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77-490: After a few meetings, three of these groups joined forces and the Willamette Bridge was born. The people who started The Bridge (as it came to be known) didn't think of themselves as just "journalists", per se- but rather, as communicators, community organizers. They saw their role as spreading the word about what was happening in the city and the world, and hoping that just spreading that information would help change

154-476: A center for the bustling Texas boomtown's peace and hipster communities while spinning off a host of other countercultural institutions. In a 1976 book about modern Texas folklore , Hermes Nye wrote that "the dark-haired bespectacled, lovely Victoria Smith and her compadre , dashing mustachioed Thorne Dreyer... helped lay the cornerstone of Houston's Space City! ... a well written, sprightly sheet... [that] also had an eye for vivid, telling graphics and poetry of

231-466: A countercultural hub," hosting art openings, political meetings, and social gatherings attended by Jane Fonda , Robert Altman , Warren Hinckle , and others. While in Houston, Thorne Dreyer engaged in an eclectic array of pursuits. He worked professionally as an actor, a freelance writer and editor, a political consultant, a correspondent for Texas Monthly magazine, a public information officer for

308-421: A feature story with the headline, "Political parties: The campaign get-together taking on aura of best show in any town, thanks to Thorne Dreyer," in which writer Gary Christian said, "Dreyer, 32-year-old public relations man making a name for himself with his party-planning, is out to defeat that deadly seriousness surrounding political parties..." Dreyer's lively, creative events – that pulled together people from

385-588: A greater emphasis on what they saw as radical politics. The paper shut down a year later. After the "Bridge" ended its run as Portland's local underground paper in 1971 it was succeeded by the Portland Scribe . Underground Press Syndicate The Underground Press Syndicate ( UPS ), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate ( APS ), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines that operated from 1966 into

462-585: A haven for bohemians and iconoclasts, was also the center of a very active left political community based at the University of Texas campus and was a major player in the massive Sixties drug and music culture – incubating talents like Janis Joplin and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and some of the pioneering psychedelic poster and comix artists. And The Rag united those communities into a potent political force. Thorne Dreyer heralded

539-477: A high level." Historian Leamer wrote about Space City! : "There is a solid intelligence to the reviews and cultural articles... It is a radical journalism grounded in fact... resolved and balanced in content and full of common purpose..." John Siemssen, writing in Houston's Other , quoted former Space City! staffer Bobby Eakin: "Thorne [Dreyer] was the glue that held the paper together..." Eakin added, "When it

616-606: A long essay co-authored by Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith, titled "The Movement and the New Media," which was considered to be the first serious journalistic portrait of the increasingly powerful underground press phenomenon. Dreyer also wrote extensively about the growing repression of underground papers throughout the country. In his book The Paper Revolutionaries: The Rise of the Underground Press , Laurence Leamer called Houston's Space City! "unquestionably one of

693-497: A manager. Dreyer also worked for Half Price Books, buying and selling used and rare books, and later ran an online bookselling business. During the 1990s, according to the Austin American-Statesman 's Brad Buchholz, Thorne Dreyer "suffered through a divorce, depression and two prison sentences for cocaine possession." Dreyer weathered a time of major personal crisis, struggling with severe clinical depression,

770-621: A model for many papers that followed. Abe Peck, author of Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press , wrote that " The Rag was the first independent undergrounder to represent... the participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the midsixties was trying to develop." Author Douglas C. Rossinow, described The Rag as "enormously important to local activists," and historian McMillian said that The Rag

847-486: A national advertising media selling company, APSmedia . APSmedia placed advertising primarily from record and stereo companies with success, placing more than 350 pages of advertising for many of the publications in the bigger markets in the first year. As cities were in the major markets, it mostly sold ads into publications without the advertisers knowing anything more than the names of the client papers. In 1976, APSmedia dissolved. By 1974 most underground newspapers in

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924-572: A national youth culture and in both subtle and direct ways influenced their colleagues in the 'establishment media.'" During this time Dreyer's writings were widely distributed, appearing regularly in dozens of periodicals. His coverage of the March 27, 1967, anti-war action at the Pentagon in Washington – with its massive acts of civil disobedience – was distributed by LNS and published around

