
This film was made by SF Newsreel and was originally rejected as not being political enough. It was too hippie dippy so the beginning five minute rap by Frank Barneke, a Peoples Park politico was added on in the beginning .
Por Primeria Vez (For the First Time)
The Cuban Film Institute sends mobile film units into the rural provinces-young and old delight on seeing movies "for the first time." Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin is shown in a rural village. An enchanting short that leaves you happy and smiling.
10 minutes (Available in Spanish)
Peoples' War
In the summer of 1969, Newsreel went to North Vietnam. From that trip came PEOPLES' WAR. This film moves beyond the perception of the North Vietnamese as victims to a portrait of how the North Vietnamese society is organized. It shows the relationship of the people to their government-how local tasks of a village are coordinated and its needs met. It deals with the reality of a nation that has been at war for twenty-five years, that is not only resisting US aggression and keeping alive under bombing, but that is also struggling to raise its standard of living and to overcome the underdevelopment of centuries of colonial rule. Amid much publicity, the footage was confiscated upon its return to the US. Despite this attempt at suppression, PEOPLE'S WAR has become one of the most sought-after films on Vietnam. Blue ribbon at U.S.A. film festival in Houston, Texas. and the Golden Bear Award, Moscow, USSR
1969 - 40 minutes
R.O.T.C.
The issue of ROTC is uppermost on many college campuses and is a major focus of anti-war activity. In an interview with the head of Harvard ROTC, the University's ties to the military industrial complex and how ROTC serves this relationship is exposed.
1969 - 20 minutes
Seventy-Nine Springs of Ho Chi Minh
This film on the life and death of Ho Chi Minh is a skillfully interwoven blend of old still photographs and Newsreel footage of the DRV's (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) founder, a man whose life spans three revolutions, three continents and three wars. It portrays his life: from militant student to revolutionary lead of this country; and his life-long work dedication to the Vietnamese people and their struggle for liberation. This eulogy was made by Cuba's renowned filmmaker, Santiago Alvarez. Musical soundtrack, Spanish titles. (Note: Understanding of the Spanish titles is not necessary for full enjoyment of the film.)
25 minutes
" . . . one of the most moving political films this reviewer has seen . . ." (Lenny Rubenstein, Cineaste)
She's Beautiful When She's Angry
In a skit presented at an abortion rally in New York City, a beauty contestant is pressured to fulfill certain roles in order to be the "ideal woman", a "winner". The skit shows how women, especially minority women, are used in this society for profit. The women who perform also discuss their personal lives and how their struggle as women is expressed in the skit. ( Note: Soundtrack is sometimes difficult to understand. )
1967 - 17 minutes
Strike City
Plantation workers in Mississippi having gone on strike against the extreme exploitation of the plantation system, and decide to form their own collective Their determination to stick together, rather than go back to the plantation or be forced out of the state, is their main resource. After a bitter winter, living in tents, they obtain partial support from private sources and begin building permanent housing. The poverty program backs down on its promise of support in response to Mississippi senators who fear the implications of collectives of back farmers in Mississippi.
1967 - 30 minutes
Summer '68
Draft resistance organizing in Boston, a Boston organizer's trip to North Vietnam -- a GI. coffeehouse in Texas, Newsreel's take-over of Channel 13 in New York -- following the production of the Rat's special issue on Chicago -- and Chicago during the Democratic Convention, the planning and carriage out of five days of protest. Each section focuses on an organizer central to each project--the attempt is to define the nature of commitment to "the Movement" against a backdrop of 1968's summer activities.
1968 - 60 minutes
BDRG: Boston Draft Resistance Group
This film detailed draft resistance organizing in Boston.
1968 - 15 minutes
Troublemakers
In 1965, a group of white organizers went into Newark's central ward to work with the black community, forming the Newark Community Union Project (NCUP). Traditional forms of protest--letters to city officials, demonstrations, electoral politics--were used as tactics for organizing. The film focuses on the action undertaken around three issues. The first is an attempt to get housing code enforcement; the second, to get a traffic light installed at a hazardous intersection. After many months of hallow promises, and inaction on the part of the city government an attempt was made to elect a third party candidate to the City Council. Lacking the resources of the two major parties, this was doomed to failure too The film is an absorbing, informative documentary of the frustrating failures of NCUP and the problem of getting even modest reform within the present political structure. But it goes beyond this--it shows clearly the contradictions in the concept of white groups organizing in black and other third world communities. A good study in some of the early New Left tactics--how and why they failed.
1966 - 53 minutes
The Woman's Film
The film was made entirely by women in San Francisco Newsreel. It was a collective effort between the women behind the camera and those in front of it. The script itself was written from preliminary interviews with the women in the film. Their participation, their criticism, and approval were sought at various stages of production.
