The Hippie Papers

The Hippie Papers
Notes From The Underground Press
Author: Jerry Hopkins
Publisher: New American Library
Date: 1968
ISBN: N/A
Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................1
Prologue..................................................................................................................3
A NEW LIFE STYLE: Do Your Thing ..........................................................................5
WAR AND PEACE: War Is Good Business/Invest Your Son ....................................17
DRUGS: Take Tea And See/Take LSD And Be.........................................................31
RELIGION: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out .................................................................45
POLITICS: Turn On, Tune In, Take Over ................................................................55
LOVE AND SEX: If It Feels Good, I’ll Do It .............................................................67
CENSORSHIP: F*ck Censorship .............................................................................79
THE POLICE: Warning: Your Local Police Are Armed And Dangerous.....................89
EDUCATION: Student is Spelled N-I-G-G-E-R ......................................................105
THE MINORITIES: I Am A Human Being: Do Not Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate ..........119
THE ARTS: Lets Make Art An Environment ...........................................................129
THE PERSONALITIES: Say It Like It is .................................................................140
Introduction
Something is happening. Something weird and woolly and scary and alive. Something that
threatens many of this country's sacred traditions, while claiming to offer the nation its ' last
chance for salvation.
The people who are doing this are called hippies, happeners, Flower Children, Vietniks,
peaceniks, beatniks and freaks. The word "generation" is often preceded by the word "love,"
and the revolution is termed "psychedelic." One major publisher offered a one-word
description; he called it a "youth-quake."
If It is this youthquake (the median age in the United States is 25, getting lower by the day)
that is sending real shock waves throughout the world, upsetting human seismographs not
just in the cities but in every rural crossroads town and sprawling suburban development.
Under 25? You were Time magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1966, and Time, among others,
said you comprised the most vocal generation in history.
Over 25? You are now in the minority. You hold the reins today. But what about tomorrow?
One way to learn about what tomorrow may bring is to read what has become known as
"the underground newspaper." To understand what it is that this most vocal of generations
wants and believes, it is necessary to read their journals. For however crudely written or
bluntly stated the demands may be, it is in these weekly tabloids that the best reports or
what is Happening appear. True enough, the "undergrounds" usually present one side of the
story, not two. But there is more than adequate reason to believe that what we've been told
so far—in other media—stops far short of the truth.
Twelve years ago there was only one underground newspaper, The Village Voice, and this
Greenwich Village weekly remained the single regularly published newspaper of dissent for
nearly a decade. Similar tabloids appeared in other cities—San Francisco, Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia—for brief periods, but it wasn't until three years ago that the Voice had a
strong colleague. This came with the introduction of The Los Angeles Free Press, in 1964.
Since that time, the revolutionary band has grown, until today there are at least 30 firmly
established weekly or bi-weekly publications and, at this writing, more than 40 others just
getting under way. (Not to mention nearly 100 high school "undergrounds," unofficial and
unauthorized but often representing the mind of the student more accurately than is
evidenced in official periodicals.) Many of the publications have even formed an
Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) to facilitate the transmission of news, features and
advertising between what one UPS organizer terms "anti-Establishment, avant-garde, New
Left, youth-oriented periodicals which share common aims and interests."
The Village Voice was founded, according to its editor, "to jam the gears of creeping
automatism." While many writers, editors and publishers think the way to achieve change is
to infiltrate and to work within existing systems, still another group is more radical and
proposes something akin to anarchy. The underground is not united in its methodology, nor
is it aligned in all its specific goals. But it is crying in a single, loud voice for one thing:
Something quite different from Now.
1
What must be remembered is that these anti-Establishment, avant-garde, et cetera
newspapers are not mere voices of dissent in the wilderness. They may have been ignored
initially, regarded as typographical freaks, but now their message is paid tribute, however
reluctantly, by the Establishment itself. The more conventional news media, the daily press
and television in particular, are reading the underground newspapers because they cannot
afford not to. Too often the big boys have been scooped, and more important, the little
weekly tabloids reflect what cannot be ignored. The Establishment types must, for whatever
reasons they conjure up, check the pulse of the underground press. Although the total
circulation of these papers is less than half a million, their impact on the national temper is
far greater than many of their million-copy competitors.
Collected on the following pages are more than one hundred , assays news stories, poems,
declarations, cartoons, editorials, advertisements, columns and column notes. The subject
material is as varied as the style and manner of presentation, covering politics, education,
drugs, sex, the new life style, censorship, police, minority groups, the arts, war, religion and
some of the personalities.
A professor in California says the college student is a “nigger" when it comes to civil rights.
A writer in Michigan proposes a plan to eliminate future Viet Cong by snapping Vietnamese
children's necks and killing all Vietnamese fetuses, while a student in New England suggests
LSD be dropped, "secretly into the coffee urns in government offices.
Some of the pieces in this anthology may shock. But remember as you read this book that
people who write for the underground press are shocked, too—by the character of our y
society and the behavior of their fellow men.
Jerry Hopkins
Los Angeles, October, 1967
2
Prologue
A Teacher's Letter to Young People by Irving Segal
About 180 years ago, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, etc., created a nation. If we
refer to the two most sacred American documents of that nation. The Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, we are aware that these two works form the basis of
our government as well as our ideas concerning human rights and human dignity.
The ideas put forth in these documents indicate that this is a nation that considers the idea
of human dignity sacred; that this is a nation to which importance of the individual is
without question; that this is a nation where no single person should ever be prevented
from developing or expounding his ideas; and finally, that this is a nation where people
have an obligation of honesty, sincerity, and fairness to one another.
The concepts developed within the nation stand as beacons for many people in the world.
Our universities give testimony to this fact, as hundreds of foreign students come to the
United States for the express purpose of studying the American political and legal concept.
Something is happening, though. Almost imperceptibly over these last 180 years certain
changes have been occurring. At first they were difficult to identify, but we can now
determine that our nation is drifting far from its, original position. Certainly we understand
that changes are imminent, for nothing Islands pat. However, there are changes affecting
the country ' at may well bring about the downfall of this "land of the se and home of the
brave."
Let us take a look at some of these changes. I mentioned at a basic concept of this country
is the importance of the individual and the idea of individualism. We now find that this idea
is undergoing a revolution. A nation where once individualism was held in high esteem
scorns the very practice of individualism. If there are any who dispute this, let me remind
them of an incident of several months ago, occurring on our own campus. For sitting on the
school lawn, sharing food and playing a guitar, a young man had food thrown at him. (He
was reviled because he was somewhat different and stood out from the others.
You see, young people, we have drifted from the position of acknowledging the importance
of an individual to demanding that one must submit to the wishes of society, or face ridicule
and scorn.
What is happening to us? This nation was built by people of courage. It is now being torn
down by those who lack the courage to speak out against wrong. It is being ruined by those
whose single goal in life is to drive a late model car and take part in the weekly bowling
league.
How many of you have received a five-dollar bill instead of an answer to your problem? How
many of you have been put off by the following: "You're right, I'd like to take your side …
but you see, I've got a position to protect" or "Well, right now it's best that I don't rock the
boat." If those statements ring familiar, is there any wonder why there is much disgust
among you for those in the "authority."
Though many have now forgotten the ideals upon which this country is based and half
adopted the philosophies of the cowards, the phonies and the double-talkers, you young
people cannot afford the luxury of doing so. You simply can not follow the leadership of
those who are squirming on the ladder of success. You have got to look into your souls and
follow the dictates of that which you feel is right. I must admit feeling that the ideas of the
current generation often seem far superior to those of mine.
3
Finally, young people, you must adopt a philosophy of life which is in keeping with what this
country is all about. If this country is supposed to believe in freedom, then it should mean
freedom for everyone, not just those who belong to your group. If this country believes in
man's dignity, then differences of the others should not be scorned. Let the longhairs have
their hair, let the guitar players strum away. If this is their wish—so be it. Let us not be
garbage throwers, or otherwise punish those who choose to be different. Also, if we believe
that we have an obligation to one another, let us not turn our backs when we are needed.
Do you remember what happened in New York? A girl screamed for help while being
attacked but received none until she was dead. The neighbors didn't want to be involved.
That seems to be the story of my generation.
How about yours?
The Participator
North Hollywood (California) High School
April, 1967
4
A NEW LIFE STYLE: Do Your Thing
Sheep? Baa.
Beware of leaders, heroes, organizers: watch that stuff. Beware of structure-freaks. They do
not understand.
We know The System doesn't work because we're living in its ruins. We know that leaders
don't work out because they have all led us only to the present, the good leaders equally
with the bad. (Who caused more suffering, Hitler or St. Paul?) It doesn't matter whether the
leader is good or bad: leading per se is bad. The medium is the message, & the message of
leadership is Vietnam. Concentration camps. The Great Society. Riots on Haight Street
What The System calls organization—linear organization—is a Systematic cage, arbitrarily
limiting the possible. It's never worked before. It's always produced the present.
And heroes are only heroes, nothing more.
Any man who wants to lead you is The Man. Think: why would anyone want to lead me?
Think: why should I pay for his trip? Think.
LBJ is Our Leader, & you know where that's at.
Watch out for cats who want to play The System's games, 'cause you can't beat The System
at its own games, & you know that. Why should we trade one Establishment for another
Establishment?
Do your thing. Be what you are. If you don't know what you are, find out.
Fuck leaders.
A sound leader's aim
Is to open people's hearts,
Fill their stomachs,
Calm their wills,
Brace their bones
And so to clarify their thoughts & cleanse their needs
That no cunning meddler could touch them:
Without being forced, without strain or constraint,
Good government comes of itself.
—Lao Tzu
communication company (San Francisco)
April 6,1967
Which Way to the Exit?
by Liza Williams
Having discovered late that all I have to sell is my time, I have bought back my rights and
here I am—emancipated! I could make more money, but all I could buy with the money
would be things. At some point during the last year we discovered that we owned seven
transistor radios, that's when the rot became apparent! So, I've dropped out … well, a little
bit anyway, and from Wednesday afternoon to Monday morning, the time is all mine.
5
This first week has been overwhelming. I've spent hours looking out the window at the
changes in the sky. From our hill top it is another full world for my exploration, and when
the cranberry sunset slinks down behind the cement ghosts of Santa Monica, it's pure kitsch
delight! I've talked with friends, arriving unexpectedly, sprawling on their floor, rubbing my
cheeks against their carpets, playing their records, eating their food, sharing their fantasies,
and never wondered should I be somewhere else.
I don't know why I hung on so long, spending days like inflated coinage, waking still asleep,
sleeping still away with dreaming, driving off in the dark of morning, oozing home in the
dark of evening, the sun and air of the day as remote as the weather reports for the Eastern
and Seaboard states. What was it I wanted that I traded time so lightly, was it another Hear
or another bit of clothing or the big numbers on the yellow stubs of checks? I must have
lost myself somewhere in the marble isles of bargains, caught myself on the fine print 'of
time payment, and I don't even know anyone named Jones. But, never again, no more, no
more.
Being free is very full of obligation. Now there is time to (»do all the things I said time
would not allow. Time to use to work and grow in work, to mold, to fit to shape the form %
of days, time to talk and listen on the same occasion. Time to see where I am, leaving the
blinding goal unfixed, time to note each passing item, My God, even time to walk!
I've driven down the same streets day after day never seeing anything but the hindering
traffic or the accursed pedestrians. But when I walk the same way I see such wonders, such
marvels. Some windows tell you everything about their if owner deep inside. The spotted
half-drawn yellowed paper shades of old age, the washed pale curtains, the folded
newspaper on the inside window sill. Behind the army of off-white curtains in the Hollywood
apartments are acres of off-white carpeting, whole casts of thousands sitting at Formica
tables eating Minute Rice, Spanish Style, off Party Paper Plates. They have bathrooms in
color schemes and golden dolphins hold their face cream soap, and in their armpits they
grow dollar signs instead of hair.
There are painted wooden houses where generations live in the blue light of television sets,
and stagger off to beds full of stainless dreams and antihistamines. There are closed doors
where no one goes, and stores where no one buys the old bread . and balls of string, the
man stands behind his counter on his platform of wood listening to the talk programs,
cursing the commerce that did not make him king. There are light-poles all tacked with
notices of sales, a new fridge and a fold-away bed, forced to sell, moving, cheap if you just
call. How long have they been gone, the notice looks so old, perhaps they are in another
town now, buying beds and ice and promising to pay.
The children run along the curb, one foot up and one foot skimming the road, their eyes are
round, their clothing short, they shove aside the space, people, disaster, and a sense of
time. I run behind until they see me, stop and laugh. They point and giggle and I jump up
and down, wave my arms. "Crazy lady," they say and run away.
I often think that when I am very old I shall go about on roller skates. There I shall be, all
hung with scarves and protest pins, flying down the street on wheels, doing figure eights at
intersections and nobody will say anything, except maybe—crazy lady—and I'm used to
that!
The Los Angeles Free Press
January 6, 1967
6
The First American Mehla
A Gathering of the Tribes—A Baptism Notes from the San Andreas Fault
by Steve Levine
Nearly a century ago the last remaining heroes of the Indian Nations met on the "Great
Plateau" in Pow-wow and in prayer to the spirits that the great muds might flow down and
cover the "white epidemic" that had never passed as originally presumed, but had instead
settled in devastation to their ways and Beings.
Now in this twentieth of recent centuries a generation, considered by many to be the
reincarnation of the American Indian, has been born out of the ashes of World War Two,
rising like a Phoenix, in celebration of the slightly psychedelic zeitgeist of this brand-new
Aquarian Age.
On Saturday, January 14, coincident with a darshan of Holy Men in Nepal and a rugby game
at the other end of field, at least 25,000 people came together in "a Gathering of tribes for a
Human Be-in" on the Polo Grounds of Golden Gate Park Pow-Wow and in Picnic. Seeking the
return of this once voluptuous country; regaining the forests and the great herds to the
chanting of mantras (Hindu-Buddhist song changes) and the magic center chiming between
the viewer and the viewed.
This Coming-Together was unlike the two previous miraculous meetings in the Panhandle;
the first on October 6, the day of the Beast of Revelations, 666, the first day of the
California LSD ban, and the second, the New Year's Day Celebration of the "Death of the Old
and Birth of the New."
This meeting was a Baptism, not a birthday party. It was a calm and peaceful approbation,
a reaffirmation of the life spirit, a settling of the waters.
Fans, feathers, plumes and tusks; bells, drums, chimes and incense; pennants, banners,
flags and talismans; beaded charms, oranges and carrots; balloons, flowers, animal robes
and bamboo; flutes and baskets; folded hands, closed eyes, bright brow and smile; prayer
cloth and shaman stick. Nearly everyone with something in their hands, except many
children darting at the festival through the human forest.
Thousands eating of the free food provided by the increasing awareness of these times, and
cooked via the Diggers—"It’s free because it’s yours." Seventy-five 10-pound turkeys,
home-made bread, oranges, and a touch of the Wandering Jew in the donated delicatessen.
On the stage, gathered up in the Coming Together, the poets and the priests. Allen
Ginsberg and Gary Snyder chanting, perhaps to Radha, mantras for the gathering of the
magic of the spirit and the new and better day that has already begun. The sound system
wiring cut during the Quick Silver Messenger Service's first set; people turning to each
other, sitting or wading about, neutralizing the Red Guard and the Fiendish Sprite
dervishing on other planets of the Earth. And sound resumes, the Quicksilver turning-on
with the generator, now fixed and spliced, guarded by the Hell's Angels, something between
the collectiveness of the Centurion Guard and the individuality of the Samurai. And the
Grateful Dead, prefaced by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, spreading sound on sound
across the gathered tribes. And Leary, "The only way out is In," a bit off this day perhaps.
The paradox of a culture reincarnated by itself: that the "white eye" who once annihilated
the buffalo must now, in action-reacted, be "saved" by the Indian incarnate from the Master
of Ceremonies, "Brothers, the spirit of the New Messiah may not be coming to us, but from
us."
7
Barefoot girls in priests' cloaks, madras saris, and corduroy. Teenage braves stripped to the
waist in a hot winter sun. Folksingers charting mountain ranges in their imaginations.
Shamans and motorcycles, lovers and voyeurs, cowboys and Indians; T. E. Lawrence on a
ladder, and my woman's eyes blue shadow and speckled gold; carnivalers, hobbyists and
Popes. Newsmen and infants, Mothers and chuckling mongrels, poets on and off the stage.
A jester with a girl on either arm. Jerry Rubin and a plea for bail from the stage; "The
police, like the soldiers in Vietnam, are victims and agents!" Hosanna from the crowd! An
adolescent princess wearing an Indian headdress of orange and blue tinted feathers, black
and white ringed tails hanging to either side of her beatific glance. A Chinese-masked drum
beater with two balloons rising red and blue, tethered to his yellow "coolie hat." A Hell &
Damnation preacher Elmer-Gantrying through a bullhorn in electrified rebuttal to the
speakers on stage, "NoNoNo! Man isn't smart enough to guide himself," baptized in bubbles
by a bearded young brave to his left. A wild cloud of gold-yellow incense geysers from the
stage.
And out of the sun, from what appears to be no-plane, a parachutist, much too small at first
to be real, gliding down toward us all looking up at the miraculous descent, Daedalus in
Paradise; reflecting, perhaps, on the mode of transportation for the Second Coming.
And the sun prepares to disappear. Dizzy Gillespie off into the crowd playing his horn to the
"Melody of Coincidence," the Jefferson Airplane in flight on stage. Lee Meyerzove stood
nearby, involuntary cabalist and chronicler. Dr. Leary, looking a bit like a younger Gavin
Arthur, a yellow flower behind his ear; Lenore Kandel, orange and red; Gary Snyder sitting
at-humm on the edge of the platform; Master of Ceremonies, Buddha, raps with gusto;
Allen Ginsberg, white-robed catalyst and distillate; Dick Gregory absent and on bail for
attempting to aid the Puget Sound Indians with a "Fish-in" in federally "re-zoned" (treatyswitch) waters.
And with the sun setting. Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder chant the night with the Om Sri
Maitreya mantrum, turned toward the sun, double disks revolving in the red-gold glare,
small groupings arms linked moving gently from side to side. She's a beautiful Nubian
princess, he a motorcycle wizard and warlock, and I poet and participant, swaying, good
people, Om Sri Maitreya. The sun moving down behind the trees, heading for the Pacific
Ocean just beyond the grove of trees on the horizon, Om Sri Maitreya. The sun coalescing in
the trees, gently moving from side to side, the sun nearly gone, thickening and converging
into itself, mandala-fire, Om Sri Maitreya Om.
And the day is over, and the last voice from the stage, Allen Ginsberg, "Now that you have
looked up at the sun, look down at your feet and practice a little Kitchen Yoga after this first
American Mehla. Please pick up any refuse you might see about you." "Shanti"
The San Francisco Oracle
January, 1967
Holiday Commune a Thing to Groove
by Michael Schechtman
After months of persecution, a sense of peace and well being is growing at Holiday, the hip
commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Their psychedelic bus has been bombed, they have received the fire of rocks, bee bee guns,
and swerving cars; but today, on the six and a half redwooded acres on the road between
Pelton and Ben Lomond, forty-five hip communards are establishing a new way of life which
challenges the stereotypes if of straights and hippies alike.
8
Although the local "Anti Hippie Association" (that's no joke, there is such an organization)
fulminates against "dirty beatniks," the citizens of Holiday may be possibly among the
cleanest inhabitants of the San Lorenzo Valley.
A large creek runs through their property, and they bathe almost every day.
The twelve sturdy cabins which stretch along the creek are well swept and kept in sparse
"Japanese style," with mattresses on the floor. The earth on the floor of the community
altar, beneath a circular grove of redwood trees, is raked, in straight lines, reminiscent of a
Zen Rock Garden.
The altar itself contains a god's eye and a crucifix hanging from the horns of a stag. Every
Monday night there is a meditation session.
The community began as a group of about fifteen living in a single apartment house in
central Ben Lomond (population 2,300). Four months ago, when their bus was bombed,
(they know who did it, but won't fink) the City of Ben Lomond performed its classical joke.
It impounded the bus as a "fire hazard" and it had to be retrieved with the help of friendly
lawyers.
It was at this time of crisis that the owner of Holiday, then a run-down resort, offered to
rent his rural premises to the hippies if in one week they could clean and repair the place to
his satisfaction. In an orgy of work the group so impressed the landlord that he contributed
the first month's rent of five hundred dollars free.
From the start the hippie ethic of "doing your thing" has had to be modified to the extent
that if your "thing" meant lying around while the others did your work for you, you had to
either change or leave.
No one is assigned specific duties, but there are lists of things to do posted in the main
living room, "from paint and remodel main house" to "weed the garden."
In addition, each cabin has to pay its share of the five hundred dollars rent, which comes to
about thirty-five dollars per dwelling, so that most of the hippies have to do some work in
the outside world.
These policies are intentional and are decided upon at twice weekly "coordination sessions"
attended by everyone.
Although a majority of the members use acid fairly regularly, the recognized leader, gaunt,
intelligent and intense Gene Carlson, has stopped, except perhaps once every eight months
to see where he's at
He says that in the three months of the community's life, the use of drugs has definitely
declined; people are learning to turn on to themselves.
As for freak outs, the general opinion is that "if you keep centered in, and have something
you're working for, it's almost impossible to freak out."
It seems to work at Holiday. Methedrine freaks, however, are severely frowned upon, and if
there is one real law in the community it is "No Dealing."
For some, Holiday is a place to "center in" after having blown their minds in a million
different directions.
As Gene puts it, on acid you see that all the different dimensions of existence are just as
real as the physical earth, but that sooner or later you have to come back to "center in."
What is known as insanity is merely "scattered mind expansion," and wisdom is
concentrated on centered mind expansion which builds up to a single point of awareness as
in a pyramid.
9
A good number of Holiday people, however, know already what their thing is and are doing
it. There is a rock band and traveling light show in the bus, and various individual artisans
who plan leathercraft business and such.
Some of the stronger members are now talking about getting up at three in the morning to
meditate, because with a macrobiotic diet you only need four hours of sleep.
When Holiday began in a Ben Lomond apartment house it resembled many Haight-Ashbury
crash pads, with Gene and his wife Sue doing most of the work and cooking.
But there is no more crashing at Holiday. Everyone works, visitors are discouraged except
on weekends, and in order to become a full member one has to be accepted by a meeting of
the coordination session.
One hears reports of a similar process in the Haight and elsewhere, whereby crash pads are
evolving into communities.
If sections of hippiedom do evolve into a strong communitarianism, then the movement will
not be, as radicals fear, simply a reactionary cop out
Meanwhile, Holiday is picking up local support, despite, or perhaps because of the
persecution. Gifts are pouring in, from food, to a grant of five cars, a truck and a bus from a
single donor, to offers of large tracts of land should the community ever decide to move or
expand.
The local Quakers, with their customary good will, have invited Holidayers to their picnics
and meetings.
But most moving of all was the voice of a middle-aged, weatherbeaten Greek immigrant
named Tom, a modem day b. A ship's captain in World War II he went "insane" after fusing
to kill in mid-battle, and was later tortured and imprisoned. He now works fourteen hours a
day in a Ben Lomond luncheonette.
"I am poor too," he says with tears in his eyes, "and after all men have done to me, I still
do not curse and I have faith in men. Perhaps I am a hippie, too."
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
August 25,1967
Fashion News
by Jeff Kaye
The Code of Dress for local high school boys requires that they should be suitably groomed
and "appropriately dressed for all school activities and classes." This raises an obvious
question: what exactly is suitable and appropriate?
The rational, obvious answer to this question can only be . that which does not interfere
with the student in his pursuit of education. However, reasonable as it may seem, this policy
is not being followed. Superfluous regulations have been added, making the ambiguous
terms "appropriately" and “suitably" unnecessarily defined. This defining of standards and
orals does not stop at a high school code of dress … it is carried out all through our lives.
We are told that regulations are merely part of growing up and are made to be obeyed
without question. Any inquiring individual must question this. We are destined to go through
life like machines, acting but rarely thinking out our actions. In a world without sense and
order, we are taught to believe that there is order, that these rules dictate order and that
regardless of what they are, they are right and must not be disobeyed.
10
If we do not want to grow up as machines, acting without ought, we must consider our
actions. We must carefully question each rule of life and think about it. We must not break
rules for the sake of breaking them, but should consider each before deciding what to do.
Rules are made to be obeyed; but we must always keep in mind … they can be changed.
Vista
Fairfax (Los Angeles) High School
April 1, 1967
The Diggers Creative Society
by Richard Pine
We are happy to announce that we are holding "Feed-Ins" meaning we are serving free food
every day at 2 pm at 7351 Sunset (corner Martel) in the parking lot of the West Hollywood
Presbyterian Church. We are housing those in need by making available the homes of those
who offer them. You might say that a good part of our operation is a type of
communications center or link between those who need help, such as food, clothing and
shelter, and those who wish to extend this help.
We don't believe that feeding, clothing and housing is the answer but a starting point. We
plan to open several workshops right here that include sewing, sandal making and even
auto mechanics or any other programs that may stimulate interest. We have to remain
flexible for we don't know yet what will motivate the people we wish to help. We desire to
make the non-sufficient, self-sufficient. However, we don't want to come on like the
establishment they are running from.
We want to encourage talk-ins. We have facilities here on Highland such as a large back
yard which will be filled with benches where all are invited to discuss any new philosophies,
ideas or values. We don't profess to know the answers, but we hope together we will find
some. We know that the new breed is just as wrong to knock the Cadillacs as the older
generation is to knock the long hair. If the new breed is the consciously aware one, we must
set the example of tolerance only the enlightened are capable of.
We are convinced that among the restless and wandering breed, there is a vast wasteland
of intellect that is afforded little, if any expression and we hope we can help to provide
some. The values handed down have not done the job and the youth cannot be blamed.
How can anyone expect the new breed to emulate a society filled large apt. complexes with
individual units filled loneliness? The divorce rate in California is over 50% and how many
are just holding out till the children reach maturity is hard to estimate. Lack of
communication is not a new story. Where is the future for our youth? That's what this is all
about.
Our goals are to help and bring together those segments of society that are alienated. We
believe that opposition is a remise. The Hippies love the sun and the beach and their
children just as the straight society does and we wish to focus on areas of agreement as
disagreement has only been breeding further disagreement. Love, tolerance and
understanding of the young, the old and the helpless and those with different views is what
we believe in. Since behavior is contagious, we want to set the pace for good behavior in
the manner in which we conduct our affairs and relate to the public.
Digger News (Los Angeles)
June, 1967
11
Desiderata
Found in Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore; Dated 1692
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what "ace there may be in silence. As
far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth
quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their
story. *Avoid loud and aggressive sons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare
yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and
lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. *Keep
interested in own career, however humble; it is a real possession in changing fortunes of
time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this
not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere
life is full of heroism. *Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical
about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.
*Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture
strength ' spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with
imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself. *You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the
stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the
universe is unfolding as it should. *Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive
Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep
peace with your soul. *With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful
world. Be careful. Strive to be happy**
communication company (San Francisco)
How Shall We Survive?
by Tuli Kupferberg
At a recent anti-war rally at LIU I heard Paul Goodman say that we were all headed for
nuclear destruction & death within 10 years unless 10-20,000 American students (at one
time?) stood up publicly & announced that they were refusing to be drafted.
He said it calmly & stated that he'd said it before & would say it again but he didn't know
quite how to put it any otherwise: whether to sing it or scream it or whatever, so he was
just simply stating it.
That statement has haunted me & this essay is an attempt to come to some grips with that
problem.
I thot (fool) that after the Cuban missile crisis we would at least have "peace in our time."
But instead (unbelievably) we now have the incredible Vietnam War.
This war may end tomorrow. (I remember how the Korean War started: it started
completely unexpectedly in a newspaper headline: "US Orders Troops Across the 38th
Parallel.") The "US" being that simpleminded haberdasher in the White House: Harry
Truman (years ago I remember reading in a college Poli Sci book how ward heeler HST had
really wanted only a local judgeship but had been forced into Senate seat by K.C politicos) &
had ended just as unexpectedly after years of "negotiations" just like that snap-crackly-pop
also by fiat-by-whim—but not yours nor mine. Well good anyway that it ended. & good
when this war ends however.
But will this be the last war? We really need a strong China to provide a spit of reality for
our paranoia. But I guess if even Cuba can give us a hard on maybe Tanzania or The Trucial
States can be developed as a threat to "our way of life."
12
I.
The country is splitting in two.
On one side the hawks, most of the millionaires, the old line politicos, the grey haired
mothers, the sex-starved (old) judges, the retired army officers, the Spellmans of the
ecclesia castrata, the sadistic police, the poor stupid soldiers, the rednecks, the frustrated,
the Madison Avenued alcoholics, the suicidal marines, the robot-teachers, the
fundamentalist Boonedockers—what we used to call "reaction."
On the other side the youth, the doves, the beatniks, the poets & artists, the protesting
students, the minorities claiming their life, the singers, the rock & rollers, the psychedelics,
the young parents crying for the fullness of their lives, the lifely professors—whatever
remains of the old humanism & classic liberalism, idealism & socialism of America.
& that old socialism has failed. It has failed for 100 years. It has had its chance & been
superceded—so that the problems it concerned itself with no longer exist. The Marxist & the
anarchist ways have failed (altho the anarchist ideas survive much better into the present &
the future).
Marxism was too mechanical. It became hypnotized by the machine. It was formed in the
era of steam & coal. It was pre-psychologic, pre-anthropologic, pre-electric, & prepsychedelic. It was a good theory of society—for the 19th Century. Marx always postponed
the essential human problems for “after the revolution." But it is now after the revolution.
The revolution (or revolutions) that have already occurred are as follows:
1) the sexual revolution: basic because it liberated the bound-in personal
energies of entire generations, of entire nations
2) the automation revolution: in 20 years it made all previous economic thot
obsolete
3) the artistic revolution: it brought art into life with such force that the two
are now inseparable
4) the psychedelic revolution: it built on the sexual & scientific revolutions to
create new universes
2.
What are the obstacles to the successful completion & functioning of these revolutions?
a) the sexual revolution: the obstacles are simply: most people over 40. To those under 20
this revolution is a fact. Nothing even to talk about. The revolution is proceeding so fast that
6-yr. old works by Mailer & Selby (for example) now seem old fashioned. The obstacles are
Catholic (& Jewish) district attorneys, frustrated judges, sadistic cops, vengeful (half-lived)
parents. This is however the strongest sector of the revolutionary front. (Stuck in a damned
military analogy!) There will be defeats: Ginzburg decision, Reagan prosecs in Calif. but
nothing can stop the pill! When sex rears its lovely head … Variety is the spice of wife.
New-old combinations your grandmother never even fantasized are here … more are
coming—(mostly) filled with joy. We call this a "sexual" revolution but it is really a
revolution of love.
b) the automation revolution: a mixed" (up) front. It was already possible at the turn of the
century (if production were rationally organized) to have an advanced (not a primitive which
was always possible) & even (I think desirable) communism. Now automation makes it so
simple one wants to weep. Cut out irrational & war production & every American could have
an incredible (material) standard of living immediately, for a few hours of work per week. In
5 to 10 years this standard could be exported to every spot on earth.
13
Meantime people starve all over the world & kill each other in various subtle & unsubtle
ways in competitive games in the great US of A.
Only the youth really know this is the age of affluence. I used to worry about how careless
young people were in returning small loans I had made to them. In my (para depression)
youth $1-10 was a huge sum. Money was hard to come by. Today it's all over. When there
are a million apples who' cares what happens to a few? This has given the youth great
courage. They are independent, they don't lick asses. They say fuck you to "careers," a jail
sentence is a badge of honor not a leper's label. The establishment (including the economic
establishment) is a farce to them—not to be taken seriously. Somehow the means to
survive will always turn up.
The idea of the commune is reappearing: the East Side anarchists, the SF Diggers, the
Proves of LA, Kerista, the Living Theater, USCO, Millbrook & the League for Spiritual
Discovery. An important new journal devoted to utopian-intentional community and its
parameters has just begun to publish (The Modern Utopian, Box 144, Tufts University,
Medford, Mass.).
The contrast between the affluence of some & poverty of others however, both in our
country & abroad, is one of the most serious threats to the survival of all of us. Unless this
problem is solved & quickly, it alone may be enough to bring us all down to spiritual &
bodily death.
Here some of the traditional socialist ideas are of most value … but they must be used in
new & imaginative ways & combined organically with the new technology. SDS & the
militant Black organizations are trying to come to grips with the ideological & practical
solutions to these emergency problems. Affluence now!
We must have dramatic demonstrations of the (economic) brotherhood of man. This country
must give with no strings attached vast quantities of its super-abundance to the poorer
nations. One first step might be immediately to disarm & give 1/2 of our war budget to
China, 1/4 to our internal poor, 1/4 to the rest of the world. Such "Utopian" solutions must
be taken seriously or we may face "realistic" annihilation at the hands of those who want or
those who want to keep, or a mutually destructive symbiosis of both.
Apocalypse!
For those who can—a total redistribution of their personal goods a la Vinaba Bhave or Danilo
Doici may be personally saving & a spiritual catalyst to all others. (This is not the social
revolution but it is a way of dramatizing it.) Certainly there are those among us (myself?)
who would benefit by a living total demonstration of the revolution. Those who are rich in
their souls can give more can they not?—without losing that which is most precious? Maybe
now only some vast new "movement" of primitive communism & community & sharing & a
living together physically of the most disparate: say like Jacqueline Kennedy & a Bowery
"bum" can save us. If Joan Baez or Bob Dylan were to give their entire fortunes to the
causes—what a final mockery it would make of America—of capitalism—of greed—of man
being the prey of man.
It is of course easy for me to speak so. (O hypocrite lecteurmon semable man frere!) I have
not done it, have I? Only the spiritually richest can do this. This is the real revolution.
c) the artistic revolution: great subverter of the hollow society. Mass your media—you are
helpless before our skills. You don't know if we are parodying you or you are parodying us
anymore. Beatles, Dylan, happenings, pop. Rock & roll great continent! The Box will destroy
you! Our bodies are opening. A thousand penises will bloom. Cunts too! We will force you to
support us—to support the artists who are digging your dark grave. Join us before it is too
late. Do not die! There is life enough for everyone!
14
"When the mode of the music changes the walls of the city shake."
d) the psychedelic revolution: this is our magic. With this we break open heads & new
worlds emerge.
Would you believe?
Break the patterns. Shatter the images! Down ikons!
Tune In Turn On Drop Out.
Pake games! Your games are fake, boring.
Man was made.
Man was made to change. No single thing abides. Plow
with me. Fast flows the abiding tide.
God in a bottle?
But Lord they said you were everywhere.
3.
Out of my enthusiasm, out of my love I have spoken a poem. Only sometimes do poems
change the world. Sometimes the world changes poems. Is this the call of the siren? Have I
minimized difficulties? Many will die between the time I write this & the time you read this.
I only did what I had to.
I will not express fear & death. I will express life & hope.
Someday some youth's vision will spring us full blown into
Paradise.
Either that or we die.
Come dance with me in Johnson's land!
The East Village Other (New York)
February 15, 1967
15
WAR AND PEACE: War Is Good Business/Invest Your Son
If You Want to Change the World …
by Richard Register
"If you want to change the world, start small."
(A quote from a full-page ad for the Peace Corps,
Look Magazine,
October 19, 1965,
page M 8)
NO WAR TOYS starts small—with small children—and is working to change the
world by making it a little more reasonable, a little happier, and a little more
peaceful. Why this approach?
When thinking about children and their actions, imagine them for a moment as mirrors that
reflect—almost perfectly—the environment in which they live. They react to acceptance and
pleasure by accepting others and giving them pleasure—both physically (by hugging and
cuddling), and emotionally (by smiling and laughing).
Children also reflect rejection and pain in exactly the same way. If a child bums himself he
will avoid (reject) the hot stove from then on. If someone has hurt his feelings, he will
reject that person by keeping his distance, setting up barriers either physical (he will turn
his back or leave the room) or emotional (he will frown and become "hard to be around"),
Rejection in the extreme is expressed when the child is hurt most severely, and takes the
form of hurting the person or thing that the child is rejecting. The most extreme rejection is
removing the rejected party entirely from existence—in other words, killing him—a solution
usually regarded as a bit primitive, uncivilized, insensitive, disrespectful, undignified, illegal
and stupid—especially since mutual agreement and compromise (mutual acceptance) can go
so far toward improving conditions for all and solving the problems that caused the original
conflict. War toys help develop the tendency to solve problems by rejecting others when a
situation of conflict arises, in short, avoiding rather than solving the problems. On a civil
level this means irresponsibility and delinquency. On a national level this means civil war.
On an international level this means outright warfare. The more people develop rejection as
a solution to problems, the more likely they will be party to an unreasonable conflict—
personal, civil, national or international.
Have you ever noticed this paradox? Why is it that a child will insist that he is actually
building a real road and not just pretending to build a road, or building a pretend road when
he is playing? Perhaps because, as most child psychologists would agree, a child does not
differentiate the world of adult reality from the play world so much as does the adult. Both
worlds are almost one, and he takes his pretend actions as seriously as adults take their
work. In fact, the child involved in road building on a small scale is doing just that—building
roads—small ones. He is working. He is practicing for his larger scale work of adult life.
