San Francisco Express Times
San Francisco Express Times was a counterculture tabloid underground newspaper edited by Marvin Garson and published weekly in San Francisco, California from January 24, 1968, to March 25, 1969, for a total of 62 issues and promoting radical politics, rock music and progressive culture in the Bay Area. It was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate, sold for 15 cents. Marvin Garson was a graduate of the University of California and veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, where he edited an FSM newsletter, Wooden Shoe, along with his wife Barbara Garson, he started the Express Times with co-founder Bob Novick and participation by David Lance Goines, Alice Waters and others. Regular contributors included Todd Gitlin, Greil Marcus, Paul Williams, Sandy Darlington, Marjorie Heins. Staff photographers were Jeffrey Blankfort followed by Nacio Jan Robert Altman. Artwork was provided by Jaxon, along with the syndicated editorial cartoons of Ron Cobb. During the year of its existence highlights included extensive on-the-scene coverage of student rioting and the prolonged strike at San Francisco State University, Lenny Heller's serialized novel of guerrilla warfare in the United States, Berkeley Guns.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Express Times was one of a number of underground newspapers infiltrated by the FBI, which had a paid informant on the staff. In December 1968 editor Marvin Garson spent 20 days in jail in Chicago as a result of his participation as a journalist in a police and protester skirmish during the Democratic National Convention in August. Starting in April 1969 the San Francisco Express Times changed its name to Good Times, publishing under that title, with a different editorial policy, until August 1972. In the post–SF State climate the paper's contents were a good deal more relaxed. One member of the editorial collective of Good Times, a resident of the Good Times Commune named Richard Gaikowski, has been identified by the History Channel's 2009 television program MysteryQuest as a possible suspect in the unsolved San Francisco Zodiac Killer case, although there is only circumstantial evidence tying him to the case
Bananadine
Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance, extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its "extraction" from banana peel was published in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967. Just a few months earlier, Donovan's hit single "Mellow Yellow" had been released, in the popular culture of the era, the song was assumed to be about smoking banana peels. In August 6, 1967, shortly after the song's release, bananadine was featured in a New York Times Magazine article titled "Cool Talk About Hot Drugs". Although the original hoax was designed to raise questions about the ethics of making psychoactive drugs illegal and prosecuting those who took them, Cecil Adams reports in The Straight Dope: The wire services, after them the whole country, fell for it hook and roach clip. "Smokeouts" were held at Berkeley. The following Easter Sunday, the New York Times reported, "beatniks and students chanted'banana-banana' at a'be-in' in Central Park" and paraded around carrying a two-foot wooden banana; the Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating "the possible hallucinogenic effects of banana peels".
Nonetheless, bananadine became more known when William Powell, believing the Berkeley Barb article to be true, reproduced the method in The Anarchist Cookbook in 1970, under the name "Musa sapientum Bananadine". In 1971, a book of one-line joke comics was released, contained a comic in which a teen is secretly handing bunches of bananas to a zoo gorilla at night, uttering the line: "Just throw the skins back, man!" Urban legends about drugs Sniggle.net Article featuring a fake Bananadine recipe
Stew Albert
Stewart Edward "Stew" Albert was an early member of the Yippies, an anti-Vietnam War political activist, an important figure in the New Left movement of the 1960s. Born in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, New York, to a New York City employee, he had a conventional political life in his youth, though he was among those who protested the execution of Caryl Chessman, he graduated from Pace University, where he majored in politics and philosophy, worked for a while for the City of New York welfare department. In 1965, he left New York for San Francisco, where he met the poet Allen Ginsberg at the City Lights Bookstore. Within a few days, he was volunteering at the Vietnam Day Committee in California, it was there he met Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, with whom he co-founded the Youth International Party or Yippies. He met Bobby Seale and other Black Panther Party members there and became a full-time political activist. Rubin once said. Among the many activities he participated in with the Yippies were throwing money off the balcony at the New York Stock Exchange, the Exorcism of the Pentagon, the 1968 Presidential campaign of a pig named Pigasus.