"... What we see is not only natural and spontaneous, it is thoughtful and beautiful. It is a film which immediately evokes the sights and sounds and smells of working class kitchens, neighborhood streets, local supermarkets, factories, cramped living rooms, dinners cooking, diaper-washing, housecleaning, and all the other "points of production" and battlefronts where working class women in America daily confront the realities of their oppression. It is . . . a supremely optimistic statement, showing the sinews of struggle and capturing the essential energy and collective spirit of all working people-and especially that advanced consciousness which working class women bring to the common struggle." (Irwin Silber, Guardian)
1971 - 40 minutes
Yippie
Yippie is filmed farce, juxtaposing the brutal police riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention with the orgy scenes from D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance." A clear and energetic no-verbal statement of Yippie politics Hip jive.
1968 - 15 minutes
Young Puppeteers of South Vietnam
"A gift from the youth of South Vietnam to the youth of America." Teenagers in the NLF liberated areas of South Vietnam make beautiful, intricate puppets from scraps of US. war materials. Armed with these puppets, they travel through the liberated zones performing for the local children while our planes "search and destroy". A poignant film that gives a view of the war even more powerful than images of atrocities. English sound track.
25 minutes
Mayday (Black Panther)
On May 1, 1969 the Black Panther Party held a massive rally in San Francisco. Speakers Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and Charles Garry present the rally's demands for the release of Huey Newton and all political prisoners. The film includes footage of the police raid on Panther headquarters in San Francisco a few days prior to the rally and the Panther's Breakfast for Children Program.
1969 - 15 minutes
Only the Beginning
For years the sentiment against the war in Vietnam has been growing. The latest polls show that 73% of the US. population want the troops out of Vietnam now G.I.'s are among the most active protesters against the war. In April, l971, thousands of G.I.'s-Marines and regular army, veterans and active duty personnel came to Washington, DC., to denounce their participation in that "dirty war," and to demand it be ended immediately. The film begins with the demonstration in Washington. In front of the Capitol, we see the veterans come before the crowd and throw their medals away. The film moves to Vietnam where the devastating effects of US. bombs are documented. ONLY THE BEGINNING is about the GI. movement to end the war.
1971 - 20 minutes color
Two Heroic Sisters of the Grassland
A cartoon version of a true story about two young sisters who risked their lives to save their commune's sheep heard during a sudden snowstorm. The film gives us a sense both of the values stressed in the new society, and the people's participation at every level in the transformation of China.
English track 42 minutes
El Pueblo Se Levanta (THE YOUNG LORDS FILM)
One-third of the Puerto Rican people live in the United States. Most have come in search for the better life promised them by US. propaganda. Instead they found slum housing, poor or miseducation, low-paying jobs, and constantly rising unemployment, in a society determined to destroy their cultural identity The film traces the growth of the Puerto Rican struggle by focusing on the development of the Young Lords Party. A Newsreel crew in New York City worked closely with the Lords for a year and a half-participating and recording the events and programs which the Young Lords are using to make significant advances in the Puerto Rican struggle. The film deals with the main problems in the Puerto Rican community-health, education, food, and housing. These problems become the focus of the Young Lords Party.
The Case Against Lincoln Center
Urban renewal removes 35,000 Puerto Rican families from New Your City's upper West Side to build Lincoln Center, a cultural show-case for the city's middle and ruling class. The film discusses the links between the problems of the city, and the forces of American corporate imperialism.
1968 - 12 minutes (available in Spanish)
No Game
October 21, 1967; The pentagon; 100,000 anti-war demonstrators who had not come prepared for a violent confrontation with the military police and Pentagon guards; for the tear gas, and rifle butts.
Considered the first collective Newsreel film. [According to Marvin Fishman, “This film was shot and edited before Newsreel officially came into existence and was then donated to Newsreel to get the newly formed organization’s distribution service off the ground.”]
1967 - 17 minutes
Pig Power
As student take to the streets in New York and Berkeley, the forces of order illustrate Mayor Daley's thesis that the police are there "to preserve disorder", and we must organize to challenge their control and preserve our lives as well as our life styles. A short impressionistic montage of music and images pointing up the disparity between their force and ours. The function of police repressing Black and white demonstrators alike is emphasized.
6 minutes
Community Control
The struggle for Community Control in Black and Puerto Rican communities in New York City. An examination of colonialism as it manifests itself in many American cities. In two so called experimental districts, police are constantly called in to enforce the political decisions of the state and city bureaucracy, and the striking teachers; union. All ofthis taking place against the legitimate demands of the community (Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and East Harlem). Filmed inside some of the schools involved in the conflict; contains interviews with Herman Ferguson, Minister of Education for the Republic of New Africa, and Les Campbell, director of The Afro-American Teachers Association.
50 minutes
Venceremos
A film shot in Cuba in l970-71 about two brigades of 500 Americans that went to Cuba illegally in order to show support by breaking the blockade and to help with the sugar harvest of ten million tons. They cut cane with brigades that were sent from Vietnam, North Korea, and Latin America. This is the story of their boat ride from St. Johns, Canada and their stay in Cuba.
