NOLA Express

“NOLA Express is a singular publication started in 1967 in New Orleans as part of the Underground Free Press movement of the 1960s that protested the Vietnam War and other government policies along with social hypocrisies. Published by two young poets, Darlene Fife and Robert Head, and produced by a dedicated band of activists, poets and illustrators based in the French Quarter, NOLA Express was opposed to American imperialism, racism and materialism. The paper was named after William S. Burroughs‘s cut-up novel, Nova Express, and published uncensored news, art and literature featuring Charles Bukowski, Hedwig Gorski, and many others. NOLA Express was one of the most outrageous papers of the 1960s. It was one of the most notorious underground newspapers to join UPS and rallied activists, poets, and artists by giving them uncensored voice. Editors Robert Head and Darlene Fife were part of political protests that extended the “memeo revolution” through pamphleteering used by freedom-of-speech poets during the 1960s. NOLA Express was also a member of COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers). These two affiliations with organizations that were often at cross purposes made NOLA Express one of the most radical and controversial publications of the counterculture movement. Part of the controversy around NOLA Express was that it included graphic images that many in Sixties society was deemed as pornographic. … In 1967, the cooperative Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was formed at the instigation of the publisher of another early paper, the East Village Other. The UPS allowed member papers to freely reprint content from any of the other member papers. One can make a comparison between the democratic free speech newspapers like NOLA Express and Wiki publications on the Internet today because of its free use and open sourcing. New Orleans was considered the Third Coast by 1960s countercultureal migrants who hitch-hiked between San Francisco, Austin, New Orleans, Key West and New York.^[3] These social revolutionaries were able to find support, free housing, food, and work without commitments on the counterculture circuit. NOLA Express was mobilized by an ever-changing ragtag army of street vendors, at its peak selling 11,000 copies every two weeks. …”
Wikipedia
NOLA Express