Thorne Webb Dreyer
Encyclopedia
Thorne Webb Dreyer is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture
, New Left
, and underground press
movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas
, where he edits the progressive internet news magazine, The Rag Blog, hosts Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM, and is a director of the New Journalism Project.
Dreyer was "an influential journalist in the underground press movement of the 1960s and early 1970s," according to the documentary encyclopedia, Conflicts in American History, which included him in a series of 73 short biographies of key figures in "The Postwar and Civil Rights Era: 1945-1973" in the United States.
He was a founder and editor of two of the most important of the Sixties underground newspapers, The Rag
in Austin and Space City!
in Houston, was an editor at Liberation News Service
(LNS) in New York, and managed Pacifica Radio's KPFT
90.1-FM in Houston.
Thorne Dreyer was active in Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS), the moving force in the 1960s New Left and perhaps the most important student-based activist organization in U.S. history. Dreyer's writing was published worldwide and his work has been cited or excerpted in more than 100 books.
, on August 1, 1945, the son of Martin Dreyer and Margaret Lee Webb. He attended Bellaire High School, where he studied theater with noted teacher and director Cecil Pickett – who later taught at the University of Houston
and whose students included actors Dennis
and Randy Quaid
and Cindy Pickett
. Dreyer later studied acting with William Hickey
at New York's HB Studio
, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin
where he took liberal arts and theater courses.
Dreyer's family was at the center of a large literary and activist community in Houston. His mother, Margaret Webb Dreyer
, was an acclaimed artist, teacher, and peace activist – and a leading light in the local cultural scene—and his father, Martin Dreyer, was a fiction writer and long-time travel editor at the Houston Chronicle and was a winner of the national Big Story award for "investigative journalism in the interest of justice." Sandra J. Levy, writing in the Archives of American Art Journal, called Margaret Webb Dreyer "a moving force in Houston from the 1940s to the 1970s," and she is included in the University of Texas at Austin's Gallery of Great Texas Women and her biography is featured at the Handbook of Texas Online. The couple owned and ran Dreyer Galleries, one of Houston's earliest and most prominent art galleries. According to Cite's Raj Mankad, Dreyer Galleries also "served as a countercultural hub," hosting art openings, political meetings, and social gatherings attended by Jane Fonda
, Robert Altman
, Warren Hinckle
, and others.
While in Houston, Thorne Dreyer engaged in an eclectic array of pursuits. He worked professionally as an actor, a freelance writer and editor, a political consultant, a correspondent for Texas Monthly
magazine, a public information officer for the City of Houston, a booking agent for jazz and rock musicians, an event planner, and a bookseller—and for years operated a leading Houston public relations business.
He has one son, Dustin Dreyer, who lives in Houston.
"In the '60s my values crystallized," Dreyer would later tell Karen Kane, in the December 7, 1980, issue of the Houston Chronicle's Texas Magazine. "What happened during those years I will carry with me the rest of my life.... We had visions of a better world, and dedicated ourselves to building it." Kane wrote that Dreyer "was on the cutting edge" of the 1960s movement. Dreyer traveled widely, participating in SDS conferences and national demonstrations and gatherings of the burgeoning underground media.
In 1966, as part of an SDS summer project, Dreyer helped run a radical storefront in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Fancisco. In September 1967, Dreyer was one of 40 peace activists, religious leaders, and movement journalists invited to travel to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, for a direct meeting with high level representatives of the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, in what was an unprecedented effort to explore new avenues for peace. Sol Stern wrote that "for the first time, high-ranking NLF representatives would... be included in discussions with American peace activists." Author Mary Hershberger wrote that the meeting, organized by SDS founder Tom Hayden
and peace activist Dave Dellinger
, "resulted in the first prisoner of war release to American peace activists."
In her book, Dreams and Everyday Life, Penelope Rosemont
wrote about the historic demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. "Thorne Dreyer came into town from Austin, Texas to edit the SDS wall poster called Handwriting on the Wall," she said. Handwriting on the Wall was published each night during the convention and posted all over town, playing an important role in keeping the thousands of demonstrators informed about the week's cascading events. These wall posters were featured in the 2011 exhibit, "Left to Right: Radical Movements of the 1960s," at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
in Austin.
was published in Austin—partly in response to the election of an ultra-conservative editor of the traditionally-liberal UT student newspaper, The Daily Texan
-- with Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman as editors. (They were actually called "funnels," in keeping with the group's anti-authoritarian approach.) In his acclaimed memoir, Famous Long Ago, Ray Mungo
wrote that "The Rag's chief 'funnel,' Thorne Dreyer, exercises an authority that is gentle and decent."
The Rag was the first underground paper in the South and the sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate
(UPS). Cited by historian Laurence Leamer
as "one of the few legendary undergrounds," The Rag was credited with being the first of its genre to successfully combine the radical politics of the New Left with the spirit of the burgeoning alternative culture, and, according to historian John McMillian, it served as a model for many papers that followed.
Abe Peck, author of Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, wrote that "The Rag was the first independent undergrounder to represent... the participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the midsixties was trying to develop." Author Douglas C. Rossinow, described The Rag as "enormously important to local activists," and historian McMillian said that The Rag was regarded by the Austin community as "a beautiful and precious thing."
The paper tempered serious political analysis with ample doses of humor, and The Rag provided a primary forum for two of the most important of the Sixties underground graphic artists – Gilbert Shelton
, whose iconic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comix would be republished in papers all over the world, and Jim Franklin
, whose surrealist armadillos helped create what writer Hermes Nye called "the Great Armadillo Cult." Austin, long a haven for bohemians and iconoclasts, was also the center of a very active left political community based at the University of Texas campus and was a major player in the massive Sixties drug and music culture – incubating talents like Janis Joplin
and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators
and some of the pioneering psychedelic poster and comix artists. And The Rag united those communities into a potent political force.
. This colorful dispatch—dated October 5, 1966—is included as a historical document in Conflicts in American History, a 13-volume encyclopedia published in 2010.
On March 26, 1967, Dreyer and Carol Neiman attended the first national convergence of underground papers at Stinson Beach, California. Historian Abe Peck wrote that "at Stinson Beach, the paper that most prefigured those to come [The Rag] was represented... by several writers, including the increasingly important Thorne Dreyer." Dreyer also participated in a historic meeting of the United States Student Press Association
(USSPA) in Minneapolis in August 1967 at the invitation of its newly-elected director, Marshall Bloom
. At the meeting Bloom was purged from USSPA because of his radical politics (and, some thought, because of what John McMillian refers to as Bloom's "effeminate demeanor"). Bloom and colleague Ray Mungo
then founded Liberation News Service
(LNS).
The underground press started out with a handful of papers on the East and West Coasts, but soon spread like wildfire and, according to historian McMillian, author of the 2011 book Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, the papers' combined readership eventually reached into the millions. Rolling Stone's John Burks quoted Thorne Dreyer as saying that the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was organized "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers poised for the kill." But, as McMillian and others would emphasize, the underground press was no illusion, and in fact played a vital and dynamic role in the 1960s
cultural revolution.
