Letter to the editor re: Gay mayday

Letter to the editor re: gay mayday.

Quicksilver Times, Juy 14-24, 1970, p. 8.

application/pdf

English

Washington (D.C.)

© Quicksilver Times

newspaper

quicksilver
where have you been?
we've been here,
but you've been far out.
we've dug you
shen you wore flowers
and shouted love.
we grew when our child
read mao's redbook.
we made bread from:
"quicksilver times
better than the new york times
get ypur quicksilver here
only 25*;"
so that you could have bread too,
because we dug you
now you're really far out.
we s t i l l dig you,
but where are you?
mayday gayday;
mayday lifeday.
i t was your day too,
but you made i t so dam blue
we want to cry with you.
in the last year and a half we
have seen q.t. go from being a drugculture
oriented hippie paper into
a struggle-oriented political newspaper.
this is great, we have sold,
read, bought and occasionally stolen
thousands of q . t . ' s and have watched
all of the changes closely.
in the last few months q.t. has
gotten much worse; i t has failed to
grow, we are street people, sometines
the only money we have comes
from selling papers, we used to
feel we were passing the word,
joyously spreading our love and l i fe
and dreams in the middle of the
death agonies we all feel under
the shadow of the great white penis,
now i t ' s business again; the joy is
gone.
the last issue, Aaericong, is
a good exanple of what's gone wrong.
mayday, the greatest orgasm of lovepain,
joy-sorrow, life-death we have
ever felt was treated with no love
at all.
where i s your coverage (coverage?)
of gaymayday? we are gay and don't
like being missed, we were there, we
were action—maybe even in a leading
role—in trying to deal with sexism
at the campsite (algonquin peace city?
whoever called it that?), we too took
over the stage once, we made our
flags, our banners, our chants and
noises known, q.t. must have heard
us, at least once.
where i s the mention of sclc,
and nwro? these are perhaps the two
most energetic, broadbased progressive
groups in the country. . they are based
primarily in black communities,
aren't they worth a l i t t l e space in
the page of q.t.?
what about the thursday april 29
town meeting, where the people of the
campsite decided that the regional
representatives, instead of the mayday
organizers, would run their camps
i t e from that point on.
what's happened i s , q.t. seems
to have no real consciousness of
what happened during mayday. it's a
view from the outside—events are reported
on, 70 pictures of "heavy" actions
filled the pages with technically
perfect s t e r i l i t y , q.t. seems
to be totally out of touch with the
community that surrounds i t . instead
we have isolated reportage, critical,
where most of us weren't really critical,
glorifying a misrepresentation of
what we did, missing out on most of
what was important to us.
i f the hip press is to be revolutionary,
it must do more than report
what happened and be on our side, it
must be a tool in the struggle, we
must have constant interchange, we must
be able to see what we did right and
why i t worked, what we did wrong and
how to learn from our mistakes, it
doesn't do much good to read about
ourselves, no matter how favorable the
coverage i s ; and most of q . t . ' s readers
are from Washington, we were here, we
know what happened.
q . t . , and the d.c. hip community
have come a long way. we've s t i l l ' g ot
a long way to go.
in love and struggle,
marie anderson
doug lawson •
terry lee
gaymayday
Marie and Terry came by last
week to deliver tfiie letter and talk
over with us these and other criticisms
of the paper. Primarily,
they feel that while Quicksilver
exists to serve and inform Washingtons
's young, revolutionary community;
it is at this time isolated
from many segments of that community.
We agree; this problem is not
new to us, but the solution will
have to be. The QT collective should
be seen as a part of the free community,
and not as a detached observer.
Likewise, the paper is a part
of the community. Our small collective
cannot directly involve itself
in all that happens here. To best
serve it's purpose as an information
and communications center for free
Washington, Quicksilver's contents
must be largely a product of that
community. We are totally commited
to working with our sisters and
brothers to produce a better people's
paper, but we can't do it alone. All
of our community has to contribute to
the free flow of information, criticism,
and support among us.
If you have any criticisms or
suggestions on how best to bring all
this about, please call us or stop
by and rap.