He was arrested at the disturbances outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention and was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Chicago Seven case. His wife, Judy Gumbo Albert, according to his New York Times obituary, this was because he was working as a correspondent for the Berkeley Barb, he would work with the Berkeley Tribe underground newspaper and lived at the Tribe's commune when he was not traveling for political engagements. In 1970, he ran for sheriff of Alameda County, California, in revenge for "getting my balls sprayed with hot, painful chemicals as a welcome-to-prison health measure" after being arrested in 1969. Although he lost to the incumbent, Frank Madigan, Albert garnered 65,000 votes, in an ironic twist, in a race with the sheriff who had supervised his earlier incarceration during the Vietnam Day Committee anti-draft protests in downtown Oakland. After the Weather Underground helped Timothy Leary escape from a California prison, where he had been imprisoned for possessing L.
S. D. Albert helped arrange for Leary to stay with Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria. In 1971, he was subpoenaed before several grand juries investigating the political bombing of the U. S. Capitol by the Weather Underground in March 1971, as well as a conspiracy by the Piggy Bank Six to bomb several branches of First National City Bank in Manhattan the previous year, he was not charged in either case. In the early 1970s, he and his wife sued the FBI for planting an illegal wiretap in his house, they won a $20,000 settlement and, in 1978, two FBI supervisors were fired for this action. In 1984, he and his wife moved to Oregon, they co-edited an anthology, The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade, that collected material that originated in the Civil Rights Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, the anti-war movement, the counterculture, the women's movement. His memoir, Who the Hell is Stew Albert?, was published by Red Hen Press in 2005. He ran the Yippie Reading Room until he died of liver cancer brought on by hepatitis in 2006.
Two days before his death, he posted on his blog, "My politics haven't changed." In the film Steal This Movie! Albert is played by Donal Logue. List of peace activists The Spies Who Thought We Were Messy by Stew Albert Almost Sheriff Yippie by Stew Albert Associated Press obituary 1 February 2006 stewalbert.com
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson referred to as LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. The 37th vice president of the United States from 1961 to 1963, he assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson served as a United States Representative and as the Majority Leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people. Born in a farmhouse in Stonewall, Johnson was a high school teacher and worked as a congressional aide before winning election to the House of Representatives in 1937, he won election to the Senate in 1948 and was appointed to the position of Senate Majority Whip in 1951. He became the Senate Minority Leader in 1953 and the Senate Majority Leader in 1955, he became known for his domineering personality and the "Johnson treatment", his aggressive coercion of powerful politicians to advance legislation. Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 presidential election.
Although unsuccessful, he accepted the invitation of then-Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts to be his running mate, they went on to win a close election over the Republican ticket of Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson succeeded him as president; the following year, Johnson won in a landslide. With 61.1 percent of the popular vote, Johnson won the largest share of the popular vote of any candidate since the uncontested 1820 election. In domestic policy, Johnson designed the "Great Society" legislation to expand civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts and rural development, public services and his "War on Poverty". Assisted in part by a growing economy, the War on Poverty helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line during his administration. Civil rights bills that he signed into law banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace and housing.
With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country's immigration system was reformed, encouraging greater emigration from regions other than Europe. Johnson's presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism after the New Deal era. In foreign policy, Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Johnson the power to use military force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war; the number of American military personnel in Vietnam increased from 16,000 advisors in non-combat roles in 1963 to 525,000 in 1967, many in combat roles. American casualties soared and the peace process stagnated. Growing unease with the war stimulated a large, angry anti-war movement based chiefly among draft-age students on university campuses. Johnson faced further troubles when summer riots began in major cities in 1965 and crime rates soared, as his opponents raised demands for "law and order" policies.