According to historian James Lewes, "A number of underground newsworkers – including Marshall Bloom, Thorne Dreyer, Ray Mungo, and Victoria Smith – argued that their papers filled a vacuum left by the collective failure of mainstream media to address the needs of the growing counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements." John Leo
wrote in The New York Times that the underground press was "consciously subjective" and "rooted in personal experience." Leo quoted Dreyer as saying that "objectivity is a farce," and that the underground papers were different from the establishment media because they were upfront about their biases.
In 1968, Thorne Dreyer left The Rag to help build the editorial collective at LNS in New York City. LNS, which was becoming the hub for alternative journalism in the United States, supplied the growing movement media with interpretive coverage of current events and reports on movement activities and the Sixties counterculture. In a history of Liberation News Service, Allen Young
-- who had worked for both The Washington Post and LNS—wrote: "The people of the underground press helped forge a national youth culture and in both subtle and direct ways influenced their colleagues in the 'establishment media.'"
During this time Dreyer's writings were widely distributed, appearing regularly in dozens of periodicals. His coverage of the March 27, 1967, anti-war action at the Pentagon in Washington – with its massive acts of civil disobedience
– was distributed by LNS and published around the world. Called "an exuberant, emotional, firsthand account" by historian John McMillian, Dreyer's Pentagon commentary has been excerpted in a number of books about the era, including Norman Mailer
's award-winning Armies of the Night
. In the scholarly journal Genre, Bimbisar Irom referred to Dreyer's "dissenting, unassimilated... powerful individual voice," noting that he was close "to [Norman] Mailer's own political sensibilities as an 'independent radical'..."
In 1969 LNS published a long essay co-authored by Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith, titled "The Movement and the New Media," that was considered to be the first serious journalistic portrait of the increasingly powerful underground press phenomenon. Dreyer also wrote extensively about the growing repression of underground papers throughout the country.
version of Los Angeles. The paper holds the radical community together."
Space City!
(originally called Space City News) was founded June 5, 1969, by Dreyer and Victoria Smith – who had worked together at LNS in New York – in coordination with former Rag staffers Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald, and community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan. The staff was run as a collective
, with all editorial and production responsibilities being shared, and in the beginning the three couples also lived together in a communal home, sharing meals and chores.
Space City! quickly moved to the fore of the second generation of underground papers—developing a reputation for its advocacy journalism
, power structure research, and arts coverage – and it served as a center for the bustling Texas boomtown's peace and hipster communities while spinning off a host of other countercultural institutions.
In a 1976 book about modern Texas folklore
, Hermes Nye wrote that "the dark-haired bespectacled, lovely Victoria Smith and her compadre, dashing mustachioed Thorne Dreyer... helped lay the cornerstone of Houston's Space City!... a well written, sprightly sheet... [that] also had an eye for vivid, telling graphics and poetry of a high level." Historian Leamer wrote about Space City!: "There is a solid intelligence to the reviews and cultural articles... It is a radical journalism grounded in fact... resolved and balanced in content and full of common purpose..."
John Siemssen, writing in Houston's Other, quoted former Space City! staffer Bobby Eakin: "Thorne [Dreyer] was the glue that held the paper together..." Eakin added, "When it was tense and they were ready to tear into each other, Thorne would hop on a chair and recite a [humorous] monologue."
Unlike The Rag, Space City! met with violent opposition from some elements in the community, facing the wrath of right wing vigilantes openly identified with a local Ku Klux Klan
group. As Victoria Smith wrote in Ken Wachsberger's Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, "we endured break-ins, thefts, tire-slashings, potshots (including a steel arrow fired from a crossbow through the front door), and threats, both to staff members and advertisers."
Raj Mankad wrote at OffCite that the Klan's violent actions against Space City! were part of a larger picture of "threats and acts of violence against progressive and radical institutions in Houston. The KPFT
[Pacifica] station transmitter was bombed off the air twice. Bullets were shot at and yellow paint thrown on the walls of Margaret Webb Dreyer
's gallery," which was located a few blocks from the Space City! offices.
station in Houston, where he hosted "The Briarpatch," a long-running interview and talk show, and turned the station's monthly programming guide into an underground-style tabloid called the Mighty 90 News. Dreyer would also serve for a time as the station's general manager.
During this period he became active in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party
in Harris County and was on the Texas staff of George McGovern
's anti-war presidential campaign. He edited a state-wide campaign tabloid, served as a McGovern delegate to the Texas State Democratic Convention, and attended the party's national convention at Miami Beach in 1972. He was also a supporter and friend of Houston's young progressive mayor, Fred Hofheinz
, working in his campaign and then working as a public information officer in the City of Houston's Model Cities Department during the Hofheinz administration.
In 1975 Dreyer and Teague Cavness started an advertising and public relations partnership called Dreyer Cavness Associates that specialized in progressive political campaigns. They managed Kathy Whitmire's successful 1978 campaign for Houston City Controller, the city's second most powerful elected position. Whitmire, who would serve two terms as Controller and then five terms as Mayor of Houston, was the first woman elected to city-wide office in Houston. After the election, Teague Cavness left the partnership to serve as Whitmire's chief aide and Dreyer continued in business as Thorne Dreyer Associates.
During this time Thorne Dreyer gained a reputation as an event planner for political campaigns, charities, and arts organizations. In 1978, The Houston Post
ran a feature story with the headline, "Political parties: The campaign get-together taking on aura of best show in any town, thanks to Thorne Dreyer," in which writer Gary Christian said, "Dreyer, 32-year-old public relations man making a name for himself with his party-planning, is out to defeat that deadly seriousness surrounding political parties..." Dreyer's lively, creative events – that pulled together people from the arts and political communities—were cited by The Texas Observer
as the best political parties in the state. Dreyer also worked as a feature writer and correspondent for the early Texas Monthly
magazine and as a booking agent and personal manager for jazz and rock musicians – including popular jazz singer Cy Brinson—and handled advertising, promotion, and booking for a number of popular Houston clubs and music venues, including Cody's, Rockefeller's, and Mum's Jazzplace, where he also served as a manager. Dreyer also worked for Half Price Books, buying and selling used and rare books, and later ran an online bookselling business.
During the 1990s, according to the Austin American-Statesman
's Brad Bucholz, Thorne Dreyer "suffered through a divorce, depression and two prison sentences for cocaine possession." Dreyer weathered a time of major personal crisis, struggling with severe clinical depression, the breakup of his marriage, and a long-standing bout with drug use. At a time when prosecution for cocaine possession was at its most severe, Dreyer was twice arrested and convicted for possession of small quantities of the controlled substance. During this time Dreyer did little productive work. Many veterans of the Sixties New Left experienced similar periods of crisis and "burnout," and a few, like Dreyer's friend Abbie Hoffman
, even committed suicide.
But Thorne would soon turn his life around as he reunited with old friends and colleagues and once again became committed to the spirit of social change
.
Dreyer now edits The Rag Blog, an Internet newsmagazine that has built a wide and loyal following in the progressive blogosphere
. He is also host and producer of Rag Radio, a popular weekly interview show, and serves as a director of the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, that publishes The Rag Blog.
