On Labor Day, 1980, I participated in an event I’d helped organize — a take-off on punk political events like “Rock Against Racism” — the Rock Against Work. I met a one-time underground newspaper publisher, John Bryan, who later started a neo-underground paper called Appeal to Reason pitched to hippie leftists of the 60s Generation. Bryan liked me and my flyers, although they often grated on his constituency, and let me write a column, ill-named “Appeal to Treason.”

Although there was friction between this reluctant electoral socialist and myself, as might be expected, he provided me with a less fettered forum than anyone else has, notably including the “anarchist” media. I was phasing out flyers at the same time, and newspaper columns, although in form a regression to modes of expression I’d started out to avoid, worked out tolerably well in their stead. Bryan’s last issue, using his previous paper name Open City, was aimed at the Democratic Convention and included my Con coverage (not reprinted here) as well as “The Political Theology of Ferlinghetti.”

Anti-Nuclear Terror

Let Us Prey!

A Bunch Abalone

Left Rites

Electing Not to Vote

Lying in State—and Elsewhere

Circle-A Deceit: A Review of Processed World

Notes on “Circle-A Deceit”

Review of Conan

Grown-Ups Say the Darndest Things

The Political Theory of Ferlinghetti