While Johnson began his presidency with widespread approval, support for him declined as the public became frustrated with both the war and the growing violence at home. In 1968, the Democratic Party factionalized. Nixon was elected to succeed him, as the New Deal coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years collapsed. After he left office in January 1969, Johnson returned to his Texas ranch, where he died of a heart attack at age 64, on January 22, 1973. Johnson is ranked favorably by many historians because of his domestic policies and the passage of many major laws that affected civil rights, gun control, wilderness preservation, Social Security, although he has drawn substantial criticism for his escalation of the Vietnam War. Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, near Stonewall, Texas, in a small farmhouse on the Pedernales River, he was the oldest of five children born to Samuel Ealy Johnson Rebekah Baines. Johnson had one brother, Sam Houston Johnson, three sisters.
The nearby small town of Johnson City, was named after LBJ's cousin, James Polk Johnson, whose forebears had moved west from Georgia. Johnson had English and Ulster Scots ancestry, he was maternally descended from pioneer Baptist clergyman George Washington Baines, who pastored eight churches in Texas, as well as others in Arkansas and Louisiana. Baines, the grandfather of Johnson's mother, was the president of Baylor University during the American Civil War. Johnson's grandfather, Samuel Ealy Johnson Sr. was raised as a Baptist and for a time was a member of the Christian Church. In his years the grandfather became a Christadelphian; as a politician, Johnson was influenced in his positive attitude toward Jews by the religious beliefs that his family his grandfather, had shared with him. Johnson's favorite Bible verse came from the King James Version of Isaiah 1:18. "Come now, let us reason together..." In school, Johnson was an awkward, talkative youth, elected president of his 11th-grade class.
He graduated in 1924 from Johnson City High School, where he participated in public speaking and baseball. At age 15, Johnson was the youngest member of his class. Pressured by his parents to attend college, he en
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer known for advocating the exploration of the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs under controlled conditions. As a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, Leary conducted experiments under the Harvard Psilocybin Project in 1960–62, resulting in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment; the scientific legitimacy and ethics of his research were questioned by other Harvard faculty because he took psychedelics together with research subjects and pressured students in his class to take psychedelics in the research studies. Leary and his colleague, Richard Alpert, were fired from Harvard University in May 1963. National illumination as to the effects of psychedelics did not occur until after the Harvard scandal. Leary believed, he used LSD himself and developed a philosophy of mind expansion and personal truth through LSD. After leaving Harvard, he continued to publicly promote the use of psychedelic drugs and became a well-known figure of the counterculture of the 1960s.
He popularized catchphrases that promoted his philosophy, such as "turn on, tune in, drop out", "set and setting", "think for yourself and question authority". He wrote and spoke about transhumanist concepts involving space migration, intelligence increase, life extension, developed the eight-circuit model of consciousness in his book Exo-Psychology, he gave lectures billing himself as a "performing philosopher". During the 1960s and 1970s, he was arrested enough to see the inside of 36 prisons worldwide. President Richard Nixon once described Leary as "the most dangerous man in America". Leary was born in Springfield, the only child in an Irish Catholic household, his father, Timothy "Tote" Leary, was a dentist who left his wife Abigail Ferris when Leary was 14. He graduated from Classical High School in the western Massachusetts city, he attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts from September 1938 to June 1940. Under pressure from his father, he accepted an appointment as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
In the first months as a "plebe", he was given numerous demerits for rule infractions and got into serious trouble for failing to report infractions by other cadets when on supervisory duty. He was alleged to have failed to "come clean" about it, he was asked by the Honor Committee to resign for violating the Academy's honor code. He refused and was "silenced"—that is, shunned and ignored by his fellow cadets as a tactic to pressure him to resign, he was acquitted by a court-martial, but the silencing measures continued in full force, as well as the onslaught of demerits for small rule infractions. The treatment continued in his sophomore year, his mother appealed to a family friend, United States Senator David I. Walsh, head of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, who conducted a personal investigation. Behind the scenes, the Honor Committee revised its position and announced that it would abide by the court-martial verdict. Leary resigned and was honorably discharged by the Army. 50 years he said that it was "the only fair trial I've had in a court of law".