Now, you take the child who is playing war and confront him with similar questions. Instead
of saying, "What are you making?" ("a road," he would answer), you say, "Who are you
killing?" The child will almost always look startled and reply that he is not killing anyone; he
is just playing. In fact the child will seldom admit that he is even PRETENDING to kill
anyone. As far as he is concerned, it's just play, a game and lots of fun.
17
Why, then, when the child insists that his creative play is reality does he remove his
destructive play so totally from the world of the real and say that it's just a game? It might
have something to do with the fact that his parents say over and over to him that it isn't
nice to hurt people. Yet they give him toy weapons to play with for hours at killing
thousands of people. Perhaps the child sees very clearly the inconsistency his parents
miss—and therefore must regard the play killing as something other than reality or face
great emotional conflict, and a sense of guilt In other words, the child sees the teaching of
love and the practice of hate as inconsistent; the child would feel hypocritical to accept both
at once.
But hypocrisy may not be the only factor explaining the child's thoughts of creative play as
real, and destructive play as pretend. It may be even more basic. Getting back to the
simple principle of acceptance and rejection, the child knows that pleasure and acceptance
are closely linked, as are rejection and pain. Building roads is acceptance of the raw
materials from which the road is built, and acceptance of the creative act itself. The concept
of a road involves even more acceptance in another way too: the acceptance of other
people and places. Roads are used for travel, so that we can see and communicate with
other people, places, and times. A creative act on the part of a child is filled with
acceptance, and acceptance is enjoyable. No wonder the child feels comfortable thinking of
creative play as reality. The whole time the child is engaged in creative play he is learning
about his own ability, building self-confidence, and developing a sense of security that can
only come from self-knowledge and confidence.
On the other hand, play killing, the extreme form of play rejection, is basically painful.
Though children—and adults—must reject from time to time, they are well aware that
rejection is the cause of pain. The child doesn't like to see people hurt any more than he
likes to be hurt himself. If it were pleasurable to inflict pain on others, why do children
construct elaborate explanations of how the people on T.V. aren't really getting killed:
"Mommy, it's just a story, isn't it? They aren't really dying, are they? I'll bet it's just a false
knife." Perhaps simply because the child doesn't like pain, either for himself or others,
perhaps he cannot accept play murder as real because he has absolutely no desire to kill or
liking for the killing of anything. He has to be taught through constant repetition to accept
the concept of killing in his later life. Here in the early stages of teaching is where hate and
prejudice begin. A tiny cut may be only a small thing, but scratch it for as many hours as
most children play war, and you have at the very least an inflexible, insensitive scar. Just as
easily you may bring on serious infection and death.
18
Consider this when thinking about the roots of hatred and war. The child is so open and
accepting that he regards his puppy as a good friend—for a time, even as his equal; he will
not prejudge (prejudice) his puppy to be inferior. Many parents know that it is only with
difficulty that they can keep the little boy or girl from sharing his favorite food with the
puppy and eating from the puppy's bowl. In fact, the child is so accepting of his fellow
animals that he would just as soon pretend to be a dog (bow-wow) or a duck (quack-quack)
as he would pretend to be a doctor or a fireman. His heroes are his friends from real life and
from picture books, and he accepts the friendship of anyone willing to offer it—dog, duck, or
man. With equal ease he rejects friendship when someone rejects him. After Mommy has
convinced him that puppy is a lower animal (puppy can't eat at the table with the family)
the little child sees the puppy as less worthy of friendship and rejects the puppy when he
feels hurt himself. At this point many adults say, "Ah, but children are so cruel. See the way
they will pull the puppy's tail and torment him so terribly?" But who rejected the puppy in
the first place? The parents. And someone had to hurt the child before he would turn around
and hurt the puppy. You might say that .the child in his early years is almost a perfect
mirror, but a mirror with a memory. If he sees his parents curse and swat the dog, he will
remember and do the same with the sincerity and intensity of someone trying to be just like
Mommy and Daddy.
Prejudice grows up a step when Mommy says, "You mustn't eat at little Howard's house,
and please don't invite him over here to eat with us." "Hah," says the child to himself, "I
shouldn't eat with puppy and I shouldn't eat with Howard. Mommy and Daddy reject both of
them so I will too. I'm superior." Next you see adults saying, "Isn't it terrible the way that
child makes fun of Howard." Once again, who was the first to reject?
And then one day you hear people saying, "Isn't it terrible that these countries should be
breaking diplomatic relations," ,and finally, "I don't understand if. Horrible. I guess war is
just part of human nature."
There are two very glib and dangerous misconceptions here. In the first place, it's not
"human nature" to make war and there are millions of people who attest to it by the very
fact that they lived their enure lives without once being on a battlefield or wanting to be.
Almost all of the remainder "had no idea it would be like THAT." Secondly, that war should
be regarded incomprehensible is as absurd as thinking that it is impossible to grasp one plus
one equals two. When children grow up rejecting people who are different and grow up
thinking that they can solve their problems by violent elimination of others (in fantasies if
not in reality) it is only logical that as adults they would collectively reject peace efforts and
try to arrive at the solution, without thinking, through violence. And, sad but true, warfare
is much closer to fantasy than most people think—until one day it smashes through your
back yard, runs over your child, bums your wife and maims your body forever. All this from
stem, sober and pious diddling with the thought. "If we could just eliminate people X, we
could solve problem Y." Funny thing—after someone sees the reality he doesn't play so
loosely with such fantasies—the very same fantasies we are pounding into the minds and
personalities of tens of millions of children the world over with our hundreds of millions of
toy weapons.
19
If a child is brought up with affection and acceptance, the story is very different and the
problems that develop in adulthood are being solved the whole time the child is growing up.
If this child is given toys that he can arrange imaginatively, that he can use to explore and
shape his own miniature world and to express his own feelings and ideas, then he is already
starting to solve the world's problems. He is already building roads to take people from
home to work, already making small farms to feed the growing population, already learning
that blocks placed in certain manners will balance, and buildings built similarly will stand. He
is open to new experiences, and learns from these experiences simply because he accepts
them openly, just as his parents accept him. His world is filled with possibilities instead of
frightening hostilities. He is at home with himself more so than the child who constantly
plays war. His play does not have to be rationalized as "just pretend"—it is regarded as it
actually is—small scale reality, actual work that is regarded as fun. It is not surprising that
this work should be regarded as fun; acceptance is pleasurable, and this kind of play
accepts the whole environment—and in turn the child feels that the environment accepts
him, too.
Now some people would say that a child brought up in the spirit of acceptance isn't seeing
what is really around him; somehow the truth is being hidden from him. Actually, the
opposite is true. He is more aware of what is actually happening, for the simple reasons that
he has not closed his mind. The child who rejects little Howard is in the dark regarding what
little Howard is actually like. The racist who has never talked to a Negro as a friend is totally
ignorant regarding that group of people. To say that these people who have grown up
rejecting others have a better knowledge of reality is like saying that a blind Frenchman
could give you better directions in New York traffic than a Manhattan taxicab driver.
Naturally, the child who has been brought up in the atmosphere of acceptance is open to
more knowledge and less likely to be afraid of his environment; he will be in a much better
position to cope with world problems as an adult. His suggestions and work may go a long
way toward solving these problems and certainly it is far better to build for a happier world
than it is to kill those people you don't know enough about to understand.
If you want to change the world, start small. Start with the child, for he is the father of the
man. Start with his play because it is a promise of things to come. Remember this: the
influence on an individual's personality is inversely proportional to his age: the older he
gets, the harder" he is to change. His knowledge, the number of facts at his disposal, grows
proportionally as he grows older. The way this knowledge will be used, for or against
mankind, is determined by the personality and not the knowledge itself. For this reason we
of NO WAR TOYS urge that everyone concerned with his future, and his children's future,
give very serious consideration to his children's play. If you want to change the world, start
small—start with your own children.
The Toy (Los Angeles)
Autumn, 1966
Why We Demonstrate
A Statement by Spokane's Citizens for Peace in Vietnam
Like most Americans, you probably aren't happy about the war in Vietnam. But you
probably aren't happy with peace demonstrators either.
We would like to explain to you why we demonstrate, and urge you to join us.
In sorrow at the ever-expanding casualties, American and Vietnamese,
including millions of Vietnamese civilians (almost one million children injured
or killed), with no end in sight, in this futile, atrocious war;
20
In horror at the widening use by American armed forces of weapons of
massive, indiscriminate destruction, such as. napalm, scorched-earth
programs, and fragmentation anti-personnel bombs;
In fear that this war, unless stopped soon, will inevitably engulf other nations,
leading to the slaughter of millions and the ultimate insanity—thermonuclear
holocaust;
In protest against our government's military intervention in the internal
conflicts of a small country 9,000 miles away, struggling for independence
after centuries of colonial rule;
In disgust that our government is supporting a dictator in South Vietnam
whose avowed hero is Adolf Hitler;
In recognition that this is an American war, but still an unjust war, violating
the principles and the provisions of the United States Constitution, the
Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, the 1954 Geneva Accords, and the United
Nations Charter;
In belief that America must end this war with the dignity befitting a great
power—by admitting our responsibility and getting out, leaving international
peace-keeping, if such be needed, to the United Nations;
In opposition to higher taxes and runaway inflation, which hurt workers and
persons on fixed incomes while the war industries profit;
In alarm that our government's escalation of the war in Vietnam and its deescalation of the war on poverty have contributed to racial violence;
In refusal to participate in the crime of silence;
And with sincere faith in the deep sources of humaneness and inner strength
and wisdom that lie somewhere in our people;
… we are forced by conscience to demonstrate our opposition to the war which our
government is waging in Vietnam.
Spokane's Natural (Spokane, Wash.)
Summer, 1967
On Avoiding the Draft
by Jerry Hopkins
A mimeographed flyer emanating from the good offices of the Vietnam Day Committee and
offering draft counseling includes this question under the heading, "ARE YOU 4-F?":
21
"Do you have: Asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, perforated ear drums, heart murmur,
duodenal ulcer, severe hemorrhoids, 'obscene' tattoos, psychological disturbances, or any
other defects or diseases which preclude satisfactory performance of military duty or which
require frequent and prolonged treatment?"
Did you read what I just read? Run, don't walk, to your nearest tattoo parlor.
Open City (Los Angeles)
August 24,1967
Dear Draft Board …
Dear Editor:
I have renewed my commitment to the peace movement, largely as a result of Dave
McReynolds' article (May 20) by mailing my draft card back to my draft board with the
following letter, a copy of which I have sent to President Johnson.
The Free Press is looking better and better. Good luck.
PEACE
Bill Tynan
West Hollywood
United States Government
Selective Service System
Local Board #98
1301 Westwood Blvd.
Los Angeles, California
Gentlemen:
After much wrestling with myself concerning the wisdom of this action, I am returning,
herewith, my Selective Service card with the profound regret that I cannot, at this time,
remain registered as a prospective conscript for military service.
Since I am over thirty-five years of age and a veteran of the Korean conflict the chances of
my being called to serve in the present military action in Vietnam are slight, but I can no
longer stand by without expressing my position in this issue in some tangible manner.
It is my firm opinion that the United States has, in recent years, pursued a course in world
affairs, with respect to the emerging have-not nations, that has needlessly provoked our
present situation in Vietnam. I do not believe that it is our position to determine the political
fate of another nation. If we feel that a particular political change threatens the balance of
world power we should present our view to the United Nations to be decided upon by
representative world opinion.
If, on the other hand, a particular political change directly threatens the internal security of
the United States I believe it could become necessary to defend ourselves militarily.
However, it has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction that International Communism
endangers United States sovereignty. I certainly do not believe that the actions or desires of
Vietnam's National Liberation Front in any way threaten the welfare of the American people.
22
In the past, in our efforts to singlehandedly combat what we consider to be the evils of
Communism, we have many times violated the spirit of democratic ideals as set forth in our
constitution, but at no time has our militant anti-Communist commitment led us into an
action of such questionable morality. I see the presence of the American military in Vietnam
as an act of aggressive violence against not only the Vietnamese people but against all
humanity.
It was the position of the International War Crimes Tribunal which met at Nuremberg
subsequent to World War II that an individual citizen who participated in or condoned acts
of immorality by his government could not stand free of guilt for such acts under the excuse
of "just following orders." I fully support this position, and after a year of careful study of
our Southeast Asian policy I refuse to support, to any degree, our present position in
Vietnam on the basis of this principle.
Secondly, I refuse to support the Administration's Vietnam policy on the grounds that it is in
violation of our constitution, since the Congress has not issued a formal declaration of war.
I hope that my stand on this issue will not be construed as a stand against the United
States or the democratic principles on which this government was founded. On the contrary,
it is precisely out of a desire to support these principles that I oppose the Administration’s
present policy in Vietnam. In the future if there is a change in this policy, or if the United
States is subjected to an unprovoked attack by a foreign power, I will be happy to review
my position regarding my military commitment.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.
Sincerely,
William Tynan
West Hollywood
The Los Angeles Free Press
June 17, 1967
Point of Information
Dear Editor:
Dow Chemical Company is impressively diversified. I: It manufactures Acetylsalicylic Acid,
U.S.P.; Iodine, Epsom ' Salts; Saran Wrap, Handi-Wrap; Dow Oven Cleaner; Dowpon Grass
Killer; Emdee Margarine; Styrofoam; Latex paints; Polyethylene containers for liquid bleach,
all purpose detergents, fabric softeners, ammonia, starches, floor waxes and automotive
polishes; and napalm.
23
Thank you
Pax vobiscum
Douglas Eby
The Los Angeles Free Press
August 4, 1967
Pledge
"I hereby pledge not to buy a new car until there is peace in Vietnam."
This pledge sponsored by the Pledge for Peace Committee is being circulated in a national
campaign. The automobile industry is essential to the war effort. The goal of the committee
is to gather 100,000 signatures to show that there is strong opposition to the war and that
this opposition could cause economic trouble to one of the nation's major industries. Anyone
who is interested in peace should sign it and mail it to Pledge for Peace, 3237 Benda St.,
Los Angeles, California 90028.
Prove (Los Angeles)
May 1, 1967
Refuse Telephone Tax
An Advertisement by The War Resisters League of Los Angeles
Because of the widening war in Vietnam, federal legislation was passed which, in April,
1966, restored the 10% tax on telephone bills. At that time the tax was 3% and due to be
dropped entirely in 1969. "It is clear," said Rep. Wilbur Mills, who managed the tax
legislation in the House, "that the Vietnam and only the Vietnam operation makes this bill
necessary!"
The consequences: … the Commerce Clearing House, 1966 Excise Tax Guide, Paragraph
2235 … indicates that the ultimate responsibility for paying, or refusing, the tax lies with
the telephone user, not the phone company, and that if the user refuses to pay the tax as
billed, the issue will be settled directly between him and the Internal Revenue Service …
rather than by termination of telephone service …
NO INCOME TAX FOR WAR
Approximately 70% of income taxes goes for war and war preparation; this year about 22%
will go for the war in Vietnam. War and war preparation contradict our central value: the
dignity and worth of a human person. We must use non-violent methods to create and
defend what we believe is '"freedom" for only non-violence does not violate the people it
seeks to protect.
Some of us are refusing to pay all or some portion of our 1966 or 1967 income taxes, or
have lowered our incomes, hence owing no tax, or paying our taxes under protest. If you
are any of these groups, please let us know when returning the coupon below.
Note: there are such laws which, though not usually applied to principled refusers, cover
possible fine and jail term not non-payment of a legally-owed amount
The Los Angeles Free Press
April 14, 1967
24
What Is It to Be a Man?
An Open Letter to Our Men in Service
by David McReynoIds
David McReynoIds is internationally famous as a pacifist who has risked his
life in the interests of peace and humanity.
It is a commentary on the state of freedom of the press in this country that
he must use the minority underground press as his chief means of
communication. BARB CHALLENGES ANY MAJOR NEWSPAPER (INCLUDING
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE) TO PUBLISH McREYNOLDS' LETTER.
It is hard to reach you guys. Once you go through the doors of that induction center it is
almost impossible to get to you. Well, you are inside now. Maybe you are at some base in
the U.S. getting your basic training. Maybe you are stationed in Germany. Maybe you've
gotten your orders for Vietnam. Maybe you are already there.
Wherever you are I hope this letter reaches you. I'm sending copies to all the Underground
Press papers in this country and Canada and England, and to friends in Japan. If you don't
agree with this letter, drop me a line, just write to me at the War Resisters League, 5
Beekman Street, NYC 10038. Tell me where I'm wrong. Unless the government has closed
us down I promise to answer. If you agree with this letter, pass it on. If you are stationed in
the States and have a friend in Vietnam, mail it to him.
The "patriots" who are so hot for the war are saying the peace movement is against you
guys. That we don't support you. They say we should all be sent to Vietnam or shot or at
least we should be ashamed because there you are fighting and we demonstrate against the
war. You've heard about flag burning and draft card burning and about what a bunch of
commies we are. That's a line of crap.
Think.
If you bum a draft card you burn a piece of paper. If you bum a flag you bum a piece of
cloth. But if you drop a napalm bomb you bum up a human being. Does the card hurt when
you bum it? Does the flag hurt when you bum it? But the child hurts when you burn it. What
is worse, burning a draft card or burning up a village?
The officers in charge of your "political education" tell you the peace movement is just a
handful of people, most of them with long hair. (Jesus had long hair and George Washington
wore a powdered wig.) They will tell you most Americans support the war. Bullshit. On April
15th of this year, more than 300,000 citizens marched in New York to protest the war.
80,000 marched in San Francisco to protest it. That is almost half a million Americans. We
didn't beat up anybody. We just marched peacefully. Two weeks later, on April 29th, the
"patriots" held their demonstration in support of the war. Cardinal Spellman, the John Birch
Society and the New York Daily News gave their full support. The organizers said 250,000
"red-blooded American patriots" would show up. Less than 10,000 came. Three weeks later
they tried again. On May 20th there was a demonstration in New York "to support our
boys." Less than 75,000 showed up. 75,000 people is a lot—but its sure as hell isn't
400,000.
Your officers may tell you there were Communists in. the big demonstrations. That's right.
There were. What you didn't hear is that we had more Catholic priests and nuns than
Communist leaders.
25
You want to know what kind of people came out to "support you" at those "patriotic rallies"?
Pot-bellied American Legion drunks. They believed in freedom so much they beat up anyone
who disagreed with them. A Negro woman held up a sign during the May 20th "patriots
demonstration" which said "No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger." A man in the uniform of
the American Legion punched her in the face and twenty other men—if you can call them
that—joined in beating up that one black woman. The police didn't arrest them. A group of
young people who believe in peace but who wanted to show they support you guys tried to
march in the May '20th parade. They carried American flags. You know what happened to
them? I quote from a newspaper report: "Grown men lustily punched and kicked girls no
older than their daughters. American flags were ripped from their hands and torn "to bits."
Is that the kind of support you want? Women and girls beaten up?
When Johnson came to Los Angeles on June 23rd there ; was no one there to support the
war except a handful of (Democratic politicians and big contributors to the Democratic K
'party. But more than 10,000 people were there to protest Johnson's war. The police split
skulls, hit women and children, '.' and sent people to the hospital because they had dared to
it inarch, peacefully, against the war. But on August 6 in that same city more than 20,000
people turned out for an even larger anti-war protest.
Look, we do not support the war. The people here, most of us, don't like this war. We think
it is a rotten war. We don't support the President. We think Johnson is a damn liar. But we
do support you. What kind of support do you want—the support of Nixon and Johnson or the
support we offer? Nixon and Johnson want you to do the fighting and killing. And the dying.
They sure as hell aren't going to do it themselves, but they "support you" doing it. We don't
want you to kill anyone, or get killed. We want you home alive and in one piece, not in a
wood box. Which kind of support do you want?
Think. It's your life. The only one you will ever have. We aren't against you guys. I read in
the papers that some men who were killed in Vietnam have had phone calls to their parents
I from people here saying they were glad the son got killed, he deserved it, etc. I can't
believe anyone is that sick to call the parents of a man who got killed in Vietnam. I don't
know if anyone really made those phone calls or if that is just a way of turning you guys
against us. But our group didn't make those calls. We aren't happy if one of you gets it. We
don't applaud when one of our planes gets shot down. You are not the enemy. The "V.C."
isn't the enemy. Not even old LBJ is really the enemy. It is killing and hurting which is the
enemy. Let's put it this way—I hope every bullet you fire misses. And I hope every mortar
shell the VC fires is a dud.
Some of you men in Vietnam say the Vietnamese want us there. Come off it! Do you expect
them to say they hate you when you are carrying an automatic rifle? Come off it! I've been
in Saigon and I've seen how every single government building is guarded by barbed wire
and sand bags and sentries. That barbed wire is there because you guys aren't popular. You
aren't "liberating" Vietnam. You are occupying it. When you "liberate" a village do the
people come out laughing, with flowers? Do the girls run up to kiss you? When was the last
time you got laid without paying for it? When was the last time a girl said she liked you
without wanting piastres? When did you pay an honest price for your drinks in the bars?
Let me ask you something else. Have you asked how come you got drafted and George
Hamilton didn't? Do you wonder why Pat Nugent is safe in the reserves instead of in
Vietnam? Is there a Congressman's son (or grandson) or a businessman's son in your
platoon? How about your company? How about your whole battalion—can you name one
rich man's son or one politician's son who got drafted? If the war is so damned important
why aren't some of the rich kids helping out with the fighting? And dying.
26
If your officers see this letter they will tell you it is subversive. What does "subversive"
mean? Is Brig. General Robert Hughes subversive? On May 30th he said: "We are
prosecuting an immoral war in support of a government that is a dictatorship … It
represents nothing but a ruling clique and is composed of morally corrupt leaders … This is
one hell of a war to be fighting. We must disengage from this tragic war." Or how about
General David Shoup, former Marine Corps Commandant? On February 21 he said, "I
believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the
business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution
of their own … I don't think the whole of Southeast Asia, as related to the present and
future safety and freedom of people in this country, is worth the life or limb of a single
American." General Shoup holds the Medal of Honor. General Hughes has the Silver Star,
Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster—and the Purple Heart. What combat medals does
Johnson have?
A couple of times guys have phoned me or written me to say I don't know how cruel the
V.C. can be, that we talk about them like they are all heroes and our men are all some kind
of criminals. Let's get the record straight. I don't think the V.C. are all heroes or saints. I
know they slit throats and kill civilians. And I think killing civilians or slitting throats is lousy.
But who does the most killing. Them or Us? In ten years the V.C. has killed about 10,000
civilians, most of them corrupt local officials. I condemn those killings. In that same period
we have killed more than 500,000 people in Vietnam. Who should I condemn more, the V.C.
or the U.S. army? Who has killed the most people? The V.C. go into a village and cut the
throat of one corrupt official. That is bad, because even a bastard is still a human being and
human beings should not be killed. But we fly over a village and drop bombs on everyone.
That is worse, right?
Another thing, which is sort of touchy, but you ought to think about it. They say the army
makes a man out of you. By now you know better. The army just tries to make a robot out
of you. A killing machine. What is a man? Is there something "manly" about the drunken
American Legion guy who slugged the Negro woman because she was carrying a sign he
didn't like? Is there something really "manly" about being able to stick a bayonet into a
man's belly? There isn't a damn thing about killing that is "manly." A man's job is to make
babies, not to kill them. If you are really "manly" you don't have to hit women who march in
peace demonstrations—you can be gentle. If you are afraid of being gentle then you aren't
ready yet to be a man. Your cock makes you a man, not your gun. And, friend, if you
confuse your cock with your gun you are really in trouble. Shooting off a gun kills people.
Shooting off your cock brings children into this world. The guys who can't make love are the
ones who want you to make war. Making love, making babies, and taking care of your girl—
that is a man's job. Killing people is for guys who are running away from their real job.
Let me get practical. Your officers may tell you the peace movement is against you. It is
not. We are for you and against the war. We are supporting you by trying to get you the
hell out of Vietnam and out of the army and back to your job or school or pool hall or girl
friend. We are not against you. Right now you are in the army. What can you do?
Get the facts. Killing anyone is pretty serious. Getting killed is just as serious. Before you
shoot your gun you ought to have some facts about the war. You have a right to get
pamphlets in the mail. Write us for a list of pamphlets with facts on the war. And don't just
read our side—write the State Department (just address your letter to: State Department,
Washington, D.C.) and ask for their pamphlets. Look over both sides and decide for yourself
who is telling the truth. If you think the State Department and Johnson are telling the truth,
then fight
27
If you think the State Department and Johnson are lying about the war and we are telling
the truth, then don't fight. Part of being a man is doing what you think is right and not just
doing what the captain tells you to do. The real patriot is not the man who does what he is
told his country thinks is best, but the man who does what he thinks is best for his country.
If you think the war is wrong, don't support it. Get out of the army if you can. There are
three ways of getting out.
You can desert. If you desert in the U.S., you can be picked up at any time—as long as you
live—and sent to prison. If you desert in Sweden or Prance you won't go to jail but you have
to stay there. You can never come back here without being arrested. If you have a girl in
Germany or France or England or Sweden and if you want to spend your whole life in
Europe, then deserting is one way out. The New York Times says about sixty guys every
month desert in Europe alone.
You can ask to be released from the army as a conscientious objector. Write us (War
Resisters League, 5 Beekman St., NYC 10038) to see if you qualify under the law. But don't
expect much. Hundreds of guys have applied for release as C.O.'s and they aren't getting
discharged. The army is saying no to almost everyone who applies. Still, you have the right
to ask for release. All they can do is say no.
Third, you can refuse to obey any further orders, accept a court martial, serve a prison
term, and be dishonorably discharged. That sounds rough—and it is. But every man who is
"dishonorably discharged" for refusing to fight in this war will be an American hero when
history is written. The men who refused to serve in Hitler's army are heroes today and so
will be the men who refuse service in the Vietnam war. We honor the Communist troops
who refused to kill Hungarians in 1956, and eventually we will honor you as well.
But that won't make it easier for you now. You would still have to serve six months to five
years in military prison. And that is rough. But if you are man enough to face combat are
you not also man enough to face prison? For those of you overseas, who would like to sit
down and talk over the whole problem—the war, what you are doing in the army, etc.—
write to: War Resisters International, 88 Park Avenue, Enfield, Middlesex, England. They will
give you the address of the peace organization nearest to your base.
I think you should know that many of those in the peace movement are taking the same
kind of risks you would take if you refused to obey orders. I am thinking of the young men
who, on October 16th, will turn in their draft cards. These guys have student deferments or
could easily skip to Canada. They are not running to Canada and they are not hiding behind
their deferments—they are going to torn in their draft cards and risk almost certain arrest.
Hundreds of them. They are going to resist openly. That takes a lot of guts. On October
16th those boys will become men. They will take that risk partly to save the peasants in
Vietnam and partly to save you men from killing and being killed. They are taking a risk
they don't have to take—because they have the courage, as men, to say No to Johnson.
The men on our side are risking prison. They aren't asking you to fight any battles for them.
The men on the side of the war are risking nothing—they are too old to fight—but they are
willing to risk you. Those of us in the peace movement aren't on the side of the V.C. We are
on the side of people. The side of life—including your life. Walk across the line and stand
with us, on the side of life. You may go to prison but you won't be alone.
28
Finally, whatever you decide to do, let me be sentimental—go ahead and laugh if you
want—and say we pray for you. We pray you hurt no one and are not hurt. We pray you kill
no one and are not killed. If you go into battle, shoot high so you won't hit anyone, not
even your officers. And always remember that even to the very end we are supporting you,
we are trying to get you out of the army and away from the crime of this war. If you want
to be counted a man you can help out by fucking things up gently. Talk about the war in
your barracks. Hand out literature. Don't take the officers too seriously. Going to prison in a
good cause is better than going to battle for an evil cause.
And paste this in your helmet, the words of a great American poet, Kenneth Patchen:
This is a man
he is a poor creature
you are not to kill him
this is a man
he has a hard time
upon the earth
you are not to kill him.
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
September 22, 1967
Another Modest Proposal
by Richard Robbins
Statements of government officials suggest that the war in Vietnam may continue for many
more years, perhaps indefinitely. In light of this I propose a program that would end the
war within a definite time period, say ten years. Since the Communist terrorist begins his
diabolical career at a very young age, often before his tenth birthday, the extermination of
all Vietnamese children and fetuses would terminate the supply. It is necessary to
exterminate all Vietnamese children and fetuses because there is no way to determine
which would be warped to Vietnamese nationalism and which would grow strong in loyalty
to the United States. While this is unfortunate, the kill-ratio will be greatly improved
because the vast majority of Vietnamese grow up with the sickness of their national pride.
$o while we are now accidentally exterminating more innocent peasants than Viet Cong
homicidal maniacs, my program would be the more humane and effective approach.
29
Since a policy's effectiveness depends so strongly on the pleasantness of its tide, my
program should be called "Euthanasia for Youth in Asia." Quite euphonic, don't you agree?
This term could easily recede into an unemotional compartment of the American citizen's
consciousness, as have such terms as extermination, depopulization, anti-personnel bomb,
twenty-four billion dollars and kill-ratio.
"Euthanasia for Youth In Asia" could be conducted with much more efficiency and at much
less expense than can the present program. A pregnant woman can't run as fast as a
Vietnamese terrorist. Also, she has much more difficulty concealing her guilt of carrying a
potential terrorist than the Viet Cong has of concealing the terrorist in his conscience. A
forcefully applied combat boot to a swollen belly could do the job which a few years later
would cost the American taxpayer $400,000 (in the case of twins $800,000).
Every Vietnamese child is on the list of the fiendish communist soul-snatchers. Surprisingly,
most of them will be perverted to believe that the American people intend to harm them.
This is why it is absolutely necessary to exterminate them before they are old enough to
bear arms against our country's finest young men. Those Vietnamese tots that do somehow
escape from the womb could still be done away with without much difficulty or expense. A
search and destroy team may walk right by a bush or tree concealing a well-disciplined Viet
Cong terrorist. But children, the little fools, are likely to shriek out of abject terror in such
situations. Our healthy Marines could easily snap the necks of the puny urchins,
accomplishing without the waste of a single bullet what in a few years would have been
costly and even dangerous.
Since I have often heard our boys say that they don't consider the enemy to be human,
there should be no moral objection to using the tender rice-fed carcasses as a succulent
supplement to the GI's K-rations. This practice would allow extended search and destroy
missions.
It appears that the bombing of North Vietnamese has not succeeded in its objective of
demoralizing the overzealous and fanatical peasants. I suggest that bombs may not be the
answer, but bombing is. Instead of bombs, drop millions of the Vietnamese children's
carcasses on Hanoi. That would demoralize them.
A few bleeding hearts and commie sympathizers will no doubt believe that "Euthanasia for
Youth in Asia" is a bit too harsh a program. But most right-thinking Americans understand
the importance of protecting our honor and our Christian ideals.
The Paper (East Lansing, Mich.)
May 12, 1967
30
DRUGS: Take Tea And See/Take LSD And Be
Bom Bom Mahadev: A Mantra for Marijuana
by Harry Monroe
"Bom bom mahadev!" the mantra yogis' cry as they raise the ganja pipe to inhale, means
"boom boom great god," according to Allen Ginsberg, who tells of having smoked it with
Shaivite worshippers, devotees and yogis at Nimtallah ghat in Calcutta, where it is
considered the beginning of the yogic path of Saddhana and, of course, is legal.
Ganja is a very superior grade of Indian hemp much stronger than the best marijuana
available in the United States. Allen was in India for a long while, and his First Manifesto to
End the Bringdown is perhaps the best source of reasons why marijuana smoking is one of
the most beneficial things a person can do, and not a little holy. '
A goodly number of us know this by the most directly convincing evidence possible.
Speaking for many who are friends and for myself, I have not the slightest reservation in
saying that this much maligned plant has powers that elevate the human condition from a
purely material plane to the spiritual.
If this is opinion, it is one shared with four hundred million others in the world.
I first came across Allen's First Manifesto in David Solomon's definitive study of the subject:
The Marijuana Papers, Bobbs-Merrill, 450 pages, $10.00. Really three books under one
cover with appendix. It is well written, and I cannot think of any area of the subject that is
not thoroughly and intelligently explored by leading authorities, and by such I do not mean
the police or federal agents.
Put together by a savant and not a propagandizer, this book contains sufficient evidence to
refute the specious arguments that fall under the heading: killer drug nonsense and
propaganda.
Mr. Solomon has collated a massive volume of absolutely convincing evidence to support
the statement that marijuana is good for you, good for your health, good for your mind, and
good for the world. It seems an understatement to say it is good for your soul when one has
witnessed in self and others a development of soul and spiritual growth attributable to
marijuana. This is an opinion shared with an impressive number of writers, poets, thinkers,
doctors and scientists.
In fact, about the only dissident over the years has proved to be one Harry J. Anslinger, a
liar and a self-serving bureaucrat, proved as such out of his own mouth in several instances
including sworn congressional testimony during which Mr. Anslinger contradicted himself. He
is presently touring Europe telling whoever will listen that LSD is a hundred times worse
than heroin. Chet Helms told me this on his return from England, where he had been telling
whoever wanted to hear that LSD was a hundred times better than heroin.
David Solomon's well-organized book encloses diverse talents between its covers, legal,
scientific, and literary. It is through all of its pages an erudite and utterly convincing
espousal of the doctrine every marijuana smoker has within him, whether articulated or not.
For instance: it provides a thousand reasons why I am; as many justifications for my being;
irrefutable literary and scientific affirmation of my own intuition; and sociological evidence
of the criminal and racist nature of the cynical campaign of self-interested men to make
marijuana illegal and railroad thousands upon thousands of American citizens into jails and
prison—men and women from among the spiritually aware, peaceful, and humane noncriminal classes.
31
The last statement will cause some eyebrows to rise. To I whomever would take exception
to it I would point out that it is a statement made in the deep belief that economically
deprived, racial, and ethnic minorities are not members of a criminal class simply because
the laws of the classes that exploit them are in large part legislated with the end in mind of
providing the means and excuse for what is a de facto accomplishment: the repression of
the economically and politically powerless. I do not doubt this the least bit, nor do I expect
that my saying it is news. If it were, we would scarcely, in 1967, be on the edge of these
several coincident movements that can only be termed revolutionary.
In reading this book, a pattern of law is revealed and a process of governing exposed as the
insidious foisting of tyranny upon the millions among us who would be free, by men without
honor employing the most reprehensible apparatus imaginable, including lobbying,
journalistic hysteria, and bureaucratic interest in self-preservation beyond function.
Tyranny is perhaps the least invidious part of the indictment, human nature being human
enough, certainly less evil by far than the full gamut of prejudice and bias which has been
enlisted in support of the deliberate campaign to legislate land enact measures shocking in
the degree of their harshness, supported by misinformation, and cynically depending in the
main upon a familiar style of yellow journalism to effect and accomplish what lacks any
justification.
These laws, hastily passed against .the objections of all truly informed legal and medical
minds, were jammed through Congress in 1937 upon the militant insistence of factions so
obviously self-interested that neither they nor their fellows would suggest that their intent
was to serve anyone but themselves. Federally instigated, these laws have long fallen into
disrepute to such an extent that they are only half-heartedly enforced at the federal level,
but are applied and enforced ten times more frequently at local levels and all too often in
the good old "Southron" atmosphere and spirit.
Gun-toting, bullying police do not have any of the philosophical and political inclinations of
the people they consider Criminals. In the vast majority of cases they have outright
antipathy for these people because of widely divergent views and different interests. That
enforcement officers largely ignore the constitutional guarantees which these people are
guaranteed, cynically violate the Constitution, and employ brutal and even criminal methods
to apprehend and convict them is !quite widely known.
BUT OURS ARE THE TIMES THAT ARE A-CHANGING
There is no stronger support for the statements I make immediately above than the
groundswell of rebellious and outraged citizen groups that is so strong in this country today.
Few individuals within the groups I refer to seriously doubt that they are in reaction to
iniquities and politico-economic injustices, and that great changes are about to take place
here.
The warmakers of America do not smoke marijuana; those who have been called peaceniks
and have accepted that term in large part do smoke marijuana. Isolation of evidence and
proof here is not sharp enough to really mean anything to those who require it before
making conclusions, but those who are more intuitional can find meaning in the statement;
and in another: marijuana smokers do not deprive others of their civil rights to any
noticeable degree, while of course non-smokers do. That is, white Americans deprive nonwhite Americans of a great deal. And they also deprive themselves of the open mind and
the freedom of choice that every marijuana smoker either has before learning of the
benefits of marijuana smoking or certainly acquires after.
32
The prohibition of liquor in the United States from 1919 to 1933 created the modem
gangster empire that existed in the United States during the twenties and thirties. To
control these new outlaws, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was expanded to its present
dimension.
By the time the bootleggers and their gangs of hired guns had been driven underground,
where they remain today, fairly immune to the law, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had
entrenched itself as the power it presently is. J. Edgar Hoover was and is the director, a
man far beyond the usual age of retirement from government service and too powerful
today to be removed or replaced.
From 1930 to 1937 a steady stream of lurid stories about the effects of the "killer drug"
marijuana, emanating from Washington, pervaded the country and culminated in the
infamous Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. The country was being carefully prepared for a new
form of prohibition by hysterical journalism, at the instigation of the very wealthy and
powerful liquor lobby that served the newly revived liquor industry.
Headlines screamed and editors fulminated, while the worst aspects of yellow journalism
were used to create the atmosphere of hysteria and abet the scare enactment of the 1937
law. Among the most blatant offenders was the Readers' Digest, since become a powerful
organ of opinion making, as reactionary then as it is now.
