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BN: So how did it... did it change then, or how did the decision-making shift after this time period then? And then like if I wanted to write an article for Gidra, what would the process be?

MM: Okay, I don't want to make it sound like it was a very organized and conscious process.

BN: That also comes through. There's a certain level of...

MM: Because sometimes it may be whoever sees it last gets to say how it's edited or how... it doesn't have to do with title or position.

BN: Well, there were no titles.

MM: Yeah. And I think we were trying to, we were experimenting, we were trying to learn ourselves, what is the best process, what is the way that we can function that lives up to our values? We want to include everybody, we want to hear the voices of people who don't speak up. We want to allow opportunities for people to play an important role. We were conscious of that, but we didn't really know how to exactly do that. And one of the things that we did -- and I don't remember exactly what month -- but we started a system of "issue editors." And so there may be one, two or three people who take responsibility for leading that particular issue, and then later on, we had a lot of specific, like high school issue, women's issue, different kinds of things like that, that that group of people would take on leadership. But I think the idea was to be flexible enough to incorporate the many people who were just curious, but also structured enough so that we can get the paper out. And I know that there was one month that is... you know, we have sixty issues from April to April. April to April should be sixty-one, but there's one issue missing because we had kind of an organizational crisis that we just could not, we didn't have the capacity to actually push through and get that issue done, so we did a combined June/July issue.

BN: This is June '70.

MM: Yeah. And that also had to do with not only internal issues, but all the things, the activity of the movement. Because we were all participating in the movement, too.

BN: We were just talking about the police riot, that's exactly that period. In terms of your own role, I noticed that around this time, in the '70s, you have a lot of photo credits and cover designs and so forth. Was that always something you were interested in and how did that kind of come about?

MM: I was interested in photography on and off. I used to... in 1970 or whatever that time period is, I must have gotten a new camera or something, but we're all using 35-millimeter film. But beyond that, 1970, I'm not sure, that was before I started, it was that time period that I was in film school. By '72 I was in law school, so that was kind of a balancing act, too. So there's no specific reason for when I took pictures and when I wrote.

BN: Although the fact that, now that you mention it, coinciding with the film school kind of makes sense.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.