[4][5] Berkeley Tribe quickly positioned itself as more radical, counter-cultural and politically astute than Scherr's Barb; it soon became more successful, surpassing an initial press run of 20,000 reaching a high point of 60,000 copies by the spring of 1970, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Original contributions included cartoons by Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and Spain Rodriguez; news covers and illustrations by Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and Gary Grimshaw; poetry and prose from Marge Piercy and Diane di Prima; feminist writings by Jane Alpert and Robin Morgan; and original works by William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, John Sinclair and Baba Ram Dass, and photographs by Stephen Shames and Alan Copeland.
[6][7][8] The Oakland trial of Huey Newton was a weekly story and, later, staff covered the deadly shootout at the Marin County Courthouse, that killed a judge and the younger brother of George Jackson.
[12] [13] The final issue of the pre-strike Berkeley Barb publicized this new movement as Let a Thousand Parks Bloom, a play on Chinese premier Chairman Mao Zedong's dictum in The Little Red Book, over Scherr's objections and, in part setting the stage for the mass staff walkout.
Interleaved with editorial diatribes, news reporting, drug prices and anarchist recipes were cartoons by Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton including serials from Zap Comix.
In the meantime, a sharp drop in readership occurred with sales plummeting from a high-point of 60,000 copies to 29,000 in the space of a single month in November, according to Tribe business manager Lionel Haines.
In June and July 1970 Tribe first published a Weather Underground-provided centerfold exposé of Larry Grathwohl, an FBI infiltrator; then the first North American English-edition of The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, written by Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella, in its entirety;[19][20][21] and, finally, a highly controversial cover --Blood of a Pig—creating yet another schism and the departure of the majority of editorial staff in protest of the newspaper's new militancy, feminist tilt and pro-Weatherman stance.
Similar ideological battles were ongoing with Tribe's sister newspapers Rat Subterranean News, Sabot, Chicago Seed, Ann Arbor Argus and others throughout the country.
When members of Dock of the Bay, a new underground paper across the Bay in San Francisco, planned to launch the San Francisco Sex Review in what was seen as a crass money-making scheme to get rich off sex ads, feminist staffers on the Tribe participated in a Women's Liberation raid to confront the male editors in a political standoff which ended with the victorious feminists taking the page layouts from Waller Press and burning them, on the same morning that the new paper had been scheduled to go to press.
[22] Similar action took place when another underground newspaper, San Francisco's Good Times, decided to accept pornographic display and classified sex trade advertising in early 1970.
The commune hosted numerous fellow travelers, bands, fugitives, film directors, and actresses including MC5, Jean-Luc Godard, Jane Fonda, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Paul Kantner from the Jefferson Airplane, Pun Plamondon, White Panther Party co-founder with John Sinclair, and Hunter S. Thompson.
The commune served as a way station for leftist political fugitives and the base of operations for International Liberation School, a self-defense weapons training center that had a gun range in the Berkeley Hills.
Then Berkeley Tribe published the entire Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla written by Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella and Tupamaros, the first North American English-language edition.
[citation needed] Berkeley Tribe then began publishing original communiques from Weather Underground, including the Declaration of War written by Bernardine Dohrn and others claiming responsibility for the numerous bombings and arson attacks around the Bay Area.