1001-423: A non-issue in the male-dominated underground press, became an increasing focus. The UPS passed the following resolutions at its 1969 conference: These resolutions were a harbinger of staff rebellions by women that split several papers, including Rat , where the feminist faction seized control of the paper for several issues. A few papers, already weakened by staff burnout, poor finances, and other factors, died in

1078-581: A profit. The explosive growth of the underground press had begun to subside by 1970, and by 1973 the boom was clearly over. After a 1973 meeting of member newspapers in Boulder, Colorado , the name of the syndicate was changed to the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS). APS members sorely needed revenues, and in 1973, Richard Lasky, ex- Rolling Stone Magazine Advertising Director of the successful San Francisco-based weekly, and Sheldon (Shelly) Schorr of Concert Magazine , published in several cities, created

1155-519: A result, countercultural news stories, criticism, and cartoons were widely disseminated, and a wealth of content was available to even the most modest start-up paper. Shortly after the formation of the UPS, the number of underground papers throughout North America expanded dramatically. A UPS roster published in November 1966 listed 14 underground papers — a 1971 roster listed 271 UPS-affiliated papers in

1232-406: A role in developing the concept of an alternate press? Yes. Did we have any real part in the way the press developed? Perhaps we did, at least in a small way. Did we succeed in directing serious attention to cultural issues beyond the standard underground press focal points of rock music, drugs, sex, and new left politics? Not hardly". Thorne Dreyer Thorne Webb Dreyer (born August 1, 1945)

1309-492: A steel arrow fired from a crossbow through the front door), and threats, both to staff members and advertisers." Raj Mankad wrote at OffCite that the Klan's violent actions against Space City! were part of a larger picture of "threats and acts of violence against progressive and radical institutions in Houston. The KPFT [Pacifica] station transmitter was bombed off the air twice. Bullets were shot at and yellow paint thrown on

1386-656: A wide and loyal following in the progressive blogosphere . He is also host and producer of Rag Radio, a popular weekly interview show, and serves as a director of the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, that publishes The Rag Blog . Melanie Scruggs wrote in 2012 that " The Rag simply went dormant, and in fact, has come to life... as a blog initiated at the Rag Reunion... and Funnelled by none other than Thorne Dreyer himself. The Rag legacy carries onward even as so few people of

1463-634: A widespread Internet following and all episodes are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive . Dreyer also helped set up an Austin chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), associated with the newly reestablished SDS. The group organized demonstrations around opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq and other progressive issues. Dreyer was involved with Progressives for Obama, which offered critical support to Barack Obama during his initial campaign for president (the organization has continued under

1540-536: Is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture , New Left , and underground press movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas , where he edits the progressive internet news magazine, The Rag Blog , hosts Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM , and is a director of the New Journalism Project. In June 2012 Dreyer topped a published list of Austin's most important political bloggers, and in 2011 received

1617-589: Is gentle and decent." The Rag was the first underground paper in the South and the sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS). Cited by historian Laurence Leamer as "one of the few legendary undergrounds," The Rag was credited with being the first of its genre to successfully combine the radical politics of the New Left with the spirit of the burgeoning alternative culture, and, according to historian John McMillian, it served as

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1694-604: The Berkeley Barb , The Paper ( East Lansing, Michigan ), and Fifth Estate ( Detroit , Michigan). The first official UPS gathering was held at the home of the San Francisco Oracle 's Michael Bowen in Stinson Beach, California , in March 1967, with some 30 people representing a half-dozen papers in attendance. The meeting was chaotic and largely symbolic, and the concept was amorphous. It

1771-540: The Chicago Seed ) and immediately joined. First-hand coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots in Fifth Estate was one example of material that was widely copied in other papers of the syndicate. The first paper in the deep South to join was The Inquisition ( Charlotte, North Carolina ). Fluxus West , a Fluxus offshoot mostly engaged in mail art and self-publishing activities, founded by Ken Friedman ,