20 minutes
High School
A film about high school students and how school becomes a prison.
20 minutes (muddled, poor editing)
You Don't Have to Buy the War
A speech by former Miss America, Bess Meyerson presented to the group Another Mother for Peace at a gathering in Beverly Hills. One of the strongest speeches ever given about who is making money out of the war in Vietnam. She gives excellent reasons to boycott many everyday products that women buy.
Open for Children
One of the first films ever made about the need for childcare.
Make It Real
This is what Newsreel considered an energy film. It contains great shots of street actions and hot music. These short films were made to show between our longer films that were "more serious" They were made to give youth a feeling that they could get up and become "street fighting men".
8 minutes
McDonnel-Douglas
A film about the McDonnel-Douglas company and its relationship to the war-machine.
Free Farm
A film made by Newsreel folks that went to live in Vermont. A story about a community free farm on land loaned by a small college. It tell the story of coming together to farm the land and to have Sunday community gatherings. The college calls the cops to kick people off the land in the fall before the harvest and local young men trash the farm. An interesting note is that posters are put up warning that a local cop named Paul Lawrence was setting up and beating up people. Ten years later he was busted for planting drugs and was known as the bad cop that went to jail. A true story of hippies with politics.
1971 - 18 minutes
Inciting to Riot
A quick montage flirtation with the idea of rural guerrilla struggle in the US returning repeatedly to the reality of pig power in the cities and space technology. A flashing image of a state of mind common among hip and political youth.
10 minutes
Don't Bank on America
This is the story of one of the first ecological political actions of the period, the burning of the Bank of America. (Newsreel distributed this film?)
Mighty Mouse and Little Eva
This is a 1930's racist cartoon, taking off on Uncles Tom Cabin. Distributed by Newsreel.
8 Minutes
Ice
A film made by Newsreel member Robert Kramer with a production team made up of Newsreel members. A story of a time in the future when the US is at war with Mexico and the Americans are living in a police state. The film includes a kidnapping, a murder, prison break, takeover of an apartment house for political education, sex, nudity, and violence. and much, much more. 150 Minutes
( a new description of this film will be available soon! although this was perhaps the description in an early NR catalogue, we hope to have more background on these old films. how they were made. the process and reflections of those who worked on them )
_________
This collection includes links to each of the Newsreel Films that is currently available to view on the web. If you find that any of the links are broken, please drop a note to the archive manager (see, Contact tab) and let us know!
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
newsreel
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
11:17
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Garbage
Subject
The topic of the resource
New Left
Description
An account of the resource
"Bringing the revolution to the Ruling Class, the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers export garbage from their Lower East Side ghetto to the halls of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts-all the while, New York was in its longest bitterest sanitation workers strike. " (Roz Payne Archive) <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KtX8IEWabTY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Newsreel Films
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
YouTube
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1968
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
film
environmentalism
garbage
labor movement
Lincoln Cente
Lower East Side
Motherfuckers
New Left
New York
Poverty
strike
trash
Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers
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https://rozsixties.unl.edu/files/original/0e3bb0610037275e2254d2625671822a.jpeg
87c4774c2e2399907f102c23f91fee82
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Photographs
Description
An account of the resource
Roz Payne was a photographer and took hundreds of images of activism during the Sixties. The images in this collection include more than 500 photographs of the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Other seminal events captured here include the 1967 anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon, the 1968 student take-over at Columbia University, the 1968 Huey Newton and Panther 21 trials, the Yippies and the Venceremos Brigade. Photos include famous Sixties figures, like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, Phil Ochs, Norman Mailer, A.J. Muste, Dick Gregory, Jean Genet, William Burroughs, Richard Daley, Mark Rudd, Dhoruba Bin Wahad and others. There are numerous other photos of lesser-known moments and activists, as well.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
photograph
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Peace Sign Graffiti
(1 image)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Description
An account of the resource
An image of a peace sign on a building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Roz Payne
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
ca. late-1960s or early-1970s
Anti-War
Lower East Side
New York
peace
peace sign
Vietnam War
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Photographs
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Roz Payne was a photographer and took hundreds of images of activism during the Sixties. The images in this collection include more than 500 photographs of the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Other seminal events captured here include the 1967 anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon, the 1968 student take-over at Columbia University, the 1968 Huey Newton and Panther 21 trials, the Yippies and the Venceremos Brigade. Photos include famous Sixties figures, like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, Phil Ochs, Norman Mailer, A.J. Muste, Dick Gregory, Jean Genet, William Burroughs, Richard Daley, Mark Rudd, Dhoruba Bin Wahad and others. There are numerous other photos of lesser-known moments and activists, as well.