The Federal Narcotics Bureau, which, except for narcotics laws would be a minor tax
bureau, issued propaganda and was I very active in bringing the public around to accepting
this ! legislation. The time was one of the depression. Jobs were scarce, bureaucrats
desperate.
Following enactment, the bureau mushroomed in size and importance, creating sinecures
for some, jobs for others. Its one-time commissioner. Harry J. Anslinger, found his career in
the bureau and has proudly taken much of the credit for ; the publicity that indicated
marijuana as a menace to youth.
Among the reports I've studied in the Scientific Papers section of the book are those of the
Indian Hemp Drug Commission, Simna, 1894; Report of Colonel J. M. Phalen, printed in The
Military Surgeon, July, 1943; Allentuck and Bowman, 1942; Report of the White House
Conference on Drugs and Drug Abuse, 1962; and Report of the President's Advisory
Committee, 1963. All conclude that marijuana is harmless and (find no evidence whatever
to support the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Harry Anslinger.
The findings of the LaGuardia Report were reported to the 'Mayor in 1944 by the prestigious
New York Academy of .Medicine. Here are the findings as they appear in the Academy's
summation. These are directly quoted:
1. Smoking marijuana does not lead directly to mental or physical
deterioration.
2. The habitual smoker knows when to stop, as excessive doses reverse the
usually pleasant effects.
3. Marijuana does not lead to addiction (in the medical sense), and while it is
naturally habit-forming, its withdrawal does not lead to the horrible
withdrawal symptoms of the opiates.
4. No deaths have ever been recorded that can be ascribed to marijuana.
5. Marijuana is not a direct causal factor in sexual or criminal misconduct.
6. Juvenile delinquency is not caused by marijuana smoking, although they
are sometimes associated.
33
7. The publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marijuana smoking in
New York is unfounded.
8. It is more of a nuisance than a menace.
The crusade against marijuana has been so zealous that by and large public opinion
subscribes to the official position that it is malign, causing mental debility, physical
deterioration, sexual degeneracy, moral decay and, in general, criminal behavior justifying
the passage of harsh and repressive laws against it. And so I have gone in search of the
malign, spending many hours poring over the findings of the several studies that David
Solomon includes in his book under the heading of scientific papers. I have not considered
the time wasted because I have failed to find the malign.
The following observations are the nearest to an indictment of marijuana that I could find:
A general ataxia is apparently limited to the symptomatic. An increased pulse
rate, blood pressure, and blood sugar level are likewise limited to
symptomatic. The increased frequency of urination does not increase the
quantity of urine passed.
The user of marijuana has mixed feelings of euphoria and apprehension as
well as feelings of relaxation and disinhibition. There is an increase in selfawareness and a reduction of critical faculty resulting in a more favorable
attitude toward the self and a capacity to freely verbalize.
The effects of marijuana is [sic] to make the user less aggressive; the
auditory acuity is unaffected and musical ability unimproved. A noticeable
degree of intellectual impairment is manifest as a loss of both speed and
accuracy of intellectual function. No mental deterioration is discernible and
indications are that it does not occur.
Following publication of the findings of the LaGuardia Report, the American Medical
Association, the Federal Narcotics Bureau, and Harry Anslinger all attacked the investigators
and denounced their findings. Anslinger's remarks were couched in terms one would hardly
expect to find in a medical journal.
This was in 1944. Similar conclusions had been arrived at by Allentuck and Bowman the
previous year and had been bitterly assailed from the same quarters. There were rumors at
the time that the report would be suppressed, and the Readers' Digest passionately
deplored its publication. Allentuck and Bowman concluded that there was no evidence to
connect marijuana with opiates and no evidence that prolonged use of marijuana led to
physical, mental, or moral degeneration. They reported no deleterious effects attendant on
the continued use of marijuana. Their prestigious study, well-received in the scientific
community, caused a stir in the press when it was published in 1943.
In 1942, Dr. Alfred R. Lindesmith won the respect of the intellectual community for his
incisive criticism of the Federal Narcotics Bureau. He is regarded today as one of the most
perceptive and enlightened experts on the sociological use of drugs.
The LaGuardia study was conducted by the New York Academy of Medicine, whose prestige
in medical circles is so considerable as to place it above criticism of the AMA. The Mayor's
Committee, which made the study and drew up the report, was composed of fifteen M.D.s
and two Ph.D.s.
The labors are regarded as the most thorough and meticulous scientific study ever made on
marijuana, and the factual findings of the report are the most impressive in the whole body
of scientific literature on marijuana—a literature going back thousands of years.
34
Others have labored in behalf of truth in this matter and have invariably earned recognition
of at least one kind: denunciation by Federal Narcotics Bureau spokesmen, the H American
Medical Association, through its Journal, and Harry Anslinger.
One of the doctors on Mayor LaGuardia's committee incisively observed that hemp has been
cultivated in America since the Seventeenth Century, and has only become a problem,
associated with a great deal of publicity, in the last ten years. The remark was made in
1944. In an attempt to put Anslinger and his activities into proper perspective, I include the
following piece of statistical information:
In 1936, 60% of all the crimes committed in the City of New Orleans were attributed to
marijuana. This was at the height of the marijuana hysteria that was so much of a thing in
the thirties. Today no one seriously considers marijuana a factor in crime.
In a letter published in the journal of the American Medical Association of January 16, 1943,
Anslinger cited numerous references in support of his contention that the use of marijuana
led to insanity. The AMA has long been an Anslinger ally and between them they have
mounted attacks on ''every report on narcotics that fails to agree with Anslinger's untenable
ideas on the subject.
In 1960 and 1961, Anslinger extended his operations and was very active in bringing
pressure to bear on the American Delegation to the United Nations and on members of the
international committees concerned with narcotics to work in behalf of anti-marijuana
legislation. As a result, most member nations, notably the Arab nations and some from
Africa that were recipients of American economic and military aid, adopted the legislation he
recommended.
One notable exception was India, whose leaders turned a deaf ear on Anslinger. Most likely
this was because of the extensive use of marijuana in the Ayurvedic, Unani, and Tibbi
systems of indigenous medicine that is practiced on the Indian-Pakistani sub-continent.
In The Politics, Ethics and Meaning of Marijuana, Dr. (Timothy) Leary introduces two
commandments for the Molecular Age, based on his understanding that marijuana and LSD
alter consciousness. The statements:
I. THOU SHALT NOT ALTER THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THY FELLOW MAN.
II. THOU SHALT NOT PREVENT THY FELLOW MAN FROM ALTERING HIS OWN
CONSCIOUSNESS.
He predicates the future of the species on our understanding and obeying these two natural
laws. A conservative estimate in 1951 set 200 million as the number of marijuana smokers
world wide, more people than can be included in the combined Jewish and Protestant
religions and exceeding in number the population of the United States. Ten million of these
people live in the United States, persecuted as an outlaw group, enduring conditions
inflicted upon them by a middle class bureaucracy addicted to alcohol.
The San Francisco Oracle
March, 1967
They've Done It!
Synthetic Boo:
Legalization Closer
35
by Thomas DeBaggio
There are three outstanding events of the past week that illustrate the quickly and quietly
changing official view on the illegality of marijuana. All three are hopeful signs that
legalization is not far off. Indeed, the process for repeal has begun with the highly complex
bureaucratic structure of government itself. But it will be laboriously slow. The bureaucracy
is a funicular calamity.
Outshining the slow bureaucratic and legislative process is the brilliant breakthrough
achieved by the chemist Dr. Rafael Mechbulam, a 37-year-old Israeli. Mechoulam, after
several years of struggle, has managed to synthesize the essence of marijuana. Not only
that, he has been able to produce this compound, minus delta one tetrahydrocannabinol, in
a fairly easy laboratory manipulation. The chemist is now able for the first time to concoct
on a large scale a potent brew of turn-on, a marijuana high from a chemical. (To the
chemically inclined, I direct attention to the instructive, jargonistic recipe contained in the
August 16, 1967, issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.)
Working in tandem, the scientists and officials of government most concerned with health
problems and drugs from a humane standpoint the Health, Education and Welfare
Department, may be able to grab control away from the bully mentality of the Bureau of
Narcotics. (The Narks have always been openly suspicious of scientific endeavor in this
field.) A move is currently underway to take control away from the tightfisted Bureau,
guardian of, by their own estimation, Morality, Reason, The American Way and The Laws of
the Land (also these selfsame instituted by and for them). The new maneuver would not,
however, legalize pot but place it under control by the FDA as a "dangerous drug." This
would make violation a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
This can be seen, peculiarly, as an advancement. It is a small but important signal that the
liberalization movement has achieved wide support among bureaucrats as well as citizenry.
Such a scheme has been in the governmental works for years. It may finally prove a
success. Although in the past the Bureau, at its mention, has always been able to frustrate
HEW designs. The Federal Narks have guarded their turf with a carefully modulated
jealousy. (It is important for all the investigative branches of the government to show that
they have been working hard when appropriation time rolls around. The small, easy cases
come in handy for this. In the last fiscal year the Bureau of Narcotics had an excess which
had to be spent, rather flippantly some feel, in order to keep the same level for next year.
Before hippies began making headlines, the Bureau worked very close to the chest toward
the end of its financial year.)
On the congressional scene there are also a few pleasant scents. It has been known for a
long time by social insiders that the prevalence of pot smoking at parties in Washington was
increasing. It has now reached a certain acceptance even amongst congressional aides. In
fact a few congressmen, though they could not qualify in any sense of me word as "heads,"
have been known to blow from time to time. However, courage, ever lacking in the mangy
political breed, is absent in Capitol Hill Cloakrooms. There is presently neither
Representative nor Senator with the guts to propose a marijuana legalization bill. A few of
the braver ones, with mock bravado in their hypothalamus, have announced that they
would vote for such legislation if some one else would propose it. As yet there is not much
self-interest in the cause.
36
But the first step toward legalization has been clearly outlined by Washington officials. It is
one of education—reeducation if you wish. Harry Anslinger's copy-beautiful leviathan must
be slaughtered, they feel. On the other hand it is not all that simple. They will not be
satisfied with less than a complete and thorough investigation of marijuana. Custom aside,
the bureaucrats are not appeased with the experimentation done to date. Mechoulam's
synthetic boo will immeasurably aid the compilation of this necessary data. It is assured
that they will be certain of the scientifically calculated effects of marijuana on every nerve
and cell in the body before it is sanctioned. In this they will doubtless be performing a much
slower prognosis than they have with such laboratory concoctions as birth control pills or
polio vaccine—not to mention the fact that they will have much less formidable foes than
the tobacco lobby to fight The new synthetic will make it possible for researchers to control
their tests with more accuracy. As well, this new chemical essence will also prove a clever
stratagem to throw in the face of the nefarious plan former Bureau of Narcotics boss Harry
J. Anslinger and his henchmen conspired on, an international treaty outlawing marijuana.
(See Spectrum, July 15, 1967.) It effects the use of grass in countries where it is now legal
as well as countries where it is not sanctioned, but at the cultivated source, not the
laboratory. Already, in the hothouse of the mind, active imaginations are at work dreaming
the exotic names the labels of legal boo will carry.
Spectrum (Washington, D. C.)
August, 1967
Making It
by Jerry Hopkins
Some time ago I ran a note in my column, wondering how it was discovered that morning
glory seeds were hallucinogenic. I wondered if someone had gone about it "logically,"
working his (or her) way through the Burpee seed catalog … alphabetically.
I quickly discarded this theory, though, figuring it was a long, long way from A (for Aster) to
M (for Morning Glory). I decided probably it was an accident, just as Dr. Hermann's learning
lysergic acid was hallucinogenic was an accident.
37
Today I am beginning to reevaluate my original theory. I now firmly believe that there ARE
people in this world of ours—and lots of them—who are spending most if not all of their
conscious hours "logically" trying to find new ways to get high.
(Once again, folks, I offer you a theory based on absolutely no evidence. Hereafter, when
you or anyone else puts forth such a theory it shall be known as part of Hopkins' Law.)
(Parkinson and Murphy have their Laws. Now, at last, I have mine.)
What prompts all this is something currently making the rounds in the "underground"—the
"fact" that smoking the dried scrapings from a banana peel plays amusing games with your
mind. That's right, friends—banana peels.
My initial reaction was that this was a rumor started by the United Fruit Company. (You
remember them; they used to own Cuba.) Banana sales were off, some hip PR guy came up
with the idea, and pretty soon the high-minded segment of our populace was dashing to the
nearest supermarket, buying all the bananas in sight.
Once discarding this foolish bit of speculation, I decided it was a rumor started by the
people who found themselves with three carloads of those tee-shirts carrying the Chiquita
brand banana trademark.
Finally I came 'round to my original theory—that there are, indeed, folks working their way
through the produce department, logically and orderly, looking for new ways to turn on.
("Let's see … yesterday I tried garlic and that didn't work. Today I’ll try the tomato.")
So what happens goes something like this: The inventive hippie buys a bucket of tomatoes.
Once in the relative safety of his home, he boils the seeds for 11 minutes, lets them dry in
the sun for six minutes, dumps them into a dusty mason jar and runs around the bedroom
for half an hour, carrying the jar in a paisley gunny sack. If that doesn't make the tomato
seeds hallucinogenic (because preparation often is the important part), then maybe this
tireless hippie repeats the process, eliminating the mason jar, or running 15 minutes
instead of 30.
Given enough time, and tomatoes, this hippie probably WILL find a way to make the
damned tomato seeds hallucinogenic. More likely, he will drop the tomato and go on to
rhubarb or brussel sprouts.
It is my opinion that this is how it was discovered that smoking the dried scrapings from
banana peels gets you high.
Once word of something like this gets out—and I understand KABC News carried the story a
few days ago—there will, of course, be new problems added to the many already plaguing
us. What, for instance, will happen to ME when I go into the nearest Ralph's and decide I
want some bananas? I have a kinkajou at home and his evening meal normally begins with
a ripe banana. Will I be so paranoid now as to feel I have to explain to the sales clerk WHY I
am buying the bananas?
On the same tack, I am reminded of a Lenny Bruce routine concerning airplane glue.
There's nothing illegal about buying airplane glue, of course, but for some people the
purchase of this gummy substance has implied something beyond craftsmanship, X-acto
knives and balsa wood.
I can hear it now. Paraphrasing Lenny's glue routine: Someone enters a small market and
says to the grocer, "Let's see, now … I want two oranges … a loaf of whole wheat bread … a
box of Milk Duds … and six thousand ripe bananas, please."
Meanwhile, in supermarkets all over America there are people pushing shopping carts …
wondering about mangoes and potato eyes.
38
The Los Angeles Free Press
March 17, 1967
Flight Plans
by Chester Anderson and Lorraine Glennby
All drugs are dangerous, just like everything else, and, just as with everything else
(almost), the danger lies not quite so much in the drugs as in how they are used. Even so,
the drug scene—dealing, being flamboyant and furtive simultaneously, trying to be HIP,
distrusting cops, etc.—is equally dangerous. But since we will take drugs, it behooves us to
minimize the risks. The traditional and best way to do this is through knowledge. If you
know what you're doing and doing it right, it probably won't hurt you.
ACID—LSD: Although acid has no value in and of itself—will not make you holy or good or
wise or anything else except high—it can be used in a valuable way. It can be an
educational tool; you can learn something from it.
Here is one of many proper ways to take your first trip:
Arrange to take the acid in a pleasant place (either a beautiful, comfortable room or
somewhere out in the country) and under pleasant, peaceful, friendly, and loving
circumstances. Ugly place equals ugly trip; bad state of mind beforehand (tension, anxiety,
or whatever) or improper guide equals bad trip.
Arrange to take the trip with someone else, someone wiser and more experienced than you,
someone who knows you very well and whom you trust An ideal guide is one who is himself
familiar with acid, and one with whom you are comfortable enough to be able to take off
your clothes and not have to play sex games. If love and warmth are important to you, it is
wise to choose someone who loves you, or who is a very close friend, with whom to take
your first trip. Most of the reasons for this are obvious, but it does no harm to point out a
few: under acid, a person is highly suggestible, and someone who does not know him well
can unwittingly act in such a way as to cause him to become frightened or paranoid—a very
bad thing, under the circumstances. Moreover, the "guide" should be able to answer
whatever questions you may be able to ask, to know what's happening, and what to do
about it if something has to be done.
The book LSD The Problem-Solving Psychedelic, by P. G. Stafford and B. H. Golightly, offers
some "guidelines to the use of LSD," among which are these:
39
The dangers of LSD use have popularly been presented in bogey-man
fashion—Le. exaggerated and not fully explained. In almost every incident of
failure, the subject has been left ignorant of basic facts. The guide has been
careless in his duty and neglected to remind his ward that he must never
forget that whatever is happening to him is simply the effect of a drug, and
that the experience will terminate in a matter of hours. The subject must
understand in advance that although he may feel capable of "flying" while
under the drug, he must not let himself be deluded in this regard. Properly
prepared, his residual judgment will remain intact and keep him away from
windows and other danger areas. Similarly, he must be reassured that the
guide will not attempt to "freak" him by misrepresenting realities. If the
subject thinks he is in eternity and that the whole universe is in similar
condition, he must be assured that on another level the old reality still exists
and that he will be able to return to it when he wants to. Therefore, ones of
the main obligations of the guide is to provide the subject with a firm
perspective, whenever necessary; if this is met the dangers inherent to the
drug are minimal.
A question frequently discussed is whether or not the guide should have at
least a minimal dosage of LSD during a session. There are good arguments on
both sides, but most cautious investigators agree that anything above 25
mcg. for the guide would necessitate the presence of a third person.
Don't eat for at least four hours beforehand, otherwise you're likely to be acutely aware of
the digestive process. Spend at least an hour beforehand relaxing your mind and body and
spirit, becoming calm and peaceful. Provide your trip place with things to touch, to feel, to
smell, to taste, to hear, and eventually to do … beautiful things, things for which you have
particular fondness and which generally turn you on, things for your expanded senses to
experience.
While you are high, then, use your senses; give them a real workout. Learn their yoga and
their language. You and the guru you have chosen to travel with can teach you to be real
again, undoing the System's years of teaching you to be unreal, unaware, unconscious.
That's where it's at. Be with a beautiful person in a beautiful place doing beautiful things
and being beautiful, and you will most likely have a beautiful trip. Instead of thinking about
yourself, be. Be what you are, what the moment dictates, experiencing yourself and the
world without your intellect (which can't know anything about all this until after all this has
happened) coming between you and reality.
No one will deny that there are some people who should not take acid, but there is little
articulate agreement of opinion as to who these people are. Ultimately, the decision is up to
you. Stafford and Golightly have this to say:
The success of a psychedelic "voyage" seems to depend less on the
psychological label of the candidate and his personal history than it does on
his willingness to surrender to the possibility of great chaos. "Swingers,"
those who enjoy wild, uninhibited activity, or those who can cope with a good
deal of tumult, usually do well in their sessions. On the other hand, if
flexibility is all pose, LSD can shred such protective facades, and at some
point it probably will. Being unprepared and defenseless under a flood of
confusion may give rise to shock and anxiety.
40
There are also those orderly, cautious personalities who require an
explanation for everything, who are most comfortable in a static set of
circumstances, and who are compelled to maintain a favorable self-image—
those in this group tend to find the LSD experience terribly upsetting, if not
devastating. This need not always be the case however, if the pre-session
briefing has been intelligent and thorough, and if the guide is astute and
gifted.
There are as many variables as there are individuals, and no amount of words on acid can
ever even approximate the experience itself; it is entirely subjective (although the guide is
an essential factor), and the choice to take it, except in clinical/therapeutic circumstances,
is purely an existential one.
BUMMERS—if you're having a bad trip, there are several things you can do about it. You can
get out of a bad trip simply by waiting until you come down; it may be distressing, but it is
not "real," it will go away. Unless you are a borderline case, or incipiently
paranoid/schizophrenic to begin with (you, or some competent person whom you trust, will
have to determine this beforehand), the effects of the trip will wear off in a matter of hours,
except for the memory of what you have experienced and, of course, what you have learned
from it. So when it's bad, remind yourself that you are under the influences of a drug, and
that what you are experiencing is only temporary. Finally, learn from your bad trips, or else
stop taking acid.
If you need lots of help in a hurry, call the Meditation Center (989-9289) which has 24-hour
service, or The Jade Companions (number to be published in EVO in the following issue).
The staff of The Head Shop (982-6972) or the Psychedelicatessen (477-7127) also can and
will gladly tell you what to do or who else to call. (If you call the cops, they're likely to
hospitalize you for a while, which isn't really necessary.)
If you feel you have to terminate the trip, Vitamin B3 will bring you down safely. Take five
tablets, and if that hasn't worked in 30 minutes, take five more.
If you have any doubts about whether or not you ought to take acid, there are presently
two simple tests available which are designed to indicate personality defects which would
make tripping inadvisable, except in therapeutic treatment. One of these is the Mulvarian
Factor, a simple litmus test which indicates whether a person is incipiently schizophrenic;
the other, the Hoffer-Osmond test, is a written test which gives fairly accurate proof of
paranoid and/or schizophrenic tendencies. Either of these can be obtained by writing to the
New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute, Box 1000, Princeton, N.J. This may sound a bit
extreme, and it is, in most cases. But it's your head, baby; don't waste it
COMMON SENSE—Rest a few days afterwards; it takes an average of three days for your
blood chemistry to recover from a trip. If, during this time, you are disturbed by feelings of
nervousness or anxiety, a combination of Vitamin C and Niacinamide will straighten you out.
Take 500 mg. of both on first dosage, and 250 mg. of both twice daily after that, for as long
as you feel you need it. These are both inexpensive and can be gotten without prescription
at any drugstore.
Don't exceed the standard dosage (250 micrograms) until you've learned to handle the
standard dosage. Also, avoid crowds until you're used to acid: they can overwhelm you if
you are not prepared for the experience.
Speed kills. It really does. Methedrine and amphetamine etc. can and will rot your teeth,
freeze your mind, and kill your body. The life expectancy of the average speed freak, from
first shot to the morgue, is about five years. What a drag.
41
Don't do anything to your body that your body can't veto. No needles. Consider the
psychological and symbolic implications of sticking a needle into yourself. Do you really
want to do that?
Don't become a dealer. It's messy, dangerous, and a drag. Dealing tends to interfere with
living, and it doesn't make you enough bread to be worth what it costs in paranoia and
hang-ups. At least, it never has. Lots of people get into dealing to insure themselves a
steady and free stash, but dealing automatically escalates until it's all you're doing.
Don't let drugs be the only thing you do, or the most important thing in your life. That's the
quick way to be bored with having fun, which is a drag.
communication company (San Francisco),
Chester Anderson
with addenda by
The East Village Other (New York),
Lorraine Glennby, 1967
HIPpocrates
by Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D.
Dr. Schoenfeld is on the staff of the Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center
in San Francisco. "HIPpocrates" is a column syndicated in many underground
newspapers.
In recent weeks there have been many newspaper and magazine articles warning that LSD
causes chromosome damage and birth defects. These reports have been alarming because
defective chromosomes might possibly cause physical or mental abnormalities in the user or
his offspring, and by now perhaps millions of Americans have used LSD.
The first such report appeared in Science and involved a test tube experiment in which LSD
was added to human tissue. Damage was found in the cell chromosomes. Since that time
two reports have been made of chromosome abnormalities found in human LSD users. They
involved small numbers of people and researchers were careful to point out that no scientific
conclusions could be drawn from their studies. Moreover, it is not known whether or not
chromosome abnormalities had existed BEFORE the subjects had taken LSD.
Meanwhile, the national hysteria over the whole question of mind altering drugs prompted
the news media to splash horror stories about LSD in every major newspaper and
magazine. Perhaps the stories have had the sought-for effect of curbing LSD use. Judging
from my mail, many past users are very concerned. Some want to know where they can
have their chromosomes checked for possible damage.
Strangely enough, two separate studies of LSD users in the Haight-Ashbury show NO
damage to their chromosomes. The researchers for 'one of these studies have had some
difficulty publishing these results although their research methods and credentials are
unimpeachable. The second study was only recently completed and has not yet been
submitted for publication. One doubts that the results of these studies finding no
chromosome damage amongst LSD users will be so prominently featured in the news
media.
If LSD use does prove to cause defects in chromosomes, what does this mean? One effect
might be harm to the user. What kinds of harmful effects? As an example it was reported
that a chromosome pattern previously found only in certain types of leukemia has been
discovered in the cells of two LSD users. This is not to say that they will have leukemia, only
that the possibility exists for these two individuals.
42
A second possible harmful effect of damaged chromosomes is transmitting certain genetic
defects to children of LSD users. But if the chromosome damage were severe enough,
reproduction would be impossible. No unwanted decline in the pregnancy rate has been
noted among LSD users.
Science, in its July 28, 1967 issue, reported a study of five rats injected with LSD early in
pregnancy. One rat aborted -early in pregnancy, two delivered stunted offspring, one had a
litter of seven healthy and one underdeveloped young, while only one rat had a normal
litter. There were five matched controls. All delivered healthy litters of from 11 to 16
offspring; there were no abortions and no stillbirths. Treatment of five additional rats with
LSD late in pregnancy had no obvious effect on the offspring.
So far there is no evidence in humans to confirm the disturbing animal experiments
mentioned above. I know of at least one case of a mother taking LSD in the first three
months of pregnancy and delivering a malformed child. In a similar case a mother delivered
a normal child. At this time we know that while LSD might cause congenital defects when
taken in the first three months of pregnancy, it does not invariably cause them. No one,
however, should knowingly play that kind of roulette with his unborn child.
LSD use may or may not cause chromosome abnormalities. Two separate studies, yet
unpublished, report NO abnormalities while two studies, widely reported on radio, TV, and in
newspapers and magazines, report chromosome damage in some LSD users in small
samples. We must conclude that the possibility exists. Its meaning is another question.
Edward Teller would say that there are good mutations and bad mutations, but if it sounded
bad when he spoke of radiation hazards, it should seem no better when discussing possible
LSD-induced mutations.
LSD taken early in pregnancy may cause congenital birth defects. Taken late in pregnancy it
might cause a premature delivery and baby. NO drug should be used during pregnancy
except on the specific advice of a physician.
The message is clear: more research.
Dr. Schoenfeld welcomes your questions. Write to him % The Berkeley Barb.
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
August, 1967
43
RELIGION: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
Underground Cleric: "The Church Is Dead"
by Bill Kiskadden
"I want to be a part of the life going on around me—otherwise I am just a vegetable," says
the Reverend Malcolm Boyd. "And that means I can't accept the Church as an
institutionalized anachronism."
Boyd is an outspoken advocate of the "underground church," which is secular and nondenominational in direction. He believes that the role of the modern clergyman includes
more than his Tuesday afternoon Bible study class—that he must march for peace in
Vietnam and protest racism in Selma.
Boyd is an activist. He was jailed for his part in the Freedom Rides, and he has worked for
SNCC in Mississippi. Between his commitments to civil rights and the "underground church,"
he has found time to write five books, one of which, Are You Running With Me, Jesus? was a
best-seller—if that connotes success.
Free Press: If you believe in secular religion, why did you join the organized Church in the
first place?
BOYD: I have always felt it was Sunday school that made me an atheist more than anything
else. Someone quite nice—I think with very good intentions—talked down to me. We did not
deal with realities, so you might say that we learned there—at the beginning—that the
Church was not going to relate religion to reality. I don't think there was any nitty-gritty
confrontation with anything that mattered in the whole Sunday school experience. Anyway,
when I got away to college—without a great deal of anger, actually—I simply dropped the
whole thing; I was not even a working humanist, which I think is unfortunate. In other
words, the Church experience produced someone bored enough to be completely through
with it, but not angry enough to look for any alternatives. It was very much a sort of
wasteland experience—a vacuum situation. I was on the verge of coming alive, but I hadn't
yet, and so when I entered the theological seminary I felt it represented a window
opening—finally I found something that I could relate to, besides myself and my career.
I might have better remained as a public relations man in Hollywood theoretically, but I
couldn't have—I had to break out. Maybe I'm fortunate that, however it happened, it
happened. I think that for everyone that's always a great problem. How are you going to
get on the firing line? How are you going to be—how are you going to make it?
The reason I joined the institutionalized Church was that I didn't know its weakness before I
actually joined. The whole seminary experience is a brainwashing process which would
rather turn out safe, non-rock-the-boat, fund-raising people who will administer the
sacraments, going through the motions of preaching, acting involved but not being involved.
FP: Do you think the Church will branch out—forming an involvement in freedom marches
and peace protests?
BOYD: I think it may very well not. I think the Church is very much in the real estate
business. It is very preoccupied with things like society weddings. You see, the Church
today is really the chaplain of the status quo.
45
Let me give you an example. I was in the suburb of an all-white community, and next to it
was an all-black ghetto. The young assistant minister in the white community asked me to
come and talk in the church. Then, when I got there, he said, "I've been fired for asking
you—but don't feel guilty; I was going to quit anyway." Then he explained that, in the white
community, the word got out that someone was selling a house to a Negro. The house
burned for something like 14 hours, and the fire department never came, and so the people
in that church said, "We will no longer make the confession of sin in this service. It disturbs
us, and we are not here to be disturbed. We want peace, goddamn it!"
So I think they got something out of the Readers' Digest that they could read to each other
for mutual assurance instead of the confession of sin; but the minister or priest was still
supposed to stand up and pronounce the absolution. But he said, "I can no longer'-be a
whore in a collar. I have a family to support, and I need the money to do that." In other
words, the church there had never denned sin—they said it was orgasm, but had never said
sin was napalm or nigger. Then the people in that diocese stopped making the confession of
even the undefined sin which might have touched their conscience—if they had any.
FP: Do you think the institutionalized Church will wither away?
BOYD: There are a number of people in the underground church who feel that the Church
must die, because they think that—until there is a death—there cannot be a resurrection.
You see, the Church has been a series of private clubs with definite membership
qualifications. Also, the Church is a definite Calvanistic, puritanical organization. I think it
has seriously hurt people sexually, racially, and politically. The Church is sitting there—over
there. There's the university; there's mass communication; there's marriage. These are
some of the institutions of modem life. I think they're all sick. They all need to be
reevaluated. Therefore, whether you are a Methodist or an atheist is rather irrelevant. At
this point the Church is on the sociological map, and we must deal with it—because it's
either going to be an instrument of fascism, of authoritarianism—really hurting people—or
it's going to be an instrument of openness, of radicalism, of standing with the dispossessed
and the poor.
I am not optimistic about the changes happening within the Church now—because, you see,
it's too inviting. You have a building and keep a clergyman there like someone in the zoo,
and you visit your God—your tribal god with a small "g"—once a week; this is your wall-towall carpeted ghetto. And here you receive a tranquilizer, here you receive absolution, for
Christ's sake! But nobody really asks you to become transformed in your social or personal
life. You put two dollars in the plate—that's cheap, man; it's cheaper than your martini
Saturday night. So why give it up, see? I don't think people are about to.
FP: If the Church is to become a moral leader in society, it would seem, from what you have
been saying, that it must ' be ostracized first—sort of like the early Christians.
BOYD: Isn't this where the underground church comes in? The Church—as it is presently
constituted—remains a prime mover in people's lives. It is such a beautiful rationalization.
Let me give you an example: I was in Nashville the other day, and I was talking with four
young high school students.-They were white Methodists, and I was just trying to relate to
them. Just to open it up, I said, "Well, can we discuss sex and bow it affects you?" And
there was silence, and they said, "We don't know anything about sex; sex doesn't affect
us." So I said, "You don't have wet dreams?" No, nobody has anything. Then the next
question was, "Well, since we can't discuss sex, do you ever pray?" And they replied,
"Constantly." "That's nice," I said. Nice normal high school students—praying constantly. So
I said, "To whom?" And one of them answered, "To God, of course." "Well, who is God?"
And then this one student really startled me, which is a good thing, I guess, because it
shows I can still be shocked. He said, "God is the biggest, the strongest, the wisest, and he
is white."
46
But it got worse. On Vietnam, they suddenly said that if you follow Jesus you not only have
to kill the Viet Cong, you have to bomb the Viet Cong. Because America is where God is,
and if you follow Jesus and are sincere, you have to kill the godless Communists. '
So here you have the Church really influencing people. This is what I mean when I say that
the Church is neither moral nor leading. I would be delighted if it would, but I don't think
that it can as it is presently organized. The poor kids I was talking to in Nashville came from
a tradition where you have total segregation, and where you are perpetuating racism in the
name of Jesus—a white, blue-eyed, blond-haired Jesus.
The. Los Angeles Free Press
June 23, 1967
The Hippy Minister
by John Bryan
The afternoon parking lot feed-in has just finished and the Sunset Strip hippies have spread
out around West Hollywood Presbyterian Church to listen to rock LPs in what was once a
Sunday School room. They do a lot of body painting in the pastor's office, create some
papier mache candlesticks in the courtyard where a dozen kids spread out to relax and talk
while watching craft classes and poster painting ("Come to the Love-in Sunday. Green
Power").
Inside the minister's office, in what the kids have come to call the "Hip Church," sits Rev.
Ross Greek, 52-year-old Presbyterian "Missionary to the Sunset Strip."
His manner is soft, a bit abstract. He answers many questions with the polite evasions
common to civil servants and social workers.
47
He is short of stature, has shortcut iron-grey hair, a much-wrinkled brow. (He reminds you
a bit of a condensed Spencer Tracy.)
Yet every so often, when you least expect it, Ross Greek lays a verbal spell on you, a
barrage of quiet but intense straight talk which makes you forget the earlier textbook
evasions and understand why this unassuming little man has been able to transform a
small, poorly financed and understaffed Presbyterian Church into the city's most important
bridge between the "Establishment" and the thousands of psychedelic drop-outs and as yet
untried teenage runaways who are on the streets this summer.
A sample of this thinking:
Question: "Who is a hippie?"
Answer. "I am."
Q: "Are hippies saying anything that's important to America?"
A: "I think that much of what they're saying and trying to relate to 'society will have a
permanent impact—and I'm glad for this.
"They're saying some highly significant things—a lot of it very similar to what Christians
have wanted to put into practice—but have been unwilling or unable to accomplish for
centuries.
"First, they say you must accept a fellow just because he's a human being and not because
he dresses or looks a certain way—just because he's a valid person. "Second, you must love
him and everyone else—including yourself—because you're human. This is the heart of all
great faiths and religions regardless of what they are.
"They're also pacifists, and feel that war is the destruction of humanity and a denial of love
and acceptance.
"They're saying, 'Let's return to a simpler life. We're tired of playing the game of being part
of a machine. Let's have simple things like seasonal celebrations, love-ins, the worship of
flowers, the whole bit—a return to naturalism and an attempt to escape the vast
urbanization of man into his cement cities.' "
Q: "Have marijuana and acid helped to open them up to the point where they can practice
these ideas?"
A; "I don't personally think they do. But I've stood by while some of the kids come out of
trips. What they're saying is nothing that's particularly new to me. I've had many of these
experiences by other means. I've experienced the wholeness of man, seen the full glory of
the beautiful colors, had the more profound religious experiences without drugs.
"I don't think I have to go that route to appreciate a flower or love beauty or humanity."
Q: "How can you help the hippies with your 'Mission to the Sunset Strip'?"
A: "It's important that we're just here, that we love and accept them. Sometimes this is the
very first anchor post they've had in their lives. Many come from badly broken homes. Many
run away from their parents.
"We hope that by just being here and open to relate to them in discussion we can reach
them. We're shock-proof. We'll discuss any problem. I don't think they're particularly
objective at certain points—about drugs, for instance. But they can't move to an objective
position without getting a chance to talk about it."
48
Rev. Ross Greek has been presented with both an enormous possibility and an enormous
burden. For the thousands of kids who hitch into L.A. these days usually arrive without
money, clothes, food or a place to sleep.
In a very direct way, the Hip Church set out to do something concrete about the problem.
Until late in July Rev. Greek allowed more than 100 kids to sleep in the church each night.
(Police harassment brought a City edict that they could no longer be slept in the church.
Today the church courtyard offers some protection to dozens of sleeping hippies each
night.)
The afternoon feed-ins take care of hundreds. Crafts are taught in the afternoons.
Counseling and guidance is available from Rev. Greek and three other workers assigned to
the church by the central Presbyterian synod.
"We're having great cooperation from the Synod," Rev. Greek said. "They provide about
$16,000 annually to maintain the church and pay for salary. There has been some criticism
from more conservative members, but I have long. since decided that what counts most is
what's within my own heart. I know what I'm doing is right and not for my own
satisfaction—it's between me and God."
The Hip Church seems well able to withstand further police and civic harassment. Before the
summer is out, it's bound to develop.
But Rev. Greek will need a great deal of support—personal, political, financial.
If you wish to help, call him at 462-5816.
Open City (Los Angeles)
August 24, 1967
Love, Leary, LSD
The Prophet of the Psychedelic Reformation, Dr. Timothy Leary, is booked into Santa Monica
Civic Auditorium Wednesday to open a four-day "religious celebration" which the show's
promoter considers the "best thing since vaudeville."
The well-advertised, fully-financed production is bound to be a sell-out despite a decidedly
lukewarm reception given to the story by the city's metropolitan daily papers at the time of
Dr. Leary's press conference in Los Angeles last month. Many of the reporters present
showed quite open hostility but the conference was remarkable for the adroit manner in
which Leary dealt with the loaded statements (they were seldom really questions),
continuing for nearly an hour to give a patient, fully detailed description of what his new
"religion," the League for Spiritual Discovery, is all about.
