Stories
The Black Panthers
in New Haven
The American
Independent Movement
Union-Organizing at Yale
* * *
The newspaper Modern Times grew out of the AIM newsletter which I had edited during the first Cook for Congress Campaign and which had continued through the second Cook campaign in 1968 and on through 1969.
Alternative newspapers, attached to New Left organizations like the American Independent Movement in New Haven, were springing up all around the country as the level of activism, on the one hand, and of government suppression and media distortion, on the other hand, had continued to increase (see activist section.
In the spring of 1970 I was approached by Joelle Fishman who suggested that we start a bi-weekly newspaper that would go beyond the AIM Newsletter and compete with the commercial media. Joelle, in her early twenties, had recently come to town with her husband Tony and had become involved with AIM, and was working at the printing press we had set up on Dagget Street, one of the poorest streets in the Hill section of New Haven. She came from a progressive background as her parents had been associated with the Communist Party. At that time, she was one of the shyest people I have ever met, but in later years, as a Communist Party candidate for public office she transformed hereself into an adept public speaker and a very confident political organizer.
On the basis of my experience editing the AIM newsletter, I estimated that it would take a dozen volunteers to run a newspaper like she described, so I said I was interested, but would not commit to it unless she had convinced 12 people to do it. A week or so later she came back saying that she only had 6 people, her, myself, Rick Wolff, Johnny Mendlehoff, Matt Borenstein and Ginnie Blaisdell. But she was so convincing that I told her yes.
Our first issue was well-timed. It came out on Mayday in 1970 during the height of the Panther trial.
For the first few years of Modern Times, I worked on it perhaps 40 hours a week. While I was a post-doc at Yale, it was not so difficult, but after I took a post at Wesleyan, I would find myself sometimes working all night to finish an edition and then getting only two or three hours sleep before driving the hour up to Wesleyan and teaching. Gradually we increased the size and the skill of the volunteer staff and it became more manageable.
On the weekend I would sell Modern Times on my "paper route" through the barber shops, corner grocery stores, and a few individual homes in Fair Haven where Nina and I were living at that time.
I learned journalism from Joelle who was a wonderful editor. She had a degree in journalism, but above all she had a deep faith that every person had a story to tell that was important for others to hear and understand. She taught me that the story should be in the words of the person, not in the words of the reporter and editor. As a result, our stories were mostly direct quotes as we let people tell their stories in their own words. It is a philosophy that I continue to support in the Culture of Peace News Network (see html://cpnn-usa.org).
Under Joelle's direction, Modern Times was always richly illustrated by excellent photographers such as Virginia Blaisdell, as shown below, and graphic artists many of whom had been drawn to New Haven by Yale University.
A typical photo by Virginia Blaisdell from Modern Times. The speaker is Rick Wolff.
It was not unusual for us to get a call from a professional reporter from a commercial newspaper to give us a story that had been censored by their editor. It got to the point that we would be told of police killings, but at that point I drew the line and said we could not afford to get into that kind of thing. And, as part of the network of alternative newspapers throughout the country, we would learn of government-sponsored provocation and terrorism, such as their role with "The Rat" newspaper in the bombings of corporate headquarters in order to dissuade people from going to the largest peace demonstration at the time. This is described in a footnote in my book Psychology for Peace Activists which is on line at http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ppa/chapter12-35.html.
I have donated my complete set of AIM Newsletters and Modern Times issues to the library at Wesleyan, where one can read an in-depth description of what was happening "on the ground" in those turbulent years of 1969-1974.
Eventually I left Modern Times when Rick Wolff arranged to seize control of the paper by throwing out Joelle who had founded and managed the paper from the beginning. His reason seems to have been simple anti-communism in response to Joelle's announcement that she had joined the Communist Party. This was typical of the sectarianism by which the New Left destroyed itself in those years, and it left me with more appreciation for the Communist Party, less appreciation for the New Left, and an abiding dislike for sectarianism.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme