May 11, 2006 at 13:13:29

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Great Speckled Memories

By Jonathan Springston, Posted by Matthew Cardinale (about the submitter)     Page 3 of 6 page(s)

opednews.com     Permalink

In those days, Midtown was the hippy and artistic haven of Atlanta. Between 10th and 14th Streets, the counterculture held sway. Many free concerts and other gatherings were held in Piedmont Park, including an early performance by The Allman Brothers.

Suburban residents would come to Midtown on the weekends to see the “freaks.” In fact, the area would become so jam-packed that it was hard to travel in the area.

The police made a habit of harassing the residents of the area for various, often bogus, reasons. The Bird produced many accounts of these incidents in their pages and made it their habit to expose unwarranted police harassment to the public.

In 1969, a police riot broke out in Piedmont Park when officers clashed with “loiterers” and “trespassers.” Police clubbed and chased people through the park and out onto 14th Street, where some who were running were caught right in front of The Birdhouse. Some Bird staffers later took affidavits from some of the victims.

The late '60s and early '70s was a low period as far as development was concerned in Midtown. Residents had abandoned the homes in the area and The Bird staff was able to negotiate a cheap rent deal for The Birdhouse.

Later, real estate developers and other business interests snatched up the land at low prices.

During the eight and half years of The Bird's prime existence, the city continued to rezone and raise rent in Midtown to the point where the colorful inhabitants increasingly could not afford to live there. When Colony Square appeared, it marked the beginning of the kind of development seen in Midtown today.

Today's residents of Midtown would be unable to recognize their surroundings if they traveled back in time. Small businesses and homes have been replaced with towering skyscrapers, fancy residential complexes, and hotels.

The Bird shuffled locations several times, leaving The Birdhouse for other nearby Midtown locations, including 253 North Avenue in 1970 and 956 Juniper Street in 1973, before ending up on 449 and half Moreland Avenue in Little Five Points in 1976.

A spectrum of leftist writings

For a long time, The Bird was able to operate without competition from other local alternative newspapers, allowing them to make a full-throated defense of liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist, and Leninist issues.

The degree of how far a story was to the left depended on what the issue was and who was writing it at what time. The early years saw more radical viewpoints than the later years. The diversity of the staff led to these varying editorial positions.

The early years saw many stories about anti-war and anti-draft rallies, tales of conscientious objectors' struggles with the law, civil rights, accounts of police harassment, geopolitical and moral stories dealing with Vietnam, labor strikes, and so much more.

Unlike today's Atlanta Progressive News, which is written in hard news format, Bird stories ran the gamut from rigid, traditional news style pieces, to stream-of-consciousness, poetry, and freeform.

Advertisements for clothing stores, bookstores, music stores, and music festivals splashed across the pages. There were arguments about whether to include advertisements early on but advertising was another valuable source of revenue.

There were pictures; letters to the editor, some more friendly than others; cartoons; and reviews.

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