- This is real.

This what we're doing right here is real.

- It's like they feed off of each other's energy.

- We want to be as analog as possible.

- When they're out in nature, they are free.

So what, you had a setback.

Let's just keep going.

Boom, that's what I'm talking about.

Make it happen!

- Yeah, I mean, look at this.

It's a party.

- When you're making history, you don't know you're making history.

(group conversing) (copy machine operating) (inspirational music) (crowd cheering) (music fades) (vehicle approaching) (people chattering) - Hustle, gentlemen.

Hustle, hustle, hustle!

If you don't follow instructions, you gotta redo.

Close the door.

You don't live in a barn.

So basically, tonight we're setting camp.

Boys, we're going to set the tents up under here, the cots up under here.

They have to figure out if they want a place to sleep.

They gotta figure out how to put the tent cots together.

And our older kids are helping them understand what that looks like.

This weekend, some of you guys, it may be a little uncomfortable for you because it's the first time outdoors like this.

We get it.

No, you're good.

You're good right here.

But eventually, it'll get better, and you'll get used to it.

And you'll find out that this is real.

This what we're doing right here is real.

Enjoy the time spent outside.

Learn a little bit about yourself.

(nighttime ambience) Turn them off!

- [Child] Turn them off!

- [Leticia] City Kids Adventures is an outdoor mentoring program.

- Our kids come from all different types of environments.

We deal with a lot of kids that come from single-parent homes.

They have troubled backgrounds.

And we also have some kids that come from very affluent environments, and they have things that are going on in their homes.

Growing up in the inner city, asphalt, concrete, not understanding any sense of the natural world.

(children playing) (hopeful music) When they come to us, our place is a program that's a constant.

And so they understand we're going to show up.

We're going to be here, understanding all kids, and everybody's held accountable.

- Watch where you're going!

- All the way to the end.

- [Leon] My wife and I give kids opportunities to see things that they may not otherwise see.

(children laugh) They're void of screens.

That's what it's all about.

(engine revving) (engines rumbling) When they're out in nature, they are free.

(children chattering) - [Young Man] First and last, I guess.

- Let the line go at 12 o'clock, like you're pointing, like you're pointing.

Boom, there it is right there.

Look at that!

Good job!

Look at that.

Life is so much better outside.

We've been blessed with a beautiful day.

Cloudy, overcast, a little wind.

It's kind of cool.

It's perfect.

Perfect.

Wouldn't rather do anything else.

(reflective music) I grew up, a classic inner-city life, broken home, divorced parents, and then my high school coaches picked up the slack and took care of me my junior and senior year, and they showed me a different aspect of life and the outdoors.

And that changed my life profoundly forever.

Now every aspect of my life involves the outdoors.

I'm a hunting guide.

I spend probably 12 months a year, some aspect in the outdoors.

- We worked together at the same middle school.

We were there coaching after school, and kids wanted to have something to do on the weekends and keep them out of trouble.

And so we decided, "You know what?

Let's take them camping."

We told the kids, "Look, if you have good grades, we'll go camping on a big trip."

It was a hit, and that's the way it all started.

And now we've been married for 28 years, along with City Kids, now in our 30th year.

So I think it's been a big hit.

(Leticia laughs) - Our program is not just about ATVs and fishing.

It's about life and being a young, responsible person.

Everything we do in our program is high risk.

We're going to take you over to the other side.

- Yes, sir.

- I got you.

Come on.

There is a degree of danger.

There's a degree of getting hurt.

- Who did this, Jason?

- His brother.

- Can I go throw him in the water?

- His brother.

There's a degree of making really, really poor choices.

When I go down the road and this is hooked to that truck, if anything goes wrong, if it falls off, and you can potentially kill somebody.

Got it?

So it has to be done right.

There are people that think that we are pretty strict, but I like to use a different term other than strict.

I like to refer to it as accountability.

One other thing that you gotta really, really, truly understand about Mother Nature: she really don't care how you feel.

The only way they're going to learn how to become independent is to give them the opportunity to do that.

- I fell into the mud, and I couldn't get my shoe on.

- Okay.

But here's the beauty of that.

You figured it out, didn't you?

So what, you had a setback.

Let's just keep going.

Let's just have a good time.

Boom, that's what I'm talking about.

Make it happen!

Good job.

- If we're doing something, and we're scared to do it, he pushes us to where we're able to do it.

- He wants us to do more better if we make mistakes.