1848-726: The Mighty 90 News . Dreyer would also serve for a time as the station's general manager. During this period he became active in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in Harris County and was on the Texas staff of George McGovern 's anti-war presidential campaign. He edited a statewide campaign tabloid, served as a McGovern delegate to the Texas State Democratic Convention, and attended

1925-603: The University of Texas at Austin where he took liberal arts and theater courses. Dreyer's family was at the center of a large literary and activist community in Houston. His mother, Margaret Webb Dreyer , was an acclaimed artist, teacher, and peace activist – and a leading light in the local cultural scene—and his father, Martin Dreyer, was a fiction writer and long-time travel editor at the Houston Chronicle and

2002-628: The 2011 book Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America , the papers' combined readership eventually reached into the millions. Rolling Stone's John Burks quoted Thorne Dreyer as saying that the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was organized "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers poised for the kill." But, as McMillian and others would emphasize,

2079-509: The City of Houston, a booking agent for jazz and rock musicians, an event planner, and a bookseller—and for years operated a leading Houston public relations business. He has one son, Dustin Dreyer, who lives in Houston. In 1963, Dreyer went to Austin to attend the University of Texas, but soon joined SDS and became heavily involved in the New Left—in student power and civil rights activities and

2156-656: The U.S. had ceased publication. APS limped along but had gone defunct by 1978; succeeded almost immediately by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies , founded in Seattle . Although many of the members of the Underground Press Syndicate/Alternative Press Syndicate were founded when the legendary urban underground papers were already dead or dying, their influence resonated through the 1970s and beyond, both in

2233-652: The UT-Austin campus police tracked the lives of dissidents and iconoclasts in the Sixties. John McMillian writes that "some of what's happening in the left-wing blogosphere can... be compared to the Sixties underground press," and Thorne Dreyer told the Austin Chronicle 's Kevin Brass that "There are a lot of similarities in the two eras." Brass, indeed, sees The Rag Blog as "part of an effort to revive some of

2310-625: The United States, Canada, and Europe. The underground press' combined readership eventually reached into the millions. For many years the Underground Press Syndicate was run by Tom Forcade , who later founded High Times magazine. The Underground Press Syndicate was initially formed by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other (New York City), the Los Angeles Free Press ,

2387-653: The United States. An attempt that summer by Bob Rudnick to coordinate and centralize the UPS at the offices of the East Village Other in New York City failed. Soon after, Tom Forcade took leadership of the organization, opening an office on West 10th Street in New York City, at which UPS curated the underground press collection for regular microfilming as well as publishing the UPS News Service . Offices were relocated to Miami during

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2464-603: The Wall ," she said. Handwriting on the Wall was published each night during the convention and posted all over town, playing an important role in keeping the thousands of demonstrators informed about the week's cascading events. These wall posters were featured in the 2011 exhibit, "Left to Right: Radical Movements of the 1960s," at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin. In October 1966,

2541-720: The Week . Meanwhile, other cartoonists whose work appeared in UPS-member papers, such as the East Village Other and the Berkeley Barb , saw their work widely distributed, eventually leading to success in the underground comix industry. Ironically, however, reprints became popular with publishers because underground artists originally had few claims on their own work . The open-ended permissions given by UPS were exploited by some underground comix publishers, bulking up or entirely filling their own magazines with work whose creators didn't receive any payment even when those publishers made

2618-510: The arts and political communities—were cited by The Texas Observer as the best political parties in the state. Dreyer also worked as a feature writer and correspondent for the early Texas Monthly magazine and as a booking agent and personal manager for jazz and rock musicians – including popular jazz singer Cy Brinson—and handled advertising, promotion, and booking for a number of popular Houston clubs and music venues, including Cody's, Rockefeller's, and Mum's Jazzplace, where he also served as

2695-656: The breakup of his marriage, and a long-standing bout with drug use. At a time when prosecution for cocaine possession was at its most severe, Dreyer was twice arrested and convicted for possession of small quantities of the controlled substance. During this time Dreyer did little productive work. Many veterans of the Sixties New Left experienced similar periods of crisis and "burnout," and a few, like Dreyer's friend Abbie Hoffman , even committed suicide. But Thorne would soon turn his life around as he reunited with old friends and colleagues and once again became committed to

