20 jan 1968 & washington free press

"The Washington Free Press is important because it became a center for left organizing. Young people flocked there and 100s of hippies survived that way."
                                                                                                  Bill Blum (2017)

#OTD Saturday 20 January 1968 the Washington Free Press newspaper, published by Washington Free Community, Inc., was in circulation throughout the city and beyond. The Washington Free Press was an underground newspaper that shared news from its own reporters and from the Liberation News Service. The photo above is the cover page of the 14 January 1968 issue. 

This issue includes critiques of Washington Post articles by Bill Blum (co-founder and editor), and a piece on poster art by Roger Selby (curator of education at the Corcoran Gallery of Art). The issue also includes a letter from Albert Miori-Sans, 17 years old, who shared that he recently moved from Argentina to DC and thanked WFP because "I am new and I know nobody here, yet already I feel I have close friends I have known all my life."

Miori-Sans may have been one of the teenagers who Blum said "trickled in and out looking for refuge, ready to earn 10 cents for each 25 cent newspaper they sold." 

Your comments are welcome below. Were you a staff member? Did you sell the newspaper? Do you remember reading the newspaper? Do you have copies of the newspaper? You may also comment privately here. 

Photo source: DigDC, DC Public Library WFP ran intermittently from 1966-1969. You can see other issues and learn more about its history. I thank Lauren Algee for sharing this source. 
William Blum, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir 2002
Dale M. Blumfield, Independent Press in DC and Virginia: An Underground History 2015. I thank Dale Blumfield for getting me in contact with Bill Blum. 
Author interview with Bill Blum, 22 June 2017