Talk:Berkeley Tribe

Untitled
this will be a continuing supplementary history of The Berkeley Tribe by one of the main staff members 1969-1971, first as Advertising Manager, then as one of three co-editors in chief of this weekly underground newspaper -- Matthew Steen. I am listed on the masthead of The Tribe and have -- a number of articles written or edited by me by name, as well as poetry, prose and critiques under the names of Billy Berkeley, weathervane and other pseudonyms. My blood and DNA are located in both of our offices on Grove Street (now MLK Way). One of the original advocates of participatory journalism and early trainer for our gone gonzo Hunter. Matthew steen (talk) 04:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC) --Matthew steen (talk) 04:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I hope you will post more here and that this page will become a good supplemental resource. Did you work for Max Scherr on the Barb? Fafhrdrn1154 (talk) 00:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

berkeley tribe redux 2012
I will be posting every few days or so as memory permits. I knew Max but did not work for The Barb. I joined The Tribe within 30 days of the walk-out from The Barb on Uni Avenue. Started in advertising and interned with The Rolling Stone at the same time as my start with The Tribe; RS wa;s still on Howard in SF while The Tribe offices were on either side of 1905 Grove (now MLK). I have many reminensces of these times, including being firebombed and shot at while at our production office. However, for the purposes of WikiTribe I would like to remain as factual and historically accurate as possible. Most of these comments are documentable through microfilmed records of every issue of The Tribe, as well as by incorporation papers on file with the State of California (Franchise Tax Board and Dept of Corporations); historical data with the American Bureau of Circulation (ABC); sources with the fifth estate; and various FBI and Congressional records.

Firstly, I believe that staff of The Red Mountain Tribe (the corporate name) should be acknowledged in the record, but subject to redaction according to individual wishes. Some of us: Hank Dankowski, Stephen Shames, Jeannie Raisler, Phineas Israeli, Stew Alpert, Jim Marshall, Marge Piercy and myself. We were photographers, reporters, typesetters, editors and shitworkers. As I can gain microfilm access to mastheads I will remember and memorialize as many as those responsible for the political and cultural mayhem caused in Berkeley and around the country by our extreme views in extreme times.

While with The Tribe I was also a field correspondent for Liberation News Service and a field director for the Underground Press Syndicate, working in association with Tom Forcade in Chicago; Tom was the principal organizer of UPS; he later committed suicide in 1975. In my UPS capacity, I made contact with staff of other underground newspapers in Seattle (The Sabot), Lawrence, Ann Arbor (Argus), Chicago (The Seed), and New York (The Rat and EVO).

I was probably one of the staff most responsible for the New Left shift of The Tribe, rightly or wrongly. I was a member of the People's Park Organizing Committee (PPOC), was arrested several times during PP riots in 1969 and was one of the 120 students shot by police. I was also an officer of Merritt College SDS and flew to Chicago to attend the SDS national convention in June 1969. Instead, we dissolved SDS and formed The Weatherman. After returning to the Bay Area, we started the International Liberation School, with the help of the Radical Education Project (REP). By we, I mean The Red Mountain Tribe; the ILS was our official project which we operated partially out of our commune on Ashby Avenue. Several non-newspaper publications were issued and a target shooting range was set up in the Berkeley hills. I was one of the weapons instructors (see FBI reports). Several of my friends and partners had recently returned from Cuba and the Venceremos Brigades. Another frined (unnamed) had returned from her sojourn to North Vietnam. And I was one of three co-editors of The Tribe throughout 1970. I was the swing vote that approved the covers of 'Bloodbath', Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla, and 'Blood of a Pig'. Yes, it was me and I am the one to curse. Political correctness is not a constant.Mlsteenwx13 (talk) 04:42, 28 February 2012 (UTC21:05, 3 March 2012 (UTC)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.127.230.217 (talk) 07:52, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Great, informative post. Who were the other two co-editors? And how were editors chosen? Did the job rotate?
 * --Fafhrdrn1154 (talk) 22:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The co-editors were chosen by the entire staff collective upon nomination during staff meetings. The editors did rotate, if I remember correctly, every