2772-518: The city's second most powerful elected position. Whitmire, who would serve two terms as Controller and then five terms as Mayor of Houston, was the first woman elected to citywide office in Houston. After the election, Teague Cavness left the partnership to serve as Whitmire's chief aide and Dreyer continued in business as Thorne Dreyer Associates. During this time Thorne Dreyer gained a reputation as an event planner for political campaigns, charities, and arts organizations. In 1978, The Houston Post ran

2849-529: The coming of The Rag ("from deep in the bowels of reaction... where apathy and dullness thrive") in a letter addressed to the founding members of the Underground Press Syndicate . This colorful dispatch — dated October 5, 1966 — is included as a historical document in Conflicts in American History , a 13-volume encyclopedia published in 2010. On March 26, 1967, Dreyer and Carol Neiman attended

2926-681: The community. The first issue of The Willamette Bridge carried this statement of purpose: It continued "...We feel that opinions are not and cannot be confined to the editorial page, so we will not attempt to appear objective about material we have definite feelings about." "The Bridge" was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service . Printed in a tabloid format with 10-15 underpaid general purpose employees (some had specialties, but everybody did everything) operating more or less collectively, The Bridge appeared every other Friday, then every Friday. By

3003-567: The entire blogosphere that I follow." Rag Radio is a weekly public affairs program that features hour-long in-depth interviews with prominent figures in politics and the arts. Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP 91-7 FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, and is rebroadcast every Sunday at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE , 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio also has

3080-553: The environmental and sustainability movements, and other issues of social activism." The Rag Blog , which was founded in 2006 by Richard Jehn, has developed global reach and in 2011 had its one millionth visitor. Many of The Rag Blog's contributors are veterans of the original Rag and the Sixties underground press. The editorial core group includes Sarito Carol Neiman, Dreyer's original Rag co-editor who later edited SDS' New Left Notes ; former Rag staffers Mariann Wizard and Alice Embree (who also worked with New York's Rat and

3157-603: The fast-growing movement against the Vietnam War. He organized demonstrations and guerrilla theater actions and helped put together the now-legendary Gentle Thursday happenings on the University of Texas campus. "In the '60s my values crystallized," Dreyer would later tell Karen Kane, in the December 7, 1980, issue of the Houston Chronicle's Texas Magazine . "What happened during those years I will carry with me

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3234-531: The first issue of The Rag was published in Austin—partly in response to the election of an ultra-conservative editor of the traditionally-liberal UT student newspaper, The Daily Texan —with Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman as editors. (They were actually called "funnels," in keeping with the group's anti-authoritarian approach.) In his acclaimed memoir, Famous Long Ago , Ray Mungo wrote that " The Rag's chief 'funnel,' Thorne Dreyer, exercises an authority that

3311-631: The first national convergence of underground papers at Stinson Beach, California . Historian Abe Peck wrote that "at Stinson Beach, the paper that most prefigured those to come [ The Rag ] was represented... by several writers, including the increasingly important Thorne Dreyer." Dreyer also participated in a historic meeting of the United States Student Press Association (USSPA) in Minneapolis in August 1967 at

3388-533: The invitation of its newly elected director, Marshall Bloom . At the meeting Bloom was purged from USSPA because of his radical politics (and, some thought, because of what John McMillian refers to as Bloom's "effeminate demeanor"). Bloom and colleague Ray Mungo then founded Liberation News Service (LNS). The underground press started out with a handful of papers on the East and West Coasts, but soon spread like wildfire and, according to historian McMillian, author of

3465-584: The kids of the Sixties couldn't imagine, not even with the right psychedelics." Dreyer, who has referred to recent changes in his personal life and his renewed commitment to social change and activist journalism as a "virtual rebirth," told Austin's public radio station, KUT-FM, that "our strength is in being together and realizing that we're not alone, and I think that's why the Internet has been very useful... in helping to uncover injustices and... in helping people feel like they're part of something larger." In