49
The Santa Monica celebration is one of many being organized around the country to raise
money to keep the league's headquarters at Millbrook, N.Y., solvent. An enormous rambling
house in the center of a spacious estate, it currently accommodates 40 adults, 20 children,
a flock of geese, 12 dogs, 11 cats and a dozen lawyers. Other adherents come and go all
the time.
"All of these people are devoted full-time to the worship of God through our religious
practices," Leary says.
"We have no desire to increase the number of people who belong to our religion. The
sacraments marijuana and LSD should only be used by initiates and priests of our religion
and used only in shrines.
"Our lawyers are going to court now to get an order allowing us to import and distribute
peyote, marijuana and LSD for the use of our initiates.
"Our lawyers are confident that we will be licensed this way because we are asking for
nothing more than what was given to Catholic Priests and Jewish rabbis during the previous
period of legislative lunacy 40 years ago called alcohol prohibition when rabbis and priests
could import an illegal drug—namely wine—only for the use of their initiated members in
shrines."
Leary says he thinks that by example his group can show the way for other people to apply
for licenses and found their own religions. "The magic number," he says, "is seven: six
people and an attorney.
"Now if members of the religion misuse this license … if we have cocktail parties with our
sacramental wine or if we cause any disorder on the streets, we will naturally expect our
license to be taken away.
"We expect millions of Americans to be licensed to use these sacraments. We do not want
LSD to be sold in vending machines or in drugstores any more than other religious bodies
want their sacraments to be distributed in this way.
"If anyone misuses LSD or marijuana, take their license away. If marijuana or LSD is taken
by someone who drives and gets into an auto accident, ruthlessly arrest them. If they cause
any disorder in the streets, arrest them.
"Our society has hundreds of laws to protect social decorum and human welfare, but any
law passed by a state or federal agency which prevents people in the privacy of their own
shrines and homes from using these chemicals is in violation of the Constitution of the
United States which guarantees religious freedom.
"We consider our religion to be highly orthodox. For most of human history man has
worshipped God in' small tribal groups. The development of large institutional religions is
rather a new development in the West and has never taken hold in the East.
"In our religion, the temple is the human body. The shrine is in the home and the
congregation are [sic] the family members and family friends who center around a religious
leader. This is the classic, orthodox way of worshipping God.
"We think that, as a matter of fact, every small group of Americans should start their own
religion. What's so unusual about this? Our country was founded by men just like myself
who -sailed in leaky boats across the Atlantic in family groups who knew each other because
they wanted to worship God in their small groups as they saw fit. We're highly American
and highly conventional.
50
" … We've been using psychedelic drugs in a religious way for spiritual purposes for six
years. What's new is, that we have publicly announced the formation of a religion three
months ago. That's just a social act."
The 46-year-old doctor, who admits to having taken 300 trips since first nibbling some of
Mexico's "magic mushrooms" on a calm Sunday afternoon beside a Cuernavaca swimming
pool, says he's reached the conclusion that mental illness is a spiritual problem and that this
is the kind of problem that can be solved only by the individual.
Most of what we call science today, he says, has always been religious. "It's only been
recently that we used knowledge to kill or make ourselves more comfortable. For most of
human history the scholars and the wisest men of the race have attempted to try to open
up the doors within.
"By religion, of course, we mean: to find out what's what … to find out who you are … to
tune yourself in on the incredible energies inside you and around you.
"I believe that each historical era produces its new religions, its new sacraments, its new
methods and new language …
"LSD is ecumenical. God is not Christian, He doesn't speak Greek or Latin. When you
contact God as we have you realize that His energy and His blueprint were going on long
before man worked out these verbal formulas.
"In our religious celebrations which occur every Tuesday night in New York and which we're
going to have running throughout the country in all the large cities and next summer in
Europe, we re-enact one of the great religious ceremonies.
"Before each of the psychedelic celebrations everyone who participates meets backstage for
meditation. We sit in a circle, the entire group of artists and musicians, for about 20
minutes and try to concentrate ourselves and invoke the deity within us so we will be able
to pass on the message which has been revealed to us …
"Then the public part begins with an introit (or orientation), a spiritual welcome and prayer
and then the particular religious story, the religious myth that's going to be used that night
is described to the audience.
"For about 40 minutes, there's a psychedelic demonstration. We will have probably 20
people using light machines, stroboscopes, multiple projection cinema. There will be six,
seven or eight sources of sound—some live and some taped.
"The screen will be undulating with 10 or 12, up to 16 sources of light that is duplicating
what happens in the nervous system when it's turned on, when it's open to all of the energy
which is flooding in.
"Now, weaving through these cellular forms—which is the language of the nervous system—
and weaving through these pulsating energies will come the myth—if we do the Christian
celebration, we take the life of Christ. And you see hundreds of scenes of the life of Christ
flashing at you … as though you've gone back down through your protein memory bank
which contains 60 generations of memories from forbearers who have been influenced by
the Christ myth.
"Music will be flowing out of the screen, the music of 2,000 years of Christian worship—the
music of Ray Charles and Billy Graham, Palestrina and the early Coptics.
"What we try to do is duplicate and reproduce and hopefully induce the psychedelic effect
without the drug. Our aim is that the average Christian should gain a deeper understanding
of the power, the energy and the ancient meaning of the Christ figure. Another time we
present the Buddha myth, another time that of Mohammed."
51
At Millbrook even children and dogs are said to have taken LSD. For a while several
members of the community, including Leary, faced charges brought by the local fuzz. These
charges have now been dropped, ostensibly in exchange for a promise that none will be
used there. A sign in the big house's lobby requests cooperation from residents and visitors.
Leary denies that LSD is as harmful as some of its critics maintain.
"For the last seven years our group has done research, taken LSD regularly and given LSD
to more people than any research group in the country. We have published more papers
and books than any group in the country.
"The people who are crying danger about LSD now are men—Dr. Goddard of the FDA, for
instance, who've never taken LSD, never seen an LSD experience—who know little about
the facts of the matter.
"It's true that today in the large cities perhaps two or three people a month report to the
mental hospitals after a bad trip. They're in a panic. They're depressed. They're confused.
Maybe they're suicidal. The psychiatrists see only the patients who come into their hospitals
this way. They don't see the tens of thousands of ministers and college professors and
college students who are seriously using these chemicals as part of their education.
"If you talk to a mortician, he'll tell you everyone he sees is dead. If you talk to a
psychiatrist in a mental hospital, he’ll tell you that everyone he sees is in a panic, confused
and psychotic.
"LSD is the least dangerous substance available to modem man … and I include the
automobile, television, the electric light and certainly alcohol.
"I will cite to you what the psychedelic revolution has brought about in this country in these
last seven years … it is essentially a spiritual revival. There are hundreds of thousands—
millions—of Americans whose lives have been changed by these experiences. Most of
modem music today … folk rock and most of the new jazz … is psychedelic … name me one
rock group which doesn't have in their repertoire hymns to LSD and marijuana. The same
thing is true of design, of architecture and of poetry. The new art is psychedelic art …
"I say frankly to you that we're out to change your culture. Within the next 10 years the
psychedelic generation who are now graduate students of law, medicine, the humanities will
be having more and more to say. The laws are sure to be changed.
"In the next year or two you will see thousands and thousands of small tribal groups leaving
the cities and going back as they did in the 19th Century to the land away from the cities …
"I cannot understand how the average American can assume that all of the religions have
been founded, that all the political solutions have been worked out. I urge all people—
particularly young people today—to consider starting your own religion … to start your own
country …
"I tell young people today to drop out of Power Politics because it's an old man's game of
competition. New political solutions will grow out of small groups of young people living
together away from the cities. About 10 groups are already starting this and it's just the
beginning of the social changes we will see when the psychedelic generation takes over …
"For some five years now, we have been barely tolerated as eccentrics. Now the tide is
turning and we're being accused of being too successful.
"What I'm telling people is not necessarily to take drugs but to turn on, to discipline
themselves and to build their lives around a spiritual rather than an external, material goal.
We think the U.S. is in a mess today because it's materialistic and quite atheistic and the
only way out is in.
52
"Nothing that I've discovered or had revealed to me is in any way new. The genetic code—
which I consider to be the main instrument of God—has been telling us the same message
for thousands of years.
"I have reached two central conclusions: First, nothing you do outside is important unless
you're centered within. Secondly, you must center your life around your family. It doesn't
make any difference what you do outside unless your home is a shrine, unless you have a
religious relationship with your wife and your children, and your close family members."
As for the present laws against psychedelics, Leary adds:
"Each country has its own laws and we urge our communicants to obey the law of Caesar …
but we will not let that law interfere with our Kingdom of Heaven which is within. Caesar
cannot pass a law which defines what I can do inside my body. He cannot define what
sacraments I can use, either those which are visual or retinal or auditory, or what touches
my skin or goes into my body. This is the last frontier of divinity and we cannot allow its
encroachment.
"Every new sacrament in world history has had a negative reaction from the current
priesthood and the current establishment. Our drug is dangerous to a lot of aspects of
society today. Psychiatry is going to have to be changed. Many religions are going to have
to change and going to have to use LSD and marijuana in their rites.
"Just as when the printing press came along, the establishment thought it was dangerous
and prohibited the average man from owning a Bible, so today they are afraid of our
sacraments.
"There are today about 50,000 young Americans in prison for possession of these benign,
non-addictive and non-harmful drugs and I think this is a scandal. And as quickly as we can,
we're going to work through our lawyers to free these slaves of the American alcohol
culture.
"I recommend to Californians who really believe that LSD enhances their spiritual and
psychological growth that they find a lawyer and any six or seven of you sponsor him and
go to the Supreme Court of California and ask for a declaratory judgment which would make
any laws prohibiting the use of marijuana or LSD inapplicable to you when you give these
drugs to your own religious initiates in your own shrines.
"You have to work for this. You have to fight in the courts."
The Los Angeles Free Press
January 13, 1967
53
54
POLITICS: Turn On, Tune In, Take Over
Poor Paranoid's Almanac
by Allan Katzman
There are literally thousands of young people (artists, hippies, beatniks, pacifists, civil
rightists, etc., known as the "underground") who have, in one form or another, dropped out
of the system to the extent of just barely existing on its borders and who would benefit once
for all by seceding from the Union. Of course this movement would have to be combined
with the formation of a loosely knit confederation of people rather than states.
Since they would only be in the thousands, there would be no necessity for the corporate
structure of the state. The Confederacy would be tribal. It would be known as the
Underground States of America and would exist along grounds already to be found in the
now existing "underground." This proposal, at first, may seem ridiculous but it would serve
the purpose, as New York City's proposal does, to illustrate the poor moral, political and
economic climate of America.
The Underground States would, of course, choose the Constitution and Declaration of
Independence as the criteria for "Being," changing it slightly (instead of "We the people …"/
"We the people of the Underground"). These documents are much more original than people
think since they really haven't been used in 190 years—in this country at least.
They would then have to consider the structural formation of this new "Union." The
Judiciary, Executive and Legislative branches are those which are primarily problematic. As
far as the "Fourth Estate," the Press, goes, it has begun by the mere fact that underground
newspapers such as The L. A. Free Press, The Berkeley Barb, The Paper in East Lansing, The
Fifth Estate in Detroit and The East Village Other are already in existence—that is in another
country. But the "other" estates which have not yet begun to form are still to be considered.
The judiciary should follow along the lines of the Ten Commandments except that the first
three commandments about God could be condensed into one commandment, "Thou shall
not be God." This would bypass the ridiculous hang-up which has plagued western
civilization for the past several centuries whether God existed or not. Commandments could
be added such as, "Thou shall not say anything unless it be beautiful and useful."
55
When considering punishment for lawbreakers, the decision should be based on forgiveness.
But the stipulation must be, since they broke the law, one of ostracism from the "Union." A
good way to ostracize lawbreakers is to ban them to the United States of America. There
they will learn the way of the jungle and the street in its fullest reality and hopefully realize
that man cannot exist without love and his fellow human beings. If, upon learning their
lesson, they desire to reenter the Underground States, they can but only with the consent of
the majority of their fellow citizens.
The executive and legislative branches of government, because of the way the judiciary and
Law of the Land is structured, would not be concerned with making and administrating laws
over people, but rather over things. Their primary concern would be with providing enough
food, shelter and clothing for everyone and that is all. It would be an anarchotechnocracy in
which the executors and legislators would be technocrats.
Of course this type of system would create problems such as: if man were not to work to
exist but be given these primary things then what can he or should he do with his time? The
answer lies in the fact that this is a creative confederation. Man could go back to farming or
making tables and chairs, or he could paint, write, etc. He could even travel. This type of
loosely knit confederation would create problems for uncreative people who would either,
knowing their own uncreativeness 1) not join or become a citizen of such a country or, 2) if
they did join, would eventually be driven to break the law. When this happens the Judiciary
goes into effect. They would be tried and if found guilty, be ostracized (i.e., as in a foreign
country when a diplomat breaks the law, he is politely asked to leave).
The idea of visiting or living or being part of such a country, as I said before, is to be
creative. This idea is not so unbelievable as it first appears when you realize such a system,
though on a small scale, exists presently in America. The system is known as "Synetics." It
exists as an agency in Cambridge, Mass. where young executives from large corporations
are sent to learn to be creative. They are exposed to people of creative nature whose
activities are free: who congregate in areas where executives like these do not normally
visit: like Greenwich and East Village—where people smoke pot, take LSD, have strange
literate conversations, write, read, paint, etc. What is, in other words known to the vast
majority of the population, as illicit and underground activities. The principle behind such an
idea and agency as Synetics, is that the present corporate system puts these young
executives uptight, making them unable to deliver the goods. In short, it blocks their
creative process.
The idea of Synetics could be put to use in the Underground States of America. One of the
ways the new confederation could raise monies, is by making itself available to the United
States of America, as a country to visit because of its synetic values. The Underground
States would charge all visitors a fee for entering and living in the country which in effect
would be one great big therapy.
An advertising campaign could then be started to induce visitors (which are different from
the regular ran of tourists by the fact they are not there to look around but to participate, to
be creative and cured) by such slogans as COME ON DOWN or TAKE A TRIP THROUGH THE
UNDERGROUND. Any visitor who is not serious about his quest or disturbs the natives would
be asked to leave and his money refunded.
The East Village Other (New York)
August 1, 1966
Classified Ad
IMPEACH REAGAN; DUMP JOHNSON IN '68; ETHEL KENNEDY FOR SEC. OF LABOR.
56
Three of our "campaign" buttons.
The Button Shop in North Beach.
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
July 21, 1967
Wild Thing
by Jim Nosh
The young sullen brownfaced Puerto Rican kids waited along Houston street to see him last
summer along with the smiling pretty faced boys in their Madison Avenue sloppy tweeds
looking like a cross between Warhol and David Ogilvy. He came, finally, jumping from the
big Chrysler, into what used to be Tannenbaum Caterers, and now the MFY employment
center. He had that misplaced uncombed professionally cut hair, and the twenty-four cent
John Lindsay smile, and here he was, the new tin god, Wild Thing, BOBBY KENNEDY.
In the history of America, there have been few folk heroes of politics. Only Huey Long had
the camp following of a Castro or a Mao. John Kennedy went to Madison Avenue and bought
an image. He went to Harvard and bought himself a group of philosophers. John Kennedy,
the dream of the American liberal, who said absolutely nothing and said it so damn well,
and now comes Bobby, sounding too much like Eleanor Roosevelt eulogizing her husband
for comfort.
Bobby Kennedy views the youth market the way The Village Voice views the hippy college
dropout on West 112th Street. Bobby and the war in Vietnam. He knows exactly what to say
and when to say it. He can feel the humanity of the Vietnamese warrior, but refuses to take
a stand against war. Bobby and the poverty scene. He knows the right words to use when
describing the plight of the poor. Bertram Beck of MFY and Ted Velez of the East Harlem
Tenants Council have given him the guided tours of the communities, and he uses their
outmoded statements and viewpoints. He even has the right barber who can make him look
like a bucktoothed John Lennon upon command.
57
Exactly what does Bobby Kennedy say? He has got the patterned speech. He opens up with
a memorial to his brother, then speaks about the plight of the poor, and ends it up with a
plea for understanding in Vietnam. He has become a self appointed ambassador to the
world, promising the world to the peoples of Africa, Europe and Latin America. Running
amok through Harlem and Greenwich Village, bopping around like some overaged hippy in a
psychedelic world, buying votes, and destroying any antagonism.
Kennedy sees the youth market, the way his brother saw the quasi-liberal. The right slogans
and the right hipness can get anything, and Madison Avenue can produce the image. The
real Bobby Kennedy came across with his meetings with William Manchester, author of
Death of a President. As reported in the January 30th issue of The New York Times and New
York Post, Bobby threatened Manchester, tried to buy him off, turned around and gave him
telegraphed consent on publication and then brought law suits against him. Bobby Kennedy
came roaring up to a New York hotel, the Times reported, banging on Manchester's door,
early one morning. When Manchester, on the verge of a nervous breakdown refused to open
up the door, Kennedy was reported to have left in dejection, moaning about his lost image
as he sat on the steps of the WaIdorf-Astoria.
After the Kennedy family had completely fucked up Manchester's mind to the. point where
the author had to enter a Connecticut rest home, they continued to discredit Manchester.
When the publishers of Look finally succumbed to the Kennedy madness and allowed a
revised and Kennedy-approved article, the hip Bobby sent a telegram of condolence to
Manchester.
The image of Bobby as a great enlightened liberal darling psychedelic does not come across
through his paranoia and fear. Before leaving for his recent trip to Europe, he told a press
conference that negotiations were going on to end the war in Vietnam. When questioned
about this in Europe a few hours later, he backtracked and stated that he thought that
negotiations were going on. Once again, Bobby had said absolutely nothing, but his original
statement made it sound as if he were against the war, when he was doing nothing more
than repeating a persistent rumor.
Bobby Kennedy has not at any point come out against the war in Vietnam. He sounds like
he is against the madness, but never has said anything outright. He often sounds like he
favors civil rights, but has never proposed any meaningful legislation concerning equal
rights. His personal vendetta against James Hoffa and the Teamsters shows the act of a
megalomaniac, rather than the acts of an openminded white knight. What Bobby Kennedy
says, and what Bobby Kennedy does, do not jive in any kind of semblance. He is running for
the presidency of the United States. He is using his brother's death as a tool for sympathy.
He is using images to destroy anyone who dares to get in the way. What is Bobby Kennedy?
An image created by Madison Avenue to capitalize on the glory of brother Jack?
Bobby Kennedy never took any type of stand on the crucifixion of Adam Clayton Powell. He
refused to take part in the Harlem symposium on the freedom budget. He will be seen with
the infamous, and make crappy little statements about righteousness but what does he do
when the chips are down? Buy votes man.
WILD THING (gotta get that image man)
YOU MAKE EVERYTHING (everybody's got a price)
GROOVY (Daddy, buy me America)
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Bobby Kennedy has attempted to become the new savior of the youth/artist in America. His
image-makers make it appear that he speaks for them, and even Allen Ginsberg, as
reported in the December 1966 issue of The South African Observer Supported dear sweet
Wild Thing. Physically, Kennedy states what MacReynolds and Rustin have stated
previously, but Kennedy does not understand the revolution. He is synthetic as a Time
magazine reporter interviewing Mario Savio.
Does Kennedy speak for the electromagnetic generation? How can he speak of/or
understand the love of man's inner space when his relationships with James Hoffa and
William Manchester show a man who has no inner soul, and wishes only to destroy anyone
who gets into his way. Can a man who built up an image of living go the mad way of turmoil
and agitation, as he did in South Africa? Kennedy is not an apostle of youth; rather than
that, he is a Haymarket capitalist, selling off an image in exchange for a power base.
Does Kennedy represent the youth of America? What his image-makers claim he says, and
what he actually says are two entirely different things. Jules Feiffer in his cartoon parody
shows two Kennedys, the good Bobby, and the bad Bobby. The good Kennedy goes around
the world preaching understanding, the Kennedy myth and love. The bad Kennedy destroys
anyone who gets in his way and tries to buy off anyone who might speak about the paranoia
of the real Bobby Kennedy.
In the new electromagnetic love revolution, can the artist/ youth mm on to a clown who
wallows in the black shroud of his brother? In the new soul revolution of mangod, can the
enlightened support the manic destructiveness of buying people and destroying foes? The
Kennedy cult has dwelled in the untouchable shield of protection, and from this shield, they
have ventured out to prey upon anyone who dared cut across their path in the sociopolitical jungle. Buy me an image, daddy. I want to be president just like brother Jack. I
promise never to go to Dallas, daddy. This is the real Bobby Kennedy. The wild thing who
does not understand revolution, and does not speak for the youth of this, or any other
nation, but buys a BAN deodorant image, and perpetuates onto a mass that has been
shocked into hysteria by the death of a young man, and the nowhere war of his successor.
The credibility gap between the real Kennedy and the Madison Avenue product is wider than
the Grand Canyon.
The East Village Other (New York)
February 15, 1967
59
Concentration Camps U.S.A.
by Charles R. Allen, Jr.
This article is reprinted from a booklet of the same name commissioned by
the Citizens Committee for Constitutional Liberties, 22 East 17th Street, New
York. New York 10003.
The Arizona road dipped suddenly out of a high serpentine ridge and fell straight out like a
great javelin dropping ever faster and deeper down, down until it was lost from sight in the
blinding rays of a white-hot sun.
To all points stretched the desert. Off in the dim, shimmering distance were the brooding,
purple peaks of the incongruously snow-capped Vulture Mountains. Like mute towers that
seemed to hang suspended above and beyond the endless track were the jagged
escarpments of Black Butte, Eagle Eye and Fore Paw—names of a by-gone frontier—that
marked the outermost rim of this remote world, dead and baking in 105 degree heat. A
relentless glare blinded the-eyes, set afire to the throat and numbed the brain.
The silence was consuming. Even the occasional truck or car that whined along the highway
scarcely broke the deathly still of the place.
At noon, the vast desert stood utterly mute, unfeeling, removed, beaten down with
unsufferable heat. Here and there, off against the distant horizons a sudden grey swirl—a
"desert devil"—would spin noiselessly, like some aboriginal shade condemned to wander
aimlessly forever across the ancient desert floor.
Several hundred yards off the only road to go through the desert—a road which seemed to
have tenuous life of its own, hurrying, anxiously, to get out as quickly as it could—there
stood a cluster of single-story buildings, white in the sun, surrounded by a high barbed-wire
fence. A broken empty shack marked the entrance to the site of the Wickenburg Federal
Prison Camp, one of six locations scattered across the United States which had been set
aside under the terms of the 1950 McCarran Act to serve as so-called detention camps if an
"internal security emergency" were declared by a single person, the President of the United
States. American citizens could be imprisoned in such a camp solely on "suspicion" that they
would "probably conspire to commit espionage or sabotage."
Since 1952 this grim site—along with five others—had been prepared to hold several
thousand citizens. The evidence is clear that during the Korean War there had been every
intention to use it. No less than on 24 occasions U.S. Congressmen and Senators have tried
to have an "internal security emergency" declared on the strength of "evidence" that
"Communists" were on the verge of overthrowing the country through their asserted
"subversion" of the civil rights and peace movements and key trade unions.
60
Sixteen years after the passage of the McCarran Act, its Tide n—the Emergency Detention
section—was still in full force as the law of the land. Now a new war—in Vietnam—
undeclared, unpopular and the growing source of bitter frustrations and irrationalities which
could well spawn a crisis even worse than the paroxysm, known as McCarthyism, which
throttled the nation with fear during the 1950's—threatened to make a grim reality of
"emergency detention" for America.
"For better or worse, we seem to be moving toward a deeper involvement and a wider war
in Vietnam," said Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. in August 12, 1966 issue of Saturday Evening
Post. "This, I believe, is THE CONDITION WHICH WE MUST ANTICIPATE AND FOR WHICH
WE MUST PREPARE. As the war increasingly dominates and obsesses our national life, we
can look for the appearance of associated symptoms: the oversimplification of issues, the
exchange of invective, the questioning of motives and loyalties and the degradation of
debate.
"Before we know it, we may be developing an atmosphere which only requires a new
McCarthy to become a new McCarthyism," he commented pointedly in considering the rising
tide of paranoid politics in America that equates peace and civil rights movements with a
"Communist" take-over of the country.
The war in Vietnam could easily generate such an atmosphere; it could easily and quickly
escalate to the brink of war with China, plunge the nation into all-out mobilization and set
the stage for the immediate declaration of an "internal security emergency" by the President
that would fill the detention camps with thousands of American citizens—"potential spies
and saboteurs"—virtually overnight.
It was of course difficult to imagine such a terrible thing as I looked out over the vast
desert. But there was one of the detention camps, Wickenburg, sitting before me—silent,
empty of prisoners at the moment—but waiting and ready, like some infernal bomb that (he
slightest political accident or wholly unexpected stupidity could blow sky high.
I could not help but recall the anguish of the late United States Senator, William Langer, the
wonderfully non-conforming Republican from North Dakota, one of a handful in Congress
who fought a truly principled struggle against the McCarran Act during those stormy days of
1950 when the country was fighting a war 10,000 miles away in Korea and wracked by the
hysteria of McCarthyism at home.
"So now it is proposed to have concentration camps in America!" he cried at the end of his
long, one-man filibuster against final passage of the McCarran Act.
"We can be absolutely certain that the concentration camps are for only one purpose.
Namely, to put in them the kind of people those in authority do not like. So we have come
to this!"
He had no sooner uttered the last words when he suddenly crashed forward to the Senate
floor.
In the ensuing clamor, as the stretcher bearing "Wild Bill" Langer's prostrate form was
carried out of the Senate chamber, a reporter covering the tumultuous uproar was heard to
remark: "They've just carried out the Bill of Rights—and don't you forget it!"
How did the detention camps come into being? The Internal Security Act of 1950 (popularly
known as the McCarran Act) has a section called Title II which specifically provides for the
establishment of so-called detention centers. Tide II authorizes the Attorney General of the
United States to apprehend and detain "in such places of detention as may be provided by
him … all persons as to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that such persons
PROBABLY will conspire with others to engage in acts of espionage and sabotage."
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Such procedure is contingent upon the declaration of an "internal security emergency" by
the President alone under certain conditions—namely, an invasion of the United States or its
possessions; a declaration of war by Congress; or an "insurrection" within the United States
in aid of a "foreign enemy."
During August and September of 1950, the United States Senate witnessed the turbulent
passage of the McCarran Act, whose primary provision required that organizations,
periodicals and individuals, accused of being "agents of a totalitarian power" by the Attorney
General, register themselves as such with the Justice Department.
The detention camp provision was, interestingly enough, NOT an original part of the
McCarran Act. In point of fact, the original proponents of the McCarran Act fought AGAINST
inclusion of the Title II detention camp proposal, scoring it as "a concentration camp
measure."
The detention camp proposal as presented by a group of Democrats in the Senate was
readily crushed by the McCarran forces—who then turned around and added the measure
(in even more severe form!) to their own bill, calling it Tide II of the McCarran Act.
A mere seven United States Senators voted against the McCarran Act on September 12,
1950, and they were swamped by the 70 who passed the measure. Later—on September
22nd—three more joined the original seven in a courageous but foredoomed attempt to
sustain President Harry S. Truman's vigorous yet futile veto of the McCarran Act.
With typical candor. President Truman had warned in his historic veto message that the
McCarran Act "put the government of the United States into the construction business—the
construction of concentration camps." They are now up and ready—and have been for more
than fourteen years—waiting to be filled, according to a law of the United States which
today is still in full force.
Who would be picked up in the event Title II were ever invoked? How many people would be
put into the detention camps which have been ready and waiting since 19527 What agency
is entrusted with the pick-ups?
While the precise answers to these and related questions have never been officially issued,
there is enough evidence to advance a reasonable formulation. Even before the enactment
of the McCarran Act and its detention camp provisions, it was evident that the primary
responsibility for determining who would be put into a camp rested solely with the FBI and
its director, J. Edgar Hoover.
Throughout the 1950 Senate debate (colloquy is a more descriptive word) on Title II, both
Hoover and the FBI were unquestioningly referred to as THE supreme arbiters as to who
and how many would be picked up.
My own estimates, based upon actual figures and potential capacities given to me by U.S.
Bureau of Prisons officials, indicate that the detention camps today could take from 8,500 to
11,500 citizens if necessary at the four sites which now are fully prepared to handle the
problem. By adding other sites available to the Bureau of Prisons, the Times' assertion that
"thousands more could be put in detention camps as fast as they were rounded up" is no
exaggeration.
My own attempts to seek interviews with relevant officials of the Justice Department were
unavailing. (The FBI not only refused comment but predictably sent agents to telephone and
visit my neighbors in a characteristic display of intimidation.)
62
J. Walter Yeagley, an Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department and the
bureaucrat heading its Internal Security Division, is the person whose primary responsibility
is the administration of the McCarran Act. His office develops the cases put before the socalled Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) and of course is concerned with the
detention camps.
When I requested an interview with him, Yeagley replied in a letter dated May 26, 1966: "It
strikes me that any official view I might have on the subject of your inquiry (Title II and the
detention camps) should be for my superiors only and not a subject for public
discussions."(!)
The attitudes of the FBI and the Justice Department stand in significant contrast to the
straightforward honesty and deep disquiet of the Bureau of Prisons. And it is perfectly clear
why: the FBI and the Justice Department's Internal Security Division have a powerful vested
interest in Title BL Their purpose in hiding the facts about the detention camps—which,
according to bureaucrat Yeagley are "not a subject for public discussion"—is obviously a
deliberate, calculated effort to maintain a high level of intimidation by keeping the public
ignorant of the camps. This stratagem of course has its exact parallel in the use of the
concentration camps in Nazi Germany:
It is to belabor the obvious to point out that the present Vietnam conflict could easily lead to
a formal declaration of war, which, very likely, would immediately result in the invoking of
Title II by PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON SOLELY ON HIS OWN AUTHORITY AS
PROVIDED UNDER THE LAW. In that case, it is obvious, the leadership of the growing peace
movement which dissents so militantly from the Johnson policy in Vietnam—those "nervous
Nellies," in the words of the President, who panic "under the strain" and turn "on their
leaders and on their country and on then-own fighting men"—would be among the first
"Communists" and "potential spies and saboteurs" picked up in "Operation Dragnet."
The ghetto uprisings in Watts, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York and Chicago suggest
another area in which Title II could be invoked. The rapidly mounting and increasingly
organized resistance of the Negro people and those bearing arms in self-defense against the
force and violence of the bigot mobs, the police and national guard—could well provide the
pretext for the White House to declare that such resistance was in actuality an "insurrection
from within"; and of course that, in turn, under the McCarran Act, would fill the detention
centers with the militants of the civil rights movement.
Nor is this idle conjecture. On a small scale, it already has happened. In the summer of
1965, several thousand interracial civil rights demonstrators—mostly youngsters—were
seized by Alabama state police and forcibly put behind hastily erected barbed-wire "pens"
for more than 72 hours on the state fair grounds at Birmingham in what was nothing less
than a make-do concentration camp of historically classic proportions. Already a familiar
voice is being heard with increasing frequency in the land—in the Congress, in the Internal
Security Division of the Justice Department, in the FBI and in the countless local witchhunting agencies—alleging "evidence" that the ghetto upheavals are the work of "outside"
(Communist of course) forces bent upon "overthrowing" the United States government.
At this point there certainly is no room for easy and false optimism about the present
opposition to Title II in the United States today. While there have been general expressions
of opposition to the McCarran Act by noteworthy organizations and individuals, there has
been no specific move to repeal Title II and dispose of the detention camps. The reason for
this lamentable state is quite easily understood: the people clearly do not know about the
existence of these camps. It is as simple—and complex—as that.
The East Village Other
(New York) 1967
63
A Way Out of the Next Few Wars
by Bertram Garskof
What is Citizens for New Politics? At present, CNP is a political club made up of people
interested in opposing the war and other aspects of the policies of the two major parties. It
is an outgrowth and a continuation of the Boulding write-in campaign in Ann Arbor, which
was so successful in raising many vital issues before the voters—issues which the two war
supporters running under the banners of the major parties would not discuss. Ann Arbor
Citizens for New Politics is associated with a national group called National Conference for
New Politics. This group has supported the development of independent political activities all
over the country, from the brave work done in Lowndes County, Alabama, to the stirring
and highly successful Scheer campaign in California.
Why was CNP organized? We have at the present time, to the sorrow of so many millions of
people, two indistinguishable and equally corrupt political parties—the great tweedledum
and tweedledee of the modem scene, the Democratic and Republican parties. These
coalitions of death have:
—killed millions in Korea and Vietnam and have prepared us for the supposed
need to kill more in Thailand, Indonesia and indeed anywhere else in the
world where American business interests run afoul of or are threatened by
local, long-needed, just social reform and self-determination movements of
underdeveloped peoples;
—lied to the American people in a calculated and terrible way to convince us
that we must kill these people to protect us from some never-defined, neverproven, never-realized menace, the international communist conspiracy;
—not made sincere efforts to provide equal rights and equal opportunities to
all of our citizens;
—failed to prevent the decay of our cities;
—failed to prevent the ruin of our air, rivers, natural resources and natural
wonders;
—manipulated the news media to teach the cold war myth of the communist
conspiracy, so as to make a mockery of our constitutionally guaranteed
freedom of the press and so as to develop a nation of paranoiacs alone in the
world, completely insensitive to the needs and aspirations of people from the
third world;
—failed to stem the tide of increasing bureaucracy and increasingly
impersonal government;
—failed to insure that our citizenry remain involved in the decision-making
process upon which anything but token democracy is founded.
For these and other reasons, Citizens for New Politics was organized to fight and, someday
perhaps, destroy the twin cancers of the two extant parties.
What are our goals? Simply put, we intend to create a political party which when in power
will reverse the trends spelled out above.
Of course, this goal is at present a tiny hope, a gleam in the morass created by the present
power structure. We do not know if we can make the dream a reality, but we feel we must
make a beginning.
64
Our immediate goal is more practical and modest, but even that, given our resources,
seems staggering: We intend to become a legitimate political party by 1968, that is, by the
next election we WILL be on the ballot and WILL run candidates to afford voters a real
alternative to the genocide and destruction now preached and practiced by both parties.
The election laws are such that we must obtain approximately 30,000 signatures all around
the state to become a party on the ballot. When we obtain the necessary signatures we will
be in a position to run the kind of campaign which we hope will attract many of the
disadvantaged and disinherited and many of those people who are beginning to realize the
horror we are raining on innocent people in Vietnam. Remember that our own government
admits to 400,000 napalm victims. Someday, gentle people, the wind will be just right and
we will smell the stench of burned flesh from 10,000 miles away.
That day, if politics was a novel, all of us would rise up in horror and oust the murderers
who forced the war on them and on us. Politics and change are not, I'm sorry to say, a
novel. We cannot afford to wait for the national outcry. We must prepare, must do the
mundane organizational work necessary to someday present alternatives for enlightened
electorates to choose.
Citizens for New Politics is made up of people who have a sense of moral outrage, who have
a vision of a better future undimmed by the so-called realities of corrupt power politics.
They are protesters and dissenters who have marched, signed ads, written letters, till they
are exhausted and have seen all of their moral indignation and right and righteous protest
go for naught in the face of the total amoral, totally conscienceless onslaught of totally
corrupt power. The members of CNP have come together to turn from protests to political
activity, so that at least in our district we can perhaps replace rather than convince corrupt
Democrats and Republicans.
This means that a lot of imaginative, even poetic, people have undertaken the boring work
of making lists, collecting money, writing speeches, doing mailings, making more lists, and
all of the other boring tasks attendant upon the development of an enduring organization.
That is our goal: to turn from protest to politics, to develop an enduring party which will
express politically the aspirations of all humane people in this district.
What are present activities? As I said, we have high-fainting goals and hopes, but when
translated to everyday activities, we are organizing and beginning, just beginning.
The Paper (East Lansing, Mich.)
May 16, 1967
Prediction
The following is excerpted from an interview with Richard Albert.
"I mean, you realize that in about seven or eight years the psychedelic population of the
United States will be able to vote anybody into office they want to, right?"
The San Francisco Oracle
65
66
LOVE AND SEX: If It Feels Good, I’ll Do It
Is California More Sexually Liberal Than Other States?
by Albert Ellis
Is California setting the lead for the world in general, and for America in particular, in
regard to the instituting of new sex mores? My impression is: Yes. And it is my definite
belief that Californians, or at least a sizeable minority of them, are in the vanguard of the
sexual revolution. How so? In several significant ways. They merrily fornicate, and they
seem to be less guilty in so doing than are the residents of most other American regions.
They freely engage in extracoital marital and nonmarital relations with little inhibition or
sense of guilt. They espouse nudism, in organized and spontaneous groups, in large
numbers.
They do not with great frequency enter into various forms of wife-swapping or other modes
of what I call civilized adultery; but they appear to do so more often than do the residents
of any other part of the country. They probably engage in homosexual or lesbian acts with
greater incidence and less guilt than do non-Californians. They openly talk about sex, and
even when they do not overtly perform it to any unusual extent, they tend to tolerate the
sexual activities of their fellows in an exceptional way.
