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Title: Interview about Liberated Guardian Author: James Herod Date: September 2014 Language: en Topics: interview
Interview with James Herod, by the Italian Group, Yes Alternative Press,
September 2014, about his Participation in the Liberated Guardian.
Published in Yes Yes Yes Alternative Press '66-'77 from Provo to Punk,
edited by Emanuele de Donno, and Amedeo Martegani. Published by
a+mbookstore, Milano, in collaboration with Colli Publishing Platform,
Rome, 2015, 493 pages, 9"x12" in size, 1-1/2" thick.
1. We would like to start by asking some personal information: name,
age, place of birth, where are you based right now?
My name is James Herod. I was born in Pryor, Oklahoma, USA on September
28, 1935. I will be 79 years old this month. I live in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA.
2. What did it mean to work in the underground press scene and how did
you get close to it? Which magazine did you work for/in? What was the
relation with the other underground newspapers?
I had a friend who had a friend who was involved in the split at the
Guardian newspaper on April 12, 1970, a national left-wing paper based
in New York City. He encouraged me to join the new group, which began
publishing the Liberated Guardian on April 20, 1970. I joined the
project in its early months and stayed with it until the end, with some
absences. The paper ran for around forty issues, from April 1970 until
February 1973. It ended when the Liberated Guardian itself suffered a
split. I wrote up my interpretation of that second split in my book,
Coming to Terms with the New Left: The Split at the Liberated Guardian
and Its Larger Significance. I was always marginal to the paper. I was
35 years old when I joined. I was accepted into the collective probably
only because I was still a student at Columbia University and was
generally active in the radical movement. Nevertheless, I was 10-15
years older than most of the other members, especially the core members.
It was something of a generation gap, although I didn't think of it that
way at the time.
What did it mean? Well, for one thing it was tremendously exciting --
politically, intellectually, socially. We published the paper from a
loft in a dilapidated building in Manhattan's Lower East Side. We
functioned as a "collective," an informal cooperative, based on direct
democracy. Most of our meetings took place in the front room of the loft
(the biggest) with everyone sitting in a circle on the floor. There were
no bosses. We debated all the then currently raging issues. The movement
of the sixties was still alive. Revolution was in the air. Although we
didn't know it at the time, the paper had come into being at the very
tail end of the uprisings of the sixties. By the time the paper ended
2-1/2 years later the revolutionary movement of the sixties had pretty
much been destroyed and had dissipated.
In those days, most of the "underground" newspapers were on each other's
mailing lists. So we got copies of a whole bunch of other papers
regularly. There was also a lot of communication amongst some of them,
based mostly on personal friendships, I think. There was an Underground
Press Syndicate which facilitated these exchanges, but was in no sense a
controlling national organization. Each paper was independent. It simply
never occurred to anyone not to be. Because our paper was based in New
York City, I guess, we got material to publish from people all over the
United States and from other countries occasionally. In that sense the
Liberated Guardian was perhaps more national and international than most
other movement newspapers. Liberation New Service was also based in New
York City. We used copy from them regularly, and I suppose some in our
group had personal acquaintances among them.
Remarkably, a book had come out already in 1972 about the "underground"
press, published by Simon and Schuster, called: The Paper
Revolutionaries: The Rise of the Underground Press, by Laurence Leamer
(220 pages).
Another such study has recently appeared, loaded with color
reproductions, by PM Press, 2011, 203 pages, edited by Sean Stewart,
preface by Paul Buhle, titled: On The Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal
History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S. This book is
compiled from interviews with actual participants in various papers, so
it is similar to the book you are putting together, it would seem. In
the introduction to this book, the editor lists a few references to
other books about the underground press (in addition to the two just
mentioned). I will list them here for the benefit of your readers.
-- John Birmingham, Our Time is Now: Notes from the High School
Underground
-- Roger Lewis, Outlaws of America: The Underground Press and Its
Context
-- John McMillian, Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press
and
the Rise of Alternative Media in America
-- Patrick Rosenkranz, Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution
-- Robert Glessing, The Underground Press in America
-- Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the
Underground Press
3. When using the word "underground" we implicitly mean that there is an
"overground." What was "overground" at that time? Is there a dialogue
between what is underground and what is mainstream today?
Sadly, and unfortunately, the term "underground" is a terrible misnomer.
None of these papers were in any way underground, in the sense of being
clandestine, secret, illegal. They were all published right out in the
open, with known street addresses, and known participants. I don't know
how the expression came to be, but it was a mistake. It gradually, over
the years, gave way to, or was replaced by, the term "alternative." This
was much better, but still inadequate. Finally, the term "independent"
started to be used. Now we refer to the Independent Media. The only
thing truly "underground" in the United States, or the only well-known
thing, during those years, was the Weather Underground.
On the other side of the coin, the term "mainstream" is recently, and
increasingly, starting to be replaced by "corporate." Corporate Media,
not Mainstream Media. This is much more accurate. The expression
"mainstream" was always an insult to opposition movements. Why should
opposition media be defined as marginal, whereas government and
corporate media is considered mainstream? Theirs is dominant, that's for
sure, but it rarely reflects majority opinion. It is Establishment
media, the media of the 1%.