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photographs
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Description
An account of the resource
Roz Payne took these photos of graffiti at the Diggers’ “Free Store,” located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
In “It’s Free Because It’s Yours,” author Dominick Cavallo provided a compelling introduction to San Francisco’s legendary Diggers:
The Diggers Take The Stage
IT STARTED IN THE WANING DAYS of October 1966. Leaflets containing provocative, often bizarre messages were placed on building walls and storefronts in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. They were posted by a group calling themselves "The Diggers." No one in the city had heard of them. Most of the broadsides were distributed in Haight-Ashbury, the birthplace of the hippie counterculture. But hundreds of the mimeographed postings were handed out to pedestrians throughout the city, including the downtown financial district. Some leaflets announced events, like one that offered free food to all comers every afternoon at Golden Gate Park's Panhandle, an elegant strip of lawn and trees on Ashbury Street. (See Leaflet below.)
[Leaflet reproduced:]
Free Food Good Hot Stew
Ripe Tomatoes Fresh Fruit
Bring A Bowl and Spoon to
The Panhandle at Ashbury Street
4 pm 4 pm 4 pm 4 pm
Free Food EVERYDAY Free Food
It's Free Because It's Yours!
the diggers.
[End of leaflet.]
Digger broadsides targeted the mind as well as the stomach. Most of them had an anarchistic edge. "There must not be a Plan. We have always been defeated by our Plan," said one. Another message warned: "Watch out for cats who want to play The System's games, 'cause you can't beat The System at its own games." Still another proclaimed: "Autonomy is Power! I mean you've got to make up your own mind." One leaflet, a distant echo of Thomas Jefferson's observation that the dead were "not even things," exhorted the young to "wipe out the old—simply wipe it out." A message with the title "Money Is An Unnecessary Evil" offered amnesty to those who had it. "As part of the city's campaign to stem the causes of violence the San Francisco Diggers announce a 30 day period beginning now during which all responsible citizens are asked to turn in their money. No questions will be asked."
Some Digger bulletins were subtle and insightful, others crude and scatological. They blended the machismo that pervaded the counterculture with the intelligence, street savvy and wicked humor of their authors. Hundreds of pedestrians throughout the city were handed this epistle about the threat long hair on young males posed to "straight" Americans:
Are the mothers of America avatars of Delilah? Those preferring clippers to tresses have reacted with the sort of righteous indignation one could expect if their own balls had been threatened. The shorn men are jealous because they think you're getting laid more. They're right, but they must also realize it's your whole way of being and not just the hair or else they'd be home nights pulling at their hair instead of their dicks. Yeah, it's jealousy baby. Don't get bugged—just be beautiful and long may it wave!
In response to a suggestion by Haight-Ashbury merchants that neighborhood residents invite policemen to dinner as a way of easing tensions between hippies and city authorities, the Diggers peppered the district with this poem:
Take a cop to dinner.
Racketeers take cops to dinner with payoffs.
Pimps cake cops to dinner with free tricks.
Dealers take cops to dinner with free highs.
Unions and Corporations take cops to dinner with post-retirement jobs.
Schools and Professional Clubs take cops to dinner with free tickets to athletic events and social affairs.
The Catholic Church takes cops to dinner by exempting them from religious duties.
The Justice Department takes cops to dinner with laws giving them the right to do almost anything.
The Defense Department takes cops to dinner by releasing them from military obligation.
Establishment newspapers take cops to dinner by propagating the image of the friendly, uncorrupt, neighborhood policeman.
Places of entertainment take cops to dinner with free booze and admission to shows.
Merchants take cops to dinner with discounts and gifts.
Neighborhood Committees and Social Organizations take cops to dinner with free discussions offering discriminating insights into hipsterism, black militancy and the drug culture.
Cops take cops to dinner by granting each other immunity to prosecution for misdemeanors and anything else they can get away with.
Cops take themselves to dinner by inciting riots.
And so, if you own anything or you don't, take a cop to dinner this week and feed his power to judge, persecute and brutalize the streets of your city.
Throughout the fall of 1966 the Diggers engineered street "happenings" in Haight-Ashbury. Many were bizarre, even by the standards of that hippie haven. One of them led to the arrest of five Diggers, and the incident made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Two Diggers brought a huge wooden frame, twelve feet square and painted in bright yellow, to the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets. They called it a "Frame of Reference." Dozens of yellow three-inch replicas of the "Frame" were handed to passersby; the small frames were hung on straps so they could be worn around the neck. People were urged by the Diggers to look through the small squares so they could experience the event through their own "frames of reference." Two giant puppets appeared. Each was about eight feet high and manipulated by two men. The puppets, along with the rest of the Diggers, invited scores of pedestrians to participate in a "play" called "Fool on the Street." The Diggers organized people in polygons and had them crisscross the streets in opposite directions. The purpose of the play was to block automobile traffic as a protest against the pollution created by American technology.