3542-411: The late 1970s. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine. UPS members agreed to allow all other members to freely reprint their contents, to exchange gratis subscriptions with each other, and to occasionally print a listing of all UPS newspapers with their addresses. Anyone who agreed to those terms was allowed to join the syndicate. As

3619-536: The meeting, organized by SDS founder Tom Hayden and peace activist David Dellinger , "resulted in the first prisoner of war release to American peace activists." In her book, Dreams and Everyday Life , Penelope Rosemont wrote about the historic demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "Thorne Dreyer came into town from Austin, Texas, to edit the SDS wall poster called Handwriting on

3696-553: The most important of the Sixties underground newspapers, The Rag in Austin and Space City! in Houston, was an editor at Liberation News Service (LNS) in New York, and managed Pacifica Radio's KPFT 90.1-FM in Houston. Thorne Dreyer was active in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the moving force in the 1960s New Left and perhaps the most important student-based activist organization in U.S. history. Dreyer's writing

3773-477: The name Progressive America Rising), and has also helped organize a series of cultural and educational activities in Austin through the New Journalism Project. After a long drought, Dreyer began writing again, with his work appearing on The Rag Blog and around the Internet. He is a contributing editor to the online Next Left Notes and in 2006 wrote a major cover story for The Texas Observer called "The Spies of Texas" featuring exclusive revelations about how

3850-539: The new Austin generation appreciate the impact that it had on their city and so much of what makes it a vibrant place to live." In a June 2012 feature on Austin's leading political bloggers, CultureMap Austin put Thorne Dreyer and The Rag Blog at the top of its list. Pointing out that Dreyer and The Rag "both came of age in the tumultuous sixties," author Shelley Seale wrote, " The Rag Blog features commentary on contemporary politics and culture and has been an original internet source on subjects like Occupy Wall Street,

3927-418: The noted Eddy Award for best Austin radio personality. Dreyer was "an influential journalist in the underground press movement of the 1960s and early 1970s," according to the documentary encyclopedia, Conflicts in American History , which included him in a series of 73 short biographies of key figures in "The Postwar and Civil Rights Era: 1945-1973" in the United States. He was a founder and editor of two of

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4004-547: The other hand, the Bridge advocated for saving The Old Church and converting a downtown parking lot into a park, which was realized in 1984 as Pioneer Courthouse Square Michael Wells, the paper's founder and main editor, left in 1970, and it was taken over by a collective from members of Reed College SDS and its spinoff, the Portland Revolutionary Youth Movement collective. which put

4081-623: The party's national convention at Miami Beach in 1972. He was also a supporter and friend of Houston's young progressive mayor, Fred Hofheinz , working in his campaign and then working as a public information officer in the City of Houston's Model Cities Department during the Hofheinz administration. In 1975 Dreyer and Teague Cavness started an advertising and public relations partnership called Dreyer Cavness Associates that specialized in progressive political campaigns. They managed Kathy Whitmire 's successful 1978 campaign for Houston City Controller,

4158-515: The proliferation of urban alternative weeklies and in scores of eclectic papers founded in small towns and suburbs. For example, Long Island's Moniebogue Press and Suffolk StreetPapers offered general audiences alternative perspectives on local news and culture, while Akwesasne Notes (published 1968–1992, 1995– c. 1997) specialized in Native American politics, including issues of peace and ecology. " Fluxus West , for example,

4235-413: The rabble-rousing counterculture spirit of the Sixties." Yet, Kevin Brass writes, Dreyer and The Rag Blog are "working in a media landscape light-years removed from the offset printing presses of their youth. While the original Rag would be lucky to sell 15,000 copies on Austin street corners... on any given day, a Rag [blog] post might pingpong through the digital atmosphere, creating the type of traffic

4312-532: The rest of my life.... We had visions of a better world, and dedicated ourselves to building it." Kane wrote that Dreyer "was on the cutting edge" of the 1960s movement. Dreyer traveled widely, participating in SDS conferences and national demonstrations and gatherings of the burgeoning underground media. In 1966, as part of an SDS summer project, Dreyer helped run a radical storefront in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. In September 1967, Dreyer

