Underground Alliance

Shoestring papers of the strident left are popping up like weeds across the U.S. Their editors, writers and subscribers represent a curious coalition of hipsters and beatniks, college students and teachers, political zealots and the just plain artsy-craftsy. Their subject matter is largely anti-Establishment protest: they are typically against the war in Viet Nam, against the draft and against the police. President Johnson is their favorite whipping boy, and it is unlikely that he could win them over even if he changed his initials from L.B.J. to LSD.

Until recently, the new papers of the left that have managed to survive have made it on their own. Now, to better their condition, five of them are banding together in something called the Underground Press Syndicate, a vague alliance through which they hope to exchange articles, columns and cartoons, hire one agency to solicit advertising for all of them, and divide up all income. The five:

> Manhattan's East Village Other, initiator of the Underground Press Syndicate. A 16-page tabloid published twice monthly, EVO boasts a circulation of 10,000 after just eight months on the streets. "We are in favor of evolution, not revolution," says Managing Editor Allan Katzman, 29, a poet with a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the City College of New York. "We hope to transform the middle class by internal and external stimuli, by means of media and LSD." Though EVO is obsessed with LSD, Katzman still finds generous space for an avant-garde international survey of the arts called "Voyeurama," a rambling column by John Wilcock (an original staffer on the now middle-aged Village Voice), and a presumably popular feature called "Slum Goddess," which consists of photographs of young girls who radiate "antiEstablishment qualities." The want ads are blunt and to the point. Sample: "Groovy, free spirit chick wanted to share West Village apt. with guy, 27. No rent. 242-8282. Bob."

> The Los Angeles Free Press, another 16-page tabloid, comes out weekly, claimed a circulation of 9,000 on its second birthday last week. Editor and Publisher Art Kunkin, 38, a former machinist who studied at Manhattan's New School for Social Research, sees his paper as "a forum for free expression of critical comment and dialogue." Kunkin keeps a closer eye on local problems than does EVO, started a commendable series of sociological studies of Watts almost immediately after the riots last summer. The Free Press fills its classified column with ads that are often explicit and occasionally written in an unfathomably cryptic private language. Read one such recent notice: "Stepney--San Francisco awaits your September; I bid August--Josie."

> The Berkeley (Calif.) Barb is an eight-to twelve-page weekly, less than a year old, with a circulation of 7,500. Says the Barb's bearded editor, Max Scherr, 50, a local bohemian of long standing: "I'm interested in all the little movements that are divergent from the mainstream of the culture." Scherr also admits--reluctantly--that sex and radical anti-Viet Nam articles are what sell his paper. Radical is the word. Wrote a Barb columnist known only as "The Roving Rat Fink," after President Johnson's recent speech in Omaha: "Never before has an American president dared to come on so arrogant. He managed to sound much like der late Fuehrer, who also was elected by a large majority."

> East Lansing, Mich.'s The Paper was started last December by Michael Kindman, 21, a Michigan State senior and Merit Scholar majoring in history. It is Kindman's way of striking back at "the bureaucratic minds" that run the uni versity. Kindman says he has 3,000 subscribers for his weekly.

> Detroit's The Fifth Estate, an eight-page paper, has been publishing twice monthly since last November for a circulation of 1,000. Its editor is Harvey Ovshinsky, 18, who put in a brief stint at the Los Angeles Free Press after graduating from high school, came back to Detroit to set up his own paper because "the liberals, the hippies and the anarchists have no organ. We print the other side." Ovshinsky is planning a long career in journalism. "I intend to be publishing this paper," he says, "when I am 35."

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