During the '60s and '70s, at the time of the so-called underground
press, there was only one other press, the regular press, the actually
existing press. Each city or town had one or two newspapers. There were
only a few national TV stations. The Left, of course, had always had its
own press, with party newspapers, journals, and magazines, all of which
were hardly known about by ordinary people. But the newspapers of the
New Left were something else entirely, a new phenomenon – newspapers
published by small autonomous groups not connected to any political
party or union – hundreds of them, which received wide circulation, in
many different social arenas – high schools, army bases, colleges and
universities, minority communities, or simply whole towns or cities.
The New Left's movement newspapers were incredibly innovative, both in
terms of content as well as design. As for content, if you take the
whole output of these papers over the decade or so that they existed,
there is hardly a topic or issue that didn't come in for critical
analysis. Virtually everything came under scrutiny. Question everything,
was the motto, and we did. Only a small part of this extraordinary
outpouring of critical analysis has been mined and collected into book
anthologies. I wish a lot more of it would be.
As for design, the movement newspapers really busted up the staid design
characteristic of regular papers at the time. Printed newspapers have
never been the same since.
As for now, on the relation between independent media and corporate
media, there are shelves full of studies, about the concentration in
ownership of corporate media, about how it has truly been turned into a
propaganda arm for government and corporations, about how the internet
and other social media has for the first time been able to make a dent
in the ability of Establishment media to control public opinion
(although less so in the United States than just about anywhere else).
Opposition movements today don't rely much on newspapers. Even corporate
newspapers are dying. But radicals still publish lots of magazines,
journals, and books, and also posters, cds, dvds, and pamphlets, plus
hundreds or thousands of web sites. Nevertheless, the power of corporate
media is still hegemonic. I read just recently about how the relatively
freer, more independent media of Europe has over the past ten years been
brought largely under control to echo the Corporate Media in the United
States. I hope this is not as true as the article seemed to suggest.
As for dialogue, I see some dialogue between today's independent media
and its readers and viewers about the corporate media, but virtually
none with the corporate media itself. Capitalist media is impervious to
criticism, from anyone, let alone from revolutionaries, or so it seems.
The big change is that all of us are free from dependence on capitalist
media for news and analysis. Anyone can get on the internet and read
newspapers and websites from all over the world, from a wide range of
political perspectives. You would think that this would enable us to
hold corporate media accountable, but it doesn't, any more than it means
we can hold governments accountable. They do what they want. It does
mean though that they are "emperors without clothes," at least for us.
And now there are more of us than ever before. They still control the
narrative, but not nearly as totally as they did before.
However, the internet is a mixed blessing, to say the least. It is
highly addictive, and it is a powerful atomizer, further breaking
society down into isolated individuals, even more than it already is. I
am aware of the intense debates within the radical community that have
raged for years about the internet and the new social media, and their
usefulness, or not, for revolution. It's complicated, and quite frankly,
I'm not up on it sufficiently to argue the case one way or the other.
I'm an old man. I hardly even know what Facebook is or how it works,
even though it has been explained to me several times by young friends.
I have a close friend, a brilliant young man in his early twenties, who
is a computer whiz and incredibly media savvy. He has recently become
quite disillusioned with the internet. The issue may become moot. The
Establishment is trying desperately to control it, and to destroy net
neutrality, and otherwise neutralize its usefulness to social forces
hostile to the status quo. I can't judge whether they will succeed or
not.
4. In our contemporary society, is it still possible to stay
"underground?" How have contents and containers changed? (from paper to
digital, advancing of technology, social network, social media, etc.)
The media environment today is markedly different than what existed in
the sixties. The movement newspapers then were made possible,
technologically, by the invention of web offset printing, which meant
that commercial printers could do short runs of a few thousand copies.
And they were cheap. So any group could scrape together the cash. Beyond
that you just needed a stand-alone IBM selectric typesetter (a glorified
type-writer), some paste-up materials, and lots of volunteer labor. Then
you were set to go.
As I explained above, I don't believe that movement newspapers were ever
underground, so I can't respond to that part of your question. But
today's independent media, as far as the printed word goes, is
substantially the same, with the difference being that there aren't that
many newspapers. The bulk of print production today goes into magazines,
journals, pamphlets, and books. There is also (or was) a huge "zine"
production, i.e., short texts, usually self-illustrated, which were
self- written, designed, and produced. Photocopying is much changed from
the sixties. Now, someone can write a zine, type and lay it out, then
run off a hundred copies on a photocopier, without much expense. There
are also groups which do nothing but distribution, so the zines get out,
and get preserved in zine libraries.
On a larger scale, we have independent radio and television stations,
independent film makers, independent book publishers, book fairs, and
book stores, all on a much grander scale than existed in the sixties, as
well as web sites galore. Somehow, though, it still doesn't add up to a
serious threat to capitalist hegemony. This is a real downer.
5. Does alternative culture necessarily need a commodity nowadays, or is
it able to stand by itself without profits and rewards?
