The Big Us was a radical underground newspaper

Underground press

The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....

 published in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

 starting in September, 1968, appearing biweekly in tabloid format. Its politics reflected the views of SDS

Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)

Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...

. Editors were Carol Cohen McEldowney, a 25-year-old SDS organizer and Cleveland welfare caseworker, and Carole Close, an antiwar activist. The paper's headquarters were in a church coffeehouse/youth center called The Outpost, near the Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

 campus. McEldowney left in May 1969 to work in an antiwar GI coffeehouse in South Carolina. Starting with the issue of Oct. 14, 1969 (vol. 3, no. 2) the paper changed its name to Burning River News, commemorating a famous incident in which the toxic waste on the surface of the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland caught fire.

In 1970 it merged with the Buddhist Third-Class Junkmail Oracle founded by Cleveland poet d. a. levy

D. A. Levy

d.a. levy , born Darryl Alfred Levy , was an American poet, artist, and alternative publisher active during the 1960s, based in Cleveland, Ohio.- Biography :...

 to become the Burning River Oracle, and rebooted its volume numbering to volume 1, number 1 with the March 3–17, 1970 issue. Starting with the Aptil 15–28 issue it changed names again to simply Burning River, under which title it published its last few issues, ending with vol. 1, no. 8 or 9 in July 1970.

The Big Us was a member of both the Underground Press Syndicate

Underground Press Syndicate

The Underground Press Syndicate, commonly known as UPS, and later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate or APS, was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the...

 and the Liberation News Service

Liberation News Service

Liberation News Service was a New Left, Underground press news service which published news bulletins from 1967 to 1981.-History:The Liberation News Service was co-founded in the summer of 1967 by Ray Mungo and Marshall Bloom after the two of them were separated from the United States Student...

. Contributors included local underground cartoonists Dave Sheridan and Fred Schrier

Fred Schrier

Fred Schrier is an artist, writer, and animator, best known as partner to the underground comic book artist Dave Sheridan. Together, using the name Overland Vegetable Stagecoach, they worked on Meef Comix, three issues of Mother's Oats Funnies, Skull Comics #1 , and The Balloon Vendor, which were...

.