Do I have accurate statistics to back up my opinions in this respect? No, my ideas are
clearly impressionistic. I doubt however, that they are completely askew; and most of the
intelligent and informed Californians I know are in agreement with them. Maybe, just
because of my prominence in the field of sexual liberalism, I come into closer contact with
sexually free West Coasters than with abstainers and prudes. Maybe, therefore, I can talk
to—and sometimes end up in bed with—an unrepresentative sample of California girls.
Again, I doubt that this is the only reason why I seem to find that Californians are freer
than, say, New Yorkers or District of Columbians. Where there's smoke, some of it tends to
get in your eyes—and into various other more accessible orifices of your body! My sexual
impressions of California may be hogwash; but there is a good likelihood that they aren't.
Assuming that I am at least partially correct, and that Californians are to some extent
setting the lead for America and the world in new sex mores, what are some of the possible
reasons for this kind of revolutionism? My guess is that the following factors have something
important to do with this phenomenon:
1. West Coast climate, especially in Southern California where most of the state's population
is concentrated, is almost ideal for year-round sex. Rolling in the hay is usually a hell of a
lot more fun than rolling in snowdrifts. Open fields and beaches are easily accessible for
various kinds of sexual delights to almost any young or older person who wants to take
advantage of them—while we less fortunate New Yorkers, alternatively, are forced during
most of the year to resort to cars, apartments, hotels, etc., which may be much harder to
find or to use to full advantage. The West with its adjacent open spaces and hospitable
climate, has much more to offer in this respect than the East or Midwest.
67
2. California—although, again I do not have statistics at hand to prove this—appears to
have a very high rate of literacy, education, intelligence, and culture, compared to most
other American states. The Californian school system, from the primary grades through the
many state colleges, impresses me as being among the top two or three in the nation. The
residents of the state—as Look magazine showed last year—seem to like various forms of
knowledge, and go out of their way to populate special courses, lectures, seminars,
workshops, and other educational-cultural events which the schools and private agencies
continually sponsor. Institutes, such as those held regularly at Big Sur Hot Springs, are
almost unique to California, and attract wide followings. Although sexual libertarianism is
hardly restricted to the upper educational levels, the new mores of our present American
sex revolution are far more indigenous to these highly sophisticated groups than they are to
less literate individuals.
3. Many relatively free or would-be free individuals deliberately migrate to California today.
Sexual varietists especially head for San Francisco and Los Angeles in fairly large numbers;
but many also wind up in other parts of the state. Just as oldsters go to the West Coast to
retire in comfort, so do youngsters often go there to retire, in quite another sense of this
word, in comfort! Sexual liberals, moreover, often require, and actively set about making,
converts to the (inter)-cause. And if biological inheritance means anything—and I definitely
think that it does—it may even be that some of the teenage sexpots of today are the highly
legitimate offspring of some of the hot-blooded males and females who were attracted to
the California scene a generation ago.
4. Because of its great distances and relative lack of means of public transportation (such as
New York City's subway system), most Californians have to get around by car at an early
age. It has been known for several decades now that the invention of the automobile has
contributed more to the incidence of nonmarital sex relations than probably any other
technological advance (except, possibly, modern contraceptive devices). Consequently, the
high rate of privately-owned and driven cars in California almost certainly abets the high
rate of petting and fornication.
5. In recent years, California has been the source of a variety of new publications, which
have directly and indirectly aided the cause of sexual enlightenment. These have included
books (such as those published by Sherboume Press), paperbacks (Parliament News, Inc.),
and newspapers (The Free Press). Although these types of publications have in part come
into existence because of the existence of many liberal readers who have been eager to
patronize them, they have also led to an increase in sex liberalism.
6. A number of libertarian groups have risen in California during the last few years,
including such groups as the League for Sexual Freedom, Kerista, and the Rene Guyon
Society. Some of these groups distinctly espouse and propagate sexual freedom and
encourage their members to have overt sex relations in unconventional ways.
7. Religious liberalism would appear to be more rampant in California than perhaps in any
other state of the Union. Not only do many congregations, such as Unitarian Churches,
flourish and consist largely of members who have liberal ideas, but other more conventional
church groups, such as Congregationalists and Episcopalians, often have openminded
clergymen who take unusually liberal sex views. I, for example, get more unsolicited
favorable letters from regular California ministers in my sex books—such as Sex Without
Guilt, the American Sexual Tragedy, and the Art and Science of Love—than I get from
ministers in almost all the other states combined.
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The foregoing reasons do not pretend to be exhaustive. Many more significant origins for
California's liberal sexual leadership probably also exist. The point is that, from all the signs
I can see, this leadership is and will probably continue to be a reality. To which I can only
say: Vive Ie West Coast! On a sunny California day, there are doubtless more naval oranges
and more orange navels, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Dr. Ellis, psychotherapist and author of at least 20 books about sexual manners and mores
on which he is rated as an international authority, is director of New York's Institute for
Rational Living, which has branches in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. He visits
California frequently to give talks, attend workshops and make radio and television
appearances, and comments: "Although this hardly makes me an outstanding authority on
California, I do know something about sex."
The Los Angeles Free Press
January 20, 4967
Clap Hands for the Orgy
by Harpo (Richard Milner)
One of the most feared (and most frequently fantasized) of sexual activities is the orgy.
Right now you are probably fantasizing one of your own, right?
The word "orgy" is ambiguous. In its broadest sense it connotes a sensual activity which is
pursued without restraint of appetite, or an "unbridled exercise of passion," as my
dictionary would have it.
One conjures up a mental picture of satyrs and nymphs in Roman garb devouring grapes,
wine, and each other for days on end. Presumably, the party breaks up when all participants
are thoroughly sated and probably exhausted.
In another sense, the orgy is simply a collection of nude adults who participate in some
composite, collective sexual act.
After all, one does not speak of "orgies" performed by a proper married couple, no matter
how violent the gyrations of the connubial bed. "Unbridled passion" is not enough without
some extra people.
Two's company; three's an orgy.
These two senses of the word are separable, in fact as well as in theory.
Indeed, some contemporary East Bay orgies do not at all satisfy the first definition. In fact,
they do not satisfy.
They involve collective sex, but may be only two hours or less in duration, after which none
of the participants is sated.
Such eat-and-run affairs are largely the prerogative of the more daring members of the
bored middle class, who fancy themselves as "swingers."
One reason they are in such a hurry is that they have to get home in time to relieve the
babysitter.
To make a gross characterization, there are "hip" orgies and "square" orgies. The former is
more often known as a "love party" or "love feast."
The latter is often called a "modem" or "sophisticated" party "for swingers ONLY."
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Although in both cases there are men and women using their mouths, hands, and loveorgans in various combinations, there are very major differences in the attitudes of the
people involved, in their notions of what it is they are doing, and, consequently, in the
entire spirit or feeling-tone of the happening.
Notions about sex condition the entire notion or personhood.
Whether a woman, for example, is considered a chattel or an independent and free agent
will be clearly reflected in sexual attitudes.
The use of the body and its parts is no less than the behavior of the person.
Contrast a love feast and a "swinger's party."
At the love feast there is much good feeling. Most of the people know and like each other.
There is some Ravi Shankar or some blues on the machine.
Candles are lit; incense bums. All senses are turning on.
With much joking and hugging, the six or eight people begin' preparation of the meal. One
cuts tomatoes, someone else chops onions, a third slices the meat.
Shish kabob and rice.
Mattresses and cushions have been spread. They sit down and casually begin to strip off
their clothes. They are mostly nude by the time dinner is finished.
After dinner, an octopus of a hookah with many protruding tubes provides a communal
smoke.
Couples pair off in different places. After awhile the couples change. Permutations and
combinations develop.
And all the while there is the gentle laughter of people who like each other, some of whom
really love one another. And the candles, and the music, and …
It is morning. Everybody kisses everybody goodbye. Sleepy and happy, they pack their
much-caressed nerve endings into their cars and leave.
The "swinger's party" is quite another style. No food. Nobody knows anybody. Nobody even
LIKES anybody.
How shall they start? Something they saw in a dirty movie once: strip poker. But most of
the people don't know how to play poker.
Small talk, nervous inanities. How will we break the ice?
One of the men goes out and brings back' a big bottle of gin. That's it, drink up, you'll feel
more relaxed. (I know, I know, they use pot at the love feast, but was it really the same
thing?)
A few daring souls start to take off their clothes. They are nervously stared at for a few
minutes.
Then all hell breaks loose.
Everybody rips off his clothes. How did that fantastic scene over on the couch develop in
just thirty seconds? There are three, four, yes (count 'em) five people involved in that.
"Fuck me, you bastard," says the good-looking chick with the lacquered hairdo.
You caress her head.
"No, no, don't touch my hair. I just had it set Anyplace but my hair."
70
As soon as you get hold of an inviting-looking woman, three uninvited guests have joined
you. They are frantic, they are mechanical, they are anonymous.
At a love feast you might actually get to know someone, but not at a "swinger's party."
Combinations of two are not allowed, by unwritten rule.
In anonymity there is no threat to one's inadequacies and jealous fears ("You can screw my
wife, but you better not have a relationship with her").
Ugly potentials hang in the air. First names only. ("God if my boss ever found out, I'd be
ruined.") The specter of blackmail.
Why do they feel dirty and uptight? Because the swinger's party is an escape from life which
reflects their lives. It brings no real escape. There is no exit.
It is an attempt to forget the humdrum day, to escape the noncommunication and no
relationships. But it is a spectacular failure, only a different kind of noncommunication and
non-relationship.
The love feast, on the other hand, is an affirmation and a celebration of life. It is part of life
rather than an escape from it.
One pays a price for love feasts however. After a few good ones, other kinds of dinner
parties tend to drag.
The Berkeley Barb. Berkeley, Calif.
September 8, 1967
Orgy Butter!
An Advertisement
A trippy body cream just made for groovy loving. ORGY BUTTER makes all
loving groovier, better and WOW. Use it as a lubricant, a body rub to make
you glow while it makes your skin soft, perfumed to turn you on, time after
time after time—and if some accidentally gets in your mouth for any reason,
it tastes great and doesn't hurt a thing. Enough for several trips $1.25.
ORDER FROM: Ravenhurst Enterprises, 5420 Carlton Way, Los Angeles, Calif.
Open City (Los Angeles)
September 14, 1967
71
Where Skinny Dippers Do It
The concept of free beaches where nude bathing and sunbathing can also
take place is spreading in California. Already five are operating and more are
envisioned. Although there have been some objections by people whose
property adjoins the beaches, no serious troubles have arisen so far.
Reporters and photographers from Elysium Inc., publishers of the official
journal of the American Sunbathing Association, recently paid a visit to one of
the beaches, and printed the following report in Nudist Adventure.
"I would rather not go to the beach if I HAVE to wear a bathing suit!" is the statement that
best describes the attitude of the volunteers of the recently-formed Committee for Free
Beaches. Perhaps the best way to convey their attitude is to describe some of the beach
happenings experienced last summer and fall.
Getting started was the hardest part. A few people spent several weekends searching along
the Pacific Coast for isolated beach areas that were convenient and accessible enough to be
reached without unreasonable effort. Most of the areas selected were not too far from public
beaches, with parking in the public area, then a walk far enough away from the crowds to
insure privacy. Some would then strip and frolic nude in the surf and sand while others in
the group would keep a close watch for passers-by. At first, if someone were spotted
approaching, the nude people would put on swimming suits until they had turned back or
passed. On occasion, some remained nude and waved a cordial greeting to the newcomers.
This ordinarily brought a friendly wave in response, and quite a few of the newcomers
returned to join in the nudist capers.
"Our most significant discovery," reports the Committee, "was that all the passers-by to
whom we displayed an open and hospitable attitude responded with an attitude of friendly
tolerance … and even voluntary participation! Perhaps this was because the types of people
who would explore a beach to the extent we did might also be the types of person who
would be open to new experience. At any rate, we were both surprised and pleased at this
high degree of acceptance.
"The most eager and enthusiastic newcomers were several families from local nudist parks.
Although these families advised us to be more cautious in our escapades, they often
remarked that the environment we had created did not suffer from the social cliques, racial
barriers, and emotional blocks that sometimes exist in nudist parks. Some of these families
said they preferred the free beach atmosphere to the nudist park environment."
By the end of the summer, several different locations had been tried. Each had its own
unique characteristics. Some were so far off the beaten track, strangers rarely appeared. At
other sites, a constant look-out for newcomers was necessary. Some beach areas were
quite small, while others provided over a mile of secluded surf and sand. Some of the
participants brought field glasses and walkie-talkie sets, and with this equipment were able
to maintain a very effective security system in which lookouts could warn of the approach of
any potentially unfriendly visitors long before their arrival.
72
As more people became interested in joining, these unusual excursions grew to groups of
forty and more, mostly nude, romping over the sand dunes, frolicking in the surf, and
capering about the beach. The freedom from clothing and false modesty, combined with the
'exhilarating atmosphere of the beach setting, seemed to generate a creative urge in most
of the group. People brought guitars, bongo drums, harmonicas and wood flutes. The
spontaneous music happenings that developed provided a fascinating and delightful
experience. "Often, when some of us were sitting around the campfire, playing music,
singing songs, and clapping hands, the children would begin to leap and cavort about on the
hard-packed sand. The total atmosphere that resulted was so intensely joyful, so irresistibly
captivating, that strangers walking up the beach could not pass us by without being drawn
into this compelling network of positive emotion, and contributing to it, and having it
contribute something to them," says the C.F.B. Executive Secretary.
"After only a few sessions such as these, our eagerness for life was so intense and positive
there seemed to be no room for negative emotions. All of our weekend beach excursions
were very good; and often intensely delightful. We had a kind of unstructured, mobile,
week-end Utopian community.
"We often found ourselves in stimulating discussion groups, freewheeling over a wide range
of topics. Looking back, it now seems significant that this factor, combined with the
permissive environment we had created, resulted in differing opinions and convictions
expressed in an honest and open manner.
"We found ourselves discussing not only the nature of our active challenge to the restrictive
social customs regarding beach attire, but also re-examining other assumptions in the fields
of education, social relationships, cultural expression, and emotional development.
"Whatever activity we engaged in, we were doing it because it was something we really
wanted to do, with no one else to coerce us to do otherwise. We do not pretend to
understand why being free from compulsory beach attire made these experiences more
refreshing, more enriching and more gratifying to us. However, we all agree that, given
more freedom of choice, we seemed to function more fully, more freely, more openly and
more genuinely. None of us have succeeded in understanding exactly why this feeling
resulted from our beachside encounters, but we did agree that something very beneficial
happened for each of us.
"Although the freedom to go nude at the ocean beach was one of the factors that originally
drew us together, individual nudity was never a really significant topic of discussion or
consideration. A far more prominent topic of consideration was the far-reaching question of
individual freedom and responsibility—and of course the right of the individual to go nude in
appropriate circumstances (such as at the beach) was only a very small part of this larger
topic."
The ocean beach environment, where the frontiers of the land encounter the frontiers of the
sea in a constant ebb and flow, provides a uniquely appropriate setting for actively
challenging decaying assumptions and social customs, and allowing new assumptions and
social customs to flow into their proper place. Even public beaches provide a temporary
respite away from the social conditioning processes of a largely pathological society. The
ocean beach setting proves a particularly suitable environment to conduct weekend
excursions, with the fundamental purpose and intention of nourishing the. development of
individual freedom, awareness, and responsibility.
The East Village Other (New York)
September, 1966
73
Poem
The following poem was written by a child, and appeared in the first issue of
The Oracle of Southern California, March, 1967.
What to Do
If You Are in
Love.
1. Were To Kiss
Kiss on the feet
Kiss on the Head
Kiss on the hand
Kiss on the lip
2. What to Do
Tell him or her
I love you.
Fuck in bed.
Do love things.
3. What to say
Say Fuck me
Say I like
To play love
Say I like
this.
—8 years old
Lenore Kandel: On Love
Lenore Kandel is the author of the Love Book, a book of poems which for their
erotic frankness has caused booksellers to be arrested (on obscenity charges)
in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Miss Kandel lives in San Francisco and the
following excerpts are from an interview by John Bryan.
LENORE: I found there was so much to be done … just meeting people. A lot of our problem
in America is simply that people don't know each other; they've not met; they don't know
how much alike they are. Like the one man who spoke up at a place where I was giving a
talk yesterday. It was a Rotary Club. He was completely sexually obsessed. All he could
think about was, like, 16-year-old girls fucking. He couldn't get off the image of little girls
with their little skirts and their boys and he had all these repressions going, all these mad
fantasies. Really, he was jealous. If he didn't have it as a kid, how DARE they?
I have a great deal of success with communication because I realize and accept our
similarities. Sometimes I can lay them out clearly and people who have never seen them
before know how much alike we are.
One of the things I have to accept and deal with and carry around is teaching people that
they're beautiful. I have to convince policemen and judges that they're beautiful creatures,
beautiful human beings …
I truly know that anyone who accepts the equal beauty F and divinity of themselves and
other human beings cannot willfully harm them. So I have to reach this kind of people.
All I can say in the Love Book is that you're beautiful. All parts of you are beautiful. All the
parts of your body are beautiful. All of you is divine.
74
There was a minister one day in court, a Baptist minister, who got completely befuddled.
I think that he's a pretty fair example of the kind of thinking which has led to the
persecution of the Love Book.
He served in the Army as a line officer in World War II rather than be a chaplain because he
preferred to use a gun.
He used terms like "guilty of sexual intercourse" and he : said my poem is definitely
homosexual because it suggested that normal people did things like oral copulation.
He said that sexual intercourse should never be written about in fiction or in non-fiction
either … but only in technical manuals which might possibly … and he considered this a
very liberal interpretation … be perused in the privacy of the bedroom with the door locked
and the blinds down.
But there were some very fine people in court. Like the lady who was the daughter of a
Methodist minister, educated : in theological seminaries and married to a Congregationalist
f minister, who wanted to appear as a witness because she felt the book had clarified things
for her to such an extent that, ; although she was not verbal and has never been able to
explain her sexual feelings to her husband, she presented the book to him and that did it.
She felt the book said "This is what I've been frying to say to you." And she felt it was so
clear and religiously beautiful that she gave it to many of her friends for Christmas as a gift
A lot of women have done this because (hey have not been verbal and there had been no
previous clarity about a woman's reaction, her loving reaction to sex.
BRYAN: Husbands don't really understand.
LENORE: And they don't want to. One of the big hassles in (his country is this thing between
the sexes. A lot of marriage counselors bought the book because they found it invaluable,
because one of the biggest problems is this inability to communicate about sex between
man and woman.
BRYAN: Even the simple admission that the woman likes to ball.
LENORE: Yes. So, it's become a very beautiful thing. The book has facets I did not see
before. I didn't understand that it would do this huge thing. It happened at a time when it
was really necessary and it's done so many beautiful things for so many people. I suppose
my trip is clarity.
BRYAN: You realize what an enormous amount of veil-shedding such a book is for the
woman?
LENORE: And for the man. It really puts a true concentration, a clear light on it. But it sure
makes things work better.
BRYAN: Once the man gets it out of his head that sex is his game …
LENORE: It no longer becomes a game. Those people recognize what I'm doing in the Love
Book because they KNOW it's true. I'm very impressed now with the truly sincere
churchmen, including Catholics, I'm meeting because I felt religion was gone but now I
know there's hope.
What really got to the District Attorney was when I spoke to him in court and tried to
convince him that he was truly beautiful.
75
I know that if he recognizes his own beauty then he'll recognize this manifest shared
divinity. Like the man who was all hung up about the young people today being able to
relate to each other physically that he blew his mind and forgot that they are also relating
to each other in other ways, becoming total beings, both body and psyche. But he's so hung
up in the total repression of his body—he thinks he's so ugly—that he's warped.
The Los Angeles Free Press
April 7, 1967
Kiss-In
In October of 1966, Eugene & Christine Pera were arrested in North Beach for kissing on the
street. The charge against them is lewd & dissolute behavior in public view. The arresting
officer claimed that he saw two people lying on the sidewalk; they seemed to be in a state
of extreme exhilaration, & talked like someone intoxicated, though they had no alcohol on
their breath.
Their trial begins Monday, April 3, & will probably continue through Wednesday. At 10 AM,
Friday, April 7th, there will be a KISS-IN on the Hall of Justice steps (that's 850 Bryant
Street, in case you've never been had), primarily to protest their arrest. If they win we'll
celebrate by bringing all manner of joyful things like beads, flowers, banners, drums, flutes
&c &c. However, if they lose we shall mourn by wearing black & singing sad songs about the
loss of our right to make love. Watch your local communication company & other yellow
journalism sheets to find out how blinded justice will handle this one.
did you know it's against
THE LAW to kiss in
public
?
communication company (San Francisco)
April 1, 1967
Indian Sex
The following is from an interview with Sun Bear, a Chippewa Indian and the
editor of Many Smokes magazine, published in Reno, Nevada, and dedicated
to "universal Indian brotherhood."
"To the Indian, everything was natural, and because of this, he had no double standard of
sex, where one was a holier-than-thou philosophy, where one refused to talk about it and
sat with folded hands, and the other, dirty pictures on outhouse walls. To the Indian, sex is
a perfectly natural thing—his Little Brothers did it, and so did he.
"Sex is the He and She rains. The light and heavy rains that bring strength to the crops in
the desert. Sex is the ceremony of the Return of the Sun—by watching the Sun-Watcher
Peaks to determine when the Sun has reached its southernmost point. At that time the
solistic ceremonies start in celebration of the Return of the Sun, the Rebirth of Life. Father
Sun bringing new life from the Earth Mother. Sex is a beautiful thing—the giving of new life
to the land which means food for people. It means fish spawning up a stream. It means
ducks bringing forth their young in the marshes. This is why the Indian people regarded it
as a natural thing. It was part of life.
"But they were first able to live on Earth as men and women and then reach up for higher
things, because of having a balance and not complexes and psychiatrists and scribes who
consumed a lifetime writing volumes on. sex.
76
“To the Indians, sex was not a spectator sport. It was between the man and the woman
who participated only."
The San Francisco Oracle
Classified Ads
Good looking bachelor, tall, 34, white, wishes to socialize with exceptionally endowed
glamorzons, that are aggressive, dominant & creative. No prejudices. Call (phone number).
Aphrodisiacs—make love a joy, not a job! materials and free samples, $2. To: (address).
Are you sick of the perfectly proportioned Rock Hudson type bulging with muscles and
oozing virility? If so then try me—a cross between Lawrence Welk and Woody Allen. Any
femme mature enough to help me lose my inhibitions? Please write Charles at (address).
The East Village Other (New York)
February 15, May 1, May 15, 1967
HIPpocrates
by Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D.
QUESTION: Would you offer a medical or other comment on a woman who adamantly
refuses to do sex as it's done in dogdom? Is man really the only animal who does "it" face
to face?
ANSWER: Once more, a prominent red-bearded veterinarian has doggedly come to our aid.
His first reaction was to thank you on behalf of his wife and himself for bringing to their
attention this exotic new "face to face" position apparently used by some humans.
He also offers the information that chimpanzees, gorillas ? and monkeys usually copulate
face to face, though on occasion will perform that act "doggie style."
Perhaps your lady friend is so enamored of you she can't bear not looking at your face. On
the other hand she might be suspicious about things done behind her back. If so, you might
consider using a mirror which would also give her a new perspective on love.
Above all, she should be assured that you will not force her to do this on crowded street
corners.
There is no "right" or "proper" way to make love. Consenting, mature individuals ought to
be able to make love however and whenever they like so long as they do not intrude upon
the rights and privacy of others. People who feel secure with each other, who are certain
they won't be put down in any way by their partner(s) are the most free and relaxed in
love. An aversion to one of the many ways of making love ought to be treated with
compassion, understanding and, above all, patience since changes in sexual patterns may
occur even at a relatively advanced sexual age. The more involvement with a love partner,
the better is the love.
Victorian women were supposed to lie placidly thinking about housework or hats until the
dreadful deed was done. Two views prevail today. One is to concentrate on loving the
person while the other holds that the act itself should be paramount. The most fulfilling and
difficult way is to do both.
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
May 5, 1967
77
CENSORSHIP: F*ck Censorship
In Defense of Obscenity
by Malay Roy Choudhury
Choudhury is a poet from Bengal, India, editor of Hungry Generation
Anthology; he was convicted and jailed in 1965 on charges of obscenity in
poetry.
I defend Obscenity.
I'd go on defending Obscenity so long as the flagitious bourgeoisie would go on claiming the
atavist superiority of their false air.
In fact there is nothing called Obscenity. Obscenity is an artificial concept,
made, fabricated,
manufactured,
constructed
by a trap-hatching class of illiterate filthy class mongers; by the bourgeois vultures of the
Establishment who live by sucking the pecuniary asspus of the battered humanity
emanating from the lower depths; by the moneyed gangsters who with visibly calculated
intentions lurk to monopolize over this dark geyser called the lower class
to safeguard their ass-based culture
to keep in action forever a monetary rung-ridden civilization
to let universe fall on her knees before the voodoo of hatred.
The segment of the vested-interests ruling a society with a false and amputated language of
its own and disowns the vocabulary of the lower classes TO SHARPEN THE SEPARATION
LINE IN BETWEEN.
II.
A word is a word is a word and I will not allow anyone to renounce, abjure, penalize or
discard even a single word, expression, slang, sentence or phrase on such plea that it is
used by a particular class/group/caste/area/community.
A word is a vacuum capsule waiting to be filled in.
A society is sick and venomous if it has two antithetic sets of vocabulary for two different
monied classes.
I will indulge in Obscenity, for I will ruin & destroy all class distinctions in Language. If you
are an academic fool and do not believe in what I say, drag a booby of Calcutta's bloodsucking bourgeois society up to Dhanbad and compel him to lie on the cleanest mattress of
a mine-laborer. He'd find it Obscene, ribald, shocking & anti-social. Drag the same dandy up
to Bombay or Paris and tell him to lie beside a Prince Shit or Aly Khan or any Mr. Big Money.
He'd be glad & joyous up to the pelvis-end of his spine:
Hatred
gestates liquid vampires in the bourgeois braincan because these lumps of white collared
god-dung are cynically panicked every moment that their right & privilege to rob all
humanity might be overthrown. Obscenity is a prejudice of the bourgeoisie who are afraid of
cultural invasion by the more powerful culture of the lower strata.
79
III.
In fact Obscenity is a home-spun soul-grinding machine manufactured by the bourgeoisie,
Just as they have manufactured WAR
MASS MURDER
CONSCRIPTION
TORTURE CHAMBERS OF POLICE & ATOM BOMB
to keep their own-class in power, to go on sipping until the entire goldshit of this earth goes
into their cancerous belly, to exterminate the non-bourgeoisie who are against their
pecuniary gibbet, to keep in reserve an army of white-collar lukeworms drenched in middleclass spit.
I do not want lukeworms gestating lukeworms.
I want MAN with pituitary soul.
A bourgeois is always a Fascist or a Communist or a Reactionary but never a man.
IV.
Language of the lower strata is Obscene to the bourgeoisie. Language of their own class is
Art to the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeoisie claim that man & society gets "depraved & corrupted" by the Language of the
lower classes because they are well aware that without such bluffs their class-based culture
can't linger long.
This bourgeois conspiracy is utter insanity.
If speaking & writing in the total FREE LANGUAGE of the ENTIRE SOCIETY leads to the
sainuiness labeled by the money-suckers as "depravity & corruption" I WILL DEPRAVE &
CORRUPT MAN TO SANITY.
I'd go on defending Obscenity until I've forced the society to embrace the total vocabulary
of MAN. I want POETRY to be given back to LIFE.
I will deliberately write what these bourgeoisie call Obscene because I will drag them and
compel them to get that barrier of false superiority destroyed forever. And I do not care if
Calcutta's Communist bourgeoisie, Reactionary bourgeoisie & Fascist bourgeoisie unite
against me to put me in their gaol or in the loonybin.
I will not allow any distinction between man & man based on exterior acquisitions.
V.
Sex is treated as capital in a community where all distinctions between man & man are
made on the basis of stockpiles of exterior acquisitions.
I will not allow any superiority of a set of vocabulary that a faction of society eats with its
atavist silver spoon.
SEX TREATED AS CAPITAL!
THE BOURGEOIS-TORTURED SOCIETY IS A WHORE-HOUSE.
But why is sex chaperoned as capital? Because sex is the only human element left on earth
that knows no narrowness of culture,
80
tradition,
religion, race,
wealth,
country, custom, convention & law.
Sex is treated as capital in bourgeois-tortured society to catch hold of the buyers by their
subconscious. No advertisement can be successful in this society without the greasy flavor
of the meat sex and no work can be done without the lubricating lure of the scarlet cunt. On
each step there would be the inevitable sex-trap because this society is composed of buyers
& sellers only.
Man and/or woman become symbol or commodity, i.e. life is transformed into "thing," into
matter in this culture.
Now, if sex becomes natural, normal & easy then this rung-ridden division of the culture
would collapse and the privileged faction would come face to face with its blank interior.
That is why sex is rationed,
that is why a slow-process of sexpoisoning foments,
that is why full accessibility to sex is debarred,
that is why nobody is given the freedom to normalize sex.
That is why usage of sex is not allowed in any other way except as capital: NEVER IN
POETRY: BECAUSE NOTHING CAN COMPETE WITH LITERATURE.
Each & every brain in this society is kept perverted through wrong sermons from the very
childhood and this perversion is made to call the standard of morality. The bourgeois rulers
know that so long as this disease is made to be known as morality and by any means the
middle class is pressed to get infected, their rule too would continue.
VI.
Usage of sex in any manner in Literature is declared Obscene by money-sucking highincome vampires because they want legal & social apparatus to exterminate their enemy
with utmost atrocity so that sex could not be used ever otherwise as capital.
I will deliberately write what the bourgeoisie call Obscene to ruin & destroy the treatment of
sex as capital.
SEX IS HUMAN;
WILL TO POWER IS IMMUNITY:
IMMUNITY IS MORALITY.
I won't allow usage of sex as commodity. CENSORSHIP IS AN OUTCOME OF THE
COWARDICE WHICH NIETZSCHE CALLED MORALITY OF THE HERD.
The bourgeoisie claim that man & society gets "depraved & corrupted" after reading a
particular book or poem in which sex is normalized, because they know that even the
.psychiatrist who comes out of the political asshole would not call masturbation & extramarital copulation "depravity & corruption" or in any way anti-social.
VII.
I, Malay Roy Choudhury, born on the 2nd day of Nov,
I DEFEND OBSCENITY,
I am aware of the conspiracy that Calcutta's bourgeois gangsters have charted against me,
81
And I do not care.
NOBODY CAN STOP THE FALL OF THIS CIVILIZATION:
I PROPHECY.
I will write in whatever manner I like and immerse my thoughts in the entire vocabulary of
mankind. I will think whatever my entire body thinks and communicate it to anyone who
has been waiting, or who would be born for this communication.
I will give POETRY back to LIFE.
Poetry should have in its armor anything & everything that Life includes.
—Guerrilla #1 (Detroit)
Prudes Attack "Brain"
An editorial calling Governor Ronald Reagan a liar and the reproduction of a famous drawing
by German artist George Grosz showing the pubic hair of a whore appeared in the arts
section of UCLA's student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, last week, causing an instant uproar.
After a Monday meeting of the administration controlled Communications Board, the arts
section—INTRO—was suspended until further notice.
Rumors were rampant on the campus last week that Bruin editor Neil Reichline was about to
be fired, but Reichline was assured by Chancellor Franklin Murphy that he'll keep his job.
But "Intro" editor Digby Diehl, instead of turning out one of the nation's best college arts
sections, has now been ordered by the Communications Board to head a study committee
which will fashion new repressive rules to stop further "obscenity" in future Bruin issues.
The County Board of Supervisors, acting in its usual reactionary fashion, issued a resolution
asking investigation of the January 18 Bruin.
The Monday Communications Board meeting was attended by West Los Angeles Police
Station Captain Sidney Barth, who told the Free Press he was there as an observer since his
department has received "several" complaints that the January 18 Bruin was obscene. He
said he considers it "obscene" also. He said that the City Attorney is investigating issuing
arrest warrants for the Bruin staffers responsible for the publication of an "Intro" cover
drawing, "Serenade," by the late George Grosz, who underwent his own censorship
problems in the 1930's when he was suppressed by the Nazis.
The articles which stirred establishment ire were a review on a book of Grosz' drawings,
"Ecce Homo" by Jerome C. Small, and a review of William Burroughs' Nova Express, by Don
Strachan. The Small article used such phrases as this opener to describe the work of Grosz:
"In our America at a time when the publicly announced life-views of the powerful and
moneyed tend to become more and more glupped up in the cotton-candied, Mary
Poppinsed, Ronald Reaganed, countless-mined. Max Rafertied, Salvation Amiied, BoyScouted, loyalty-oath-of-the-eunuchs-of-God-ed."
He also used phrases like "Pendulous, wild-forested, pouting-lipped pudenda … psychotic
yellow teeth thirsting form plump tennibuttocks to chomp bloody; horse-pudded, dogdugged whores …"
The Burroughs article quoted the great junkie writer to some extent and this shocked the
establishment. It ran this quote, for instance:
" … One of the soldiers wiped his mouth and stepped forward grinning and pulled his pants
down to an ankle and his cock flipped out spurting …"
82
Sacramento also had a fit about the editorial page article by managing editor Brian Weiss,
which said:
"The Hon. Ronald Reagan, Governor of the State of California, is a liar."
—The Los Angeles Free Press
January 27, 1967
Long May It Wave
The Ramparts red glare at the Radich Gallery Thursday evening 12/28. The Cops of the
World zeroed in on one Marc Morrel, a 29-year-old artist who Was having his first one-man
show; a series of assemblages made from blue-red-white textile materials. O're the bombs
bursting in air the summons was served to Steven Radich by Patrolman Burns for publicly
displaying American flags that were defiled and mutilated (Penal Law 1425-16D).
Mr. Radich realized "something was afoot when last Friday some plainclothesmen from the
19th precinct, headed by a Lf. Mahoney, came to look over the show." "They had received
many complaints and came to watch through the long perilous night." The show consisted of
stuffed American flags, puppets, and pillows adorned with yellow golden cords or metal
chains and locks. One piece which did not amuse the blue coats was a spread out octopus
with steel helmet and gas mask entitled "Cops of the World."
Hank DiSuvero of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union, has taken the case. "There is a clear
violation of the First Amendment," Mr. DiSuvero said, "and there is no sanctity in the
symbols of government, an artist has every right to use any materials for his art." "In fact,"
Mr. DiSuvero went on, "there have been many cases of American flags used for such
purposes: Jasper Johns for one. There was a case in Mississippi of a college professor who
got in trouble for using the Confederate Flag."
The most recent case before the courts was the flag burning which occurred on the stage of
the Bridge Theater. The License Department dropped the charges in November. Meanwhile
Mr. Radich is getting together a statement to be signed by N.Y. artists and critics to protest
the law. He is due to appear at Criminal Court, 52 Chambers St., January 4, Rm. 207 at
9:30. And in the words of Francis Scott Key, "Oh say can you see the star spangled banner
yet wave, O'er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave."
The East Village Other (New York)
"Obscene" Kite Busts Fifth Estate Art Editor
The local Gestapo ended their celebration of National Police Week Sunday, May 21, by
staging a tiny raid on the offices of The Fifth Estate's brother newspaper. The Sun, at 4863
John Lodge, and took SUN editor Gary Grimshaw into temporary custody for "exhibiting an
obscene drawing." Grimshaw is also Art Editor of The Fifth Estate.
The drawing under indictment was an American flag kite which carried the legend "Fuck
America—go fly a kite," and a drawing of the Egyptian peace eye superimposed over the
flag which was hanging from a light fixture.
Grimshaw was in the Sun office counting papers when two officers from the Vernor precinct
walked in the open door and started talking with him about his appearance, the newspaper,
the neighborhood, and other topics of concern to them when one of the officers spotted the
decorated kite, which was facing the back of the room.
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He flipped, cut down the flag, and called three more squad cars for help. By this time Sun
staff member Jerry Younkins and other reinforcements had shown up and were questioning
the police agents about their activities. Grimshaw was taken to the Vernor precinct station
where the arresting officers gave the desk sergeant this story:
"We were traveling down the John Lodge expressway and looked up to see the door of the
Sun building wide open on a Sunday afternoon. We disembarked and went over there to
check it out when we noticed the obscene drawing, which we could see FROM THE
SIDEWALK."
A check of the rulebooks determined that there was an ordinance forbidding the display of
obscene drawings which could be seen from outside, and Grimshaw was issued a ticket.
His court date will be June 7th, in Traffic Court (!), 600 Randolph, in downtown Detroit. All
interested parties are urged to be there to witness the weird courtroom proceedings.
The Fifth Estate (Detroit)
June 1, 1967 130
Herald-Examiner's Christmas Gift:
A Castrated Christ Child
That paragon of tastelessness, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, surpassed itself this
Christmas season (and that's no small task).
In its special Christmas Day issue of the colorful "California Living Magazine," this week
appropriately entitled "Our Christmas Gift to You," the Hearst newspaper empire's Mission to
the West included nine pieces of world famous religious art, all part of the collection of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
This "family newspaper" which constantly runs busty movie page pictures as well as ads for
films clearly dealing with some of the more juicy varieties of sexual depravity, decided that
such painters as Peter Paul Rubens, Veronese and Paris Borodone, all masters of the Italian
Renaissance, had come on a bit too strong for its moral, Girl Scout Den audience.