It worked. When the police arrived to untangle the knot of pedestrians and stalled cars, a cop inadvertently created a memorable moment in the history of the Haight-Ashbury. "We warn you," he addressed one of the puppets, "that if you don't remove yourselves from the area you'll be arrested for blocking a public thoroughfare." The puppet responded with a question: "Who is the public?" "I couldn't care less; I'll take you in," shot back the officer. "I declare myself public," said a Digger's voice from behind the puppet. "The streets are public—the streets are free. "
In addition to their street happenings, the Diggers opened a "free" store on Page Street called the Free Frame Of Reference. The store stocked clothing, furniture and other goods. All of the items were free. "Customers" could take whatever they wished, in any quantity they desired. Indeed, if a customer wished, he could empty the entire store. The only rule in the store was etched [p. 101] on a sign not far from a box containing cash and labeled "Free Money." It read, "No Stealing."
Within weeks of their first mimeographed broadsides and street "plays," the Diggers became the most celebrated and influential voice within San Francisco's hip community, although few in the city knew their identities. Anonymity was the group's first principal. "Free means not copping credit," read one of their leaflets. The Diggers believed love and commitment should be given without strings attached, including the hope for fame or fortune. Nor did they wish to become media celebrities, thereby risking what they called "co-optation" by the "establishment." Their instant notoriety within San Francisco, which quickly spread to "hip" communities in the rest of the country, made people curious about who the Diggers were. In response to queries about their identities a Digger sent a letter to a local underground newspaper.
"Regarding inquiries concerned with the identity and whereabouts of the Diggers, we are happy to report that the Diggers are not that." The letter was signed "George Metevsky." (It was the misspelled name of George Metesky, the so-called Mad Bomber who terrorized New York City in the fifties, and was a sort of folk hero to those Diggers who came from the New York area.)
Most of the Diggers, in fact, were actors who worked for the San Francisco Mime Troupe. The Mime Troupe was an alternative theater company that presented plays for free in an abandoned church in the Mission District and in the city's parks (a hat was passed through the audience at the end of a show). The Mime Troupe had a varied repertoire, ranging from Shakespeare to Beckett, but specialized in the ribald, class-conscious medium of sixteenth-century commedia dell'arte. Perhaps those members of the Mime Troupe who at one point or another called themselves "Diggers" stumbled upon the name when performing in a play from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries—the original Diggers were mid-seventeenth-century English agrarian radicals.
Although the Diggers of San Francisco were short lived, lasting barely two years, their impact upon the style and substance of counterculture protest during the second half of the decade was significant. As a historian recently noted, the Diggers were the "high priests of the counterculture." Their iconoclastic broadsides, free services, community events and guerrilla theater street happenings were emulated by cultural radicals later in the decade. As their caper of the Fool on the Street demonstrates, the Diggers believed that consciousness could be jarred and moral "frames of reference" altered by staging theatrical confrontations between symbols of freedom and authority. This had a seminal influence on the media-oriented style of protest created in the late sixties by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. When Hoffman began his career of protest in New York City's East Village in the mid sixties he called himself a Digger. This chagrined the original Diggers, who saw Hoffman as little more than a media-obsessed publicity hound. And when Hoffman, Rubin and the satirist Paul Krassner created the far more famous Yippies in 1968 they used the Diggers as their model. More important, the Diggers distilled the chaotic urges of the counterculture during its early days in San Francisco. They brought a sort of intellectual cohesion to the embryonic hippie impulses to seek new identities, new experiences and new lives.
But the significance of the Diggers goes beyond their impact on the counterculture, within or beyond the Haight-Ashbury. Nor does it rest on their criticisms of American society. Their views more or less mirrored those of other sixties rebels, even though the Diggers disparaged most forms of political and cultural radicalism. They called the New Left self-righteous and "puritanical," and dismissed Timothy Leary's psychedelic drug culture as naive and devoid of moral direction.
The Diggers are important for understanding the counterculture because of the method they used to protest American limitations on American freedom: theater and acting. The Diggers used theatrical formats, especially the self-conscious acts of performance and improvisation, as metaphors for personal freedom and as practical means of enacting that freedom.
Diggers referred to their street plays as "life-acts." These included the free stores, the daily free food service (where the "customers" had to pass through the large "frame of reference" to get the food), and the various street happenings they organized. Digger life-acts were plays in which the most radical implications of American liberty were "performed."
Digger radicalism was based on an intuition. They never made it explicit, but it pervaded their ideas and behavior. American freedom, particularly the right of the individual to alter and refashion his identity, was an improvisation, like the Digger style of theater. The self-reliant individualism at the heart of the American version of personal freedom was based on the unspoken assumption that the individual's identity was malleable. It could be improvised, altered at will. In theatrical terms, it was an "act." American individualism, indeed the very idea of being American, was an improvised act of self-creation. "Acting" American and making yourself up as you went along were essentially the same things. History and scripts were irrelevant to both. Creating an identity in America was a process through which the individual presented (that is, staged) an invented self (or role) to his public (the audience). And the play could be endlessly restaged.