The Rag Blog, which was founded in 2006 by Richard Jehn, has developed global reach and in 2011 had its one millionth visitor. Many of The Rag Blog's contributors are veterans of the original Rag and the Sixties underground press. The editorial core group includes Sarito Carol Neiman, Dreyer's original Rag co-editor who later edited SDS' New Left Notes; former Rag staffers Mariann Wizard and Alice Embree (who also worked with New York's Rat
and was active in the Women's Liberation Movement
); filmmaker and writer William Michael Hanks; and art director James Retherford, who edited The Spectator, a Sixties underground paper published in Bloomington, Indiana, and was active with the YIPPIES
.
Historian and publisher Paul Buhle
said in 2009 that "The Rag Blog is in many ways what The Rag... was in the middle 1960s, a light in the darkness... not only readable but funny," calling it "the best place for insights in the entire blogosphere that I follow."
Rag Radio is a weekly public affairs program that features hour-long in-depth interviews with prominent figures in politics and the arts. Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP 91-7 FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, and is rebroadcast every Sunday at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE
, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio also has a widespread Internet following and all episodes are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive
.
Dreyer also helped set up an Austin chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), associated with the newly reestablished SDS. The group organized demonstrations around opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq and other progressive issues. Dreyer was involved with Progressives for Obama, which offered critical support to Barack Obama during his initial campaign for president (the organization has continued under the name Progressive America Rising), and has also helped organize a series of cultural and educational activities in Austin through the New Journalism Project.
After a long drought, Dreyer began writing again, with his work appearing on The Rag Blog and around the Internet. He is a contributing editor to the online Next Left Notes
and in 2006 wrote a major cover story for The Texas Observer
called "The Spies of Texas" featuring exclusive revelations about how the UT-Austin campus police tracked the lives of dissidents and iconoclasts in the Sixties.
's Kevin Brass that "There are a lot of similarities in the two eras." Brass, indeed, sees The Rag Blog as "part of an effort to revive some of the rabble-rousing counterculture spirit of the Sixties." Yet, Kevin Brass writes, Dreyer and The Rag Blog are "working in a media landscape light-years removed from the offset printing presses of their youth. While the original Rag would be lucky to sell 15,000 copies on Austin street corners... on any given day, a Rag [blog] post might pingpong through the digital atmosphere, creating the type of traffic the kids of the Sixties couldn't imagine, not even with the right psychedelics."
Dreyer, who has referred to recent changes in his personal life and his renewed commitment to social change and activist journalism as a "virtual rebirth," told Austin's public radio station, KUT-FM, that "our strength is in being together and realizing that we're not alone, and I think that's why the Internet has been very useful... in helping to uncover injustices and... in helping people feel like they're part of something larger."
In a 2008 feature story in the Austin American-Statesman
, Brad Bucholz wrote: "Thorne Dreyer's belief system for a new millennium is anchored in community and participation and a sense of humor. As a younger man, he led a charge to change the world, thinking it his generation's calling. Today, Dreyer has the gentle feeling at times that the movement has repaid the favor and saved him."
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
, New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
, and underground press
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....
movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, where he edits the progressive internet news magazine, The Rag Blog, hosts Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM, and is a director of the New Journalism Project.
Dreyer was "an influential journalist in the underground press movement of the 1960s and early 1970s," according to the documentary encyclopedia, Conflicts in American History, which included him in a series of 73 short biographies of key figures in "The Postwar and Civil Rights Era: 1945-1973" in the United States.
He was a founder and editor of two of the most important of the Sixties underground newspapers, The Rag
The Rag
The Rag was an underground paper published in Austin, Texas from 1966-1977. The sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate, The Rag was one of the most influential of the early underground papers, known for its unique blend of radical politics, alternative culture and humor.- Early history...
in Austin and Space City!
Space City (newspaper)
Space City was an underground newspaper published in Houston, Texas from June 5, 1969 to August 3, 1972. The founders were SDS veterans and former members of the staff of the Austin, Texas underground newspaper, The Rag, including Thorne Dreyer, Victoria Smith, Cam and Sue Duncan, and Dennis and...
in Houston, was an editor at 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...
(LNS) in New York, and managed Pacifica Radio's KPFT
KPFT
KPFT is a listener-sponsored community radio station in Houston, Texas, which went on the air on March 1, 1970 as the fourth station in the Pacifica radio family. Larry Lee sold the idea to Pacifica to establish listener-supported radio in Houston as an alternative to main-stream broadcasting. The...
90.1-FM in Houston.
Thorne Dreyer was active in Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
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...
(SDS), the moving force in the 1960s New Left and perhaps the most important student-based activist organization in U.S. history. Dreyer's writing was published worldwide and his work has been cited or excerpted in more than 100 books.
Family and early life
An only child, Dreyer was born in Houston, TexasHouston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
, on August 1, 1945, the son of Martin Dreyer and Margaret Lee Webb. He attended Bellaire High School, where he studied theater with noted teacher and director Cecil Pickett – who later taught at the University of Houston
University of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
and whose students included actors Dennis
Dennis
Dennis or Denis is either the first or last name of a male derived from the Greco-Roman name Dionysius meaning "servant of Dionysus", the Thracian god of wine, which is ultimately derived from the Greek Dios combined with Nysos or Nysa , where the young god was raised.Alternative forms and...
and Randy Quaid
Randy Quaid
Randall Rudy "Randy" Quaid is an American actor perhaps best known for his role as Cousin Eddie in the National Lampoon's Vacation movies, as well as his numerous supporting roles in films, including his Oscar nominated performance in The Last Detail, Independence Day, Kingpin and Brokeback Mountain...
and Cindy Pickett
Cindy Pickett
Cindy Lou Pickett is an American actress best known for her 1970s role as Jackie Marler-Spaulding on the CBS soap Guiding Light; her role as Dr. Carol Novino on the hugely popular television drama St...
. Dreyer later studied acting with William Hickey
William Hickey
William Hickey may refer to:*William Hickey , English lawyer and author of a famous set of memoirs*William Hickey , American actor...
at New York's HB Studio
HB Studio
Founded in 1945 by Herbert Berghof, the HB Studio is a school that offers professional training in the performing arts. Located in Greenwich Village in New York City, its curriculum includes classes in a variety of areas, including acting, directing, playwrighting, screenwriting, musical theatre,...
, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
where he took liberal arts and theater courses.
Dreyer's family was at the center of a large literary and activist community in Houston. His mother, Margaret Webb Dreyer
Margaret Webb Dreyer
Margaret Webb Dreyer — known to many as “Maggie” Dreyer — was an American painter, muralist, mosaic artist, educator, gallery owner, and political activist who spent most of her career in Houston, Texas. Though she worked in a number of styles and media over the years, she was best known as an...