These three gentlemen, whose work is seen yearly in the museum by thousands of children
conducted there on school-sponsored tours, had apparently been a bit too frank for the
Herald's genteel audience which normally must settle for a diet of murder, robbery and
napalm incineration of women and children.
In their depiction of the infant Christ child, these painters had included an infantile penis,
long forbidden on the Herald's gory pages.
The solution, as aghast readers of "California Living's" pages 6 and 7 duly noted, was
simple. The Herald simply castrated Jesus with an airbrush … and then offered the Eunuch
Lord to its family following.
We understand the magazine's December editor resigned in disgust.
The clincher: Veronese's sloppily castrated "Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth, etc.," shown
on this page, was a donation to the museum from a very prominent newspaper publisher …
William Randolph Hearst.
—The Los Angeles Free Press
December 30, 1966
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Six Professors in Search of the Obscene
On November 23, 1966, at the Poetry Center, San Francisco State College, an ad hoc
committee of 6 English professors who are also accomplished poets—James Schevill, Patrick
Gleason, Jack Gilbert, Leonard Wolf, Mark Linenthal, Maurice Bassant—read excerpts of
Michael McClure's The Beard and the full text of Lenore Kandel's Love Book. Both works
have been seized by the S.F. Police Dept.—preventing distribution and performance of the
works in what seemed to be a wave of homebred puritanical neo-fascism. Though the
professors had planned to be arrested at the reading by the S.F. Police Dept., there didn't
seem to be any police interest in extending the controversy to the S.F. College campus. An
enthusiastic audience of poets, artists, writers, students, about 300 strong, from inside and
outside of the academic circle attended the reading, which turned out to be a fiery dialogue
on obscenity and politics. Although it wasn't a bust, it was probably the most exciting
happening since Socrates' perambulations around the Athenian marketplace. The poems
were read passionately, lovingly, warmly by the professors and each professor made
statements about obscenity and the current political situation in S.P., California, and the
U.S. The following are excerpts from a tape recorded at the reading:
MAURICE BASSANT: The attempt to suppress ideas in books and literature has a long and
dishonorable history. The first book of Protagoras in the 5th Century B.C. in Athens. A
period which also saw the forbidding of libelous material. After the year 800 A.D., especially
after the Bull of Pope Martin V, the Church began in earnest its suppression of heretical
writings. We know something of the power and effects of the Index Librorum Prohibitorium,
the index of forbidden books. Other grounds have been added in more recent times;
voluptuous materials, anti-nationalistic materials. This is part of our common law. It was in
1643 that John Milton protested against the new Licensing Act. In 1684, something
interesting happened then. Judge O'Hare, an English magistrate, and before him the case of
a bookseller, the psychedelic bookseller, I suppose of his time, who was presenting material
that was inimical to the Crown of James II. The writer of the pamphlet was never found, but
the bookseller was sentenced and was promptly drawn and quartered and his head was
stuck on London Bridge. There is the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and I could go on
and on, and I think we all know the names of books which in the last 100 or so years have
been treated in this sort of way. A few examples: Shelly's Queen Mab, indicated as a vicious
atheistic and blasphemous work, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Madame Bovary by
Flaubert, Pierre by Melville, Huck Finn, Sister Carrie, almost all the novels of D. H.
Lawrence, especially Lady Chatterley, The Rainbow, and Women in Love, also Ulysses and
many of the novels by Henry Miller, as well as Jurgen, and Howl, the list is endless. We're
gathered today as in a way the most recent kink in the struggle which will not end today or
ever. Men 'will always fear, they will always be afraid and it seems to me that they must be
taught not to fear. Let me conclude: with perhaps a relevant paragraph from D. H.
Lawrence:
Accept the Sexual physical being of yourself and of every other creature,
don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of the physical function. Don't be afraid of
the so-called obscene word. It is your fear which makes them bad. Your
needless fear. It is your fear which cuts you off physically even from your
nearest and dearest, and when men and women are physically cut off they
become dangerous, bullying, cruel. Conquer the fear of sex and restore the
natural flow. Restore even the so-called obscene words, which are part of the
natural flow. If you don't put back a bit of old warmth into life, there is
savage disaster ahead.
85
LEONARD WOLF: What I have to say today I say in my f role as a college teacher. I'm also a
poet, but some days I'm not allowed to be one … it is not the university or the college that
prevents me. We live in an unpoetic world … ; First, I am not an anarchist I believe in the
state. Second, I am an employee of that state. Third, therefore it is incumbent on me to
desire for the state as liberal, as free, as humane a conscience as I can help promote. Now,
a certain number of propositions.
First, this is a sexual century. I know of no other era in history in which such large
segments of the population have been so preoccupied, so self-conscious, and so puzzled by
their own sexual behavior, as our own.
Second, in any age, societies are forever engaged in exploring and defining a life style that
will finally be identified as its own. This life style appears in history as characteristic modes.
We recognize the classic, the Romantic, the Neo-classic, the Neo-romantic. Another way of
saying this is that all societies are constantly engaged in discovering and establishing their
own mores.
Three: Sooner or later, language reflects or ought to reflect ; the life style of an age or is
employed in defining it.
Four: Today's meeting is an indication of a curious cultural fix in which we find ourselves.
Our life style is Post-post-post-romantic. That is to say it emphasizes the whole range of
individual freedoms, and from the tenor of today's meeting particularly sexual freedom and
the other utterance of sexual anguish. But, our language is just past the last gasp of the
Victorian period. Let me be very clear. In 1966, more and more boys and girls, men and
women, knew each other in the physical sense in and out of wedlock. More and more men,
and more and more women, practice what I have called "lateral polygamy." We call it
divorce. More and more men, and more and more women, are aware of and choose
homosexual love than anyone ever did in 1866. But the language for love remains, except
in special cases, Victorian. We speak of "sleeping with" when what we are actually
describing is one of the world's most strenuous exercises. We "have an affair with" when
what we mean is an entirely unbusinesslike circumstance. We "go to bed with" as if sleeping
were our problem. For the human body, linguistically speaking, the situation's sadder still.
North of the shoulder and south of the knee, we may still call, if I may mix my metaphors, a
spade a spade. An eye is still an eye, the toe, a toe, and the shoulder is still a shoulder. A
breast, however, becomes a bosom, and the male sex organ is still a male sex organ … and
the nipple becomes a pasty.
Five: Artists, writers, teachers, thinkers, whatever they are, are constantly engaged in
testing the reality of and discovering the limits of the life style.
Six: The human body is interesting. It can be beautiful, clever, witty, comic, loathsome,
delicious, stinking, sprightly, lewd, tragic, holy, and obscene. Human sexuality, expressed
by the body, and with the body, is beautiful, clever, witty, comic, loathsome, delicious,
stinking, spritely, lewd, tragic, holy, and obscene. I do not share the general view of the
recurrently expressed view here today, that human sexuality is always and at every time a
divine experience. For some people, it is a profound tragedy.
Seven: I believe in obscenity. It exists.
Eight: I believe in pornography. It exists.
Nine: I believe a writer has occasion to be obscene and pornographic. I teach Chaucer.
Ten: I prefer not to have literary reputations of my time established by policemen.
86
Eleven: I have been called, and I'm delighted at the charge, a "Puritan liberal." As a Puritan
liberal, it is permissible for me to regret the passing of the class distinction between words.
I like dirty words, but I would prefer to keep them dirty. That is, I would prefer to use them
less rather than more so that g they may continue to shine with their clean bright terrible
power.
Twelve: Miss Kandel's poem is serious, tender, religious, touching and ultimately, for my
taste innocent and romantic. She regards human sexuality as being also a religious gesture.
She joins in that sense a great number of Christian mystics. She accepts the unity of flesh
with spirit and the oneness of the universe. She has, I think with considerable success,
illustrated with. language a view of the divine relationship to matter that the Tibetan
bronzes at the De Young Museum express in three dimension. If Miss Kandel's poem were
bad, however, if it were ignorant, stupid, repulsive, unredeeming in any social sense, she
would in my judgment, still have the right to exercise an artistic or human failure. To hold
that the freedom of speech is a right only of talented persons is as ridiculous as the most
recent folly that elected only the "beautiful people."
JEFF BERNER: I published the Love Book three weeks before I went to Czechoslovakia to
collect new material for an avant garde manifestian collection. The establishment of the
United States is often very smug when it talks about Communist totalitarianism. I went to
Prague to find out Milan Nijack (sic) who is a happener in Prague and had worn his hair
down to his shoulders for about a year, he often makes manifestations in the streets, like
playing a cello lying on his back in the middle of an intersection. Nijack, two days before I
went into Prague … the police took him off the streets with no papers and no warrants and
shaved his head and they didn't beat him up and they didn't cut him up, but they shaved "
his head. While I was there, we did some happenings and Dick Higgins did some happenings
the next night, and after that experience, we hopped in Nijack's car, drove down the streets
of Prague, whereupon the police pulled him over to the side, took him out of the car,
checked his papers, and said, "What kind of weirdo are you? No hair, huh?" And my reaction
coming back to San Francisco … I was here about six days before this happened and I love
San Francisco and I'm very disappointed to see this similar attitude prevailing here …
—The San Francisco Oracle
December 16, 1966
A Test Case
Censorship.
We will try a test case.
Fuckfuclrfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuclrfuckfuckfuckfuckruck.
This is to prove something. There is no redeeming social merit. Neither are your prurient
interests to be aroused. In San Francisco once I saw a three minute movie with the word
fuck displayed every frame and nothing else, sixteen times a second, three minutes. In two
minutes the audience was roaring with laughter.
You can take fear of sex only so far.
I don't expect anyone to say anything about these dirty words, thank you.
Spokane's Natural (Spokane, Wash.)
August, 1967
87
THE POLICE: Warning: Your Local Police Are Armed And
Dangerous
STAMP OUT POLICE BRUTALITY.
TEACH A HIPPIE TO FIGHT.
communication company (San Francisco)
Cops Crush Communes
by Lorraine Glennby
Sharp knocking on the door in the middle of the night; police forcing their way in,
intimidating, beating, arresting the occupants on false charges, then holding them
incommunicado for hours—this is no flashback to the Rhineland, Mister: this is happening in
America, in New York City, in the East Village, right now.
We are told that when police are brutal and unreasonable, that citizens have recourse to a
Civilian Review Board which will protect the innocents. We are told about rights of property,
the sanctity of the home, the right of each man to the pursuit of happiness. If you are a
member of a minority group, if you are black, PR, if you have long hair and wear beads and
bells, forget it. If you offend just one hair on the long arm of the law it will choke you and
others like you until the American cries of justice and freedom fade like once-remembered
echoes on the other side of a barbed-wire fence.
This is where thousands of our nation's youth stand today; the heat is on the hippies, and
summer is beginning. Hate and tensions are building all across the country in the
metropolitan flower gardens they have cultivated out of ghettos, and whereas Love has only
God on its side, Hate has the Law behind it. This is an account of recent battles between the
two, and very possibly only an indication of what is to come:
At 622 East 11th St. there is a commune organized and run by a young man called Galahad.
A commune (breathe easy there, Birchites) is one apartment which is used for the good of
many; it is a gathering place for friends, a place for anyone who needs it to get some sleep,
a meal, some human contact, or whatever he may be looking for on a journey in search of
himself and a better world. Galahad's commune is one of the "few, or perhaps by now the
only working commune in the East Village, for two reasons: the others have been harassed
out of existence by police busts, trumped-up evictions, and etc., and because of Galahad's
policies of operation which include no drugs on the premises nor acceptance of anyone
under the influence of drugs which would make him an unstable factor in the group.
Galahad himself is an honest, open, t religious and rather incredible do-gooder who, as
Faulkner put it, endures.
In the last month Galahad's commune has been illegally entered and busted ten times by
uniformed police and plain-clothesmen in search of, well, extinction. There is no law against
communes, but there are ways to get around that if the gendarmes don't like 'em. Here's
how:
April 28—police removed 8 people from the commune and took them to the stationhouse
charging them with corrupting the morals of a minor. Basis for these charges were absurd.
The charges were dismissed on May 5.
May 1, 3:00 A.M.—plainclothesmen arrived at the commune and threatened to break down
the door if they were not admitted. They were admitted. Only casualty was a good night's
sleep.
89
May 5, 11:00 P.M.—uniformed men banged on the door and demanded admittance, saying
they were police.
May 6, 1:00 A.M.—uniformed cops pay another visit.
11:00 P.M.—plainclothesmen this time; when asked if they had a search warrant, one of
them replied "we don't need one." They forced their way into the apartment, taking 15
people to the 9th Precinct with them when they left. The 15 were subsequently released.
When the attorney acting on Galahad's behalf phoned the Precinct he was told by an officer:
"These people are bedbugs and should be exterminated."
May 7, 2:30 A.M.—police again forced their way into the apartment, presumably for another
look around, and then left.
As a result of these repeated harassments, the lawyer acting on behalf of Galahad on May 9
submitted a complaint to the Civilian Review Board. Instead of stopping the barrage, this
complaint may very well have been the cause of increased vindictiveness on the part of
certain officers.
Things were quiet for a few days—impromptu searches must get boring when not so much
as a potseed or a real corrupted minor is ever to be found—until Galahad did a good deed. A
runaway girl, age 15, found her way to the commune on May 18. After talking to her for
awhile, Galahad finally convinced her that she should go back home to her parents and took
her to the stationhouse so that the cops could see that she got home safely. In return, he
received a warning from them, saying "we'll get you," and they intimated that it would
probably be on a narcotics charge. (Summer isn't here yet, remember—perhaps then they
would have charged him on the spot with corrupting her morals en route to the
stationhouse.)
Only one day after this act of good will, Galahad's was entered into THREE TIMES, twice by
detectives and once by policemen in uniform. The same evening the largest hippie bust in
the community to date was carried out in one grotesque coup which included the arrest of
21 young men and women in the searching of two other apartments in the building on 11th
St., and an hour's worth of baitings, bearings, and vandalism on the part of New York's
Finest. (It should be stressed, in fairness, that the majority of the police at the 9th Precinct
are decent men who are doing their job as they should; the outrage and the shame rests
with a few plainclothesmen and narcotics police who are vindictive and irresponsible.)
At 6:15 P.M. that night, police came to the door of apartment 12, just next door to
Galahad's digs, and demanded to be let in, claiming they had a search warrant. Some 15
minutes later apartment 12 had a visitor, Jeff Heald, who was promptly thrown against the
wall and searched. The apartment's owner (whose name is withheld since he is not yet 18)
received the same treatment when he came home around 6:30. Not a thing was found;
apartment owner, and friends were all clean. The fuzz, undaunted, had the good fortune to
spy Nadine, a fifteen year old girl who is seen often around the East Village, and, noticing
that she was under age, later charged the apartment's owner with "corrupting the morals of
a minor." There is absolutely no evidence (nor any truth) to this charge.
Still greedy for more "filthniks," as one cop kept calling them, they began grabbing anyone
they saw on the stairs heading towards Galahad's commune, pulling them into the
apartment across the way, then searching, questioning, and insulting them. Finally, at 6:45,
they caught someone just as he was being admitted to the commune and barged in behind
him. When asked if they had a search warrant, one cop replied "we don't need one."
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Then it began. They ransacked the apartment, pushed the occupants around, burnt a hole
in one of the mattresses. No luck; the commune was clean as were all of the people in it.
Then one of the plainclothesmen saw a young man throw something out of the window.
When he would not say what it was he had thrown, they pulled him into a back room and
tried to force a statement. I spoke to the "suspect," Bill Nicholson, the day after the bust. It
was a little hard for him to talk; his nose was still red and congested from "kind of a karate
shot" they gave him to start with. They hit his stomach and kidneys also, but of course that
didn't show. "After a while," Bill told me, "the cop started telling me 'hit me back, go on, hit
me back,' but I wouldn't do it."
Before they left, the avengers made the apartment upstairs, looking for one Dan Greenberg,
whose name they had gotten from an undercover informant. (It is not uncommon for some
narcotics police to bust a guy with, say, a wife and child, threaten him with 2-5 years, then
tell him that he can be let go on a suspended sentence if he agrees to do undercover work
for the force which involves, let's face it, informing on his Friends.) They found not only
Dan, but two friends who were risking him, one of them a girl, and also a pocketbook
containing grass seeds.
The paddywagon was jiggling with the weight of young flesh by 7:30 P.M. when it set off for
the 9th Precinct. All 21 were held there for approximately 9 hours, during the greater part
of which they were not permitted to make any phone calls. Fortunately, various neighbors
and Samaritans on the street who saw what had happened got word to friends of the
accused (and there were many) who called in a lawyer to act in their behalf.
After leaving the precinct, the group was treated to an hour and a half in a cell at the Center
Street Tombs. They were then removed to the court, where, lo and behold, they found a
Be-In!—Friends with flowers, friends with smiles, friends with moral support, just being
there, talking with assorted cops, sounding little bells, blowing small minds. When some of
the smile squad were thrown out of the building, they brought back some coffee to the
officer who'd issued the order.
The judge examined the charges:
16 had been charged with a misdemeanor, #1533, for loitering inside a building with intent
to use narcotics. Interesting. Nary an aspirin had been found on any of the accused, and
one of the "loiterers" had been found sitting in his OWN APARTMENT at the time of the
arrest. All 16 charges were promptly dismissed.
The young man into whose apartment Nadine had unwittingly stepped was charged with
corrupting the morals of a minor.
Two were charged with a misdemeanor, #3305, possession of marijuana. Horrors.
One was charged with a dark horse rap: prior sale of a barbiturate to a policeman. (Don't
the cops know buying sleepers is illegal?) The origins of this charge are cloudy and
unsubstantiated.
One was charged with a felony: sale of grass.
Of these five, one of the possession charges was dismissed at the arraignment and the
other four are pending hearings. The entire incident is presently being investigated by the
New York Civil Liberties Union, which is very much concerned with the waves of police
harassment which have been engulfing the hippies. I recently spoke with Paul Chevigny, an
attorney for the N.Y.C.L.U., who told me "I've been studying police abuses of all kinds for
one and a half years, and this is the most systematic harassment I have ever
encountered … it makes Mississippi look like a kindergarten."
91
As I am writing this the situation is worsening. Early in the evening (Wed., May 25) the
commune was busted again and Galahad was arrested. The charge was corrupting the
morals of a minor. The moral putrefaction underlying the entire concept is bad enough; its
application to the man in question is enough to make one puke.
Thanks to the efforts of his many friends, Galahad's bail bond of $500 was met and he is
temporarily out of danger. But our society as a whole is not. As long as bigotry has legal
sanction, as long as civil servants are let free to act like civil stormtroopers, we all sink
deeper into the dark night of the soul in our country. Let us only hope that we can end it
soon.
The East Village Other (New York)
June 1, 1967
Telephone Reports from Readers
The following three statements were among dozens printed following an antiwar demonstration staged when President Johnson addressed a fund-raising
dinner in Los Angeles.
Sherwyn Shayne (Attorney at Law)
"My wife and I attended the Peace Parade in front of the Century Plaza Hotel on June 23,
1967.
"We were both monitors and we wore armbands to so identify ourselves.
"I wore a business suit and a tie.
"My duty as a monitor was to keep the demonstration peaceful and to keep the crowd
orderly and to make sure the laws and rules were observed.
"At approximately 9:15 pm, I was near the middle of the crowd next to the police officers
who were stationed at the center island divider in front of the hotel.
"I heard an officer just behind me make a command, 'All right, everyone move back.'
"I then asked the crowd to move backward or easterly and a police officer. Van Fleet, Badge
#3750, holding his billy Club sideways, knocked down two boys on my right and one of
them fell in front of me and I fell over him with my back to the officer. 'He then hit me on
the side of my head with his club and as I arose gasping for breath he hit me with the tip of
his billy club in my abdomen.
"When I was able to catch my breath I asked him why he hit me, and he motioned to the
officer on his right and that officer hit me in the abdomen with the tip of his billy club.
"I then stood crouched over gasping for breath once again and Police Officer Van Fleet
pointed to me and said, 'I want him.'
“Two police officers then grabbed me by my arms and pinned them behind me.
"I was bleeding profusely from the head as all of this was Ingoing on.
"I was taken very roughly and violently to a patrol wagon and all the way protesting that
their force was unnecessary and that I would walk with them willingly.
"I was taken to three different locations and booked at each.
"My wounds were treated approximately 30 minutes after arriving at the Century City
garage and only after requesting same even though I was covered with blood from head to
foot."
92
Rebecca Guile
"My age is 14. Barbara Hansen is 22. But I'm a big girl. Barbara is only five feet, two inches
tall, a small girl …
"The squad moved on us. Grim faced. But they didn't keep just holding the clubs. They
started swinging them. Police I people knocked Barbara down. I tried to help her up. But a
policeman kneed her in the stomach and hit her on the with his club. Her nose was cut and
bleeding. The cop's shoe had done that. It's a very small nose. The policeman's shoes were
big. He raved at her to 'Get up.' She couldn't. He was standing on her ankle. There's a black
bruise to prove it. And her face is pretty bruised too.
"But the cops didn't evidently think the one lone officer could handle this five-foot-two little
girl. More of them gathered around to help him beat her. But before they could do much
more than add a bruise or two another officer came and made them cool it. Barbara got up
with my help and Evan Sole's. But the cop was angry that she was getting away and it her
again.
"All 'round us police were knocking people down and beating them and kicking them.
Supporting Barbara, who was in pain, I tried to get us back in the direction we'd come from.
We ended up in the parking lot, where police were still bashing and pushing and kicking
people.
"Barbara was bleeding pretty colorfully. We had had enough. But we tried to make sure that
people saw what L.A.'s was capable of when it came to controlling an orderly ring of peace
demonstrators."
Mrs. Bernice Hamm
"My son, 18, is a hemi-plegic. He is paralyzed on his right hand. His left leg is in a brace. He
has double vision. The police came to us and pushed us off the street. We never heard the
bullhorn announcements because the police were stopped nearby with their motors running
and the helicopters also drowned out the announcements.
"A man on crutches was being clubbed in the back by police. The people said, 'He can't
move any faster.' The police said, 'He got here on crutches, he can leave on crutches.'
"Then the police attacked my son. He fell on the street and was struck on the head. (He has
had three brain operations; he has an apparatus in his skull which keeps him alive.) I was
pushed or fell to my knees over my son, trying to protect him. A policeman stepped on his
good hand and kicked him. His glasses were completely smashed.
"He seems all right now, but had a throbbing headache. May be seriously hurt, takes a few
days to tell his condition."
The Los Angeles Free Press
June 30, 1967
Why Did It Happen?
by Art Kunkin
The position of the Los Angeles Police Department is: We gave the anti-Johnson
demonstrators at Century City fair and legal warning last Friday. We ordered them to
disperse. When they did not move, and when they did not move fast enough, we did what
was necessary: we cleared the streets. If we had to use billy clubs, well, that is why we
have them. We have the duty to protect the President, our government, property, and the
private citizen against unlawful, unruly mobs.
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Fact: The Los Angeles police are trained in crowd control and crowd psychology: Fact: The
demonstrators had every legal right to be where they were. Didn't the police perceive that
the demonstrators strongly believe in their constitutional right to assemble in protest
against the policies of the American government?
Didn't the police anticipate that the demonstrators would be unwilling to disperse, would
consider the order to disperse itself an unlawful act when (Fact) there was no violence or
disorder of any type before the police moved in with drawn billy clubs; when (Fact) there
was no movement of the demonstrators toward the hotel in violation of private property or
the conditions of the parade permit; when (Fact) the President was never endangered by a
single demonstrator; when (Fact) the march monitors had the situation in hand and could
have moved the crowd past the hotel in an orderly fashion if the police had not interfered.
Everyone concerned with the preservation of orderly and democratic government in the
United States must therefore ask: Do police have the right to aggressively attack and
bloodily disperse a peaceful group of demonstrators? Do police I have an unquestioned right
to pursue riotous policies behind I. the cover of an unnecessary and unwise order to
disperse? Do 11 the police have the right to strike first, the right to be the "military
aggressors" on the basis of unfounded and unsubstantiated assumptions that trouble will
develop?
There was a clear alternative to the police riot at Century City. The police properly should
have adopted a defensive posture, maintaining their protective lines in front of the hotel
where the President was dining and cooperating on traffic control with the parade monitors.
There was never any clear I "danger" to the police, the President or public safety which
justified dispersal of the crowd (until, of course, the police 'themselves endangered public
safety).
Assuming that the police training in crowd psychology is of any value at all, the police must
have known that the. unnecessary order for 20,000 persons to disperse was only a signal
for a few people in the crowd to sit down as a demonstration of their commitment. We must
assume the police did know that some people in the back lines would not move, making it
impossible for those directly in front of the police to get out of the way of the billy clubs.
How do you "back up" with 20,000 people behind you?
The police are not stupid. They must have known that their order to disperse was inevitably
a prelude to violence. When the order to disperse was given, at least one group of
policemen were ordered by a superior to loosen or remove their ties so demonstrators could
not grab them.
Why were the police so willing to provoke a violent reaction? Why were the police so
impatient with the demonstrators when all reason suggests that police authority must
exercise "the greatest patience when confronted by a mass of citizens convinced of their
legal rights?
It is too easy to say that many individual officers are recruited from among the violent
sadists of our society, are paranoids viewing the community from a standpoint of fearful
hostility. But whether or not this is true, it is a matter of record now that Police Chief
Thomas Reddin was quite pleased with the police violence and viewed it as a useful
exercise. Perhaps he sees the situation resulting in more tax money for the police
department and as training for other exercises in crushing dissent.
It is a matter of record that Mayor Yorty is happy. Perhaps he thinks his political position is
strengthened among those millions who mistakenly have learned from the mass media that
communists and unruly mobs caused the police to use their clubs.
94
In their documentary, "LBJ in L.A." TV Channel Two commentators speculated on the reason
for police aggressiveness. They said they had heard that the Secret Service was unwilling to
permit unfriendly crowds anywhere near the President of the United States, and therefore
influenced police behavior. Channel Two then rightfully asked: What will be the effect on the
1968 elections if only friendly crowds are going to be permitted in a city the President is
visiting?
Unfortunately, many citizens are going to believe the great lie that the police were only
responding to bad behavior on the part of the demonstrators on bloody Friday. There will be
more talk of communist plans in Los Angeles to attack the President as justification for
police actions. Why don't the newspapers, radio and TV stations do a report on the anti-war
movement in Los Angeles which will truthfully show that the overwhelming majority of
Americans who protest the war in Vietnam are, in fact, anti-communist because of a deep
dislike for totalitarianism wherever it exists and that the actual communists in Los Angeles
are an isolated group numbering only a few hundreds at most?
It seems that one has to participate personally in a demonstration to see how the police are
prone to abuse their position of responsibility and, under the guise of dispersing a group of
citizens, wield their billy clubs in an uncalled-for manner.
Tens of thousands of citizens have now experienced unfair police treatment at Century City,
on Sunset Strip, in Watts and in East Los Angeles. While daily newspaper reportage of these
events is often vicious in exaggeration, misstatement and omission, it is true that TV and
radio are bringing to millions of others an immediate coverage which is often closer to the
truth. Unfortunately, all media seem to be minimizing the number of people physically
injured by the police. Many non-arrested demonstrators were processed through the UCLA
Emergency Medical Center last Friday night and at least several hundred did not get
treatment at all or went to private doctors.
The police at Century City had a legitimate role to play as peace officials. However, they
proved to be not peaceful but rioters in the full and worst sense of the word. Who can took
at the photographs in this issue of police trampling women and beating the backs of men on
the ground without being 'fearful for American democracy? Police Chief Reddin, Mayor Yorty
and President Johnson should go back to then" history -books and learn what is the usual
fate of governments and leaders who persist in abusing the people.
The Los Angeles Free Press
June 26, 1967
Policemanship: A Guide
by Doc Stanley
Your life and future depend on how you handle yourself in four contacts with the police. If
you handle yourself poorly you will go to jail, be subjected to police harassments, get
beaten up or perhaps even killed. If you handle yourself well, you will be permitted to
continue your life as a free citizen. Policemanship is perhaps the most important art one can
learn in contemporary America.
95
The first, prime, ultimate thing to remember in dealing with, police officers is RESPECT.
RESPECT is the key. If you treat police officers with respect you will have less trouble in
your relations with the police than if you do not. If you cause or permit a police officer to
feel that you do not respect him or is department you may be beaten up, arrested roughly
or shot.
If you are so disrespectful to a policeman that his image of self is threatened," you are in
danger of losing your life. Almost 11 police officers are touchy about respect for police and
will fact with violence if they feel that proper respect is not shown. If on the other hand, you
cause a police officer to feel that you do respect him, his uniform, his department and the
law, e will not feel called upon to display the show of force which is his method of gaining
respect
Police officers are also touchy about being called by diminutive, pejorative, or slang names.
Address all policemen as “officer," "Sergeant," "sir," or by their title if they are higher inking
officers. Do not under any circumstances use terms like "copper," "fuzz," "nabs" or any
other appellation which could be interpreted to indicate disrespect. In talking with police in
the street or in public places look them in the eye and smile. Keep your hands in sight and
make no rapid or fast moves. If you have occasion to reach into one of your pockets or into
your purse, inform the officer that you wish to do so and ask his permission before you
begin to move. "May I get my wallet out of my back pocket, please. Sir?" is a good form to
use when asked for identification by a policeman. Stand at attention with your hands in the
air when talking with a policeman after he has accepted your identification.
In all conversations with police officers it is safe to assume that at the time of the
conversation you are in fact under arrest. The officer believes this and in case he feels it
necessary to shoot you, he will testify that you resisted arrest and thus justify his action.
Therefore, keep your hands up, speak in polite tones, and don't make any sudden moves,
unless you want to get beaten up or die on the spot.
Keep the conversation with police officers to a minimum. Anything you may say will be used
against you. There is no such thing as friendly conversation with a policeman. Any question
he may ask or any information you may volunteer is part of his investigation.
Establish the fact that you are under arrest as quickly as possible in any encounter with
policemen. Ask "Am I under arrest?" The officer must answer this question. If he answers
"Yes," then ask him to transport you to the police station at once. Ask him to open the door
of the police car and get in. Never, under any circumstances, offer the slightest resistance
to arrest.
Welcome arrest, be happy about it, get to jail as fast as you can. The faster you get to jail,
the faster you will get out and the less chance you give a police officer to beat or shoot you
the better off you are. In this day and age it is rare for prisoners and arrestees to be beaten
once they arrive at the station house or police headquarters. If any beating or shooting is to
occur, it will be in the street or in the police car on the way to the lockup. If you are in the
hands of the police get this part of the process over with as fast as you can in order to
minimize the danger to your person.
You are entitled to the advice of a lawyer at ALL times in your dealings with the police.
Under NO circumstances should you attempt to explain to police ANYTHING without the aid
of your lawyer. Refuse to talk to police interrogators when your lawyer is not present. You
are entitled to a phone call to your attorney, at PUBLIC EXPENSE. Demand your call and
refuse to talk to police until you have contacted your lawyer. Do what he tells you—no
more, no less.
96
If, on the other hand, when you ask "Am I under arrest?", the officer answers "No," thank
him for his time and tell him, "I decline to discuss my private lawful business with police
officers. Excuse me, sir," and wait until he drives away. Do not walk away from the police
car—LET THE CAR PULL AWAY FIRST.
If the officer attempts to question you as to why you are continuing to stand by the police
car after you have declined to discuss your private lawful business with the police, tell him
that you are waiting for him to leave first. If you begin to walk away before the officer
leaves the scene of the contact he may shoot you and later claim that you were resisting
arrest. You won't be there to contradict him, as you will probably be dead. LET THE
OFFICER LEAVE FIRST! This is very important.
It should be borne in mind that respect is often confused with fear in the minds of some
policemen. Thus a citizen who does not present a conservative middle class fear-respect
attitude when being engaged in conversation by police is apt to be bullied and tested in
order to determine his level of hostility to authority. If an individual protests his treatment,
police officers have been known to bait him into a violent outburst which justifies the use of
force and restraint in investigation. Provocative testing of individuals from minority groups
has been held to be a major cause of the violent demonstrations among such groups.
Policemen will sometimes use the stress situation of arrest and investigation to coerce
individuals to confess crimes which they did not commit. This misuse of the coercive power
of police authority has caused large segments of the population to dispense with the
services of police insofar as is possible.
A young man having been through the process of investigative arrest says, "The only time
I'd call the police is when a murder was about to take place, because I would rather call the
cops than explain a body." Thus in certain groups of our society the police are viewed as the
enemy.
"They are always trying to bust you for a traffic warrant," a young lady reports. Persons
with outstanding traffic warrants (probably several thousand warrants a day are added to
the large number already outstanding) can not and do not report incidents of crime to the
police for fear of arrest by the investigating officers.
"Routine" warrant checks on parents of teenagers in custody for curfew violations have been
known to cause the parents to be arrested when they come to recover their children. A man
with a traffic warrant outstanding is just as "hot" as the ten most wanted men.
A particular problem with the police is often experienced by persons who suffer chronic
physical disabilities. Epileptics, for example, have frequently been denied medication while
in custody. In one recent case, a diabetic about to enter insulin shock fought four guards to
a standstill in a nearby city jail over the guards' refusal to give him sugar to prevent the
insulin reaction. Persons requiring medication should carry printed cards signed by a
physician testifying to their condition before venturing on the heavily police-patroled streets
of Los Angeles.
In short, do not walk on the streets of Los Angeles alone, particularly at night when a
pedestrian is an automatic suspect for the policeman in his mobile fortress. But if your job,
or health or leisure activities require you to leave your home and you do have an encounter
with a policeman, be courteous and stay calm. Never resist physically, say it in words. Don't
talk except to give your name and address. If you happen to be in an unusual place at an
unusual hour, then just explain and stop. Say you will answer no more questions until your
lawyer gets there. Tell the policeman you expect to be called Mr., Mrs. or Miss, but don't
argue about it. Tell them you would like the name and badge number of the officers and
write them down. Tell them your lawyer said to do so and always carry an attorney's card to
show to the police.
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If the police want to search ask for then search warrant tell them, "You don't have my
permission to search but I won't stop you." Say this whether you have anything to hide or
not. While the search is on, say nothing except, "I'm innocent and I can't say anything until
my lawyer gets here." If you are arrested say you want to know the charge. (Tell the police
Penal Code #841 requires this.) You can make two phone calls before three hours are up,
one to your family or lawyer, and one to a bail bondsman (Penal Code #851.5). (They have
48 hours to book you. Ask for your lawyer or a court lawyer and for time to talk to him. Say
nothing else until the lawyer arrives.
Don't take "friendly" advice from officers, or discuss your case with other prisoners. Only
your own lawyer is looking out for you. Ask for a chemical drunk test, if it's a drunk charge
arrest.
It's all right to sign a traffic ticket. You don't admit anything by signing. But once you sign
appear in court or pay the bail to prevent a warrant from being issued.
Never carry opened alcoholic beverages in the car. Keep them in a locked trunk.
Juveniles are entitled to a lawyer from the very beginning.
In short, remember to stay calm, don't resist physically, don't talk and know how you can
reach a lawyer in a hurry. Your visit or residence in Los Angeles will be much happier if you
remember these rules.
The Los Angeles Free Press
February 18, 1966
98
The Double Agent Squared
by Tuli Kupferberg
As part of his alternate service (alternate to entering the American business community) a
hippie might elect to do the following:
1) Enters Police Force (local, state, FBI, Treasury Dept., FDA) as double agent,
2) Reports back to local community on pending raids, plans of action &c,
3) Keeps diary on general inside attitudes, unofficial orders & procedures. Bugs station
house locker room—for example—,
4) (After 1-2 years?) resigns. Has helpful book. Has fun.
HIPPIES!
JOIN THE POLICE
SERVE YOURSELF
& SERVE YOUR COMMUNITY TOO!
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
September 8, 1967
Love the Local Heat
by Gridley Wright
The following is from a long tape transcribed in a Los Angeles underground.
Gridley Wright was the "spokesman" for Strawberry Fields, a hippie commune
in the Malibu hills.
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Another thing that I'd like to see is a bumper sticker that says, 'Love the Local Heat.' The
Birchers have 'Support Your Local Police.' Support, man, support! No, man, 'LOVE Your
Local Police! That's where it's at! Put them through changes.
Like when they had these demonstrations on the Sunset Strip. Man, those demonstrations
would have been a thousand per cent more effective if instead of saying 'Stop Police
Brutality,' the signs said 'Love the Police.' Because, you see, a policeman has a response to
the word 'love.' That's a reality to him. He wants to love. If he's ever loved or ever had
flashes of love, he feels good, right? 'Stop Police Brutality.' Man, the policeman doesn't think
he's brutal, HE THINKS HE'S RIGHT! You're not communicating with a person unless you are
TALKING to the person and they listen to you. A policeman can't listen to you if you're
saying he's brutal. You have to accept another person's reality if you're going to be able to
communicate with him, 'cause otherwise you're just playing a word game. I never talk to
the police 'about what THEY'RE doing, you know. I answer his questions about me. They're
not necessarily the words that he's using, but just feeling out the tone of where he's
threatened and of where he's not threatened by you, and where he's open to you. It's just
like communication with anybody.
The Oracle of Southern California (Los Angeles)
Summer, 1967
Guests, Cops Groove
by David 0. Arnold
David O. Arnold is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of
California at Santa Barbara.