- He has high expectations for us, and they allow me to have high expectations for myself.

So I'll become something great someday.

- At the end of every event that we have or any activity we have, we come around a fire, which we call reflection time.

During reflection time, we try and share our likes and dislikes and what you learn from it.

I want you to really express yourself.

Why did you like that?

- Obviously, this is a safe space.

Nothing you say is going to be ridiculed, so just speak, just start communicating.

- What I liked was catching fish.

It was really fun.

- What I learned is to speak up about if you need help.

- What I learned was sometimes you may not succeed every time, but it's the work that matters.

(group clapping) - A lot of times with kids, particularly inner city kids, accountability is something that's totally foreign in their environment.

George has a difficult time self-regulating at school.

There are no consequences for his behavior.

The one thing that we can do, because George enjoys what we're doing here, is we can start to connect the dots for George.

Tell me one thing that you think you need to do different when you go back to school.

- If they're bothering me, I can tell them to stop.

And if they keep doing it, then I can walk away.

- [Leon] Positive peer pressure is the ability to put pressure on a kid to where they're going to make a positive choice, and everybody's held accountable.

But they know it comes from a place of love.

It comes from our hearts, and we have amazing intention for them to be amazing individuals.

- Well, listen, thanks for being here.

Let's get these calves worked.

Be gentle, and they'll be gentle to you.

We all just fell in love with Leon and Leticia and their project and what they do.

They give young people an opportunity to learn the lessons that the outdoors offers.

- See those... See that... - I like to think mentoring is like breathing.

It's necessary.

Our program is about changing the mindset and demonstrating a way to live.

Thank you, Lord, for a happy heart, for rain and sunny weather.

Thank you, Lord, for this good food.

I learned that the positive aspects of life came from nature because it's real.

And so this is a way to have kids, give them an opportunity to be able to do that as well and understand and find themselves.

Once they have hope, the rest is history.

Then nothing can really stop them because they believe that there's something else.

(hopeful music) - I've been coming here since the fifth grade.

It's probably the best thing that's happened to me in my life, honestly.

- We are hoping that the experiences that we have are going to impact kids' lives forever, and they're going to go out and make a difference in their community.

That's what keeps us going, and that's why we know we'll do this thing we call City Kids until we can no longer breathe.

(engine rumbling) (engine revving) (music fades) (pages fluttering) (copy machine printing) (group conversing) (wind blowing) - The refrain you always hear is that print is dead.

And as somebody who works in print media, we're aware of the industry struggling.

And so I think there's just something fascinating to the idea of a group of young people making the choice to put out a print publication.

This story is about counterculture.

It's about analog versus digital.

It's about a group of University of Texas students who are resisting mainstream narratives in the media.

(upbeat music) My name is Sasha von Oldershausen, and I wrote "Campus Underground" for "Texas Monthly."

One morning I woke up and immediately grabbed my phone as one does, and I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across a post.

(thoughtful music) It was a copy of this magazine that somebody had taken photos of.

The images were kind of intriguing to me.

It had an armadillo on the cover that was smoking a joint.

It had this kind of DIY zine feel to it.

The cartoons and the line drawings, it felt like really cut and paste.

And while the magazine skews left, it had this irreverent sort of countercultural humor.

Headlines like, "No, Social Media is not The New Public Square."

"To Fight Conservatism, We Need Community."

"You're Not a Revolutionary, You're a Dork."

On the last page of the magazine was an email address, and I immediately reached out.

I received an email back from Kira Small and Ava Hosseini.

(Ava exclaiming) - [Kira] Good to see you!

- Our Persian princess.

Hello!

Hello!

Oh no, your glasses!

Hi!

- [Sasha] Ava and Kira are the co-founders of the magazine.

They're seniors at UT Austin.

Kira is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Ava is originally from Iran.

I went over to their apartment, which also doubles as their fledgling magazine operation, which basically amounts to a printer in the corner of their living room.

- [Woman] Swipe left.

- We want to be as analog as possible, and we wanted it to be like a very laissez-faire social situation where people can just come and hang out.

Anybody who's here is here because they want to be.

- Yeah.

I mean, look at this.

It's a party.

You know?

- It's a party.

It's a party.

(group conversing) - As well as my coworkers, they're my best friends.

They're some of the most interesting and smart people that I've met here at UT, and I was really excited to work with them on something like this.

- Recently, they got a newspaper box.

They got a newspaper box that looks a lot like another student newspaper box.