4389-664: The shoes could be grown into," and the emergence of UPS helped to create a sense of national community and to make the papers feel less isolated in their efforts. Walter Bowart and John Wilcock of the East Village Other , with Michael Kindman of The Paper , took the lead in inviting other papers to join. The San Francisco Oracle , The Rag , and the Illustrated Paper (a psychedelic paper published in Mendocino, California ) joined soon afterward, and membership grew rapidly in 1967 as new papers were founded (such as

4466-627: The spirit of social change . On Labor Day weekend in 2005 in Austin, Thorne Dreyer joined as many as 100 former staffers and followers of The Rag for an historic three-day reunion that included a series of spirited meetings, social events, concerts, and art shows. Inspired by the Rag Reunion and the renewed contacts, energy, and commitment that grew out of it, Dreyer moved back to Austin in 2006, and once again became involved in alternative journalism and political organizing. Dreyer now edits The Rag Blog , an Internet newsmagazine that has built

4543-604: The strongest underground papers in America." In Leamer's words, the paper "had a special importance in Houston since the city is a sprawled-out, Texas version of Los Angeles. The paper holds the radical community together." Space City! (originally called Space City News ) was founded June 5, 1969, by Dreyer and Victoria Smith – who had worked together at LNS in New York – in coordination with former Rag staffers Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald, and community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan. The staff

4620-538: The summer of 1969 it was printing and selling 15,000 copies a week, making The Willamette Bridge one of Oregon's largest papers. It was organized by Editors and staffers included Michael Wells, Jimmy Beller and Maurice Isserman . The Bridge was the forum where Portland's emerging Women's, Gay Rights and Environmental movements found a voice and reached the public. It had connections to the Black Panthers , Draft Resistance groups and other radical organizations. On

4697-589: The summer of 1972 to cover the Democratic and Republican Conventions , both of which were held in that city that summer. By the fall of 1973, the syndicate's offices were located at 283 West 11th Street. The magazine's post office box was Box 386, Cooper Station , New York, NY. Under Forcade's leadership, UPS would later also publish the Underground Press Revue . As the underground press movement evolved, women's liberation , initially

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4774-404: The underground press was "consciously subjective" and "rooted in personal experience." Leo quoted Dreyer as saying that "objectivity is a farce," and that the underground papers were different from the establishment media because they were upfront about their biases. In 1968, Thorne Dreyer left The Rag to help build the editorial collective at Liberation News Service in New York City. LNS, which

4851-559: The underground press was no illusion, and in fact played a vital and dynamic role in the 1960s cultural revolution. According to historian James Lewes, "A number of underground newsworkers – including Marshall Bloom, Thorne Dreyer, Ray Mungo, and Victoria Smith – argued that their papers filled a vacuum left by the collective failure of mainstream media to address the needs of the growing counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements." John Leo wrote in The New York Times that

4928-471: The wake of these schisms, while others lost revenue and circulation by barring sexual content and advertisements, which in any event were increasingly being spun off into tabloid sex papers like Screw . Almost from the outset, the Underground Press Syndicate supported and distributed underground comix strips. Cartoonists and strips syndicated by the organization included Robert Crumb , Jay Lynch , Ron Cobb , Frank Stack , and The Mad Peck 's Burn of

5005-467: The walls of Margaret Webb Dreyer 's gallery," which was located a few blocks from the Space City! offices. After Space City! shut its doors, Thorne Dreyer worked with KPFT-FM, the listener-supported Pacifica radio station in Houston, where he hosted "The Briarpatch," a long-running interview and talk show, and turned the station's monthly programming guide into an underground-style tabloid called

5082-546: The world. Called "an exuberant, emotional, firsthand account" by historian John McMillian, Dreyer's Pentagon commentary has been excerpted in a number of books about the era, including Norman Mailer 's award-winning Armies of the Night . In the scholarly journal Genre , Bimbisar Irom referred to Dreyer's "dissenting, unassimilated... powerful individual voice," noting that he was close "to Mailer's own political sensibilities as an 'independent radical'...." In 1969 LNS published