From the Diggers point of view, the idea that the individual could be self-made, become the product-in-process of his autonomous right to be what he wished, implied a performance. And if he was a conscious life-actor, he became the independent director of his own play. He could change scripts, roles and identities as he saw fit.
This had radical implications. Whether expressed in secular or religious terms, the American idea that one could be "born again" or become self-made presumed the malleability and mutability of individual identity. This was implicit in one of the grand American myths: personal identity was a willed invention rather than a fixed condition determined by an individual's family or personal history. Indeed, the Diggers viewed American culture as a stage upon which neither the "props" nor the scripts were permanent. An American life could be a consciously performed series of improvised roles. The only permanent lines in the script of American culture were the rights of individuals to create themselves and the continent's expansive stage upon which that freedom was enacted. For the Diggers, history, whether personal or collective, implied old roles for old plays. If an American wished to be free of the past, he simply needed to "act" that way.
The Diggers represented the values and dynamics of cultural radicalism in their purest, most articulate and explicit forms. They provided a (more or less) coherent rationale for the tendencies of counterculture youth to explore unchartered regions of the mind and to experiment with new forms of social relationships. Along with the use of hallucinogenic drugs, this included the hippie traits of trying on new costumes or adopting new names as ways of experimenting with novel identities. It meant "acting out" in front of others—"doing your own thing," as they said in the sixties—through self-revealing, public displays of normally private desires and fantasies. The star of Digger theater was the individual's pristine freedom and autonomy, unleashed from social controls. The antagonist of their life-acts, frequently portrayed with brutally stark condescension, was the cult of security, and the staid, settled personal life it incarnated.
This chapter describes the Diggers' performance of American freedom and their role in defining the cultural radicalism that was forged in San Francisco during the mid sixties, before it spread to the rest of the country. It also shows how their performance was linked to, and in one dramatic instance inadvertently reenacted, pre-twentieth-century literary myths about the wilderness origins of American identity, freedom and "manhood."
The Diggers were an act that combined the antics of Marx Brothers and Dead End Kids films of the thirties and forties with the tactics of shock and surprise employed by New York's "Mad Bomber" in the fifties. Theirs was a performance by determined, articulate, radical actors whose purpose was to kick away the modern props of an undemocratic, bureaucratic, materialistic culture. They offered a primitive alternative, informed by mythic visions of pristine American freedom, to the sterile roles and the repetitive, uninspiring scripts of a settled, hierarchical twentieth-century society.
The Diggers designed many of the counterculture's props. But they did not build the stage. The hunger for enhanced personal freedom was percolating among young people in the San Francisco Bay Area before the Diggers took the stage in the fall of 1966. It began in the early sixties, with student political activism at Berkeley and experiments with hallucinogenic drugs by the novelist Ken Kesey and his band of proto-hippies called the Merry Pranksters. An outline of these events, and why San Francisco provided a congenial environment for their development, is the necessary setting for describing the history of the Diggers.
___________
The Diggers also set up a Free Store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. An October 14, 1967, article in The New Yorker, described the New York Free Store:
[Ed. note: This article mentions "Richie" as one of those in the New York Free Store. This is undoubtedly the same Motorcycle Richie who plays an important role in the John Simon novel about the Diggers, Sign of the Fool.]
THE Diggers' Free Store is a small ground-floor shop at 264 East Tenth Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A, and its name is a simple description, not an advertising come-on. Diggers are hippies who help other hippies, so everything in the Free Store is given away. During its regular business hours (from one in the afternoon until nine at night, Mondays through Saturdays), the shop is crowded with Negro and Puerto Rican children, old women speaking Middle European dialects, barefoot runaways with glazed eyes, stumbling winos, and gaily ornamented hippie couples, all picking through boxes full of used shoes or fingering racks of soiled clothing or burrowing under piles of miscellaneous junk spread out on rough wooden tables, which line the walls. In one window, a bright-colored hand-lettered sign reads, "DON'T WASTE. GIVE TO THE DIGGERS." The store has been open two weeks, and contributions have included a pair of crutches, a litter of gray-and-white kittens, a broken motorcycle, and five television sets in working order. Some of the contributors are relatively well-off uptown or West Village types; others are local housewives, hippies, and Negro and Puerto Rican children. The store virtually runs itself, but the people who started it—four self-proclaimed Diggers who identify themselves merely as Clyde, Susan, Diego, and Richie—maintain an office of sorts in an incredibly cluttered room behind the shop proper. There they worry about such relatively long-range problems as how to raise enough money to pay the rent (a hundred and seventy-five dollars a month), meet the gas, electric, and telephone bills, and buy vegetables for the famous Digger stew, which is made daily in a huge white-enameled pot in a kitchen behind the office, and is ladled out—free, of course—to anyone who wants it every afternoon around five o'clock in Tompkins Square Park. When Clyde, Susan, Diego, and Richie are asked to explain why they are performing these services for the lower East Side community, each repeats the enigmatic Digger motto: "Diggers do."