"We expected all kinds of trouble—anything, up to full riots. We hadn't had this sort of
people up here before." But the helmeted Monterey motorcycle cop was smiling as he told
me this. And his gas tank, instrument panel and handlebars were adorned with two or three
dozen flowers.
This was the biggest surprise of the Monterey International Pop Festival last weekend. As
has often been the case at such events, the cops expected and prepared for the worst. Chief
of Police Frank Marinello, who has been a cop for 33 years, said, "When the matter of the
Monterey Pop Festival first came up I was quite apprehensive." In addition to his own police
force, he called for assistance from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Department and the
police departments of towns as far away as Gilroy and Salinas. Yet, by Sunday, he had
decided to send 40% of them home—and the ones who remained had very little work to do.
On Sunday afternoon the chief complimented both sides. "There has not been one complaint
lodged against the boys in blue," Marinello said. He then spoke of " … the so-called Hippies
who I have begun to like very much. In all my life I have never encountered such a group of
peace-loving people."
I asked some of the people roaming the fairgrounds what they thought of the police. "They
were pretty groovy cops," one teenaged girl replied. A cat who sold prints in one of the
booths at the fairgrounds simply said, "Oh, fantastic." He told me that when he first arrived
the police were patrolling the grounds three abreast, but then changed to twos, and by the
time the first concert opened Friday night they no longer seemed concerned with defending
themselves.
100
The police felt the same way about the crowd. Friday evening a Monterey City sheriff's
deputy told me the crowd was "as peaceful if not more peaceful" than at the Monterey Jazz
Festival. The next morning, a Negro cop from Seaside felt that "so far it's a lot better" than
the Jazz Festival crowd. As the weekend rolled on, the comments got more and more
positive. Another Sheriff's deputy stated that he had "never heard of a crowd this size this
peaceful." Had he been anticipating trouble? "With this many people you always would," he
said. A Monterey city cop said they were "outstanding. Surprisingly, no trouble at all." At the
Jazz Festival he sometimes has to "push people a little to get them to move, but here
there's no trouble."
After a number of such comments from the crowd and police, I deliberately set out to see if
I could elicit negative remarks. No one could think of a single item of police behavior that
they could criticize.
One Monterey motorcycle cop finally came up with something. "The biggest problem I
have," he told me, "is getting them to walk near the fence rather than in the middle of the
street" But this, he felt, was really a trivial matter, and for the most part he found the
crowd quite well-behaved. Like the other motorcycle cop, this one also had flowers
decorating his machine. Unlike the other one, however, he also had a stick of burning
sandalwood incense attached to his speedometer.
The police inside the main gates had no motorcycles to decorate, but they found other ways
to groove. Several cops had yellow or purple flowers fastened to their badges, and one
sheriff's lieutenant had a flower in his hatband as well as a button on his coat which
announced "Warning: Your Local Police are Armed and Dangerous." Without, my even
asking him, he volunteered the comment that he's "seen crowds all my life and this is the
nicest crowd I ever saw. Beautiful people. Wonderful crowd." I saw a girl hand a burlylooking, helmeted cop a daisy; he was surprised at first, but when he saw her smile he
hesitantly returned the smile. When I passed him again ten minutes later, he was still
carrying the daisy in his hand.
Tommy Smothers came up with the term "flower fuzz" at the end of the Festival—and flower
fuzz they were.
Terry McVay, the Animals' road manager, has probably had as much experience with this
sort of thing as anyone at the Festival. He felt the way the police handled things "couldn't
be better." The police at most concerts take one of two extreme approaches, McVay said.
Either they accomplish nothing—in which case, with a group such as Eric Burdon and The
Animals, "the result is diabolical," or else there is a solid wall of police. "But here," he told
me during the last concert, "it's 'been fantastic without large numbers of police. There's
been very good organization, very good."
A moderate number of arrests is to be expected at a 2 1/2 day gathering of close to 50,000
people. But as of 8 P.M. Sunday, according to Chief Marinello, not a single arrest had been
made for any reason. State narcotics officers had picked up two boys who had apparently
been smoking pot, Marinello said, but there was not enough evidence to hold them.
Why did things go so well at Monterey? Where there are bad relations between the police
and the public whom they supposedly "protect and serve," the police have sometimes
earned the blame heaped upon them. But by the same token, at Monterey they deserve a
great deal of credit. Chief Marinello personally should be praised, as should the men working
for him.
101
The attitude of the festival organizers also played an important role. Derek Taylor, who was
road manager for the Beatles' first American tour, summed up this attitude an hour before
the first concert Friday evening. "Throughout the extraordinarily complicated planning
period," Taylor said, "none of us in the Festival offices in Hollywood exchanged a harsh
word, and, we know that we can pass the weekend peacefully because we've learned to
remind ourselves in moments of press that it's a Festival we're having, not a war.
"There will be no problems," he continued, "there will be only dilemmas capable of
resolution."
The third group that must share the credit is 45,000 strong: the people who attended the
Festival. When no one gets up tight, hassles can't arise. If we in Southern California can
learn the lesson of Monterey, we too might find the "unviciouscircle" of understanding and
cooperation starting to turn.
The Los Angeles Free Press
June 23, 1967
POSTSCRIPT: The day this article appeared in the Free Press, Los Angeles police broke up a
peace demonstration—reported earlier in this chapter.
A Letter from Alan Watts
The Editor
Oracle
Sir:
Recent and current "race" riots have many causes, but one of them is most certainly hatred
of the police. In this country, the big-city police forces have, at present, an extremely bad
public image, which must be changed now—because nothing is more basic to the morale of
the community than respect for the law and its officers. May I therefore submit the following
simple and practical proposals. They will not solve the entire problem, but will make a
substantial contribution to that end.
1. Clothes all too easily make the man, and those who dress like Nazi SS troopers tend to
behave like them. Police uniforms should therefore be changed from black or blue to khakigreen, and, instead of helmets or vizored caps, we should restore the old Campaign Hat, as
worn by Forest Rangers and Mounties—officials generally liked by the public as helpful
"scouts." If there must be helmets, let them be those of the British "bobbies."
2. The police must cease to carry armaments other than truncheons or night-sticks.
Concurrently, the civilian public should forbid themselves to own firearms other than
shotguns, and automatic weapons should be outlawed, and I say this even as a former
member of the National Rifle Association.
3. In accordance with the constitutional principle' of the separation of Church and State, the
police must have no further jurisdiction in matters of personal and private morals. Nothing
brings them in greater disrespect than being required to act as armed preachers, enforcing
sumptuary laws against gambling, wenching, boozing, and drug-taking. Such jurisdiction is
also a major cause of police corruption, inviting blackmail, harassment, entrapment, and
acceptance of bribes. The drunken driver, for example, should be charged with bad driving—
not with intoxication. All efforts to get rid of the causes of crime, by force, end as attempts
to get rid of human nature, and all truly moral behavior is, by definition, voluntary.
4. Police duties should be confined to the essential functions of (a) directing traffic, (b)
protecting the citizenry from murder, robbery, and violence, and (c) giving due assistance
to lost children and little old ladies.
102
If these four basic principles are worked out in detail, we in the United States will have
loved and honored police forces, as distinct from officially sponsored corps of racketeers,
hoodlums, and booted bullies—all the more dangerous for being allowed to vent their spleen
with a clear conscience. There will be respect for authority when, and only when, authority
is itself respectable.
Very truly yours,
Alan Watts
Sausalito, Calif.
The Oracle of Southern California (Los Angeles)
October, 1967
103
EDUCATION: Student is Spelled N-I-G-G-E-R
Highschoolers Start Free Speech Crusade
The college "Free Speech" movement has finally filtered own to the high school level and a
full scale rebellion is now in progress in Los Angeles against dictatorial school administers.
The rebellion blew up a new head of steam Friday in the second free speech rally sponsored
by Students for a Democratic Campus and one of the new high school underground
newspapers, Insight (Hamilton High).
More than 100 high school students—from such West Los Angeles schools as Hamilton,
University, Fairfax and Dorsey—gathered to discuss a "Bill of Rights" the Students for a
Democratic Campus group has proposed.
More rallies—expected to bring together students from high schools throughout the city—
are planned and discussions have begun in at least one school between the dissident
students and administrators.
The "Constitution and Bill of Rights" read Friday demands the following liberties:
—Freedom of Advocacy (including the distribution of literature on
controversial social and political issues on campus).
—Freedom of Speech (including campus distribution of the independent high
school "underground" papers).
—Freedom of Speech (including the setting up of "free speech" areas where
students can openly debate important issues and bring controversial figures
to hear their views).
—Freedom to organize student political organizations on campus.
—The right to have student representatives on hand to help set
administrative policies.
—The right of petition and initiative in school government
—The right to join with the faculty to determine local school policy—without
administrative dictation.
—The right to dress as students please (no chopping of long hair or school
dress codes).
—An end to corporal and unjust punishment.
—An end to forced self-incrimination.
—An end to forwarding of students' school records to outside agencies and
businesses without the student's consent.
The "constitution" even demands an even more fundamental change in the relationship of
the students to their high schools. It asks that students be given the legal minimum wage
while in class.
Barry Tavlin, editor of Insight, reported that demands of the sort listed above will be
discussed by a newly formed student-administration council at Hamilton High in the next
few weeks.
"The pressure for student rights is growing," said Tavlin. "The first Democratic Campus rally
we held January 20 at Rancho Cienega Park was attended mostly by Dorsey High students.
105
"Last week's rally," he continued, "was attended by students from many more schools and
the ones we plan in the future are bound to be citywide."
The Los Angeles Free Press
March 3, 1967
The Student as Baby
by Barry Tavlin
The Los Angeles Schools are run according to the philosophy in loco parentis. This means
(and the translation shows) H that for administrative purposes the school is acting in place
of the parent.
Many people argue that this or any type of paternal school system is bad. These people say
that education should develop mature, responsible individuals; that in this system a person
cannot assume responsibility if he is constantly watched by a parent figure; that the
inherent controls in the system hinder, rather than help the development of the individual.
It is suggested, therefore, that the loco parentis system be eliminated. These points are all
valid and worthy of consideration.
It seems apparent, however, that the current system will plot be eliminated for a while. If
we are to keep this paternal system, we should at least modernize it, as is needed. An
objective look will show that the system is not designed for today's High School students.
There is a fence around each school. The gates are locked during school and a student must
get permission to leave before the school day ends. But till what age must a child be locked
in, asking permission to leave? Is it not assumed that if a person can drive a car he can
leave any premises on his volition? Why the lock on the high school? '
The students of each school are told what clothes they may wear and how they may wear
their hair. But till what age must children be dressed by their parents? How old is the child
when he starts buying clothes for himself? At what age does a child first go by himself for a
haircut?
The student is certainly not of high school age. In the schools a student must ask to leave a
classroom. Students are not allowed in the halls without authorization. At what age are
children taught (or forced) to ask to be excused from the room? How old is the child who
must have his mommy's permission to go where he is going? Is this a high school student—
"Teacher, may I go to the lavatory?"
It is legal today for a teacher or administrator to hit a student. But is not force only used on
those supposedly incapable of reason? Are these developing individuals no longer rational
creatures?
The most significant failure of in loco parentis is in education itself. All material that a
student sees is pre-read and censored and/or watered down. The curricula and activities
have all been pre-softened for the students. No distribution of outside material is allowed.
But at what age are children given a Gerber's Diet of Pacts—a bulk of easy to digest good
news? (Yes, of course there is a Santa Claus, Mary.) How old are children who cannot
always be told the truth? (Did I really come from a stork. Daddy?) -(No Johnny, your
mother isn't crying; she has something in her eye.) (Yes, son, America is our country and
it's the best—Couldn't be better.) What age child cannot read a story because it may have
an unhappy ending? Why are high school students treated as if they were of this age?
106
In our discussion of in loco parentis we must blame the Board of Education for the policy's
existence. In viewing its interpretation and enforcement, however, we must condemn the
school administrations and personnel. In watching it remain unchanged, we can only blame
ourselves, an aware but inactive community. If the changes are to come about, they must
come because of the demands of responsible adults, intelligent teachers, and sincere, active
students.
Insight
Hamilton High School (Los Angeles)
The Student as Nigger
by Jerry Farber
Students are niggers. When you get that straight, our schools begin to make sense. It's
more important, though, to understand why they're niggers. If we follow that question
seriously enough, it will lead us past the zone of academic bullshit, where dedicated
teachers pass their knowledge on to a new generation, and into the nitty-gritty of human
needs and hangups. And from there we can go on to consider whether it might ever be
possible for students to come up from slavery.
First let's see what's happening now. Let's look at the role students play in what we like to
call education.
At Cal State LA. where I teach, the students have separate and unequal dining facilities. If I
take them into the faculty dining room, my colleagues get uncomfortable, as though there
were a bad smell. If I eat in the student cafeteria, I become known as the educational
equivalent of a niggerlover. In at least one building there are even rest rooms which
students may not use. At Cal State, also, there is an unwritten law barring student-faculty
lovemaking. Fortunately, this anti-miscegenation law, like its Southern counterpart, is not
percent effective.
Students at Cal State are politically disenfranchised. They are in an academic Lowndes
County. Most of them can vote in national elections—their average age is about 26—but
they have no voice in the decisions which affect their academic lives. The students, are, it is
true, allowed to have a toy government of their own. It is a government run for the most
part by Uncle Toms and concerned principally with trivia. The faculty and administrators
decide what courses will be offered; the students get to choose their own Homecoming
Queen! Occasionally, when student leaders get uppity and rebellious, (they're either
ignored, put off with trivial concessions, or maneuvered expertly out of position.
A student at Cal State is expected to know his place. He calls a faculty member "Sir" or
"Doctor" or "Professor"—, and he smiles and shuffles some as he stands outside the
professor's office waiting for permission to enter. The faculty tell him what courses to take
(in my department, English, even electives have to be approved by a faculty member); they
tell him what to read, what to write, and, frequently, where to set the margins on his
typewriter. They tell him what's true and what isn't. Some teachers insist that they
encourage dissent but they're almost always jiving and every student knows it. Tell the man
what he wants to hear or he'll fail your ass out of the course.
107
When a teacher says "jump," students jump. I know of one professor who refused to take
up class time for exams and required students to show up for tests at 6:00 in the morning.
And they did, by God! Another, at exam time, provides answer cards to be filled out—each
one enclosed in a paper bag with a hole cut in the top to see through. Students stick their
writing hands in the bags while taking the test. The teacher isn't a provo; I wish he were.
He does it to prevent cheating. Another colleague once caught a student reading during one
of his lectures and threw her book against the wall. Still another lectures his students into a
stupor and then screams at them in a rage when they fall asleep.
Just last week, during the first meeting of a class, one girl got up to leave after about ten
minutes had gone by. The teacher rushed over, grabbed her by the arm, saying "This class
is NOT dismissed!" and led her back to her seat. On the same day another teacher began by
informing his class that he does not like beards, mustaches, long hair on boys, or Capri
pants on girls, and will not tolerate any of that in his class. The class, incidentally, consisted
mostly of high school teachers.
Even more discouraging than this Auschwitz approach to education is the fact that the
students take it. They haven't gone through twelve years of public school for nothing.
They've learned one thing and perhaps only one thing during those twelve years. They've
forgotten their algebra. They're hopelessly vague about chemistry and physics. They've
grown to fear and resent literature.' They write like they've been lobotomized. But, Jesus,
can they follow orders! Freshmen come up to me with an essay and ask if I want it folded
and whether their name should be in the upper right hand corner. And I want to cry and
kiss them and caress their poor tortured heads.
Students don't ask that orders make sense. They give up expecting things to make sense
long before they leave elementary school. Things are true because the teacher says they're
true. At a very early age we all learn to accept "two truths" as did certain medieval
churchmen. Outside of class, things are true to your tongue, your fingers, your stomach,
your heart. Inside class, things are true by reason of authority. And that's just fine because
you don't care anyway. Miss Wiedemsyer tells you a noun is a person, place or thing. So let
it be. You don't give a rat's ass; she doesn't give a rat's ass.
The important thing is to please her. Back in kindergarten, you found out that teachers only
love children who stand in nice straight lines. And that's where it's been at ever since.
Nothing changes except to get worse. School becomes more and more obviously a prison.
Last year I spoke to a student assembly at Manual Arts High School and then couldn't get
out of the goddamn school. I mean there was NO WAY OUT. Locked doors. High fences. One
of the inmates was trying to make it over a fence when he saw me coming and froze in
panic. For a moment, I expected sirens, a rattle of bullets, and him clawing the fence.
Then there's the infamous "code of dress." In some high schools, if your skirt looks too
short, you have to kneel before the principal, in a brief allegory of fellatio. If the hem
doesn't reach the floor, you go home to change while he, presumably, jacks off. Boys in
high school can't be too sloppy and they can't even be too sharp. You'd think the school
board would be delighted to see all the spades trooping to school in pointy shoes, suits, ties
and stingy brims. Uh-uh. They're too visible.
What school amounts to, then, for white and black kids alike, is a 12-year course in how to
be slaves. What else could explain what I see in a freshman class? They've got that slave
mentality: obliging and ingratiating on the surface but hostile and resistant underneath.
108
As do black slaves, students vary in their awareness of what's going on. Some recognize
their own put-on for what it is and even let their rebellion break through to the surface now
and then. Others—including most of the "good students"—have been more deeply
brainwashed. They swallow the bullshit with greedy mouths. They honest-to-God believe in
grades, in busy work, in General Education requirements. They're pathetically eager to be
pushed around. They're like those old grey-headed house niggers you can still find in the
South who don't see what all the fuss is about because Mr. Charlie "treats us real good."
College entrance requirements tend to favor the Toms and screen out the rebels. Not
entirely, of course. Some students at Cal State, L.A. are expert con artists who know
perfectly well what's happening. They want the degree or the 2-S and spend their years on
the old plantation alternately laughing and cursing as they play the game. If their egos are
strong enough, they cheat a lot. And, of course, even the Toms are any down deep
somewhere. But it comes out in passive rather than active aggression. They're
unexplainably thick-witted and subject to frequent spells of laziness. They misread simple
questions. They spend their nights mechanically outlining history chapters while
meticulously failing to comprehend a word of what's in front of them.
The saddest cases among both black slaves and student slaves are the ones who have so
thoroughly interjected their masters' values that their anger is all turned inward. At Cal
State these are the kids for whom every low grade is torture, who stammer and shake when
they speak to a professor, who go through an emotional crisis every time they're called
upon during class. You can recognize them easily at finals time. Their faces are festooned
with fresh pimples; their bowels boil audibly across the room. If there really is a Last
Judgment, then the parents and teachers who created these wrecks are going to burn in
hell.
So students are niggers. It's time to find out why, and to do this, we have to take a long
look at Mr. Charlie.
The teachers I know best are college professors. Outside the classroom and taken as a
group, their most striking characteristic is timidity. They're short on balls.
Just look at their working conditions. At a time when even migrant workers have begun to
fight and win, college professors are still afraid to make more than a token effort to improve
their pitiful economic status. In California State colleges the faculties are screwed regularly
and vigorously by the Governor and Legislature and yet they still won't offer any solid
resistance. They lie flat on their stomachs, with their pants down, mumbling catch phrases
like "professional dignity" and "meaningful dialogue."
Professors were no different when I was an undergraduate at UCLA during the McCarthy
era; it was like a cattle stampede as they rushed to cop out. And in more recent years, I
found that my being arrested in sit-ins brought from my colleagues not so much approval or
condemnation as open-mouthed astonishment. "You could lose your job!"
Now, of course, there's the Vietnamese war. It gets some opposition from a few teachers.
Some support it. But a vast number of professors who know perfectly well what's
happening, are copping out again. And in the high schools, you can forget it. Stillness
reigns.
I'm not sure why teachers are so chickenshit. It could be that academic training itself forces
a split between thought and action. It might also be that the tenured security of a teaching
job attracts timid persons who are unsure of themselves and need weapons and the other
external trappings of authority.
109
At any rate teachers ARE short of balls. And, as Judy Eisenstein has eloquently pointed out,
the classroom offers an artificial and protected environment in which they can exercise their
will to power. Your neighbors may drive a better car; gas station attendants may intimidate
you; your wife may dominate you; the State Legislature may shit on you; but in the
classroom, by God, students do what you say—or else. The grade is a hell of a weapon. It
may not rest on your hip, potent and rigid like a cop's gun, but in the long run it's more
powerful. At your personal whim—any time you choose—you can keep 35 students up for
nights and have the pleasure of seeing them walk into the classroom pasty-faced and redeyed carrying a sheaf of typewritten pages, with title page, MLA footnotes and margins set
at 15 and 91.
The general timidity which causes teachers to make niggers of their students usually
includes a more specific fear—fear of the students themselves. After all, students are
different, just like black people. You stand exposed in front of them, knowing that their
interests, their values and their language are different from yours. To make matters worse,
you may I suspect that you yourself are not the most engaging persons. What then can
protect you from their ridicule and scorn? Respect for Authority. That's what. It's the
policeman's gun again. The white bwana's pith helmet. So you flaunt that authority. You
wither whisperers with a murderous glance. You crush objectors with erudition and heavy
irony. And, worst of all, you make your own attainments seem not accessible but
awesomely remote. You conceal massive ignorance—and parade a slender learning.
The teacher's fear is mixed with an understandable need to be admired and to feel superior,
a need which also makes him cling to his "White supremacy." Ideally, a teacher should
minimize the distance between himself and his students. He should encourage them not to
need him … eventually or even immediately. But this is rarely the case. Teachers make
themselves high priests of arcane mysteries. They become masters of mumbo-jumbo. Even
a more or less conscientious teacher may be torn between the need to give and the need to
hold back, the desire to free his students and the desire to hold them in bondage to him, I
can find no other explanation that accounts for the way my own subject, literature, is
generally taught. Literature, which ought to be a source of joy, solace and enlightenment,
often becomes in the classroom nothing more than a source of anxiety—at best an arena for
expertise, a ledger book for the ego. Literature teachers, often afraid to join a real union,
nonetheless may practice the worst kind of trade-unionism in the classroom; they do to
literature what Beckmesser does to song in Wagner's "Meistersinger." The avowed purpose
of English departments is to teach literature; too often their real function is to kill it.
Finally, there's the darkest reason of all for the master-slave approach to education. The
less trained and the less socialized a person, the more he constitutes a sexual threat, and
the more he will be subjugated by institutions such as penitentiaries and schools. Many of
us are aware by now of the sexual neurosis which makes white man so fearful of integrated
schools and neighborhoods and which makes the castration of Negroes a deeply entrenched
Southern folkway. We should recognize a similar pattern in education. There is a kind of
castration that goes on in schools. It begins, before school years, with parents' first
encroachment on their children's free unashamed sexuality and continues right up to the
day when they hand you your doctoral diploma with a bleeding, shriveled pair of testicles
stapled to the parchment. It's not that sexuality has no place in the classroom. You'll find it
there but only in certain perverted and vitiated forms.
110
How does sex show up in school? First of all, there's the sado-masochistic relationship
between teachers and students. That's plenty sexual, although the price of enjoying it is to
be unaware of what's happening. In walks the teacher in his Ivy League equivalent of a
motorcycle jacket. In walks the teacher—a kind of intellectual rough trade—and flogs his
students with grades, tests, sarcasm and snotty superiority until their very brains are
bleeding. In Swinburne's England, the whipped school boy frequently grew up to be
flagellant. With us the perversion is intellectual but it's no less perverse.
Sex also shows up in the classroom as academic subject matter—sanitized and abstracted,
thoroughly divorced from feeling. You get "sex education" now in both high school and
college classes: everyone determined not to be embarrassed, to be Very up to date, very
contempo. These are the classes for which sex, as Feiffer puts it. "can be a beautiful thing if
properly administered." And then, of course, there's still another depressing manifestation
of sex in the classroom: the "off-color" teacher, who keeps his class awake with sniggering
sexual allusions, obscene titters and academic innuendo. The sexuality he purveys, it must
be admitted, is at least better than none at all.
What's missing, from kindergarten to graduate school, is honest recognition of what's
actually happening—turned-on awareness of hairy goodies underneath the petti-pants, the
chinos and the flannels. It's not that sex needs to be pushed in school; sex is push enough.
But we should let it be, where it is and like it is. I don't insist that ladies in junior high
lovingly caress their students' cocks (someday, maybe); however, it is reasonable to ask
that the ladies don't, by example and stricture, teach their students to pretend that those
cocks aren't there. As things stand now, students are psychically castrated and spayed—and for the very same reason that black men are castrated in Georgia: because they're a
threat
So you can add sexual repression to the list of causes, along with vanity, fear and will to
power, that turn the teacher into Mr. Charlie. You might also want to keep in mind that he
was a nigger once himself and has never really gotten over it. And there are more causes,
some of which are better described in sociological than psychological terms. Work them out
It's not hard. But in the meantime what we've got on our hands is a whole lot of niggers.
And what makes this particularly grim is that the student has less chance than the black
man of getting out of his bag. Because the student doesn't even know he's in it. That, more
or less, is what's happening in higher education. And the results are staggering.
For one thing damn little education takes place in the schools How could it? You can't
educate slaves; you can only train them. Or, to use an even uglier and more timely word,
you can only program them.
I like to folk dance. Like other novices, I've gone to the Intersection or to the Museum and
laid out good money in order to learn how to dance. No grades, no prerequisites, no
separate dining rooms; they just turn you on to dancing. That's education. Now look at what
happens in college. A friend of mine. Milt, recently finished a folk dance class. For his final I
exam, he had to learn things like this: "The Irish are known for their wit and imagination,
qualities reflected in their dances, which include the jig, the reel and the hornpipe." And
then the teacher graded him A,B,C,D, or F, while he danced in front of her. That's not
education. That's not even training. That's an abomination on the face of the earth. It's
especially ironic because Milt took that dance class trying to get out of lithe academic rut.
He took crafts for the same reason. Great, Fright? Get your hands in some clay? Make
something? Then the teacher announced that a 20-page term paper would be required—
with footnotes.
111
At my school we even grade people on how they read poetry. That's like grading people on
how they fuck. But we do it. In fact, God help me, I do it. I'm the Adolph Eichmann of
English 323. Simon Legree on the poetry plantation. "Tote that iamb! Lift that spondee!"
Even to discuss a good poem in that environment is potentially dangerous because the very
classroom is contaminated. As hard as I may try to turn students on to poetry, I know that
the desks, the tests, the IBM cards, their own attitudes toward school and my own residue
of UCLA method are turning them off.
Another result of student slavery is equally serious. Students ,don't get emancipated when
they graduate. As a matter of fact, we don't let them graduate until they've demonstrated
their willingness—over 16 years—to remain slaves. And for important jobs, like teaching, we
make them go through more years, just to make sure. What I'm getting at is that we're all
more or less niggers and slaves, teachers and students alike. This is a fact you want to start
with in trying to understand wider social phenomena, say, politics, in our country and in
other countries.
Educational oppression is trickier to fight than racial oppression. If you're a black rebel, they
can't exile you; they either have to intimidate you or kill you. But in high school or college,
they can just bounce you out of the fold. And they do. Rebel students and renegade faculty
members get smothered or shot down with devastating accuracy. In high school, it's usually
the student who gets it; in college, it's more often the teacher. Others get tired of fighting
and voluntarily leave the system. This may be a mistake, though. Dropping out of college
for a rebel, is a little like going North, for a Negro. You can't really get away from it so you
might as well stay and raise hell.
How do you raise hell? That's a whole other article. But just for a start, why not stay with
the analogy? What have black people done? They have, first of all, faced the fact of their
slavery. They've stopped kidding themselves about an eventual reward in the Great
Watermelon Patch in the sky. They've organized; they've decided to get freedom now, and
they've started taking it.
Students, like black people, have immense unused power. They could, theoretically, insist
on participating in their own education. They could make academic freedom bilateral. They
could teach their teachers to thrive on love and admiration, rather than fear and respect,
and to lay dawn their weapons. Students could discover community. And they could learn to
dance by dancing on the IBM cards. They could make coloring books out of the catalogs and
they could put the grading system in a museum. They could raze one set of walls and let life
come blowing into the classroom. They could raze another set of walls and let education
flow out and flood the streets. They could turn the classroom into where it's at—a "field of
action" as Peter Marin describes it. And, believe it or not, they could study eagerly and learn
prodigiously for the best of all possible reasons—their own reasons.
They could. Theoretically. They have the power. But only in a very few places, like Berkeley,
have they even begun to think about using it. For students as for black people, the hardest
battle isn't with Mr. Charlie. It's what Mr. Charlie has done to your mind.
The Los Angeles Free Press
March 3, 1967
112
Warhol or Art History? Academic Freedom at Issue
by Clay Carson
Whether Andy Warhol and freakouts are legitimate subjects for instruction in a college art
class is under dispute at UCLA where an assistant professor of art history is being phased
out Kurt von Meier, notified last week that his contract with the art history department
would not be renewed when it expired in June, alleges that the real issue is one of academic
freedom.
In his classes he has blended the past with the present by resenting Andy Warhol in the
classroom, opening an art ambition with a freakout, playing Otis Redding recordings,
reading in class the poetry of John Lennon and such prose work as "Summerhill" and the
"Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-flake Streamline Baby."
Traditionally, art history is taught chronologically with heavy emphasis on the memorization
of dates and artist and picture names.
Von Meier believes that the teacher should instead make the student aware of the nature of
art and make it part of his personal environment … thus the emphasis on contemporary art
forms which reach more directly into the student's daily awareness rather than on older
"canned" art.
He encourages new ideas from his students, but demands that their individual projects and
papers have purpose and real intellectual content.
"You've got good, wild ideas," he told one student, "but you've got to make some sense
historically. This IS an art history class and I AM an art historian, believe it or not."
Needless to say, von Meier is considered a heretic by the more conservative members of the
UCLA Art History Department, one of whose members, Dr. Lester Longmen, has accused
current intellectual leaders as having "lost faith in God, in man, in reason and the future of
the human race."
The removal of the controversial von Meier follows a sad but increasingly evident UCLA
pattern of shying away from truly creative instructors as exemplified by the recent
departure of poet Jack Hirshman and the cancellation last year of a Lawrence Lipton course.
Von Meier regards it as a violation of academic freedom and demands that the matter be
considered by the UCLA Academic Senate.
"By every tradition of academic freedom, course content is left to the professor," he told the
Free Press. "At no point did If anyone tell me there was a problem. They just lied to me.
"I don't want to fight them for my job. (He has a number of other lucrative offers). I want
the Academic Senate to take a stand, though, on what I feel to be an issue of academic
freedom—free inquiry into ideas with respect to content of course and methodology.
"This case will decide whether I will ever teach again. It will decide for me whether there
are any possibilities left in the university.
"The administration here has no real concern with education," he continued. "They keep a
close guard on the students and hold convocations to siphon off future challenge."
Von Meier, a Princeton Ph.D. and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, is greatly respected by art
historians across the nation.
He is widely published and highly regarded by a number of his UCLA colleagues, including
Eugene Klienbauer, who calls him a "brilliant man."
113
The move to end his contract apparently came after conservative members of the faculty
received letters from some of von Meier's students complaining about his unorthodox
techniques.
Since the controversy over his methods arose, von Meier has been assigned to teaching a
graduate seminar and no longer teaches modern art classes.
The Los Angeles Free Press
January 13, 1967
Otherseens
by John Wilcock
America's need to prolong the infancy of the twenties is based mainly on the inability of the
economy to absorb all those kids who come pouring out of school in their early teens. But
there are good reasons for believing that this country's immature posturings in world politics
are directly attributable to a fatal malaise that could be called "too much childhood."
Pinpointing this problem, the newly formed Committee to Discredit College Degrees is
starting a propaganda campaign to discourage parents from "the too-automatic assumption
that letters mean more than literacy." Committee chairman Seward Campbell—a Ph.D.,
incidentally—explains: "What we have here is the self-perpetuating cliché that a kid without
a college degree can't get a good job—so employers insist on a degree instead of simple,
rational intelligence. Common sense should tell anybody that the ability to think is not
necessarily related to the ability to learn a lot of meaningless facts and pass a series of
exams. Particularly as the set of acceptable facts is liable to change from time to time and
place to place."
Deploring the worldwide spread of what it terms "American-oriented higher education,"
CDCD plans to set up chapters in England, Germany, and Mexico ("America's most slavish
imitators") to foster the belief that intelligence is as important as college degrees and this
can be acquired "by using the brain as well as the memory."
The East Village Other (New York)
September 1, 1966
Student Power: Toward a Strategy of Disruption
by Stephen Saltonstall
This article was prepared for a summer conference at the Center for the
Study of Democratic Institutions. Stephen Saltonstall is a student at a New
England university and is a nephew of the governor of Massachusetts.
The "silent generation" has been a thing of the past for nearly seven years now. Since about
1960, when the nuclear disarmament and sit-in movements got underway, student activism
has been gathering momentum steadily, both in terms of militance and of numbers of those
involved. The last academic year saw Berkeley shut down by a student strike, Sand Hubert
Humphrey roughed up in Ann Arbor and Palo Alto. It witnessed the downfall of reactionary
administrators at Howard University and Boston University; it saw former Harvard professor
Robert McNamara mobbed in Cambridge. And this fall, one-half of America's state
universities will have "new-left" student body presidents.
114
But simultaneous with the success of the new politics on the campuses has come the
triumph of reaction outside of them. We crouch to our television sets while armies invade
our cities. We protest, but the government continues its systematic annihilation of the
Vietnamese peasant. Billions of dollars are spent by Congress to send sterilized nose-cones
to the moon, but not one cent to curb New York's eight million rats. Gag-rule is the byword
not only of the Joe-Joe Pools and Dean Rusks, but of the U.S. Justice Department, as its
counselors scuttle in search of ways to silence Jim Garrison one flay, or Rap Brown the next.
It is not that our ideas have lacked a hearing. David Riesman remarked recently that
student activists have been "childish" in assuming that since their protests have been
ineffectual, they have not been registered. No, President Johnson has big ears; the walls
have bugs. A more plausible reason for the failure of our program, I suggest, is the anomaly
of our exceedingly conservative tactics in light of our radical goals. In particular, we have
failed up to now to question two myths which the American establishment has always used
to keep radical reformers in line.
The first of these myths is mouthed widely and often, from the gamut of house-leftists like
Michael Harrington, to those imposingly-titled corporate defenders of the status quo (e.g.
"Freedom House"). It is most shrilly voiced when radicals seem to be on the verge of
changing things. The only acceptable means of bringing about reform, we are told, are
those consistent with the "democratic process"—whatever that is. Persuasion, education,
and exercise of franchise is "responsible protest." Coercion is "irresponsible" and
"undemocratic." This cliché of the liberal center is at the very least historically naive. Nearly
all of our radical reforms have been brought about (or thwarted) by coercion. Without men
like Denmark Vesey or Nat Turner, indeed without the Civil War, slavery might not have
ended—and without the Klansmen and their vicious "Mississippi Plan" it might not have been
reinstituted. Without the "Boston Riot" of 1903, the challenge to Booker Washington's power
by black radicals like W. E. B. DuBois and Monroe Troter would never have gotten off the
ground. Without the Homestead and Pullman strikes, without Coeur D'Alene and Cripple
Creek, trade unionism would have never flourished.
Moreover, if coercion were to be discarded from the reformer's inventory, there would be
very little left on the shelf; for nearly all tactics are coercive, at bottom. Does not
propagandizing imply a sort of coercion? And Reinhold Niebuhr, in Moral Man and Immoral
Society, has convincingly defended the proposition that Gandhi’s methods were no less
coercive than those of the British Army. Even Martin Luther King has conceded that the
difference in coerciveness between non-violent and violent tactics is often small, only a
matter of degree. Furthermore, those who employ coercive tactics usually do so in the face
of more brutal and pervasive forms of coercion on the part of those against whom their
protests are directed. Liberals invariably overlook this fact. The allegedly enlightened Dean
Monro of Harvard, for example, inveighed against the five hundred demonstrators who had
dared to surround and capture the Secretary of Defense for a few minutes, on the grounds
that McNamara's "civil rights" of "freedom of movement" had been violated. He had nothing
to say of the "rights" of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese for whose liberate murder
McNamara is responsible. Nor did it occur f the Dean to criticize a government which
coerces American youth to fight a war to which it is opposed.
Despite the wrongheadedness of Monro's position, it is fear that most students on the noncommunist left have swallowed it. What better evidence of this than the fact that we have
constantly dissipated our energies on educational projects like "Vietnam Summer" in the
simple conviction that exposure to the truth changes men's minds.
115
There is still another often-heard argument against radical action. Civil disobedience and
disruption, it is said, alienates are people than it converts. This myth is about as politically
sophisticated as a Billy Graham sermon. We are supposed to infer that it is necessary to
change minds before changing institutions. One is reminded of the so-called "Southern
moderates" who insist that racial justice must be accomplished not governmental or
organizational coercion, but through a “change of heart."
How quaint. The liberals caution us: win over your adversaries; change the laws. Now
everyday politics not only presupposes the franchise (which most of us lack), it presupposes
Dialogue. Sure, Dialogue is a fine ideal; it is also an entirely impractical means of effecting
radical reform. It takes two to Dialogue, and our goals are too inimical to the interests of
the dominant classes in our society, or too pressing, for Dialogue to add up to anything but
political suicide. In a slave state, the function of every Socrates is to be put to death.