six months, although it could have been quarterly. One of the editors would holdover, for purpose of continuity, with two new editors. I was one of the holdovers. Replacements were selected during staff meetings whenever someone resigned. During my 1969-1970 tenure, Jim Marshall, Stew Alpert and Phineas (a pseudonym) were Weathervane13 02:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC) co-editors. There were several others. I'm working on other wikipages and will contribute more information before I move on to editing The Berkeley Tribe page.Mlsteenwx13 (talk) 07:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Before I forget (haha), one of the other co-editors, briefly, was Marge Piercy -

see her Wikipage.Mlsteenwx13 (talk) 07:42, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One more thing -- I, or someone, needs to scan past issues of The Tribe into the computer so that the content and graphics will be available to the public.Mlsteenwx13 (talk) 07:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * 2012wow; still hard to believe. all of those years, all of our lives. My wiki username has changed from wx13 to weathervane13.  Easier and it used to be one of my pseudonyms at The Tribe when publicly

proposing illegal activities in The Tribe. In retrospect you are probably right Lee. We did go a bit over the line, however, we were young, educated, altruistic, exploring and outraged by the Vietnam War, racism and institutionalized poverty. It was a vast and rapidly changing social, cultural and political environment. We cannot recriminate against excesses of long times past that helped to bring to some degree of fruition the ideals all of us fought for and against. Weathervane13 02:40, 6 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)


 * More Tribe info. As I recall, our names were on the masthead for the first 8 or 9 months of publication when we started noticing strange cars with bullet-headed men in sunglasses parking across and down the street of our offices on Grove.  The staff met en masse and we voted to remove all names from the masthead but not from individual

stories and articles. There never were staff job designations in the masthead, only our names. Also, are you sure about our publish dates of 1969-1972. I could swear I was working at The Tribe in 1968 as ad and layout manager. I have to get at the microfilm for doublecheck of my memory. Weathervane13 17:04, 7 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)


 * Well, back again. I will be doing a major edit of this stub article to upgrade it and earn a better assessment.  Thanks for starting this page and inserting image.  Not bad.  But the article really needs a rework, as you probably realize.  I won't be tossing relevant info or names currently in the article, just fleshing it out and with lots of cites/refs. Weathervane13 00:42, 22 April 2012 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

2013 Update on Tribe and nuts and bolts of underground newspapers
Am currently writing a more detailed version of Berkeley Tribe organization and operations, other Bay Area underground press and the role played in the development of radical left politics and counter-culture. Info will include a piece on R. Aoki, International Liberation School, our gun range and the Black Panthers.. Will integrate with article piecemeal at first. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs) 19:01, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Major article rewrite ~ ~ Help and Advice and Assessment
== Finally, starting this rewrite, now that it has been adopted by Bay Area Task Force. Am using other underground newspaper Wiki articles as a guide for this. Parts of this article need to be consolidated and merged. Will work on it. Also would like to import some jpg images -- how do I accomplish this using thumbnail jpgs in different locations in the article???Weathervane13 19:32, 9 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Also would request an assessment to move this article up to Start class. ThanksWeathervane13 20:02, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

New revised Article Berkeley Tribe in French Wiki and Redaction

 * Translation went fairly well. Increased article content 75%.  Lot of fixes needed (and done) on citations and links.  Still going thru the translation, finding some minor transposition errors.  Much better than previous article.  Still needs lede work to shorten lede.Weathervane13 21:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)


 * Article was redacted for some reason. Could have been the translation 'cause all the citations and links were repaired after the translation??.

Length of lede template

 * Am working on merging much of the lede into body of articleWeathervane13 04:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

what makes this vandalism? what makes it unsigned? I told you who I am, and I did work at the Barb during People's Park as well as through the Strike and walkout, and am one of the original "Founding Mothers" and first co-editors - I posted an article about the Tribe years ago but it was immediately taken down as "unimportant" - yet they kept yours, despite the confused structure. typical. I definitley outrank you as a Tribe authority, obviously have more back copies (all have staff boxes by the way) -You owe me a great deal more respect, not to mention friendship - but all that seems to have gone down the tubes long ago - not sure I should waste more time on this; embarrass yourself if you like, stake out personal territory on an "anonymous" page, which you contradict by signing it because obviously, ego is bigger than information (which is why you were better off in advertising than information)-