To the chagrin of his family, Leary elected to transfer to the University of Alabama in late 1941 because of the institution's expeditious response to his application. He enrolled in the university's ROTC program, maintained top grades, began to cultivate academic interests in psychology and biology, but he was expelled a year for spending a night in the female dormitory, losing his student deferment in the midst of World War II. Leary was drafted into the United States Army and reported for basic training at Fort Eustis in January 1943, he remained in the non-commissioned track while enrolled in the psychology subsection of the Army Specialized Training Program, including three months of study at Georgetown University and six months at Ohio State University. With no urgent need for officers at the late juncture in the war, Leary was assigned as a private first class to the Pacific War-bound 2d Combat Cargo Group at Syracuse Army Air Base in Mattydale, New York. After a fateful reunion with Ramsdell in Buffalo, New York, he was promptly promoted to corporal and reassigned to his mentor's command as a staff psychometrician.
He remained in Deshon's deaf rehabilitation clinic for the remainder of the war. While stationed in Butler, Leary began to court Marianne Busch. Leary was formally discharged at the rank of sergeant in January 1946, having earned the Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal. Following retroactive suspension, Leary was reinstated at the University of Alabama and received credit for his Ohio State psychology coursework, he completed his degree via correspondence courses and graduated on August 23, 1945. Upon receiving his undergraduate degree, Leary decided to pursue an academic career. In 1946, he received an M. S. in psychology at Washington State University, where he studied under noted educational psychologist Lee Cronbach. His M. S. thesis was a study of the clinical applications of the We
Alternative newspaper
An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture. Its news coverage is more locally focused, their target audiences are younger than those of daily newspapers. Alternative newspapers are published in tabloid format and printed on newsprint. Other names for such publications include alternative weekly, alternative newsweekly, alt weekly, as the majority circulate on a weekly schedule. Most metropolitan areas of the United States and Canada are home to at least one alternative paper; these papers are found in such urban areas, although a few publish in smaller cities, in rural areas or exurban areas where they may be referred to as an alt monthly due to the less frequent publication schedule. Alternative papers operate under a different business model than daily papers. Most alternative papers, such as The Stranger, the Houston Press, SF Weekly, the Village Voice, the New York Press, the Metro Times, the LA Weekly, the Boise Weekly, the Long Island Press, are free, earning revenue through the sale of advertising space.
They sometimes include ads for adult entertainment, such as adult bookstores and strip clubs, which are prohibited in many mainstream daily newspapers. They include comprehensive classified and personal ad sections and event listings as well. Many alternative papers feature an annual "best of" issue, profiling businesses that readers voted the best of their type in the area; these papers send out certificates that the businesses hang on their wall or window. This further cements the paper's ties to local businesses. Alternative newspapers represent the more commercialized and mainstream evolution of the underground press associated with the 1960s counterculture, their focus remains on social and political reportage. Editorial positions at alternative weeklies are predominantly left-leaning, though there is a contingent of conservative, libertarian, alt-weeklies. Styles vary among alternative newspapers. Columns syndicated to alternative weeklies include "The Straight Dope," Dan Savage's "Savage Love," Rob Breszny's "Free Will Astrology," and Ben Tausig's crossword puzzle "Ink Well."
Quirky, non-mainstream comics, such as Matt Groening's Life in Hell, Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek, Ruben Bolling's Tom the Dancing Bug, Ted Rall's political cartoons are common. The Village Voice, based in New York City, is one of the best-known examples of the form; the Association of Alternative Newsmedia is the alternative weeklies' trade association. The Alternative Weekly Network and the Ruxton Group are national advertising sales representatives for alternative weeklies; some alternative newspapers are independent. However, due in part to increasing concentration of media ownership, many have been bought or launched by larger media conglomerates; the Tribune Company, a multibillion-dollar company that owns the Chicago Tribune, owns four New England alternative weeklies, including the Hartford Advocate and New Haven Advocate. Creative Loafing only an Atlanta-based alternative weekly, grew into Creative Loafing, Inc. which owns papers in three other southern U. S. cities, as well as the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper.