, was an acclaimed artist, teacher, and peace activist – and a leading light in the local cultural scene—and his father, Martin Dreyer, was a fiction writer and long-time travel editor at the Houston Chronicle and was a winner of the national Big Story award for "investigative journalism in the interest of justice." Sandra J. Levy, writing in the Archives of American Art Journal, called Margaret Webb Dreyer "a moving force in Houston from the 1940s to the 1970s," and she is included in the University of Texas at Austin's Gallery of Great Texas Women and her biography is featured at the Handbook of Texas Online. The couple owned and ran Dreyer Galleries, one of Houston's earliest and most prominent art galleries. According to Cite's Raj Mankad, Dreyer Galleries also "served as a countercultural hub," hosting art openings, political meetings, and social gatherings attended by Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
, Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
, Warren Hinckle
Warren Hinckle
Warren Hinckle is an American political journalist based in San Francisco. As a student at the University of San Francisco he wrote for the student newspaper, the San Francisco Foghorn. After college he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle...
, and others.
While in Houston, Thorne Dreyer engaged in an eclectic array of pursuits. He worked professionally as an actor, a freelance writer and editor, a political consultant, a correspondent for Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Austin, Texas. Texas Monthly is published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. and was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education...
magazine, a public information officer for the City of Houston, a booking agent for jazz and rock musicians, an event planner, and a bookseller—and for years operated a leading Houston public relations business.
He has one son, Dustin Dreyer, who lives in Houston.
SDS and radical activism
In 1963, Dreyer went to Austin to attend the University of Texas, but soon joined SDS and became heavily involved in the New Left—in student power and civil rights activities and the fast-growing movement against the Vietnam War. He organized demonstrations and guerrilla theater actions and helped put together the now-legendary Gentle Thursday happenings on the University of Texas campus."In the '60s my values crystallized," Dreyer would later tell Karen Kane, in the December 7, 1980, issue of the Houston Chronicle's Texas Magazine. "What happened during those years I will carry with me the rest of my life.... We had visions of a better world, and dedicated ourselves to building it." Kane wrote that Dreyer "was on the cutting edge" of the 1960s movement. Dreyer traveled widely, participating in SDS conferences and national demonstrations and gatherings of the burgeoning underground media.
In 1966, as part of an SDS summer project, Dreyer helped run a radical storefront in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Fancisco. In September 1967, Dreyer was one of 40 peace activists, religious leaders, and movement journalists invited to travel to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, for a direct meeting with high level representatives of the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, in what was an unprecedented effort to explore new avenues for peace. Sol Stern wrote that "for the first time, high-ranking NLF representatives would... be included in discussions with American peace activists." Author Mary Hershberger wrote that the meeting, organized by SDS founder Tom Hayden
Tom Hayden
Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden is an American social and political activist and politician, known for his involvement in the animal rights, and the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of actor Troy Garity.-Life and...
and peace activist Dave Dellinger
David Dellinger
David T. Dellinger , was an influential American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change.-Chicago Seven:...
, "resulted in the first prisoner of war release to American peace activists."
In her book, Dreams and Everyday Life, Penelope Rosemont
Penelope Rosemont
Penelope Rosemont , attended Lake Forest College. She has been a painter, photographer, collagist and writer, and "graphic designer for [Arsenal/Surrealist Subversions] and other...
wrote about the historic demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. "Thorne Dreyer came into town from Austin, Texas to edit the SDS wall poster called Handwriting on the Wall," she said. Handwriting on the Wall was published each night during the convention and posted all over town, playing an important role in keeping the thousands of demonstrators informed about the week's cascading events. These wall posters were featured in the 2011 exhibit, "Left to Right: Radical Movements of the 1960s," at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum is one of 13 presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. The library houses 45 million pages of historical documents, including the papers of Lyndon Baines Johnson and those of his close associates and others...
in Austin.
The Rag
In October 1966, the first issue of The RagThe Rag
The Rag was an underground paper published in Austin, Texas from 1966-1977. The sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate, The Rag was one of the most influential of the early underground papers, known for its unique blend of radical politics, alternative culture and humor.- Early history...
was published in Austin—partly in response to the election of an ultra-conservative editor of the traditionally-liberal UT student newspaper, The Daily Texan
The Daily Texan
The Daily Texan is the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin. It is entirely student-run and independent from the university. It is one of the largest college newspapers in the United States with a daily circulation of roughly 30,000 during the fall and spring semesters and bills...
-- with Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman as editors. (They were actually called "funnels," in keeping with the group's anti-authoritarian approach.) In his acclaimed memoir, Famous Long Ago, Ray Mungo
Ray Mungo
Raymond Mungo is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books. He writes about business, economics, and financial matters as well as cultural issues...
wrote that "The Rag's chief 'funnel,' Thorne Dreyer, exercises an authority that is gentle and decent."
The Rag was the first underground paper in the South and the sixth member of 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...
(UPS). Cited by historian Laurence Leamer
Laurence Leamer
Laurence Leamer is a best-selling author and journalist. Leamer is a former Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and a former International Fellow at Columbia University. He is regarded as an expert on the Kennedy family and has appeared in numerous media outlets...
as "one of the few legendary undergrounds," The Rag was credited with being the first of its genre to successfully combine the radical politics of the New Left with the spirit of the burgeoning alternative culture, and, according to historian John McMillian, it served as a model for many papers that followed.
Abe Peck, author of Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, wrote that "The Rag was the first independent undergrounder to represent... the participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the midsixties was trying to develop." Author Douglas C. Rossinow, described The Rag as "enormously important to local activists," and historian McMillian said that The Rag was regarded by the Austin community as "a beautiful and precious thing."
The paper tempered serious political analysis with ample doses of humor, and The Rag provided a primary forum for two of the most important of the Sixties underground graphic artists – Gilbert Shelton
Gilbert Shelton
Gilbert Shelton is an American cartoonist and underground comix artist. He is the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, Wonder Wart-Hog, Philbert Desanex, Not Quite Dead, and the cover art to The Grateful Dead's 1978 album Shakedown Street.He graduated from Lamar High...
, whose iconic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comix would be republished in papers all over the world, and Jim Franklin
Jim Franklin (artist)
Jim Franklin is an artist best known for his poster art created for the Armadillo World Headquarters, a former Austin, Texas music hall....
, whose surrealist armadillos helped create what writer Hermes Nye called "the Great Armadillo Cult." Austin, long a haven for bohemians and iconoclasts, was also the center of a very active left political community based at the University of Texas campus and was a major player in the massive Sixties drug and music culture – incubating talents like Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators
13th Floor Elevators
The 13th Floor Elevators were an American rock band from Austin, Texas formed by guitarist and vocalist Roky Erickson, electric jug player Tommy Hall, and guitarist Stacy Sutherland, which existed from 1965 to 1969...
and some of the pioneering psychedelic poster and comix artists. And The Rag united those communities into a potent political force.
Underground press and LNS
Thorne Dreyer heralded the coming of The Rag ("from deep in the bowels of reaction... where apathy and dullness thrive") in a letter addressed to the founding members of the Underground Press SyndicateUnderground 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...
. This colorful dispatch—dated October 5, 1966—is included as a historical document in Conflicts in American History, a 13-volume encyclopedia published in 2010.
