Word: avatars
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...that isn't the point. Whether or not Avatar is written well or not is not grounds for its being suppressed. Important issues never come conveniently packaged. Let's suppose that Avatar is the worst written of the underground newspapers (which it is not). Who is to say that tomorrow some Cambridge magnate might not decide that the CRIMSON is offensive and badly written. The parallel is admittedly a bad one because Harvard University wields a big stick in town and the local officials wouldn't want to tangle with Harvard Law professors over the issue. The point is, however...
...most recent Avatar, the Children's Issue? Because if you didn't you should buy it and decide for yourself whether it is obscene in comparison with the girlie mags. If it isn't obscene then the police are cracking down on political obscenity and not literary obscenity. Perhaps local officials want to crack down on the mouthpiece of the hippies. But where is there a law that says you can harass a segment of the population you disapprove of? Haven't we been fighting that kind of thing in the South? Oh, but local politicians get mileage...
There is another, more subtle, more insidious excuse for not worrying about Avatar's fate. "It's a bad magazine, the writing is poor, and there's that kook who thinks he's God in it." To begin with Avatar has improved immensely and personally I really like the rag. Go into the University Restaurant some afternoon when a new issue has just come out. Everyone has a copy and many a professor has been caught chuckling over its refreshing tone...
...Avatar does not have the power. They have little or no backing. They are in trouble financially, all their editors have been arrested, they are at the end of their shoestring operation. And they looked like an easy target for repression. I'm first Harvard undergraduate has been arrested for selling Avatar, and there is some talk about getting together a group of students and Faculty to bring attention to the clear infringement on the freedom of the press...
What interests me especially about the Avatar case is that students who participate in disruptive demonstrations are constantly asked by more moderate elements of our society why they don't present their complaints through regular channels. The people who built Avatar from nothing were using one of these legitimate channels of expression which are guaranteed by the bill of rights--the freedom of the press. And then all of a sudden these hippies, these malcontents find that the legitimate channels are clogged with petty political hog wash and pedantic restrictions. If every effort the anti-Establishment makes to express itself...