I take it by this you mean to ask whether it is possible to have an
alternative culture outside the hegemonic capitalist commodified
culture? This is a good question. It obviously is possible because
revolts keep breaking out. In spite of the enormous powers that
contemporary ruling classes have to control public consciousness
resistance movements keep emerging. In fact, one of the most striking
recent developments, is that the capitalist ruling classes have lost
their ideological veneer. They can no longer plausibly justify
themselves theoretically. They are standing naked, exposed. Their
mendacity and brutality is no longer obscured by a propaganda smoke
screen. People see through them. This is why they are having to rely
more and more on brute force to maintain their dominance. This is very
encouraging from the point of view of those hoping to get out of
capitalism, and to rid the world of this 500-year-old pestilence.
In the short run, of course, all revolts still take place within
commodified societies. The United States is surely the most thoroughly
commodified capitalist society in the world. If revolts can happen here,
they can happen anywhere. And this is a powerfully locked down society.
That's why revolts here are less frequent and forceful than perhaps
anywhere else. Yet they do happen. Commodification sets restraints,
obviously. Most everyone needs money to live, equipment and material
must be bought, bills must be paid. We can't do anything without using
commodities. But within these confines, we can still find room to
revolt, and attack our oppressors. There are cracks in the empire.
In the long run, the only way to get out of the capitalist commodified
world (and now they are really commodifying every last thing on earth –
water, wind, seeds, genes, feelings, illness, the ocean, rain forests,
government functions, even war) is, most basically, to achieve a shift
out of commodified labor (wage-slavery) into cooperative labor, and
along with this to slowly extricated ourselves from the world of
commodities which are bought and sold to a world of mutual aid, gift
giving, and sharing. I have tried to spell out some of the steps we
could take to accomplish this in my book Getting Free: Creating an
Association of Democratic Autonomous Neighborhoods.
By the way, it is not too useful, it seems to me, to frame the
phenomenon of the movement newspapers of the '60s and '70s within the
concept of culture alone. It was a cultural event, of course, but not
essentially so. These newspapers were an expression of a revolutionary
movement, a global systemic revolt against capitalism (although the
anti-capitalism was not always, or even often, explicit). When that
movement disappeared (it was crushed, mostly, but it also disintegrated
from internal contradictions) so did the newspapers.
6. Imagine a drug that could reanimate our dying culture: which one
would it be?
You are joking I hope. Or maybe you surmise that anyone involved in the
revolts of the sixties would naturally think along these lines. The main
function that marijuana (the obvious drug of choice in the sixties) has
served these past forty years, at least in the United States, is to lock
people up, to fill the prisons, to suppress dissent. Why would anyone
think that a drug could fix things? Well, we could try Aldous Huxley's
Soma, I guess, but that wouldn't reanimate anyone; it would further
pacify us. Arthur Koestler, in his book Janus, pinned his hope for
humanity on the invention of a drug that would neutralize the influence
of the reptilian part of our brains over the higher, more civilized,
consciousness-forming parts. He saw humans as deeply flawed
biologically. His was a vain hope indeed. We probably are flawed
biologically, but this can't be fixed with a drug. Rather than searching
for a magical drug, we should be trying to break our addictions to
stuporous practices which weaken us and render us defenseless, like
alcoholism, internet abuse, drugs and medications, trivia, video games,
spectator sports, junk news, junk food, junk movies, narcissism,
nihilism, tourism, listening to ruling class media, and so forth.
Besides, one could argue that the culture is not dying, and that in fact
we are in the beginning phases of the emergence of the first truly
global culture and consciousness, which, fortunately, is a radical one,
the first really world-wide anti-capitalist consciousness. This
consciousness is also rejecting representative government, insisting on
direct democracy instead, and decentralization. It is against empire. It
is environmentally aware, ecological. Many millions of people worldwide
are beginning to connect the dots between global warming and capitalism.
So in this sense, these are hopeful times.
A couple of things are dying, it's true. The global American Capitalist
Empire is dying. And the Earth is dying, killed by capitalists. Some
argue that capitalism itself is dying, and will be gone within forty
years. I fear that this will be too late to save the earth, but let's
hope not.
Consciousness altering drugs may find room for safe usage in a free
society, but as used currently they hamper effective resistance to
oppression (and, indeed, are frequently used by the ruling class to
destroy opposition movements, like they did with the black liberation
movement in the United States). In this sense I have always been at odds
with the sixties.
7. In our research, we specifically focus on the relation and influence
between the European underground press scenario (starting from Provo)
and the American one. How would you analyze this connection?
I can't help you much here. Americans are an insular people. Most of us
don't speak a foreign language. Living and publishing out of New York
City as we did, we obviously had an opportunity to meet up with
revolutionaries from all over the world, on a pretty regular basis, who
were passing through the city. We did a long piece once on the Quebecois
in Canada. We regularly featured articles on Palestine. We followed the
Vietnamese English press of course. We had visitors from Italy, France,
Germany, England, Cuba, Mexico, West Indies, and so forth. I think we
did receive European papers from time to time. But as far as formal
alliances with the European movement press, I don't think there were
any, as far as I know. But as I explained above, I was always marginal
to the project, so I might have missed them.