Tocsin - The West's Leading Anti-Communist Weekly. Vol.5 No.34

Berkeley/Oakland: TOCSIN Inc. / Charles Fox, 1964. Newsletter. Singleton issue of the weekly, no photos this number. As with other numbers presswork is on semi-glazed alkaline paperstock, folded twice for mailing, slight edgewear, a hint of toning. Good clean copy unmarked except for the mailing address. Subjects touched on are Koreanization of Vietnam, Carlton Goodlett's magnificent press statement, a variety of the local CPUSA are getting federal jobs and benign press attention, and more, including a child in a US Army hospital needing get-well cards. The Goodlett material quotes 175 words of his public statement ("We're Forging a Technique") and cites a dozen or so of his left credentials. The newsletter was begun in June 1961 to expose the Red conspiracy behind the burgeoning student movement and the greater New Left, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area and at UC Berkeley, from Free Speech Movement to anti-Vietnam War activism and Black Power struggles of later years. Tocsin delved into its mission passionately, illustrating many issues with B&W surveillance photos taken on the site of rallies or teach-ins, naming names and tracing real or imagined Communist lineages, family connections, factional shifts, etc. Despite its blatant slant, no comparably systemic chronicle of local activists and their associations is available in Left publications from the period.