- We acquired this box from basically a friend of a friend of Grant's, and we don't know why it's burnt orange, Mike.

We couldn't tell you that.

(upbeat music) - [Sasha] "The Rag" is published once a month.

They come up with stories that they're going to feature in the upcoming issues, and then they host these doodle parties where members of the staff come in.

They kind of riff and come up with the art for the magazine.

- Charlie is writing about furries and white nationalism.

This is just going to be some classic furry art.

- [Woman] Dude, that's wrong.

Her body- - Nothing is wrong!

- Her body, you can see through it.

- The trick of "The Rag" is that we want it to kind of trick the readers into thinking that it's dumber than it is.

You want to kind of open it because like, oh, there's a cartoon of Jim Davis as a penis.

And then you look inside, and it's like a really nuanced analysis of what it means to leave Zionism as an American Jew.

- [Sasha] These gals, I mean, they have a lot to say, and they're not afraid to say it.

- We're not in the business of giving women eating disorders here, even if it's the ayatollah.

It won't scare me.

It's really good.

- Okay, okay.

- Try to get a word in edgewise.

(Sasha laughs) - Every last remaining question.

- Literally, every last remaining question.

- It's like they feed off of each other's energy.

- This my canvas.

- Kira cuts my hair.

- This is my canvas.

- Kira cuts my hair.

- I've never met two people who vibed as much as they do.

- You guys do it, but in Sugar Land.

- [Ava] Yes, exactly.

- [Kira] Yeah, exactly.

- [Woman] More paper!

- More paper!

(group conversing) - They print the magazine at home, thousands of pages.

They have these parties where they're printing and stapling.

- We do it like this to keep it social and communal.

We're trying to build community.

It's actually more sustaining to keep things going if people have a positive outlet with which to react to things.

- I think this might be my favorite issue.

- [Kira] I'd kind of be offended if no one had a bounty on our head.

Is that bad?

- This is really, really important socializing that we felt like we were missing in college that made it so that we felt like we had to sort of create the space for it ourselves.

And then tomorrow we're going to First Light to drop it off.

- The average teen in America spends five hours a day on social media, not on technology, on social media alone.

And so I knew that I wanted to write an article about the idea of social media as the new public square.

This is an idea that the Supreme Court itself propagated in 2017, and it's really gained a lot of steam despite the fact that it's idiotic.

I don't know, I don't know.

Maybe that sounds harsh, but just really think about what you're saying when you're saying that social media is the new public square.

It means that you're ceding the real-life public square to whatever forces might want to control it.

When you feel like you can go on Twitter and say the things that you might say at a protest, why go to the protest anymore?

- Getting everyone in a room and just having real conversations, like earnest conversations, where people are taking each other in good faith, as opposed to this internet beef and rage baiting, and whatever else, I think, is something that has been really important to us for "The Rag."

(group conversing) (propulsive music) - Part of the reason why they decided to spearhead this publication was in response to crackdowns on free speech at UT's campus and across the nation.

Governor Greg Abbott last summer signed into law the Campus Protection Act that created limitations on how and when students could protest.

(pressing music) - The will to speak is a muscle, and it is a muscle that without practice can be atrophied.

And in some ways I think that the cultural sort of resistance to resistance concerns me as far as the legacy of speech in America.

It's not just necessarily about right now.

What we are trying to do is kind of reinstate this sense of community among activists.

(rousing music) - [Sasha] This DIY ragtag operation has a real legacy.

- Get your rag, get your rag, underground newspaper, good for your mind!

(driving music) - [Sasha] I became aware that "The Rag" actually started in 1966 amidst the Vietnam War, and it lasted until 1977.

- There was just a sense, a palpable sense of history, a sense that something very important was happening.

You could feel it.

Everything was a little bit larger than life.

- I mean, democracy wasn't about electing people to office, and then waiting around and hoping they did something that you liked.

It was about taking direct action.

- [Sasha] One of the founding members of the original "Rag" was Alice Embree.

- The war in Vietnam in '66 was just beginning to kind of capture a ton of attention.

Having an anti-war voice was important, and that's where "The Rag" played a role.

(reflective music) - When I first met her, I didn't know what to expect, but I wasn't expecting Alice.

(Sasha laughs) She's been arrested multiple times while protesting.

Did you ever get visited by FBI?

- Yeah.

Doesn't everybody?

No.

(Sasha laughs) - I was eager to learn more about the history of "The Rag."