On March 26, 1967, Dreyer and Carol Neiman attended the first national convergence of underground papers at Stinson Beach, California. Historian Abe Peck wrote that "at Stinson Beach, the paper that most prefigured those to come [The Rag] was represented... by several writers, including the increasingly important Thorne Dreyer." Dreyer also participated in a historic meeting of the United States Student Press Association
United States Student Press Association
The United States Student Press Association was a national organization of campus newspapers and editors active in the 1960s. It formed a national news agency called College Press Service . USSPA was developed as a program of the National Student Association . USSPA later became independent, then...
(USSPA) in Minneapolis in August 1967 at the invitation of its newly-elected director, Marshall Bloom
Marshall Bloom
Marshall Bloom is best known as the co-founder of the Liberation News Service with Ray Mungo in 1967.-Early life and university studies:...
. At the meeting Bloom was purged from USSPA because of his radical politics (and, some thought, because of what John McMillian refers to as Bloom's "effeminate demeanor"). Bloom and colleague Ray Mungo
Ray Mungo
Raymond Mungo is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books. He writes about business, economics, and financial matters as well as cultural issues...
then founded 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...
(LNS).
The underground press started out with a handful of papers on the East and West Coasts, but soon spread like wildfire and, according to historian McMillian, author of the 2011 book Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, the papers' combined readership eventually reached into the millions. Rolling Stone's John Burks quoted Thorne Dreyer as saying that the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was organized "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers poised for the kill." But, as McMillian and others would emphasize, the underground press was no illusion, and in fact played a vital and dynamic role in the 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
cultural revolution.
According to historian James Lewes, "A number of underground newsworkers – including Marshall Bloom, Thorne Dreyer, Ray Mungo, and Victoria Smith – argued that their papers filled a vacuum left by the collective failure of mainstream media to address the needs of the growing counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements." John Leo
John Leo
John Leo is a writer and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He edits , the Institute's web site on America's universities, and is a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also a Visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college in Savannah.From 1988 to 2006 his weekly column...
wrote in The New York Times that the underground press was "consciously subjective" and "rooted in personal experience." Leo quoted Dreyer as saying that "objectivity is a farce," and that the underground papers were different from the establishment media because they were upfront about their biases.
In 1968, Thorne Dreyer left The Rag to help build the editorial collective at LNS in New York City. LNS, which was becoming the hub for alternative journalism in the United States, supplied the growing movement media with interpretive coverage of current events and reports on movement activities and the Sixties counterculture. In a history of Liberation News Service, Allen Young
Allen Young (writer)
Allen Young is an American journalist, author and editor who is also a social, political and environmental activist.-Early life:Allen Young, born in Liberty, N.Y., on June 30, 1941, to Rae Young and Louis Young. His parents, both secular Jews, spent their youth in New York City, then relocated to...
-- who had worked for both The Washington Post and LNS—wrote: "The people of the underground press helped forge a national youth culture and in both subtle and direct ways influenced their colleagues in the 'establishment media.'"
During this time Dreyer's writings were widely distributed, appearing regularly in dozens of periodicals. His coverage of the March 27, 1967, anti-war action at the Pentagon in Washington – with its massive acts of civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
– was distributed by LNS and published around the world. Called "an exuberant, emotional, firsthand account" by historian John McMillian, Dreyer's Pentagon commentary has been excerpted in a number of books about the era, including Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
's award-winning Armies of the Night
Armies of the Night
The Armies of the Night is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning nonfiction novel written by Norman Mailer and sub-titled History as a Novel/The Novel as History. Mailer essentially creates his own genre for the narrative, split into historicized and novelized accounts of the October...
. In the scholarly journal Genre, Bimbisar Irom referred to Dreyer's "dissenting, unassimilated... powerful individual voice," noting that he was close "to [Norman] Mailer's own political sensibilities as an 'independent radical'..."
In 1969 LNS published a long essay co-authored by Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith, titled "The Movement and the New Media," that was considered to be the first serious journalistic portrait of the increasingly powerful underground press phenomenon. Dreyer also wrote extensively about the growing repression of underground papers throughout the country.
Space City! and the KKK
In his book The Paper Revolutionaries: The Rise of the Underground Press, Laurence Leamer called Houston's Space City! "unquestionably one of the strongest underground papers in America." In Leamer's words, the paper "had a special importance in Houston since the city is a sprawled-out, TexasTexas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
version of Los Angeles. The paper holds the radical community together."
Space City!
Space City (newspaper)
Space City was an underground newspaper published in Houston, Texas from June 5, 1969 to August 3, 1972. The founders were SDS veterans and former members of the staff of the Austin, Texas underground newspaper, The Rag, including Thorne Dreyer, Victoria Smith, Cam and Sue Duncan, and Dennis and...
(originally called Space City News) was founded June 5, 1969, by Dreyer and Victoria Smith – who had worked together at LNS in New York – in coordination with former Rag staffers Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald, and community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan. The staff was run as a collective
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
, with all editorial and production responsibilities being shared, and in the beginning the three couples also lived together in a communal home, sharing meals and chores.
Space City! quickly moved to the fore of the second generation of underground papers—developing a reputation for its advocacy journalism
Advocacy journalism
Advocacy journalism is a genre of journalism that intentionally and transparently adopts a non-objective viewpoint, usually for some social or political purpose. Because it is intended to be factual, it is distinguished from propaganda...
, power structure research, and arts coverage – and it served as a center for the bustling Texas boomtown's peace and hipster communities while spinning off a host of other countercultural institutions.
In a 1976 book about modern Texas folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, Hermes Nye wrote that "the dark-haired bespectacled, lovely Victoria Smith and her compadre, dashing mustachioed Thorne Dreyer... helped lay the cornerstone of Houston's Space City!... a well written, sprightly sheet... [that] also had an eye for vivid, telling graphics and poetry of a high level." Historian Leamer wrote about Space City!: "There is a solid intelligence to the reviews and cultural articles... It is a radical journalism grounded in fact... resolved and balanced in content and full of common purpose..."
John Siemssen, writing in Houston's Other, quoted former Space City! staffer Bobby Eakin: "Thorne [Dreyer] was the glue that held the paper together..." Eakin added, "When it was tense and they were ready to tear into each other, Thorne would hop on a chair and recite a [humorous] monologue."
Unlike The Rag, Space City! met with violent opposition from some elements in the community, facing the wrath of right wing vigilantes openly identified with a local Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
group. As Victoria Smith wrote in Ken Wachsberger's Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, "we endured break-ins, thefts, tire-slashings, potshots (including a steel arrow fired from a crossbow through the front door), and threats, both to staff members and advertisers."
Raj Mankad wrote at OffCite that the Klan's violent actions against Space City! were part of a larger picture of "threats and acts of violence against progressive and radical institutions in Houston. The KPFT
KPFT
KPFT is a listener-sponsored community radio station in Houston, Texas, which went on the air on March 1, 1970 as the fourth station in the Pacifica radio family. Larry Lee sold the idea to Pacifica to establish listener-supported radio in Houston as an alternative to main-stream broadcasting. The...
