Ron Cobb SIGNED 1967 VINTAGE Lg. 17 X 17 Print From LA Free Press Ed. Art Kunkin

Description

This Listing Is For A Limited Edition Large 17 in. x 17 in. Vintage Lithograph Print on Card-Stock Signed By The Sixties Political Cartoonist Ron Cobb, acquired from Art Kunkin out in the Joshua Tree Area of the 'High Desert' of Southern Calif. He received it from his Free Press Contributor, Political Cartoonist (ETC!), Ron Cobb. Please Read Wikipedia Articles Below, to Learn More About How Much They Have Done For the Real Progressive Movement over the Last 5 Decades..!
(From Wikipedia) "Arthur Glick 'Art' Kunkin
(born 1928) is an American
journalist
, political organizer,
machinist
and
New Age
esotericist
best known as the founding publisher and editor of the
Los Angeles Free Press
.
Born in
New York City
, he attended the prestigious
Bronx High School of Science
and the
New School for Social Research
, eventually becoming a
tool and die maker
and joining the
Trotskyite
movement as an organizer for the
Socialist Workers Party
, where he was business manager of the SWP paper,
The Militant
.
Beginning in the late 1940s Kunkin was associated with
C.L.R. James
and the radical Marxist
Johnson-Forest Tendency
. During the 1950s he was Los Angeles editor of their journals
Correspondence
and
News & Letters
, while working as a master machinist and tool and die maker for
Ford
and
General Motors
. During this period a number of theoreticians and organizers of the Johnson-Forest trend (including
Raya Dunayevskaya
,
Martin Glaberman
,
Grace Lee Boggs
and
James Boggs
) were concentrated in the auto industry in Detroit, where they worked to recruit black workers and gain influence inside the auto workers' unions.
In 1962 Kunkin left General Motors to go back to college and work toward a graduate degree. Soon afterward he had his first experience with a local newspaper on the staff of a Mexican-American paper in Los Angeles called the
East L.A. Almanac
. "For the first time in my life I was writing about garbage collection and all kinds of community problems," he later recalled. Meanwhile, he was also doing political radio commentaries for
KPFK
Pacifica Radio while serving as the Southern California district leader of the
Socialist Party
.
In May 1964 he produced the first trial issue of the
LA Free Press
as a one-shot distributed at the
Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market
, a fund-raising event for KPFK. The response was favorable enough for Kunkin to start publishing the
Freep
(as it came to be called) on a regular basis starting in July. The core group of volunteers and supporters who got involved in the paper included people from KPFK, the bohemian crowd that hung out at the Papa Bach bookstore, and The Fifth Estate, a
Sunset Strip
coffee house which provided office space for the
Freep
in its basement. The paper soon became a nerve center of the burgeoning hippie scene.The atmosphere at the
Freep
was described by a reporter for
Esquire
: "Kids, dogs, cats, barefoot waifs, teeny-boppers in see-through blouses, assorted losers, strangers, Indian chiefs wander in and out, while somewhere a radio plays endless rock music and people are loudly paged over an intercom system. It's all very friendly and rather charming and ferociously informal."
Launched on a shoestring budget, the
Free Press
struggled for years. By 1969 circulation had exploded to 100,000 copies, but legal problems stemming from publication of a list of names of undercover drug agents put the
Freep
in a precarious financial position just as it was expanding its operations to include a printing plant, a typesetting firm and a small chain of bookstores. Underpaid staff members left in two waves of defections to form the competing newspapers
Tuesday's Child
and
The Staff
. By 1972 Kunkin and the paper were deep in debt to the very pornographers whose advertising had been the source of the paper's profits, and Kunkin lost control of the paper and was fired, rehired, and fired again, as the paper spiraled slowly into oblivion, paralleling the nationwide decline of the
underground press
.
Kunkin's post-
Free Press
career began with a stint as a professor of journalism at
California State University, Northridge
, followed by several years as president of the
Philosophical Research Society
in Los Angeles, an esoteric mystical group founded by
Manly Palmer Hall
. This was followed by an apprenticeship in
alchemy
at the
Paracelsus Research Society
in
Salt Lake City
, where he edited their journal
Essentia
. He later became a lecturer in alchemy and other New Age topics at the
Institute for Mentalphysics
retreat center near
Joshua Tree
and a columnist for the
Desert Valley Star
."
Art Recently Received 2 "Lifetime Achievement Awards" from the Veterans for Peace AND the Calif. State Legislative Assembly..!
Please feel free to ask any questions. Please Bid with Confidence. Serious Bids Only Please! It Is Guaranteed To Be What Is Claimed: An Authentic Signed Piece of Underground Journalism History Signed by 1 of the Men Who Helped Start It All, Ron Cobb!
The Print Itself is In Excellent Condition for Being over 5 Decades Old (Please See Photos)
Thank You for Checking Out This Auction, Good Luck & PEACE.
Payment from Auction Winner is Expected within 3 days. Thank You!