SPECTRUM:
A Cooperative Newspaper for the Tallahassee Community
Organized in the Spring of 1974, the Leon County Food Co-op
(LCFC) hit the ground running so fast and hard that it didn't get around to
putting out a newsletter till almost a year had passed, and that first
newsletter effort lasted so far as is recalled or known presently, for
only one issue. Edited by Candis Paparone and published in March
of 1975, the first LCFC newsletter was essentially part of a lead-up to
the first annual meeting of members and the closing the books on the
Co-op's first year's business. In March of 1976 a second
newsletter manifestation appeared under the editorship of Debi Powers,
initially, and later of Tana McLane. This second newsletter effort
lasted through 18 more or less monthly issues, and through the Summer
of 1978 at which time it did NOT wither or die or anything even remotely resembling
that, but rather in the following Fall it blossomed out into a fully
independently edited and independently financed alternative community
newspaper, published roughly semi-monthly (with increasing irregularity
towards the end) through the Summer of 1986. Irrespective of any
and all political interests of various members, LCFC had a firm, well
understood, and well agreed upon, policy of political neutrality on
anything and everything EXCEPT food. There was NO disagreement
upon that policy within the food co-op, yet the newsletter also had the
spirit of a caged bird longing for freedom, and in the Fall of 1978 Tana
called a meeting of just about anyone and everyone she could think of
to see if the interest and support was there for an independent and
broadly ranging political publication. It was, and Spectrum was
the result. Over the course of its production run, the
ever-revolving Spectrum collective, the many writers and cartoonists or other artists published in
Spectrum, and many of the people appearing in photos or mentioned in various Spectrum articles, comprised nearly a veritable who's who of alternative Tallahassee.
Tallahassee is in the southern part of the Old South, and it's a college
town. In 1978 it had barely gotten past everything except the
always-open Krispy Kreme doughnut shop closing at dark during the week
and 11 p.m on weekends. The town still had a traditional annual
ebb and flow as well as an annual (previously semi-annual) overflow when
the legislature passed through. Summer was a time of annual
Diaspora. Townfolks who could, spent as much of the Summers as
possible in some breezy beach house "down at the coast"; and students
scattered to the four quarters of the earth. Very little steady
effort has ever made headway uninterrupted through a Tallahassee Summer,
going back all the way to well-before the days when the White folks
decided to chase all of the natives away. Publications put
together by volunteers were just part of that ages-old pattern at first,
relatively consistent in their hiatuses; but eventually, as the early
1980s continued on, co-ops and volunteerism and everything related to
them started crashing into walls, large and small... dwindled away,
failed, or chameleon-like underwent an intentional change of form.
This wasn't just a local phenomenon. It occurred all over the
United States and the promising "Third Wave" of cooperatives largely
crashed hard ashore and dissipated. Tallahassee was a strong center for
co-ops and in some respects
co-ops here actually weathered this collapse better than many, many,
many co-ops and other alternative endeavors across the nation.
LCFC is no longer here in name, but in actual fact it is the New Leaf
Market which continues to serve the community and thrive. Much of
the thriving social aspect that made LCFC a Third Wave co-op was largely
severed and fell by the wayside, but the economic and food aspects
persevere.
That said, this site is intended among other things, as a web-based
html/pdf repository of the full production run of both the LCFC
Newsletter and Spectrum: A Cooperative Newspaper for the Tallahassee
Community. The links at the top of this page will take readers to their applicable
indexes.
LCFC Newsletter (scanned pdf documents)
Spectrum (scanned pdf documents)
This page was created on 29 May 2012
and was modified on 1 July 2012.