[Pacifica] station transmitter was bombed off the air twice. Bullets were shot at and yellow paint thrown on the walls of Margaret Webb Dreyer
Margaret Webb Dreyer
Margaret Webb Dreyer — known to many as “Maggie” Dreyer — was an American painter, muralist, mosaic artist, educator, gallery owner, and political activist who spent most of her career in Houston, Texas. Though she worked in a number of styles and media over the years, she was best known as an...
's gallery," which was located a few blocks from the Space City! offices.
Progressive politics and public relations
After Space City! shut its doors, Thorne Dreyer worked with KPFT-FM, the listener-supported Pacifica radioPacifica Radio
Pacifica Radio is the oldest public radio network in the United States. It is a group of five independently operated, non-commercial, listener-supported radio stations that is known for its progressive/liberal political orientation. It is also a program service supplying over 100 affiliated...
station in Houston, where he hosted "The Briarpatch," a long-running interview and talk show, and turned the station's monthly programming guide into an underground-style tabloid called the Mighty 90 News. Dreyer would also serve for a time as the station's general manager.
During this period he became active in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
in Harris County and was on the Texas staff of George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
's anti-war presidential campaign. He edited a state-wide campaign tabloid, served as a McGovern delegate to the Texas State Democratic Convention, and attended the party's national convention at Miami Beach in 1972. He was also a supporter and friend of Houston's young progressive mayor, Fred Hofheinz
Fred Hofheinz
Fred Hofheinz , was mayor of Houston, Texas, from 1974 to 1978. He attended the University of Texas, earning a B.A., M.A., PhD, and J.D....
, working in his campaign and then working as a public information officer in the City of Houston's Model Cities Department during the Hofheinz administration.
In 1975 Dreyer and Teague Cavness started an advertising and public relations partnership called Dreyer Cavness Associates that specialized in progressive political campaigns. They managed Kathy Whitmire's successful 1978 campaign for Houston City Controller, the city's second most powerful elected position. Whitmire, who would serve two terms as Controller and then five terms as Mayor of Houston, was the first woman elected to city-wide office in Houston. After the election, Teague Cavness left the partnership to serve as Whitmire's chief aide and Dreyer continued in business as Thorne Dreyer Associates.
During this time Thorne Dreyer gained a reputation as an event planner for political campaigns, charities, and arts organizations. In 1978, The Houston Post
Houston Post
The Houston Post was a newspaper that had its headquarters in Houston, Texas, United States. In 1995, the newspaper was absorbed into the Houston Chronicle.-History:The newspaper was established on February 19, 1880, by Gail Borden Johnson...
ran a feature story with the headline, "Political parties: The campaign get-together taking on aura of best show in any town, thanks to Thorne Dreyer," in which writer Gary Christian said, "Dreyer, 32-year-old public relations man making a name for himself with his party-planning, is out to defeat that deadly seriousness surrounding political parties..." Dreyer's lively, creative events – that pulled together people from the arts and political communities—were cited by The Texas Observer
The Texas Observer
The Texas Observer is an American political newsmagazine published bi-weekly and based in Downtown Austin, Texas. The non-profit magazine is nonpartisan, but the publication has historically been an advocate for liberal politics...
as the best political parties in the state. Dreyer also worked as a feature writer and correspondent for the early Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Austin, Texas. Texas Monthly is published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. and was founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education...
magazine and as a booking agent and personal manager for jazz and rock musicians – including popular jazz singer Cy Brinson—and handled advertising, promotion, and booking for a number of popular Houston clubs and music venues, including Cody's, Rockefeller's, and Mum's Jazzplace, where he also served as a manager. Dreyer also worked for Half Price Books, buying and selling used and rare books, and later ran an online bookselling business.
During the 1990s, according to the Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is an award-winning publication owned by Cox Enterprises. The Newspaper places focus on issues affecting Austin and the Central Texas region....
's Brad Bucholz, Thorne Dreyer "suffered through a divorce, depression and two prison sentences for cocaine possession." Dreyer weathered a time of major personal crisis, struggling with severe clinical depression, the breakup of his marriage, and a long-standing bout with drug use. At a time when prosecution for cocaine possession was at its most severe, Dreyer was twice arrested and convicted for possession of small quantities of the controlled substance. During this time Dreyer did little productive work. Many veterans of the Sixties New Left experienced similar periods of crisis and "burnout," and a few, like Dreyer's friend Abbie Hoffman
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....
, even committed suicide.
But Thorne would soon turn his life around as he reunited with old friends and colleagues and once again became committed to the spirit of social change
Social change
Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. It may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic...
.
Rag Reunion and The Rag Blog
On Labor Day weekend in 2005 in Austin, Thorne Dreyer joined more than 100 former staffers and followers of The Rag for an historic three-day reunion that included a series of spirited meetings, social events, concerts, and art shows. Inspired by the Rag Reunion and the renewed contacts, energy, and commitment that grew out of it, Dreyer moved back to Austin in 2006, and once again became involved in alternative journalism and political organizing.Dreyer now edits The Rag Blog, an Internet newsmagazine that has built a wide and loyal following in the progressive blogosphere
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
. He is also host and producer of Rag Radio, a popular weekly interview show, and serves as a director of the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, that publishes The Rag Blog.
The Rag Blog, which was founded in 2006 by Richard Jehn, has developed global reach and in 2011 had its one millionth visitor. Many of The Rag Blog's contributors are veterans of the original Rag and the Sixties underground press. The editorial core group includes Sarito Carol Neiman, Dreyer's original Rag co-editor who later edited SDS' New Left Notes; former Rag staffers Mariann Wizard and Alice Embree (who also worked with New York's Rat
Rat (Newspaper)
Rat Subterranean News, New York's second major underground newspaper, was created in March 1968, primarily by editor Jeff Shero, Alice Embree and Gary Thiher, who moved up from Austin, Texas, where they had been involved in The Rag.-Beginnings:...
and was active in the Women's Liberation Movement
Women's liberation movement
The Women's Liberation Movement was a political movement, born in the 1960s from Second-Wave Feminism.It generated mythology almost before it was born such as bra burning - and it was allegedly a matter of deep concern to those within it at the time that its history would allegedly be rewritten...
); filmmaker and writer William Michael Hanks; and art director James Retherford, who edited The Spectator, a Sixties underground paper published in Bloomington, Indiana, and was active with the YIPPIES
Youth International Party
The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a radically youth-oriented and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s. It was founded on Dec. 31, 1967...
.
Historian and publisher Paul Buhle
Paul Buhle
Paul Merlyn Buhle is a Senior Lecturer at Brown University, author or editor of 35 volumes including histories of radicalism in the United States and the Caribbean, studies of popular culture, and a series of nonfiction comic art volumes. He is the authorized biographer of C. L. R...
said in 2009 that "The Rag Blog is in many ways what The Rag... was in the middle 1960s, a light in the darkness... not only readable but funny," calling it "the best place for insights in the entire blogosphere that I follow."
Rag Radio is a weekly public affairs program that features hour-long in-depth interviews with prominent figures in politics and the arts. Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP 91-7 FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, and is rebroadcast every Sunday at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on WFTE
WFTE
WFTE is a radio station licensed to serve Mount Cobb, Pennsylvania. The station's licensee is Community Radio Collective, Inc., a 501 non-profit charitable organization.WFTE Community Radio plans to go live on the air in February 2011...
, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio also has a widespread Internet following and all episodes are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
.
Dreyer also helped set up an Austin chapter of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), associated with the newly reestablished SDS. The group organized demonstrations around opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq and other progressive issues. Dreyer was involved with Progressives for Obama, which offered critical support to Barack Obama during his initial campaign for president (the organization has continued under the name Progressive America Rising), and has also helped organize a series of cultural and educational activities in Austin through the New Journalism Project.
After a long drought, Dreyer began writing again, with his work appearing on The Rag Blog and around the Internet. He is a contributing editor to the online Next Left Notes
Next Left Notes
Next Left Notes is an independent radical publication and weblog connected to the 2006 re-incarnation of Students for a Democratic Society...
and in 2006 wrote a major cover story for The Texas Observer
The Texas Observer
The Texas Observer is an American political newsmagazine published bi-weekly and based in Downtown Austin, Texas. The non-profit magazine is nonpartisan, but the publication has historically been an advocate for liberal politics...
called "The Spies of Texas" featuring exclusive revelations about how the UT-Austin campus police tracked the lives of dissidents and iconoclasts in the Sixties.
The Rag in the digital age
John McMillian writes that "some of what's happening in the left-wing blogosphere can... be compared to the Sixties underground press," and Thorne Dreyer told the Austin ChronicleAustin Chronicle
The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly, tabloid-style newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic...
's Kevin Brass that "There are a lot of similarities in the two eras." Brass, indeed, sees The Rag Blog as "part of an effort to revive some of the rabble-rousing counterculture spirit of the Sixties." Yet, Kevin Brass writes, Dreyer and The Rag Blog are "working in a media landscape light-years removed from the offset printing presses of their youth. While the original Rag would be lucky to sell 15,000 copies on Austin street corners... on any given day, a Rag [blog] post might pingpong through the digital atmosphere, creating the type of traffic the kids of the Sixties couldn't imagine, not even with the right psychedelics."
Dreyer, who has referred to recent changes in his personal life and his renewed commitment to social change and activist journalism as a "virtual rebirth," told Austin's public radio station, KUT-FM, that "our strength is in being together and realizing that we're not alone, and I think that's why the Internet has been very useful... in helping to uncover injustices and... in helping people feel like they're part of something larger."
In a 2008 feature story in the Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is an award-winning publication owned by Cox Enterprises. The Newspaper places focus on issues affecting Austin and the Central Texas region....
, Brad Bucholz wrote: "Thorne Dreyer's belief system for a new millennium is anchored in community and participation and a sense of humor. As a younger man, he led a charge to change the world, thinking it his generation's calling. Today, Dreyer has the gentle feeling at times that the movement has repaid the favor and saved him."
External links
- The Rag Blog
- Rag Radio
- Rag Radio Archived Podcasts
- The Rag Website
- Rag Authors Page
- The Rag: A film by Peoples History in Texas
- LNS Archives
- MDS/Austin
Selected articles by Thorne Dreyer
- "The Spies of Texas: Newfound files detail how UT-Austin police tracked the lives of Sixties dissidents," by Thorne Dreyer, The Texas Observer, November 16, 2006.
- "The Movement and the New Media," by Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith, Liberation News Service, March 1, 1969.
- "Rag Radio: Carl Davidson on Mondragon and Workers' Cooperatives," by Thorne Webb Dreyer, Truthout, September 20, 2011.
- "The Mad Mix: Montrose, The Heart of Houston," by Thorne Dreyer, CITE: The Architecture and Design Magazine of Houston, Summer 2010
- "The KKK in the News Again. And Back in Sixties Houston," by Thorne Dreyer, The Rag Blog, Feb. 9, 2009
- "Montrose Lives: Houston’s Montrose: The strangest neighborhood east of the Pecos" by Thorne Dreyer and Al Reinert, Texas Monthly, April 1973.
- "Sixties Radicals: Whatever Happened to the New Generation," by Thorne Dreyer, Texas Monthly, November 1976.
- "People call for revolution: Pentagon up-tight," by Thorne Dreyer, The Rag, August 30, 1967. (Simultaneously published in the Washington Free Press and then distributed by Liberation News Service.)
- "God Goes to the Astrodome," by Thorne Dreyer, Texas Monthly, January 1974.
- "Poet Marilyn Buck Freed After 25 Years in Prison," by Thorne Dreyer, The Rag Blog, July 19, 2010.
Documents
- "Letter to the Underground Press Syndicate," by Thorne Dreyer, October 5, 1966. (The Rag Archives).
Interviews
- Oral history interview with Thorne Dreyer on July 15, 1976 from Metropolitan Archives of the Houston Public Library. Audio tape (1 hr, 23 min.) and transcript.
- Thorne Dreyer interviewed by Jeff Farias, April 29, 2010 (25 min.).
- Thorne Dreyer and Sherwood Bishop discuss underground newspaper Space City! and Sixties Houston at Zine Fest Houston 2009.
- Interview with Thorne Dreyer by Texas Public Radio about "Spies of Texas," Nov. 24, 2006
- "The Eyes of Texas Were Upon Texas Radicals," Interview with Thorne Dreyer on News 8 Austin, Video and Transcript, 2006.
- Video interview with Thorne Dreyer and others from the Rag Reunion, September 2005, by People's History in Texas, 2005.
- "Veteran activist pinpoints 1960s spirit in Occupy movement" Interview by John A. Salazar for YNN, Time Warner Cable, 2011
- Jeff Zavala's videos of Thorne Dreyer's Rag Radio interviews with Scott Crow, Robert Jensen, and Diane Wilson, at The Rag Blog, 2011.
Books
- Abernethy, Francis Edward, What's Going On? In Modern Texas Folklore (Austin: The Encino Press, 1976), Nye, Hermes, "Texas Tea and Rainy Day Woman," p. 118
- Anderson, Terry H., The Movement and the Sixties (New York : Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 178.
- Baunstein, Peter and Doyle, Michael William, Imagine Nation : the American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s (New York : Routledge, 2002), pp. 107, 113
- Bizot, Jean-Francois, Free Press: Underground & Alternative Publications, 1965–1975, (New York: Universe, 2006), Cover and pp. 4–5. Photograph.
- Burks, John, "The Underground Press," The Age of Paranoia: How the Sixties Ended (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), p. 17
- Fixx, James F, Ed., New York Times: The Great Contemporary Issues: The Mass Media and Politics, (New York: Arno Press, 1972.) pp. 96–98.
- Garvy, Helen, Rebels With a Cause : A Collective Memoir of the Hopes, Rebellions and Repression of the 1960s (Los Gatos, California : Shire Press, 2007), p. 112.
- Giles, Robert and Robert W. Snyder, 1968 : Year of Media Decision (New Brunswick, New Jersey : Transaction Publishers, 1998), pp. 148, 170.