false accusation Matt - I am shocked and dismayed that you didn't have the common courtesy to respond correctly to my very well intentioned editing help - your article is disorganized, redundant and in need of work - but it's also tendentious, misleading, negative and bording on the slanderous for the vast majority of the Tribe staff who were NOT admirers of the Weathermen - you sure are acting like a petty, phallocrat tyrant; maybe it was just a fit of pique; i'd have been more diplomatic if I'd been treated that way myself, but on wiki, stranger just shoot down pages without reason - then we see things like this that need work, and are supposed to be available for corrections by anyone - b but some guy thinks he owns it and can define the truth his way, whether right or wrong - not the idea, pal! a TV character quipped "if there's one thing I can't stand more than hippies, it's the neo-fascists they tend to eventually become"

Where do I complain about YOUR vandalism of my edit and criticism? poor guy with such a big ego he can't see he's missing the point. no time for this. Detroit Annie (if you don't remember me, your alzheimer's is much worse than you think) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anniemagic (talk • contribs) 18:20, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Vandalism
This article has been vandalized.Weathervane13 00:42, 26 January 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weathervane13 (talk • contribs)

I remember Matt Steen, but not as a major member - on the other hand, he seems to have omitted me (Detroit Annie) and most of those I knew, although I'm quite sure we were "major", and I apparently have a much larger selection of back issues to refer to (all of which have staff boxes, by the way; )I'm surprised he was so uninterested in the useful input - but I'd seen a guy do that at the Goddard Media Conference - stand up and claim to be the Tribe editor and spout a bunch of nonsense which I was well aware of being erroneous - but there at least, I could say my piece and be heard by others, who could judge the worth of the arguments - something amiss about all this

Steen's writing style is confused, ill-ordered, contains definite errors and slanderously tendentious exaggerations - most of the editorial staff and content were relatively mild, he seems to want to give an impression of radical nuts - from whom he takes his pseudo, weathervane. The least he could have done, was respect the work I put into correcting it, enough to read it - which would surely have taken more time than 6 seconds - even anonymous, the male ego is a monsterous waste of other people's time and energies - which is ultimately, why the Tribe folded, by the way.

I was surprised Abe Peck found so much to say about it, since he was never there - and surprised that Steen didn't ask for his help in editing, if he can take it better coming from another male...

In the version he immediately removed (how did he find out after only 6 seconds?) I tried to re-order the content to follow logically, removing redundance and repetition, simplifying language and adding useful/necessary detail - all of which he slew whole cloth - I wonder what kind of mafia is running wiki, that leaves him full right to reestablish his unreadable text - despite the editorial policy allowing others to participate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anniemagic (talk • contribs) 22:00, 26 December 2015 (UTC)


 * An electronic archive of The Berkeley Tribe is here. I cannot find Steen's name mentioned in the few issues I searched and browsed. This ad for a 1970 issue claims that Steen was an editor, but the issue mentioned does not show his name (that I could find) either. Until his name is found within the pages of the paper, it should be removed from this article. I will add citation needed tags and delete the Steen references if a citation is not found shortly. SteveJEsposito (talk) 22:07, 28 March 2017 (UTC)SteveJEsposito (talk) 22:35, 28 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Deleted the uncited Steen references. Citation Needed tags have been up since March, 2017 and no citations have been added.SteveJEsposito (talk) 00:34, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

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New Left revision?
MarnetteD has removed the New Left tag from this article. Is there any question at all that The Berkeley Tribe was a part of the New Left?SteveJEsposito (talk) 13:15, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Same editor did the same thing to the Marion Delgado page, that has as a source "New Left Notes".SteveJEsposito (talk) 13:19, 25 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Please read and understand WP:CATDEF where it clearly states "Categorization of articles must be verifiable. It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories." This was explained at the ANI thread as well. As soon as reliable sources are added then the cat can be restored. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 17:58, 25 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Added diverse references in paragraph 1 referring to The Berkeley Tribe as a New Left publication.SteveJEsposito (talk) 21:20, 25 December 2017 (UTC)