Our roots stretch back to the early 1980’s, when we connected
with
the dynamic punk, reggae, and hip hop scenes in Providence, Rhode Island.
We
organized many events, including May Day, Peace and Freedom festivals, and
demonstrations.
We
circulated countless copies of the NWR paper magazines, on Dead Tour, all
across the nation.
In 1986, we printed the first
issue of the New World Rising magazine, as part of our
“disrupt the war party”
campaign in NYC. During the campaign, we developed strong connections with the
anarchists and squatters in NYC.
In 1987, we connected with the Rainbow Family
of Living Light at the National Gathering in North Carolina, seeing people
living alternative lifestyles in the here and now.
In 1988, we connected with
the Grateful Dead tour and did three tours a year until the death of Jerry
Garcia. We distributed from 10-30,000 copies of the magazine per tour.
New World Rising magazine
continued into the late 1990’s, with 30 issues and about 1 million copies being
created and distributed.
Going on tour with the Dead was our primary means to
reach the cultural creatives, with NWR spreading our network nationally and
internationally. This brought in waves of messages of peace and love,
especially from young womyn.
NWR transformed into a
communicator and connector for the peace and love and music
world transformation
movement. Our distribution peaked in the summer of 1989 at 50,000 copies.
We continued touring and distributing and connecting until Jerry died in ‘95.
In 1992, Grateful Fred, the
founder of New World Rising, bought an abandoned house in the oppressed
neighborhood of South Providence, Rhode Island, to start our Build the New
World Now project, by fixing it up into our Sassafras House cooperative living
project, with a desired focus on activists, musicians, and artists. Hundreds of
people lived there over the 12 years that it continued.
Over the years, we rehabbed
Sassafras house and developed an inner city cooperative living experiment.
Living together, we had activists, artists, musicians, construction workers,
mainly young people and also many otherwise homeless people struggling to
survive. We had good times and we had plenty of bad times. We all learned a lot
from the experience.
We went into a dilapidated drug and violence prone neighborhood and planted the
Rainbow flag of peace, love, caring, sharing and networking together to make
the world a better place. We helped many of our neighbors fix up their homes
and shared many a spliff with neighborhood youth. We made many friends from our
“hippie house” base. But throughout the project, financial responsibility by
most of the residents was lacking, and this led to the end of that experiment
in 2004.
After that, our core scattered
to NY, CO, FL, RI, and other places,
each doing their thing in the transformation
process.
Now in 2012, the movement intensifies as the imperial system
disintegrates.
And New World Rising ‘zine is born again.
2012: the year to SHINE!!!
