Thorne Webb Dreyer (born August 1, 1945) is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture, New Left, and underground press movements.

Dreyer was "an influential journalist in the underground press movement of the 1960s and early 1970s," according to the documentary encyclopedia, Conflicts in American History, which included him in a series of 73 short biographies of key figures in "The Postwar and Civil Rights Era: 1945-1973" in the United States.

Dreyer later studied acting with William Hickey at New York's HB Studio, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin where he took liberal arts and theater courses.

According to Cite's Raj Mankad, Dreyer Galleries also "served as a countercultural hub,"[6] hosting art openings, political meetings, and social gatherings attended by Jane Fonda, Robert Altman, Warren Hinckle, and others.

In 1963, Dreyer went to Austin to attend the University of Texas, but soon joined SDS and became heavily involved in the New Left—in student power and civil rights activities and the fast-growing movement against the Vietnam War.

[11] Handwriting on the Wall was published each night during the convention and posted all over town, playing an important role in keeping the thousands of demonstrators informed about the week's cascading events.

In his acclaimed memoir, Famous Long Ago, Ray Mungo wrote that "The Rag's chief 'funnel,' Thorne Dreyer, exercises an authority that is gentle and decent.

"[14] The paper tempered serious political analysis with ample doses of humor, and The Rag provided a primary forum for two of the most important of the Sixties underground graphic artists – Gilbert Shelton, whose iconic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comix would be republished in papers all over the world, and Jim Franklin, whose surrealist armadillos helped create what writer Hermes Nye called "the Great Armadillo Cult.

"[17] Austin, long a haven for bohemians and iconoclasts, was also the center of a very active left political community based at the University of Texas campus and was a major player in the massive Sixties drug and music culture – incubating talents like Janis Joplin and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and some of the pioneering psychedelic poster and comix artists.

Thorne Dreyer heralded the coming of The Rag ("from deep in the bowels of reaction... where apathy and dullness thrive") in a letter addressed to the founding members of the Underground Press Syndicate.

Historian Abe Peck wrote that "at Stinson Beach, the paper that most prefigured those to come [The Rag] was represented... by several writers, including the increasingly important Thorne Dreyer.

"[15] Dreyer also participated in a historic meeting of the United States Student Press Association (USSPA) in Minneapolis in August 1967 at the invitation of its newly elected director, Marshall Bloom.

[14] Rolling Stone's John Burks quoted Thorne Dreyer as saying that the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was organized "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers poised for the kill.

According to historian James Lewes, "A number of underground newsworkers – including Marshall Bloom, Thorne Dreyer, Ray Mungo, and Victoria Smith – argued that their papers filled a vacuum left by the collective failure of mainstream media to address the needs of the growing counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements.

In a history of Liberation News Service, Allen Young — who had worked for both The Washington Post and LNS — wrote: "The people of the underground press helped forge a national youth culture and in both subtle and direct ways influenced their colleagues in the 'establishment media.

Called "an exuberant, emotional, firsthand account" by historian John McMillian,[14] Dreyer's Pentagon commentary has been excerpted in a number of books about the era, including Norman Mailer's award-winning Armies of the Night.

In the scholarly journal Genre, Bimbisar Irom referred to Dreyer's "dissenting, unassimilated... powerful individual voice," noting that he was close "to Mailer's own political sensibilities as an 'independent radical'...."[22] In 1969 LNS published a long essay co-authored by Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith, titled "The Movement and the New Media," which was considered to be the first serious journalistic portrait of the increasingly powerful underground press phenomenon.

quickly moved to the fore of the second generation of underground papers—developing a reputation for its advocacy journalism, power structure research, and arts coverage – and it served as a center for the bustling Texas boomtown's peace and hipster communities while spinning off a host of other countercultural institutions.

In a 1976 book about modern Texas folklore, Hermes Nye wrote that "the dark-haired bespectacled, lovely Victoria Smith and her compadre, dashing mustachioed Thorne Dreyer... helped lay the cornerstone of Houston's Space City!...

It is a radical journalism grounded in fact... resolved and balanced in content and full of common purpose..."[13] John Siemssen, writing in Houston's Other, quoted former Space City!

met with violent opposition from some elements in the community, facing the wrath of right wing vigilantes openly identified with a local Ku Klux Klan group.

As Victoria Smith wrote in Ken Wachsberger's Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, "we endured break-ins, thefts, tire-slashings, potshots (including a steel arrow fired from a crossbow through the front door), and threats, both to staff members and advertisers.

On Labor Day weekend in 2005 in Austin, Thorne Dreyer joined as many as 100 former staffers and followers of The Rag for an historic three-day reunion that included a series of spirited meetings, social events, concerts, and art shows.

Inspired by the Rag Reunion[28] and the renewed contacts, energy, and commitment that grew out of it, Dreyer moved back to Austin in 2006, and once again became involved in alternative journalism and political organizing.

The editorial core group includes Sarito Carol Neiman, Dreyer's original Rag co-editor who later edited SDS' New Left Notes; former Rag staffers Mariann Wizard and Alice Embree (who also worked with New York's Rat and was active in the Women's Liberation Movement); filmmaker and writer William Michael Hanks; and art director James Retherford, who edited The Spectator, a Sixties underground paper published in Bloomington, Indiana, and was active with the YIPPIES.

John McMillian writes that "some of what's happening in the left-wing blogosphere can... be compared to the Sixties underground press,"[14] and Thorne Dreyer told the Austin Chronicle's Kevin Brass that "There are a lot of similarities in the two eras."

"[33] In a 2008 feature story in the Austin American-Statesman, Brad Buchholz wrote: "Thorne Dreyer's belief system for a new millennium is anchored in community and participation and a sense of humor.