[speech writ. 10/10/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Buenos Dias, Juan—
The subject of the radical press arises always in times of social discontent, when the acquiescence of the straight media forces people to seek alternative sources of information.
During the 1960s, millions of people, tired of the supine slavishness of the systematic press, turned to alternatives like the Berkeley Barb of California’s Bay Area, to the Phoenix of the South; from Besta Ye! of New York’s Young Lords Party, to The Black Panther, the voice of the national Black Panther Party.
Those papers provided alternative takes on the raging Vietnam War, and local struggles in the raw, unmitigated voices of young people engaged in the anti-war, civil rights, feminist, Puerto Rican independence and Black Liberation movements.
As many of these movements waned, most of these papers stopped publishing, and those few which remained served as cultural expressions of social relations, rather than strictly political journals. The Village Voice of New York City comes to mind.
Yet, even today, some small papers remain, with thousands of readers in regional pockets across the U.S.
Generally, as movements go, the radical press follows.
Thank you,
Mumia Abu-Jamal