From PENN@MARIE.MIT.EDU Wed May  8 00:09:31 1991
Date:    Mon, 18 Mar 1991 18:18:32 EST
From: "steve penn 26-567, 253-1521 Remember Our Humanity; Science is Not Neutral; MIT War Research Kills." <PENN@MARIE.MIT.EDU>
Subject: NLNS Prospectus
To: prog-pubs@fuggles.acc.Virginia.EDU
X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"prog-pubs@fuggles.acc.virginia.edu"


Hi Folks,

	Regarding NLNS, I guess that we should have provided more of an 
introduction earlier, since we started well before the war, and we plan to 
continue far past it.  Basically NLNS existed as a "future project" for the 
Network of the Alternative Student Press (NASP) for a few years before 
actually being seriously attempted last May.  NLNS was designed 
to be the news service for NASP.  It was designed to collect the best and 
representational stories from NASP papers and correspondents, to assemble 
them into packets of various medium, and to redistribute them to NASP and 
subscribers.  The cost was to be covered by donation and subscriptions.  
Papers and correspondents submitted their material simply by sending it to 
us via US mail, email, or, when necessary, fax.  In order to guard against 
to much centralized decision-making in what has been a very decentralized 
network of journals, NASP papers selected which of their stories were to 
be run in the packets.  Papers would continue to receive the packets as 
long as they remained in contact with NLNS.  Everyone was asked to mail 
NLNS their publications, and papers that could afford to pay for NLNS were 
asked to do so.

	Those are still the goals of NLNS, but some of the demographics 
have changed significantly in the past year.  Presently, the number of 
active papers in the network is nearly 200, which is 5 times what it was a 
year ago.  This increase is far more that we targeted and our resources and 
staff are particularly strained.  In addition, during the war we took on 
the additional task of trying to maintain an up to date account of all 
national and international protest and censored or suppressed news.  Now 
that the fighting has subsided, we are trying to move out of crisis mode 
and onto more permanent footing.

	Sooo... we will be moving back to the twice monthly packet 
frequency.  Please send all material to:

	NLNS, PO Box 41, MIT Branch, Cambridge, MA 02139     or
	dmstern@athena.mit.edu				     or
	dmstern@athena.bitnet

	Also we are always in dire need of contributions which you can send 
to the above address.  Remember your contributions help assure that papers 
which cannot afford to pay us still continue to receive the NLNS packets.

	If you have worked for a NASP paper, or at least a progressive 
paper, and you are interested in working with the NLNS collective, please 
write or call us at (617) 253-0399.  In establishing the NLNS collective we 
try to draw from the staffs of NASP papers and we try to maintain 
balance along the different societal groupings such as race, gender, class, 
etc.

	Finally, the NASP meeting that was scheduled for late January did 
not happen.  Eugene, from the GADFLY, has once again volunteered to 
organize a Northeast NASP meeting at the Socialist Scholars Conference in 
late April.  I will try and send out a mailing asking for feedback about 
the next national NASP meeting.  If your paper is not currently on the 
NASP/NLNS list, send us your publication soon.

			Send us your news, money and ideas,

				steve penn