The Free Press was the Key to the Zeitgeist

Ruben Martinez:
“While I never read the Freep during its run, the generation of writers I belong to owes everything to Art Kunkin's pioneering efforts.
I became a staff writer at the LA Weekly about a decade after the last issue of the Freep, and the veterans that I learned from would speak of it with the kind of reverence reserved for legends. They said the Freep was more than a newspaper -- that it was the key to the zeitgeist, a connection to the vanguard, words that in and of themselves were Revolution. As bombastic as it sounds, I understood that to be the mission of the alternative press. I still do.

Ruben Martinez,Author of “The New Americans: Seven Families Journey to Another Country.”