It was part of this massive countercultural movement of that time.

It became part of the Underground Press Syndicate, which was a nationwide network of underground newspapers.

- I think the Underground Press Syndicate was the connective tissue for both countercultural upheaval and the anti-war movement in particular.

And then it had components that were the connective tissue for the women's movement or the gay and lesbian.

All of this upheaval was kind of held together in this kind of alternative media.

- It affected politics.

It affected the way that mainstream media was reporting on the news, and it was a major part of Austin culture.

- When you're making history, you don't know you're making history.

You're just part of this thing, and then a focal point or an inflection point will happen, and it becomes obvious that you are not alone.

(pensive music) I think a lot of social change happens that way.

It's not that you sit there and think, "Oh, we need to change the world."

It's like, "What do we need to... What's the right thing to do now?"

And it was the right thing to do.

It was great.

- Alice started as a typist, which she said was the role that a lot of women took who were a part of that scene.

And it was only until later that she felt empowered through the women's movements that were happening around her and that they were reporting on to actually find her voice and write.

So it's kind of amazing that you fast-forward 60 years, and the two people who are founding this new version of "The Rag" are two women.

(reflective music) - They have a lot of sensibility about humor that also was part of the early "Rag," so they kind of carry that tradition really well.

- What was it like to see that first issue?

- They had the armadillo with the torch, and the torch being passed to the new generation.

- [Sasha] Kira and Ava had met with the old guard of the magazine as they were planning to revive it.

- I feel a lot of relief.

I'm both honored and relieved and happy to see this happen.

I hope it can survive.

They're in this moment that's very... It's worse, but it's similar.

- How is it worse?

- There's just a level I don't think I can imagine from the '60s.

We still had sort of that theory that we were operating with the First Amendment.

(tense music) So what do you do?

You meet the moment with humor, with an analog piece of paper, with cartoons.

You know, anger burns quick.

Humor is something that can disarm people and get people talking and create camaraderie.

And if anything is needed right now, it's that feeling of camaraderie.

- [Students] Two, one... - Happy birthday!

- Spray!

(group cheering) - That's such a win!

- We'll paint over it.

- Let's not touch it.

- [Kira] This is so cute.

This is so, so cute.

- Thank you.

- [Kira] Oh my God!

Okay, okay.

This is huge because I desperately need to show you.

(bluesy music) ♪ Get your rag, get your rag ♪ ♪ Underground newspaper ♪ ♪ Good for your mind ♪ (group laughs) - I remember being at that meeting with the old guard and being, first of all, so moved by all of their stories and everything and by the outpour of support that they had given us.

But I remember turning to Kira and being like, "Hey, that's going to be us one day, you know?"

And that's sort of the hope is to one day be like Alice, who is in her 80s and is guiding these young people into activism.

(uplifting music) - [Kira] To be able to take the torch from the old guard and then to be able to pass that on when we graduate is like- - [Ava] It's so moving and it's so unbelievable.

- Like, it's the most profound, meaningful project I've ever taken part in.

- [Ava] Me too.

Definitely, me too.

- [Kira] Yeah.

Me too.

Me too.

(music fades) (footsteps approaching) (optimistic music) - [Sasha] I think this story extends beyond Texas.

"The Rag," its original legacy was part of a movement of writers and thinkers who were resisting the mainstream.

And in this new version, I think Kira and Ava serve as a model of what you can do in the face of crackdowns on free speech, in the face of oppression.

- I didn't understand how important my right to free speech was until I started exercising it.

You start to understand, "Oh, I have rights in America and in Texas that I wouldn't have anywhere else on the planet to say what I would like to."

That is awesome.

- Good.

Okay.

"The Rag" is an inherently American project because it is so defiant and because it has its hands in so many pots because it is so multicultural.

- A country founded on rebellion is going to have satire in its veins, and we're really happy to channel that.

- Totally!

- Thank you so much, Sasha.

- I felt so hopeful after I met them.

I even walked into my editor's office, and I was like, "The kids are all right."

(both laugh) They're so engaged with the world and so eager to say something different and to be heard and to resist the way that information is being told.

It's amazing.

It gives me so much hope.

(inspirational music) There are fewer communities forming organically in the world.

I've noticed people have a real desire to meet people, to have these kind of analog experiences.

- To see a kid go on and give back to their community, that's just a byproduct of the process.

- These people who might otherwise be on their phones are now coming together, and I think, as humans, we're social people, and it's necessary.

(music ends)