Monday, April 4, 2016

The Story of the Late and Great Washington Free Press

Authorities took the challenge represented by the underground media seriously.  This article from the Spark website composed and maintained by Craig Simpson tells the story of a campaign of police and judicial harassment in the Washington DC area.

https://washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/washington-free-press-battles-suppression-1969-70/#comment-1679

Friday, April 1, 2016

Greil Marcus and George Jackson

Most people know Greil Marcus as an observer, commentator and critic of US culture, especially of music, from rock and roll back into the American folk ether.  In the early, 1970s, when he wrote for a much less mainstream Rolling Stone magazine and the great rock mag CREEM (which also featured Lenny Kaye and Patti Smith), Marcus was also often quite political. One of the foundations of my book Daydream Sunset is that the New Left, the Black Liberation movement and the counterculture were closely bound in a common struggle against the US warmongering and racist establishment.  This piece, written for CREEM after Black Panther George Jackson was murdered at San Quentin prison in 1971, is proof of that.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B01dj5QyuLDeRkx4aGVsekQ2Tnc