Rebels’ Voice, vol. 1 no. 3

"Rebels’ Voice was an alternative student newspaper assembled by Raymond Davis, John Hock, Stewart Shevin, Hughthir White, and other high school students. Its tagline was, “The official organ of the rebels.” Lorraine Perlman writes, “With minimal help from people older than themselves, [they] succeeded in printing their unofficial newspaper. The equipment was just as recalcitrant for people under sixteen as for those over sixteen.” The high schoolers also helped with maintenance of the print shop and printing Radical America.The newspaper is an impressive document, gathering stories from students at schools across the city: a student from Western High School who reports on new repressive I.D. card requirements; a short article on “bad dope” in the schools (“Lately, in the schools there has been a lot of bogue dope going around such as Jones and downers”); a report from a student who is “tired of seeing black and white students fighting ... School encourages blacks and whites to fight instead of helping each other ... they like to keep the whites and blacks divided so they’ll fight each other instead of the real enemy.” The paper encourages students to organize unions at their schools, and offers a “Rebel’s Platform” that demands an end to sexism and racism, and an education “to produce for ourselves and ... govern ourselves.” They also demand an end to the “student/teacher caste system”: “Teachers are not the social or intellectual superi-ors of students, they have only lived longer and (hopefully) acquired useful knowledge that we need. ... WE ARE NOT BEASTS. We demand to be able to move when we want, speak when we want, think what we want and go to the bathroom when we want.” An article entitled “Scab Labor” criticizes the graphic arts department at Cass Technical High School for teaching students outdated technology while promising them that they’ll be employable upon graduation. It also accuses the school administration of using students as non-union “scab labor,” with no wages or benefits, to print materials for the school’s football team and office needs.6Stewart Shevin, who was a student at Cass Technical High School, recalled later, “they had hand-operated, sheet-fed Kluge letterpresses. At the time, part of what we were telling students was, ‘This is supposed to be a vocational school, and they’re teaching you letterpress. There’s technolo-gy out there! Don’t you know that you can offset print?’” The school relied on students operating the letterpress equipment to meet their printing needs, yet the skills the students were learning were outdated and would not be useful upon graduation." The Detroit Printing Co-op by Danielle Aubert.