- Glessing, Robert J., The Underground Press in America (Bloomington, Indiana : The Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 36, 49. (spelled "Dryer")
- Hare, A. Paul and Herbert H. Blumberg, Nonviolent Direct Action: American Cases: Social-Psychological Analyses, (Washington and Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1968), pp. 266–267.
- Kengor, Paul, Dupes: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, (Wilmington, DE, ISI Books, 2010), p. 467.
- Leamer, Laurence, The Paper Revolutionaries : The Rise of the Underground Press (New York : Simon and Schuster, 1972), pp. 41, 44-45, 47, 62, 63, 66, 104, 105, 108
- Lewes, James, Protest and Survive: Underground GI Newspapers during the Vietnam War, (Westport, CT, Praeger, 2003), pp. 38, 46, 67.
- Mailer, Norman, The Armies of the Night : History as a Novel : The Novel as History (New York : New American Library, 1968), pp. 274–5.
- McMillian, John, Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 9, 53, 58-59, 62, 72-73, 91, 97-99, 129, 151, 162, 164, 171, 210, 222, 241, photo gallery 9
- Mungo, Raymond, Famous Long Ago : My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service (Boston : Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 9, 116, 126.
- Pardun, Robert, Prairie Radical : A Journey Through the Sixties (Los Gatos, California : Shire Press. 2001), pp. 162, 227, 264.
- Peck, Abe, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), pp. 58, 59, 75-76, 148-49, 287.
- Romm, Ethel Grodzins, The Open Conspiracy: What America's angry Generation is Saying. (Harrisburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 1970), pp. 40, 157.
- Rosemont, Penelope, Dreams of Everyday Life: Andre Breton, Surrealism, Rebel Worker, sds & the Seven Cities of Cibola (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2008), p. 202.
- Rossinow, Douglas C., Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 176, 192, 194, 257-58, 260, 269.
- Sale, Kirkpatrick, SDS, (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 392, 527.
- Stewart, Sean, Ed., On the Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), pp. v-vii, 2, 18-22, 46-49, 89-90, 142-43, 179, 190-91, 196.
- Trodd, Zoe and Brian L. Johnson, Eds, Conflicts in American History: A Documentary Encyclopedia, Volume VII (New York: Facts on File, 2010), Chapter 11: "The New Left and the Underground Press" by John McMillian, pp. 239, 240, 242, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 257, Biography of Thorne Dreyer, 502.
- Wachsberger, Ken, Editor, Voices from the Underground : Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Undergroound Press, Part 1 (East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, 2011), pp. 299, 300 (photo), 301, 302, 310, 313 (photo).
- Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam Webster, Springfield, Mass (1983), Usage example for "liberate." (In multiple editions from 70s to present.)
Scholarly articles and academic papers
- Burr, Beverly, "History of Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin (1960-1988)", Paper, University of Texas at Austin, Spring 1988, p. 20, 30
- Harvey, Marti G., "The Evolution of The Rag, An Analysis of the Social, Political and Technological Influences on the Birth of One Underground Newspaper in the 1960s," Masters Thesis, May 2010, University of Texas at Arlington, pp. vii, 11, 16, 22-23. 25, 27- 29, 36-42, 52-59, 62, 64-69, 72, 75-76.
- Holder, Matt, "A 'Molotov cocktail thrown at respectability and decency in our nation' : The Rhetoric, Revolutionary Zeal, and Myth-making of The Rag, 1966-1972", Honors Thesis, Southwestern University, 1996, Thesis Advisor, Jan C. Dawson, History.
- Irom, Bimbisar, "Genre and Political Transition: The Problematic of the Collective Novel in Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night," Genre (Duke University Press, 2011), p. 49
- Lewes, James, "The Underground Press in America (1964-1968): Outlining an Alternative, the Envisioning of an Underground," Journal of Communication Inquiry, October, 2000, pp. 379-400 (Iowa City, Iowa : Sage Publications, Inc.), pp. 387, 390, 392, 397, 400.
- Mailer, Norman, "The Battle of the Pentagon" Commentary, April 1968.
- McMillian, John, "Smoking Typewriters : The New Left’s Print Culture, 1962-1969," Doctoral Thesis, Columbia University, 2006, Dissertation Advisor, Provost Alan Brinkley
- McVicker, Jeanette, "One Nation, Under a Groove? Assessing the Legacy of the Sixties Underground Press," H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences, July 2011.
- Olan, Susan Torian, "The Rag: A Study in Underground Journalism." Masters Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1981
- Rossinow, Doug, "The New Left in the Counterculture: Hypotheses and Evidence," Radical History Review, 1997
- Slonecker, Blake, "Living the Movement: Liberation News Service, Montague Farm, and the New Left, 1967-1981. Dissertation, 2009, University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill, pp. 26, 36, 46, 105, 107, 110, 122,
Periodicals and online publications
- Brass, Kevin, "Media Watch: The Rag in the Modern World," Austin Chronicle (February 12, 2010)
- Boyle, Shane Patrick, "Zine Fest: When Houston Is Cool," The Rag Blog, June 2, 2009.
- Boyle, Shane Patrick, "Underground in H-Town: A Rich History of Alternative Media," The Rag Blog, May 19, 2010.
- Buchholz, Brad, "Thorne Dreyer back after 40 years: Radical returns to Austin..." The Austin American-Statesman, February 24, 2008. (Reposted on the Sixties website.)
- Burks, John, "The Underground Press: A Special Report," Rolling Stone, October 4, 1969
- Chriss, Nicolas C., "Officer to Play Down Marine Quiz Findings", Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1967, pp. 14–15.
- Christian, Gary, "Political parties: The campaign get-together taking on aura of best show in any town, thanks to Thorne Dreyer," Houston Post, April 30, 1978.
- Feldman, Claudia, "Houston's '60s night scene: Joplin sang here for $20 a night," Texas Magazine, Houston Chronicle, August 13, 1989.
- Holland, Dick, "UT’s Radicals", Austin American-Statesman, July 19, 1998, Page D-6.
- Kane, Karen, "Thorne Dreyer: Echoes of rebellion and random gunfire," from "The '60s: The young radicals, then and now," Texas Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Dec. 7, 1980, pp. 10–14.
- Leo, John, "Politics Now the Focus of Underground Press," New York Times, September 1, 1968,
- Mankad, Raj, "Space City! Underground," Cite: The Architecture & Design Review of Houston, Summer 2010, p. 18.
- Mankad, Raj, "Underground in H-Town," OffCite, May 21, 2010
- Martin, Debi "Sixties-era 'underground' newspapers live on in new media websites and blogs," Debi Martin website, July 26, 2011.
- McLemee, Scott, "Andy Warhol, Then and Now," Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 24, 2010.
- Raskin, Jonah, "John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters'," The Rag Blog, Feb. 21, 2011.
- Shivani, Anis, "Pressing for change: John McMillian's 'Smoking Typewriters' charts history of underground newspapers," Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 20, 2011.
- Siemssen, John, "Remembering Houston's First Alternative Newspaper," Houston's Other, Summer 1998
- Smith, Cheryl, "Everything Old is New Again: 'The Rag’ Returns to Austin," Austin Chronicle, Sept. 2, 2005.