5159-690: Was a winner of the national Big Story Award for "investigative journalism in the interest of justice." Sandra J. Levy, writing in the Archives of American Art Journal , called Margaret Webb Dreyer "a moving force in Houston from the 1940s to the 1970s," and she is included in the University of Texas at Austin's Gallery of Great Texas Women and her biography is featured at the Handbook of Texas Online. The couple owned and ran Dreyer Galleries, one of Houston's earliest and most prominent art galleries. According to Cite's Raj Mankad, Dreyer Galleries also "served as

5236-651: Was active in the Women's Liberation Movement ); filmmaker and writer William Michael Hanks; and art director James Retherford, who edited The Spectator , a Sixties underground paper published in Bloomington, Indiana, and was active with the YIPPIES . Historian and publisher Paul Buhle said in 2009 that " The Rag Blog is in many ways what The Rag ... was in the middle 1960s, a light in the darkness... not only readable but funny," calling it "the best place for insights in

5313-405: Was also one of the newest UPS members in 1967. By June 1967, a UPS conference in Iowa City hosted by Middle Earth drew 80 newspaper editors from the U.S. and Canada, including representatives of Liberation News Service . LNS, founded by Marshall Bloom and Ray Mungo that summer, would play an equally important and complementary role in the growth and evolution of the underground press in

5390-399: Was becoming the hub for alternative journalism in the United States, supplied the growing movement media with interpretive coverage of current events and reports on movement activities and the Sixties counterculture. In a history of Liberation News Service, Allen Young — who had worked for both The Washington Post and LNS — wrote: "The people of the underground press helped forge

5467-406: Was hoped that the syndicate would sell national advertising space that would run in all five papers, but this never happened. As Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith wrote for Liberation News Service (LNS), the formation of UPS was designed "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers, poised for the kill". But, they added, "this mythical value was to be extremely important:

5544-655: Was one of 40 peace activists, religious leaders, and movement journalists invited to travel to Bratislava , Czechoslovakia , for a direct meeting with high-level representatives of the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam , in what was an unprecedented effort to explore new avenues for peace. Sol Stern wrote that "for the first time, high-ranking NLF representatives would... be included in discussions with American peace activists." Author Mary Hershberger wrote that

5621-570: Was one of the six or seven founding publishers of the Underground Press Syndicate in 1967, but we never gained any traction on the way the papers were designed or what they dealt with. Even though we can be found in the first lists of founding papers, along with the East Village Other , the Berkeley Barb , and the Los Angeles Free Press , we vanish from history soon after because our focus was so vastly different. Did we exert

5698-545: Was published worldwide and his work has been cited or excerpted in more than 100 books. An only child, Dreyer was born in Houston, Texas , on August 1, 1945, the son of Martin Dreyer and Margaret Lee Webb. He attended Bellaire High School, where he studied theater with noted teacher and director Cecil Pickett – who later taught at the University of Houston and whose students included actors Dennis and Randy Quaid and Cindy Pickett . Dreyer later studied acting with William Hickey at New York's HB Studio , and briefly attended

5775-590: Was regarded by the Austin community as "a beautiful and precious thing." The paper tempered serious political analysis with ample doses of humor, and The Rag provided a primary forum for two of the most important of the Sixties underground graphic artists – Gilbert Shelton , whose iconic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comix would be republished in papers all over the world, and Jim Franklin , whose surrealist armadillos helped create what writer Hermes Nye called "the Great Armadillo Cult." Austin, long

5852-403: Was run as a collective , with all editorial and production responsibilities being shared, and in the beginning the three couples also lived together in a communal home, sharing meals and chores. Space City! quickly moved to the fore of the second generation of underground papers—developing a reputation for its advocacy journalism , power structure research, and arts coverage – and it served as

5929-632: Was tense and they were ready to tear into each other, Thorne would hop on a chair and recite a [humorous] monologue." Unlike The Rag , Space City! met with violent opposition from some elements in the community, facing the wrath of right wing vigilantes openly identified with a local Ku Klux Klan group. As Victoria Smith wrote in Ken Wachsberger's Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press , "we endured break-ins, thefts, tire-slashings, potshots (including

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