Village Voice Media and New Times Media merged in 2006. The pre-merger Village Voice Media, an outgrowth of New York City's Village Voice, included LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Seattle Weekly, Minneapolis City Pages, Nashville Scene. New Times Media included at the time of the merger Cleveland Scene, Dallas Observer, East Bay Express, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Houston Press, The Pitch, Miami New Times, Phoenix New Times, SF Weekly, Riverfront Times. In 2003, the two companies entered into a non-competition agreement which stated that the two would not publish in the same market; because of this, New Times Media eliminated New Times LA, a competitor to Village Voice Media's LA Weekly, Village Voice Media ceased publishing Cleveland Free Times, a competitor to New Times Media's Cleveland Scene. The US Justice Department launched an antitrust investigation into the agreement; the case was settled out of court with the two companies agreeing to make available the publishing assets and titles of their defunct papers to potential competitors.
The Cleveland Free Times recommenced publication in 2003 under the publication group Kildysart LLC, while the assets of New Times LA were sold to Southland Publishing and relaunched as LA CityBeat. On October 24, 2005, New Times Media announced a deal to acquire Village Voice Media, creating a chain of 17 free weekly newspapers around the country with a combined circulation of 1.8 million and controlling a quarter of the weekly circulation of alternative weekly newspapers in North America. The deal was approved by the Justice Department and, on January 31, 2006, the companies merged into one, taking the name Village Voice Media. Phoenix Media/Communications Group, owner of the popular Boston alternative weekly the Boston Phoenix, expanded to Providence, Rhode Island in 1988 with their purchase of NewPaper, renamed the Providence Phoenix. In 1999, PM/CG expanded further through New England to Portland, Maine with the creation of the Portland Phoenix. From 1992 through 2005, PM/GC owned and operated the Worcester Phoenix in Worcester, but PM/GC folded that branch because of Worcester's dwindling art scene.
Nonetheless, a number of owner-operated, non-chain owned alternative papers survive, am
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement in the United States was a decades-long struggle with the goal of enforcing constitutional and legal rights for African Americans that other Americans enjoyed. With roots that dated back to the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, the movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s, after years of direct actions and grassroots protests that were organized from the mid-1950s until 1968. Encompassing strategies, various groups, organized social movements to accomplish the goals of ending legalized racial segregation, disenfranchisement, discrimination in the United States, the movement, using major nonviolent campaigns secured new recognition in federal law and federal protection for all Americans. After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had been enslaved.
For a period, African Americans voted and held political office, but they were deprived of civil rights under Jim Crow laws, subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by whites in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal rights. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal and local governments and communities had to respond to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans across the country; the lynching of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, the outrage generated by seeing how he had been abused, when his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral, mobilized the African-American community nationwide. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. Moderates in the movement worked with Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that overturned discriminatory practices and authorized oversight and enforcement by the federal government.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly banned discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minorities as voters; the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, across the country young people were inspired to take action. From 1964 through 1970, a wave of inner-city riots in black communities undercut support from the white middle class, but increased support from private foundations; the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from about 1965 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its practice of nonviolence. Instead, its leaders demanded that, in addition to the new laws gained through the nonviolent movement and economic self-sufficiency had to be developed in the black community.
Many popular representations of the movement are centered on the charismatic leadership and philosophy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in non-violent, moral leadership. However, some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to any one person, organization, or strategy. Before the American Civil War four million blacks were enslaved in the South, only white men of property could vote, the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only. But some free states of the North extended the franchise and other rights of citizenship to African Americans. Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment that ended slavery. From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction Era trying to establish free labor and civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to insurgent movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, whose members attacked black and white Republicans to maintain white supremacy.
In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, the U. S. Army, U. S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts; some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage and suppressing black voters, assassinating Republican officeholders. However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the Federal Government to ge