Clyde is eighteen years old. He comes from Gadsden, Alabama, and has been more or less on the road since his thirteenth birthday. He stands six feet three, weighs two hundred pounds, has medium-length red hair, and is clean-shaven. His body is decorated with forty-two tattoos, mostly self-applied. He claims that he once ran a tattoo parlor in New Orleans, and made as much as five hundred dollars a week in it during Mardi Gras. Why did he give it up? "Why does anyone do anything?" he says. He met Richie out in San Francisco, where they were both "sort of connected with the Hell's Angels." He was forced to sell his motorcycle in Las Vegas when the cops arrested him as a "disorderly person." "My hair was longer then," he explains. He is one of eleven children; his father is a house painter. He drops in on his family whenever he happens to pass through Atlanta, where they now live. He speaks in a pleasant, faded drawl, and smiles easily. He wears black chino pants, black boots, and an Army shirt with a pfc.'s stripe on the sleeve. He is not worried about the draft, because of his police record. "And, if nothing else, this'll do it," he says, displaying a black swastika tattooed on the inside of his right forearm. "Lots of people don't know the war is over," he adds. "Three people have attacked me because of this. It blows minds. A good bike rider blows minds. If you can't blow minds, you can't be ‘righteous.’" When customers at the Free Store become obstreperous, he throws them out. "We get a lot of winos," he says. "You know how winos are. They see a crowd and they want to give their speech: ‘I was deprived of this and that, and that is why I'm what I am.'" At the end of the day, he helps clean up the store. "You won't believe what a mess this is every evening," he told us. He is getting married next month to a girl named Hilda Hoffman. "It's a bike wedding," he says. "Everyone will come on bikes and take off afterward for a party."
Susan is twenty-one years old. She comes from Detroit, where her father is a tool-and-die maker. She ran away from home at eighteen and went to Chicago, where site lived with a group of hippies. "I scrounged food for ten people a day," she said. Like Clyde, she met Richie in San Francisco, where she lived "in a real barn." Richie told her, "I'm taking you away," but she said no, so he headed for New York on his motorcycle but got locked up in Las Vegas for twenty-one days and had to come back to San Francisco. The next time, she left with him. They have been "going steady" for six months, and are planning to be married in a double ceremony with Clyde and Hilda. She has blue eyes, brown hair, and a pale skin, and wears a Mexican riding blouse of white muslin unbuttoned down the front to reveal a purple T-shirt with a silk-screened portrait of "the Zig-Zag man," done by a West Coast poster artist. On her head she wears a "Rigoletto" hat of dark-red velvet, with dyed ostrich plumes, which she found in a carton of contributions from a theatrical-costume shop. A handsome Weimaraner hound spends most of his time sitting at her feet. "That's Cigar. He's two years old and has genuine Digger fleas," she told us. On most afternoons, she ladles out tile Digger stew in Tompkins Square Park. She says that the most important thing in life is to remember that "you’re free to do whatever you want to do."
Diego is forty-four years old. He is from Indianapolis, and has deep-reddish-brown hair and a bushy beard. He knew Clyde in New Orleans ("I know people everywhere"), and he came to New York in June. He cooks the Digger stew, in a thirty-two-quart pot on a gas range in the Free Store’s kitchen. "I can do just about anything in a kitchen that needs to be done," he says. "I've been all around the country, and the best place to get a job when you're hungry is in a restaurant." The meat for his stew—beef trimmings or ham hocks or "perfectly good" wieners or sausages with ripped casings–is donated by a local wholesale butcher. "There's enough good food wasted around town in a day to feed half the country," he told us. Besides meat, he throws into the pot whatever fresh vegetables are in season—carrots, potatoes, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, garlic—and "lots of spices." Every morning, the Diggers pick up a huge bag of day-old rolls at Rapoport's Restaurant, on Second Avenue. The Diggers feed as many as fifty people each weekday and up to a hundred a day on weekends. "We haven't turned anyone away yet, but there's never any left over, either," Diego said. "We’re going to have to go to two pots soon."
Richie is twenty-three years old. His father died when he was an infant. His mother is a licensed real-estate broker on Long Island—"a real bourgeois; she owns a Caddy." He hasn't seen her in years. "I have two pairs of pants to my name," he says proudly. He wears a blue woolen cap; his hair, which is dark, falls almost to his shoulders. He spent two years in a New York State reform school and has been on the road since he was eighteen. He ran into the Diggers in San Francisco, where he kept his motorcycle in a Digger garage. Before long, he was using his bike to deliver Digger stew to Golden Gate Park. He also got a look at four Free Stores that the Diggers have been operating in San .Francisco, and he liked what he saw. "People ask, 'Why a free store?'" he told us. "We tell them it's free because it's yours. Take what you need. If you take more than you need, you'll know it. Every day they tear this place apart, and every night we clean it up." He smiled one of his rare smiles. "The Sanitation Department won’t remove our trash, because they say we’re a commercial establishment." Richie doesn't believe in city administrations in general, or in cops, but he has only praise for Deputy Inspector Joseph Fink, the commander of the Ninth Precinct, whose men patrol the lower East Side. "All the hippies dig Fink." Richie said to us. "If anyone has to be a cop—if that's his thing—then he ought to be like Fink." Richie sums up his own philosophy in a single sentence: "Every human being's got a right to do his thing as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else." But he adds, "I don't believe in throwing flowers if someone's trying to take what's yours away from you. The Diggers say, 'I'm not going to pay for your trip.'" He admits that he likes to "start things up" and then move on. "I fluctuate between being a Digger and an outlaw motorcycle rider," he says. Looking into the distant future, he says that he may someday "buy some land in Marin County, in California, when I can save up a couple thousand dollars—you know, settle down and become a real bourgeois."
Title
A name given to the resource
Graffiti from The Diggers' "Free Store" in New York
(2 images)
Subject
The topic of the resource
counterculture
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Roz Payne
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1969
Abbie Hoffman
anarchism
counterculture
Dead End Kids
Diggers
Dominick Cavallo
Emmett Grogan
Frame of Reference
Free Store
George Metesky
Golden Gate Park
Haight-Ashbury
happening
hippies
Jerry Rubin
Ken Kesey
life-acts
Lower East Side
Marx Brothers
Merry Pranksters
New Left
New York
New Yorker
Paul Krassner
San Francisco
San Francisco Mime Troupe
theater
Timothy Leary
Yippies
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Underground Press
Description
An account of the resource
One of the key characteristics of the various movements of the 1960s-era was the creation of alternative, or "underground," newspapers. These newspapers were not clandestine, though. Quite the opposite. They were important public organizing tools for New Left movements, crucial to disseminating information, educating activists and promoting events. In addition to articles, they also often included comix and other graphics, advertisements and sometimes even personals. This collection contains a range of underground newspapers, some focused on a particular movement, like the women's movement, others offering broader coverage of the many movements taking place at the time.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
newspaper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
RAT Subterranean News, May 22-June 4, 1970
Subject
The topic of the resource
New Left
Description
An account of the resource
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 media and revolution; Joan Bird and Dionne Donghi; a labor walk-out at Bell Telephone in New York; the police killing of six black men in Augusta, Georgia; police killing of two students at Jackson State; street-fighting between Puerto Rican youths and police on the Lower East Side; poetry; the role of women in the labor movement; brief reports on anti-colonial struggles in Portuguese’s African colonies; corporate repression of indigenous people in Brazil; 9 days of global activism in May; revolutionary feminism; squatting; “The Woman-Identified Woman”; How to…; emergency first aid for street warfare; ads and personals; repression against marijuana advocates; letters to the editor.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAT Subterranean News
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
May 22-June 4, 1970
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
underground press
Alice Embree
anti-colonialism
Anti-War
Augusta
Austin
Bell Telephone
Black Panther Party
Black Power
Brazil
counterculture
Dionne Donghi
drugs
East Village Other
feminism
FRELIMO
Gary Thiher
Gay Liberation
Georgia
Guinea
homosexuality
Jackson
Jackson State
Jeff Shero
Joan Bird
John Sinclair
labor movement
lesbianism
Lower East Side
marijuana
Mississippi
Mozambique
New Left
New York
police
Police Brutality
Puerto Rican Nationalism
Rat
Rat Subterranean News
self-defense
squatting
street warfare
Texas
The Rag
Vietnam War
Women's Liberation
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Underground Press
Description
An account of the resource
One of the key characteristics of the various movements of the 1960s-era was the creation of alternative, or "underground," newspapers. These newspapers were not clandestine, though. Quite the opposite. They were important public organizing tools for New Left movements, crucial to disseminating information, educating activists and promoting events. In addition to articles, they also often included comix and other graphics, advertisements and sometimes even personals. This collection contains a range of underground newspapers, some focused on a particular movement, like the women's movement, others offering broader coverage of the many movements taking place at the time.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
newspaper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
RAT Subterranean News, June 5-19, 1970
Subject
The topic of the resource
New Left
Description
An account of the resource
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.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
RAT Subterranean News
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 5-19, 1970
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
underground press
A
A.I.M.
Alice Embree
American Indian Movement
Anti-War
Argentina
Austin
BIA
Black Panther Party
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Ceylon
Conference for Women
counterculture
Dave Hughey
Dionne Donghi
East Village Other
FBI
feminism
France
Gary Thiher
George Demmerle
gynecology
informant
Jane Alpert
Jeff Shero
labor
Lower East Side
New Left
New York
Panther 21
Puerto Rican Independence
Rat Subterranean News
Sam Melville
sexism
Sylvia Plath
Texas
The Feminists
The Rag
Vietnam War
Weather Underground
Women's Liberation
Young Lords