It is obvious, for example, that President Johnson is not interested in entering into a
Dialogue on Vietnam. This would mean his defeat; for his position is irrational. So he sends
his representatives to the universities not to, talk to us about the war, but to lie to us. For
the Administration, Dialogue may be possible within, say, the framework of State
Department policy, but not without it. As for students, they talk, they petition, they picket,
their effect is negligible.
What the student movement needs, then, is a viable coercive strategy. I do not advocate
desultory civil disobedience, which gives pleasure to those performing their "witness," but
which cannot change the course of history. Nor do I believe that arming ourselves is the
answer—not that this would be a morally justifiable tactic; it would be impractical. No
matter how much force we could muster, the government could muster more. Blacks, not
police, died in large numbers in Newark and Detroit. But students are capable of sabotaging
the society with disruption.
Our contemporaries in the ghettos are way ahead of us. They have demonstrated this
summer that a small concentrated minority group can significantly disrupt American society.
(It is important to note here that most of those involved in these rebellions, according to
Daniel Moynihan, were between seventeen and twenty-two.) The universities, populated by
a large, exploited, powerless mass, are the middle-class ghettos. With a little effort, they
too can be made to explode.
Clark Kerr has unwittingly pointed the way. For the meta-message of his writings is that the
federal government cannot survive without the universities' help. I propose, then, that we
seek to destroy the university's capacity to prop up our political institutions. By stalemating
America's intellectual establishment, we may be able to paralyze the political establishment
as well.
First, we have the capacity to immobilize R.O.T.C. on the campuses. This would seriously
affect the army's capacity to wage war, as more officers are turned out by colleges than by
the service academies, and there is already a critical shortage of second lieutenants in
Vietnam. A small disciplined group of "shock troops" could pack classes, break up drills, and
harass army "professors."
Second, we can stop the defense research being carried on under university auspices. The
Kissingers and Rostows should be locked, blocked from entering their offices, and harried at
their homes. Students should infiltrate office staffs of electron accelerators and foreign
policy institutes, hamper their efficiency. The introduction of a small quantity of LSD in only
five or six government department coffee urns might be a highly effective tactic. Students
should prevent their universities from being used as forums for government apologists.
Public figures like Humphrey and McNamara, if they appear, should be subject to
intimidation and humiliation.
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Finally, college administrations can be slowed to a near-standstill if students over-use the
bureaucracy. Floods of petitions can be filed with deans and registrars. Appointments by the
score can be made with their assistants just for the hell of it. An inordinate number of
library books can be checked out. IBM cards can be bent slightly so that they will be
rejected by the computers, and so forth.
The economy seems as vulnerable a target for disruption as the university. Our generation
has already inadvertently alarmed the economists with our lack of enthusiasm for business
careers; even a partially-successful boycott of corporate employers might prove disastrous.
The clothing industry would probably collapse if all students, say, suddenly decided not to
wear button-down collars. Mass-refusal to purchase American automobiles would do some
damage. Small bits of sabotage by individuals—the sending of business reply cards through
the mails, or overpaying one's phone bill by a penny—would have a decided cumulative
effect.
This strategy of creative disruption which I have outlined is directed mostly, of course, at
ending the Vietnam War. But I believe that it is entirely possible that, if effective, this
technique would have wide ramifications for the furthering of student power in the polity as
a whole. For if students demonstrate to the politicians that they can mobilize themselves to
exert the coercive power inherent in their numbers, they will have to be reckoned with as a
political force. Students will have to be consulted—and heeded—on the issues which concern
them.
We activists have had since the Port Huron Statement a relatively coherent set of goals, a
vision of what American society ought to be like. But our strategy has been muddled,
gradualistic, and naive. As a result, in five years our movement has grown astoundingly, but
we have not come any closer to realizing our ideals than we were in 1962. Many of us have
lost hope. But this need not be so. We have the power to bring the American Juggernaut to
a halt. Let us paralyze the University; let us ball up the economy. We have the power. One
day soon, Congressmen and Presidents may petition us, not we them. Let us therefore
disrupt. We have nothing to lose.
The Worrier
University High School (Los Angeles)
September 29, 1967
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THE MINORITIES: I Am A Human Being: Do Not Fold, Spindle
Or Mutilate
The Traditional Indian Land And Life Committee
"Tribe follows tribe and nation follows nation like the waves of the sea. It is
the very order of nature, and regret is therefore useless. Your time of decay
may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God
walked and talked -with him as friend with friend, cannot be exempt from the
common destiny. In this respect we may be brothers after all. We will see."
Chief Seattle—1855
We live in a nation founded in the name of religious freedom, yet it has crushed the
religions of its first inhabitants, usually in the name of religion.
We live in a nation founded by frugal men who looked ahead to the welfare of future
generations, yet it has squandered its best resources, its land, forests and minerals, its
peoples and their talents.
The obstinate, single, human soul; the religious dissenter; the style of man for whom
nobles, kings or classes were a bore or a joke—these were the men we call our nation's
founders. But even they, in our troubled beginnings, doubted the souls of women, of the
propertyless, of Negroes, and of the American Indian.
No nation has ever talked so much of religious liberty; no nation has had such a strong
movement for conservation; no nation has declared itself so strongly for freedom as the
American Nation. And no people in America has had so close an acquaintance with
America's failures in all these areas as have the American Indians.
And no group knows the full range of the damage to Indians and to all of America better
than the Traditional Indian.
The Traditional Indians are a quiet people; they have set an example. They are at home on
the land and under the skies, beside the rivers and within the forests. And, if they must,
they are at home on the desert.
Their message is wordless, and therefore a frail one in an aggressive, urban society built
everywhere upon words. Their message is timeless and tranquil, and therefore out of tune
to a society running always at full speed, building and rebuilding.
Their message is one of gratitude to all natural things, and therefore is lost to a society of
machined insensitivity.
The basis of their message is a way of life.
We, as outsiders, can never truly know the full range of this message. We can, however,
see the tumbling young children and the alert old men in traditional communities and envy
such societies where the individual finds himself treasured. And we can also see the
degradation and despair of those Indian groups who have abandoned their heritage.
It is the tragedy of our nation that we have said one thing and have done another; we have
strayed so far from our definition of ourselves, that today, for many of us, it seems that we
stand for nothing, we are rooted in air.
But in our midst, there is the Traditional Indian and his living message, his unique identity,
now in imminent danger of extinction.
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We believe it is not only the traditional Indian's identity which is threatened, but our own. If
we are to survive, morally and spiritually, we must become what we claim to be, a society
dedicated to human values, and where each man is free to grow and flourish in his own
fashion.
The Committee is an organization dedicated to the preservation of Traditional Indian land
and life. We do not seek to define the Traditional Indian identity. We seek to establish an
atmosphere in which this identity can continue and grow stronger.
To accomplish this, we propose:
1) To engage in political, educational, and legal action to bring our
government to acknowledge the sovereignty of Indians over Indian affairs.
2) To work to defeat all Indian legislation not initiated by Indians themselves.
3) To expand the ability of the majority community to hear the voice of the
Traditional Indian.
If you agree with our aims and proposals, and want to help, please write: The Traditional
Indian Land and Life Committee, 22592 W. Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles, California
90018.
The Oracle of Southern California (Los Angeles)
August, 1967
"Police Abuse Us" Homophiles Across Nation Cry
by Hal Waldman
There is growing concern among homosexuals across the country about the increased
harassment by police, especially in the areas where "gay bars" exist.
Fire Island in Long Island, New York, a favorite beach area for the gay set, has police raids
as an everyday occurrence. The fear of embarrassment in a public court on the mainland
causes many who are arrested to plead guilty, and the police rely on these pleas of guilty
for 95 per cent of homosexual convictions.
The Mattachine Society has organized to offer legal aid to convicted persons, and will offer
education of the rights in the courtrooms.
Columbia University, in New York City, has granted a charter to the Student Homophile
League, comprised of both homosexual and heterosexual members, in order that the
student group be able to seek equal rights for homosexuals. The Committee on Student
Organization issued the charter after checking the names of the members and assuring
themselves that each was a student at Columbia.
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the cry of harassment of gay bars has risen. Homosexuals
in the Rampart Street Precinct complain that unwarranted and excessive police action is
being taken toward patrons of these establishments. They claim, also, that undercover vice
squatters are frequenting the bars to lure and entrap customers, and that there are more
than enough plainclothesmen and uniformed officers on hand during the arrests, even
though Chief Reddin continues to speak of a shortage of manpower.
Police Lt. Peterson, Vice Squad, of the Ramparts Street Precinct Station, admits to the
undercover vice squad members being used to infiltrate the bars. However, he was quick to
note that these men did not bait patrons, but were there only to check, and arrest, if
necessary, anyone breaking the law.
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"Complaints have come to us from neighbors in the area who say they have seen
homosexuals in the area of MacArthur Park trying to entice children," Peterson said.
"One woman claimed her husband was beaten and rolled after he walked into a bar,
completely unaware of the evils that lurked within."
An eyewitness reports to the Free Press that on August 20, at about 1 A.M., Lt. Peterson
entered the Explorer Bar on Hoover Street followed by eight uniformed henchmen. They
joined forces with several plainclothesmen, who were already in the bar, while 15 others
grouped outside—(a shortage of manpower. Chief?!). Secure in numbers, they proceeded to
round up and arrest a number of patrons for lewd conduct.
Lt. Peterson stated that there was nothing more distasteful to the force than having to do
this type of work, and that many - -members leave the vice squad after experiencing work
of this nature. "But as long as complaints come in from the public, it is the Police
Department's duty to check each complaint—and take measures to see that public safety is
secure," he added.
Homophiles argue that the "public" includes those minority groups that are being subjected
to vicious police tactics; "We are members of the citizenry and are told to remain silent and
cooperate in order to preserve our physical well being."
For every cop that leaves the force, there seem to be ample : replacements who relish
flaunting their gun-on-the-hip-billy-club-in-hand powers over unarmed citizens, who are in
many leases innocent whipping posts for the frustrations and perversions of a certain
element that joins the police force in order to "Protect and Serve" their own egos.
"Negroes, Spanish Americans, hippies, homosexuals and ethers represent minority elements
of society," says one homophile. "They are also the public. Who, then, will defend the public
from the public defenders?"
The Los Angeles Free Press
September 8, 1967
Brother, Can You Spare a House?
by Jef Jassen
Hey, Black Brothers! Did you ever go out looking for a pad? You know—a place to get in
from the rain and the cold, and maybe even from the heat.
So you go through all this real estate agency shit and they give you a fist full of numbers to
call and places to go. And you know that never works but you end up giving the man ten
bucks anyway, and you turn around and go look some more.
Walk down a street and see a sign "For Rent." And about the time you knock on the cat's
door he pokes his head out and spits, "We don't rent to your kind here!"
I'm in San Francisco looking for a pad, getting tired of crashing on people's couches. I've
got money in my pocket, clean shirt on my back, new sport coat, all nice and tidy. You
know—just like Big Daddy likes to see.
I look up and here's one of these signs. For Rent. Apartment. 479 Steiner. See manager
Apt. 7.
Note on the door says the manager's at the store. Back in five. I sit down on the steps in
the hallway and dig on the pretty-colored windows (probably the work of some hippie chick)
and listen to the music floating out of the room.
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About this time a tall, beautiful blonde chick comes up the stairs. "Hi, are you the
manager?" I say. "Yeah," she smiles. "But I can't rent to you."
"What!! Why not?"
"The owner says I can't," she comes back, opening the door and picking up her black cat.
"Your hair's too long, and all the people that live here are really straight."
Now this chick sure as hell wasn't "really straight" but she was the manager. And with the
exception of a slight summer tan, I'm as lily white as she is.
She says, "Hippies are always letting hundreds of people crash in their pads, and they're
never working. I took a chance and rented to two hippie girls a couple weeks ago and they
broke three windows and completely wrecked the place in only one week."
I said, "Look. I'm trying to get away from that kind of scene. That's why I just moved out of
my place on Central. Furthermore, I manage a successful band and work for a newspaper.
And I need a place."
"Sorry, man. I can't take a chance. The owner won't let me."
Get this now, people. This is Steiner Street—in the Fillmore.
So I say OK, baby, and I leave.
Three months ago there was a letter in this paper that said "Dear Editor, Where Big Daddy
is concerned, hippies and niggers are the same thing."
So please remember, Black Brothers. When the flames of revolution start burning Whitey at
the stake, you may see a sign scribbled in psychedelic red that says, "Hip Soul Brother!"
That's going to be me, brothers, and I really do know what's happening.
The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
August 25, 1967
The United States: A Country That's Lost Its Way
by Frank H. Joyce
Doc Greene is confused. So are 170 million other white Americans including Hubert
Humphrey and Roy Wilkins.
It all started when they were born white in a society which told them all then lives that they
were better because they were whiter. And which then organized itself to make it come
true.
In a column he writes regularly for a newspaper which calls itself The Detroit News, Doc
Greene spoke for most Americans when he condemned Dr. Martin Luther King for finally
coming out against the war in Vietnam.
Niggers are supposed to know their places. And the war in Vietnam, is, quote Doctor
Greene, “… an American problem, not a racial problem." Just who the Hell does Martin
Luther King think he is speaking out about an American problem. He is only a NEGRO leader
and he had better not forget it. Never mind the Nobel peace prize. That's only for added
stature when he keeps his place.
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Race is an American problem, of course. And the war is a racial problem. Gooks and
Niggers. Yellow dwarfs with pocket knives is the way Lyndon Johnson characterized it.
Would you want one to marry your sister? Could he live next door—this little man you're
dying for. Sending the United States to fight for freedom and Democracy in non-white
Vietnam, said Dick Gregory, "is like sending a convicted child molester to baby-sit with your
daughter."
Watts and Saigon. Who does not believe that there is a connection between the inability of
this nation to understand the drive for liberation of American black people and the drive for
liberation of Vietnamese yellow people. Communist agitators, says Senator Eastland of the
Mississippi civil rights workers. Communist aggressors, says Lyndon Johnson of the National
Liberation Front. Is there, perhaps, a connection between the War on Poverty and the
pacification program for South Vietnam? They certainly look the same.
Dr. King, it is argued, is hurting his cause. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was
one. It's what they say about everything. They said it about the sit-ins, then about the
marches, then about voter registration, then about moving to Chicago. And of course they
were right.
Most Negroes are worse off today then they were in 1960. More Negroes live in segregated
housing. More Negro children attend segregated schools. A higher percentage are
unemployed. More Negro mothers die in child-birth, relative to whites, than did before. More
Negro babies die before reaching the age of one year than did before, both relative to
whites and absolutely. And the gap in income between the average Negro family and the
average white family rose from $1,600 in 1950 to over $3,000 in 1965.
It's all in the records. The Department of Labor and the U. S. Civil Rights Commission and
the Health, Education and Welfare and Commerce departments will tell you about it if you
care to look.
The reason is that white people control everything in this society. They do so to their own
benefit. They do not like people who are not white. In Louisville, Kentucky, they throw rocks
and bottles and lob cherry bombs with slingshots and shoot pistols. In Vietnam they drop
napalm and chemicals and anti-personnel weapons with B-52's and F-101's. But of course it
doesn't have anything to do with race. Neither did Proposition 14 or the homeowner's
ordinance. If you don't believe it, ask the people who sponsored the legislation. Or the
people who passed it
The war isn't racist because it's integrated. “ … even though it is an equality of danger and
death … I was somewhat thrilled by the view," says Doc Greene, who has been there and
seen it with his own eyes.
And it is only fair, now he tells us, that a disproportionate share of Negroes are dying in
Vietnam now because in World War II a disproportionate share of whites died to defend the
American Way of Life. And the American way of life doesn't include black people. Except as
slaves of one sort of another.
It is all part of a larger problem, this view that Doc Greene has. It is a typical view; most
Americans agree with it. But then most Americans are always getting confused about who is
the criminal and who is the victim.
It is Stokely Carmichael's fault that there was a riot in Nashville. And it is his fault that
Lester Maddox and Lurleen Wallace and Ronald Reagan got elected. And it is Adam Clayton
Powell's fault that there is a double standard. And if black people march into white
neighborhoods it is their own fault if they get rocks thrown at them or their cars dumped in
a river. Sure, and it was the Jews' fault that Hitler put them all in gas ovens.
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Yes, we used to admire Dr. King. But now he has strayed from the path of whiteousness. He
is "A Leader Who Has Lost His Way."
No, Dr. Greene. You are wrong. It is the country which has lost its way. If it ever had one.
It may be just as well.
The Fifth Estate (Detroit)
May 1, 1967
"We Burned Detroit Down and Put America on Notice"
by H. Rap Brown
H. Rap Brown, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), gave the following talk last Sunday (August 14) to a Black Congress
rally in the Watts area. We feel that this talk holds so many clues to the
direction which the black revolt is likely to take in America in the next few
months that it should be reprinted in as nearly complete form as space
permits. Here is the major portion of Brown's speech:
There was a message that came from Detroit and it came to Los Angeles, It says that Watts
did not burn so that people might have a picnic. People did not bum Watts down so that you
could have the Watts Festival. Detroit was not burned down so that they might
commemorate it next year with a festival. Black people are not concerned about a party.
When we want a party we go out to a party. But we've got to start controlling our
community. That's the essential thing. I want to talk about the press a little more … the
WPP … the White Power Press, White Power Papers and the White Power People.
Their job over the years has been to make black people enemies of black people. They
made black people enemies of Malcolm X so that he could be killed and the black people did
not revolt because they believed he was an enemy of the black people.
They made Muhammad AM an enemy of black people. He .was given the maximum
sentence and fine and black people did not revolt. Stokely Carmichael was fast becoming an
enemy of black people.
Violence has a value in America. Violence is as American as the Fourth of July and cherry
pie. Don't you forget it If there's any value that black people should possess, any value that
we choose to keep that America taught us it should be the value of violence. Because our
people are going to use violence to end oppression. For America that should be dear …
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America has no conscience as far as black people are concerned. The only reason that
America does not move against China is because China has a bomb and all those armed
forces and America respects force. That's why all you black people would do better to arm
yourselves. There's no sense talking about political control or legality until you can control
and defend your community. You can't talk about joining the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party. No such animal exists for the black man. What is the Democratic Party
but Lyndon Johnson and George Wallace?
The only difference between Lyndon Johnson and George Wallace is that the wife of one of
them has cancer. No other difference. You all know about Reagan. I don't have to tell you
about Reagan. The only difference between Johnson and Goldwater was that Goldwater was
honest. Lyndon has out-Goldwatered Goldwater. He did everything that Goldwater said he
was going to do and more. And black people are talking about re-electing Lyndon Johnson,
a cracker, a honkey outlaw from Texas!
You have to understand. It has been said that politics is war without bloodshed and war is
politics with bloodshed. Understand what the People of Detroit did. They took their war and
their politics into the street in an open revolt That was a rebellion, and not a riot. You have
to distinguish between the two.
What a honkey kid does in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida when he gets drunk off a beer is a riot.
What brothers do from Newark to Detroit is a rebellion. They are rebelling against
conditions. Understand that no one person is responsible for or can prevent a rebellion.
Conditions do it. Congress has never addressed itself to the conditions. They sit up there
talking about an anti-riot bill which has no meaning to me. It doesn't affect me the least
little bit because I'm going to go where I'm going.
Now what it does do, it restricts travel for everybody in the country, sets the scene for the
concentration camps. If they can tell you where to go and when to go, why, they know
where you are.
Black people are slated for genocide. Not as much as they were a few years ago when all
John F. Kennedy had to do was send out letters with the Presidential seal on them saying
for all Negroes to report to the concentration camps and the niggers would have been there
on time. You have been conditioned to genocide.
And following that same logic, they could have told us to go into the showers to be baptized
because they know we love religion and we would have gone and they would have turned
the poison gas on.
But now brothers are engaged in rebellion. This is the eve of a black revolution.
People across the world—the black people who have for so long been oppressed—are
striking out at their oppressor, white America. These people oppress more people than any
country has before.
Those concentration camps are real. And they ain't for the Indians because the Indians are
already on their reservations. They're not for the Chinese because we're scared of Mao so
they got to be for black people 'cause me and Stokely aren't going to fill up any 29
concentration camps.
So I wonder when black people are going to get serious about rebellion and start talking
about revolution. As long as you got the White Power Press here I know you ain't serious
about engaging in war because you're in such a big rebellion now. There's too much looting
and there ain't enough shooting. See, brother, if your going to loot, loot a gun store 'cause
they got guns and ammunition and that's what you're going to need.
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Don't be out there looting no TV stores and running home to see yourself. That's why so
many brothers get shot. If the white man was really hip, all he'd have to do when the
rebellions start would be to give everybody in the community a television set and a case of
beer and the brothers would go home and watch it!
… People are running around saying we ain't got no business having no guns. You better
get you some guns. You're either free or you're a slave. There's no such thing as a secondclass citizenship. You're either a citizen or you're not.
Otherwise it's like telling me you're just a little bit pregnant That don't make no sense.
Black people are not free.
Black people have gotten into the bag of equating progress with concessions. They give you
a few things and you think you're making progress. They give you an astronaut this year
and I believe they're getting ready to lose that nigger in space. Look at what happened to
their last project! You know what they're going to do. They're going to take Double-O-Soul
and shoot him up in the air and give his wife a medal. They give you Thurgood Marshall and
look what happens to him. He's subjected to a type of questioning that no Supreme Court
justice has ever been subjected to.
And we talk about making progress!
Black people are worse off than they were 30 years ago. And we talking about making
progress! We going to fight a yellow man for this white man … Brother, if you're going to
fight, your war is here. Because if you can die defending your motherland you can also die
defending your mother.
The only reason that America is in Vietnam is for the natural resources and the strategic
position Vietnam is in relation to China. If we were really interested in stopping communist
aggression we would be in Poland which is a white communist country, Czechoslovakia
which is a white communist country, Russia which is a white communist country.
But no. We go to a black so-called communist country and drop bombs.
America is racist through and through and the only reason that America dropped the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima and not on Germany was because the Japanese people were yellow …
Black people tend to run around and talk about black middle class. There is no such animal.
The Man sees you as black. I don't care how much money you've got. When he moves he's
going to move against all black people, those with Cadillacs and those with Fords. He's
going to move against niggers as a whole. We cannot afford the luxury of talking about a
class structure in the black community. America does I not view the black' community as a
class-structured organization or unity or people. When America kills the black man it's
because he's black. I believe the first people to go to the concentration camps will be the
people who are running around talking about "we the middle class." Like I say, the white
man is going to middle-class them right out there to those concentration camps and the.
white man is slick. He might put them on trains with first class accommodations and won't
those niggers dig that!
The ghettos across America are beginning to explode. America owes the black people 450
years of dues and now she has to pay.
We can't afford the luxury of saying that we have black people down there in Congress. We
have no real black people in Congress. Edward Brooks is the White Knight on the Ajax can
… he's stronger than dirt! …
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You know he's got to be out of his mind. He went to Vietnam and came back saying that we
need more black people to come over and fight there. What kind of an idiot is this? Any man
who has to publish in Ebony Magazine that he's a soul brother shouldn't bother advertising
it. We know it's a lie. If you're a soul brother the other brothers know it.
The black people who are moving against black people have identified their enemies and are
beginning to move against them.
Understand that the peoplehood that was so elusive for years for black people has been
forced upon them because of America's racism.
It's important to note that in Newark and Detroit there were snipers who were arrested,
yes, but the key thing is that no sniper was turned in by his own people. And where did they
snipe from? From the roofs of black houses and black apartments. That means that black
people have condoned and legitimatized sniping. I don't have to predict a long hot summer
for it to happen. I don't have to be there for it to happen. Black people have legitimatized it
as a tactic and have legitimatized violence as a tactic. Black people are saying that America
is overdue and that we recognize that what America respects is force. We don't want
America to love us. We want America to respect us. We got messages out, brother. We got
messages everywhere.
Too few black folks understand the revolutionary tone of black music these days.
You've got to decide and define who your people are. Black people are going to recognize
it's important to be black. It's essential to be black. Integration doesn't mean anything to
black people. It shouldn't mean anything to them. Integration is not necessary or desirable.
We're not talking about equality anymore because we don't believe white folks can be equal
for another 400 years.
Our message is freedom and we are going to be free by any means necessary. We burned
Detroit down and we put America on notice. "Jack, we built you up and we will tear you
down."
Don't run around here telling me about looting, brother. You looted us from Africa and you
looted the land from the Indians. How can you steal from a thief? But I tell you, brother, we
going to start in looting hardware. We going to let you keep your TV. TV is
counterrevolutionary. That TV set is the worst thing that black people got. Because what
happens on it fosters white supremacy. Every time you turn on your TV set you got a show
that tells you that black is bad. Black folks don't buy a Cadillac and we don't drink RC Cola.
We don't do nothing. Just like the history books they've sold to black people for years.
Everything black is bad. Black cows don't give good milk. Black hens don't lay good eggs.
You talk about black mail and that's bad. Funerals are black, weddings are white. Angel food
cake is white. Jesus is white, Judas is black. We ain't won one yet!
I saw a brother who was so shook up one time he went out to get some flesh-colored bandaids … he threw one on his arm and thought something was wrong with his skin. They don’t
make none for us. Black folks don't get cut. We don't bleed. America does not speak to
black people. And it's a course we don't control ourselves.
You don't control Watts. Mayor Yorty controls Watts. Understand, brothers. You will never
control it unless you move to seize control. Freedom is not a welfare commodity. It cannot
be distributed to you. They can't give you a card saying you're free. That's what happened
with the slaves. That's why we're still in slavery. You got to exercise your Bright to be free.
You were born free. That was the trouble with the civil rights movement. They told the
white men he had to civilize me. They did nothing for me. What they better do is civilize
some of them honkies. Go into their own communities and civilize their own people.
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This is what a white man thinks of them. George Bernard Shaw says of America and its
white people that America is the only country he knows that went directly from barbarism
'to decadence without going through civilization. Now if he thinks that of a honkie, you know
what I think I of him.
I think Lyndon Johnson is the biggest outlaw the world has ever known. And I think his
Momma was a communist. And for those of you out there who don't know … J. Edgar
Hoover is a faggot! He got nerve enough to talk about mortality! The top cop in the nation is
a faggot! What is America coming to? A society so sick it cannot survive. I do not want
anything but violence and I'm going to use I it to free myself. They can't give me anything.
Any society that will pass a law to prevent people from burning a flag but hot pass a law
that will prevent people from burning children in Vietnam has to be sick. Any society that
can't even pass an anti-rat bill is sick.
These are the people who exterminate the buffalo and the Indian. If they were serious they
could get rid of rats. How in the world are they going to exterminate the buffalo and not be
able to deal with a rat?
I'm for George Wallace getting to be President this year. ‘Cause there ain't no doubt about
where he's at Lot of folks going around here talking about the difference I between good
and bad white folks. It ain't no such They didn’t say some niggers stunk. They didn't say
SOME niggers I was lazy. How in the world can you take time to distinguish between an
enemy in time of war. America declared war and we are responding. We must move from a
position where we only respond to a position where we can act and enforce our own laws.
I am not confined morally nor legally to the laws of America I because I did not create those
laws, the very laws the white I man uses to keep the black man down.
In conclusion: Ours might be to do or die. But for the little brothers, the Simba … theirs
should be but to reason Black power, brothers.
Open City (Los Angeles)
August 17, 1967
128
THE ARTS: Lets Make Art An Environment
I Sgt. Pepper the Most—I Beetles, Dig?
by Lewis Segal
On the last track of 1966's "Revolver," John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and
Ringo Starr invited the listener to turn off your mind, relax and float downstream … and
promptly drifted off into the surrounding magenta miasma—each heading where his
business and desire pointed him. After a year of soundtrack scoring, movie making and sitar
study—but absolutely no concert appearances—they reassembled for their first endeavors in
part-time Beatledom: "Strawberry Fields," "Penny Lane," and now "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band!"
Housed in its aggressively campy cover, "Sgt. Pepper" packages a dozen songs in styles
ranging from the playfully nostalgic "When I'm Sixty-Four" to the blatantly psychedelic
"Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds." Scarcely half of them qualify as "Rock Music" (in the old
echo-chamber-plus-electric-guitar sense) and, had the album preceded "Revolver," it would
have justified great critical jubilation. With that last record in view, however, "Sgt. Pepper"
Seems only a consolidation of the Beatles' previous achievements or—at best (depending on
one's personal tolerance for tangerine trees and marmalade skies)—a small advance. In any
case, within 2 a week of its release the album is a guaranteed million-seller, a source of
both artistic and moralistic controversy and the cause of a celebrated copyright wrangle
between Capitol Records and several Los Angeles radio stations.
To some extent, Capitol is accustomed to being in Beatle battles—most recently over the
original "Yesterday and Today" cover. Indeed, the group's first Capitol album ("Meet the
Beatles") immediately caused a copyright conflict with Vee-Jay records, which had marketed
a competing Beatle disc. I Capitol won, and the former Vee-Jay tracks are now on 'The Early
Beatles."
129
At the time of THAT controversy, the Liverpool quartet was frankly influenced by the harddriving American rhythm-and-blues idiom—particularly the work of Chuck Berry. In addition
to challenging the track capabilities of any phono cartridge, their early efforts offer a
conscious imitation of the so-called "Negro Rock" sound (the most extreme example being
"Twist and Shout") and an attempt to outdo every excess in pop music. Certainly their flat
choral mooing in "Anna" and their incredibly insensitive version of "A Taste of Honey"
provide no musical justification for their popularity.
Performed with a heavy reliance on falsetto phrases, the Beatles' early songs extravagantly
courted the teenage maternal instinct. Starting with wait-like haircuts and extending to
pencil-thin collarless suits, the "Beatle look" deliberately projected a rather asexual
vulnerability. Their songs reinforced this image by admitting no greater intimacy than handholding and, in one lyric, even declaring:
I don't need to hug or hold you tight;
I just want to dance with you all night.
("I'm Happy Just To Dance With You")
After their initial sensational success, the Beatles could easily have settled into second
string show business status. (After all, Elvis still makes films and records, doesn't he? Yes,
he does—but try and name a recent one.) But—whether from a denned sense of purpose or,
more likely, just to keep themselves from becoming bored—they began using their
tremendous popularity as a basis for growth.
Under the guidance of recording director George. Martin (whose name first appears on "The
Beatles' Second Album"), they experimented with more complex harmonies and mellowed
their former scream-and-shout style. But excellent melodies were still being spoiled by
banal lyrics:
I gave her all my love. That's all I do,
And if you saw my love, you'd love her, too …
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) probably marks the end of this "early" period of development.
By this time, a sense of humor was combined with an attempt at idiomatic expression and,
for the first time, the Beatles began sounding like an artish group. Their next two albums
("Beatles '65" and "Beatles VI") offered a lyrical sensitivity matched by a surprising melodic
ease. Clearly the group had arrived—both as composers and performers.
At this point, let's briefly leave the Lennon-McCartney axis for a glimpse of the Beatles'
iconoclastic composer-performer, George Harrison. Within the prevailing Beatle style,
Harrison's image had always been asocial. Even while Lennon-McCartney were wailing "I
Want To Hold Your Hand," Harrison's songs snarled:
Don't come around,
Leave me alone,
Don't bother me.
By "Beatles VI," his petulance had become comparatively literate:
You've tried before to leave me
But you haven't got the nerve
To walk out and make me lonely,
Which is all that I deserve.
From now on, Harrison's influence would be increasingly dominant and shape, to a very
large extent, the group's future development.
130
The seven songs for "Help!" constitute the apotheosis of so-called "middle Beatles."
Actually, each of these "periods" lasted little more than a year, with Lennon-McCartney in
complete command of their medium and even Harrison feeling conciliatory in "I Need You."
If this phrase was characterized by melodic ingenuity and a secure mastery of pop lyricism,
it was protected and confined by the prevailing commercial framework. With "Rubber Soul,"
however, the Beatles took an extraordinary risk and arguably changed the course of popular
music. Their former image was almost completely abandoned when the old "asexual
vulnerability" gave way to:
I'd rather see you dead, little girl,
Than to be with another man.
Beginning with the startling cover photo, "Rubber Soul" shifted the Beatles into an aloof and
occasionally defiant artistic posture. Musically, the album expanded the horizons of the rock
idiom through an extraordinary experimentation with unique instrumental sounds:
harmonium, fuzz bass, organ, sitar and Baroque piano. The lyrics either evoked a mood
through a kind of emotional shorthand or tackled offbeat subjects with unusual candor:
Was she told, when she was young,
That fame would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back
To earn his day of leisure;
Will she still believe it when he's dead?
Starting with "Norwegian Wood" ("Is the girl a Lesbian?" "Is the boy on pot?") critical
inquisitors have sought ominous meanings in almost every Beatle lyric. Hi-Fi Stereo
Review's Rex Reed solemnly affirms that a "yellow submarine" is an LSD capsule. Time
warns that "Day Tripper" is corrupting our youth, and someone seems bound to suggest
that "Penny Lane" is ACTUALLY a Chelsea chippie who totes her wheelbarrow through
streets broad and narrow selling (a) Banana filament, (b) sugar cubes or (c) Herself—alive,
alive-O.
Such silliness is largely the doing of critics who accept the commercial clichés and,
therefore, mistrust any performers who attempt to find ways of describing emotions without
inevitably devaluating them. And if the Beatles didn't initiate this. kind of artistic approach—
that honor goes to Mr. Dylan—their extraordinary prominence and influence make them
prime targets for all kinds of parasites.
The latest attack comes from the BBC, which has banned "A Day in the Life" because the
song "might encourage" drug addiction.
Following "Rubber Soul," Capitol released an album called "Yesterday and Today"—an
assemblage of tracks from the British versions of "Help!", "Rubber Soul" and the unreleased
"Revolver." (In England, Beatle records generally have fourteen tracks, while the American
versions seldom exceed eleven. Capitol claims "we can afford to do no more," since
conflicting royalty laws charge them the same amount for eleven songs that Parlaphone
pays for fourteen.) Aside from the controversial cover, "Yesterday and Today" is notable
only for its lack of stylistic unity and purpose. Best of the individual tracks—but still better
when heard in its intended sequence—is probably "Nowhere Man," a moral lesson scaled to
the teeny-bopper attention span:
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to.
—Isn't he a bit like you
And me?
131
"Revolver" is a record with a rubber soul (or a vinyl one, if you prefer accuracy to imagery)
and electronic ancestors. It totally rejects the notion that a record must be a transcription of
a so-called "live" performance and embraces a wide range of electronic resources. In
addition, the growing influence of Indian music (largely Harrison's contribution) plus
elements of classical composition give the album an unprecedented richness and make it
impossible to classify. As Marshall McLuhan writes, "When a medium becomes a means of
depth experience, the old categories of 'classical' and 'popular,' or of 'highbrow' and
'lowbrow' no longer pertain."
Tempted by unlimited technical resources and impressive artistic ambitions, the Beatles
nevertheless shaped "Revolver" with a stunning economy of means. "Eleanor Rigby"
presents two, character portraits, a statement about futility and a string quartet—all in a
memorable two minutes, eleven seconds. "I Want To Tell You" sets a pounding off-key
piano against fumbling words ("I feel hung up and I don't know why") to express THE
twentieth-century dilemma: inability to communicate.
Released six months after "Revolver," "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" are singles
of exceptional skill. "Penny Lane" is, quite simply, a portrait of a street, rich in observed
detail and interpretative nuance. (The line about children laughing behind the banker's back
is a particularly nice touch.) "Strawberry Fields," however, is perhaps the most serious
composition Lennon-McCartney have attempted and—until "A Day in the Life"—easily the
longest. In increasingly fragmented phrases, the song attempts to evoke the feeling that
"nothing is real":
Living is easy with eyes closed,
Misunderstanding all you see;
It's getting hard to be someone,
But it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.
Which brings us back to "Sgt. Pepper." Like "Revolver," many of the disc's selections seek
the elusive, unreal aura of daily life in a manner closely corresponding to the efforts of poet
T. S. Eliot. "She's Leaving Home" (quite similar to "Eleanor Rigby"), "Fixing a Hole" and "A
Day in the Life" all fall within this group, but the most striking example is "Good Morning,
Good Morning" in which banal, purposeless conversation is likened to animal noises and the
daytime world appears a dismal place indeed:
Everybody knows there's nothing doing
Everything is closed—it's like a rain
Everyone you see is half asleep
And you're on your own, you're in the street
The "Sgt. Pepper" theme of unreality appears in varied manifestations. "Being For the
Benefit of Mr. Kite" sets calliope music and crowd noises to fanciful phrases ("Ten
summersets he'll undertake on solid ground" 'resembling lyricist Lennon's "In His Own
Write"). At another extreme, "Within You, Without You" weds an exceptionally deft poem to
a luscious quasi-Indian melody to create the best song George Harrison has yet composed.
Finally, there is "Lovely Rita," which slyly mocks inappropriate notions of Romantic Love in
applying them to a parking meter policewoman:
Lovely Rita meter maid,
Nothing can come between us.
When it gets dark,
I tow your heart away …
132
If any one element unifies "Sgt. Pepper," it is the dynamic use of sound to create unique
mental images. Automobile engines, animal cries, carnival noises, electronic effects—PLUS a
staggering assembly of musical idioms—are employed to tune the listener in on die sense of
NOW which is the Beatles' trademark. More so than with any other performers, the
difference between the group's latest and last record separates (as if time were tangible)
1967 from 1968. In the past year we HAVE laid down all thought, surrendered to the void
and, at last, reached the place "where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies," when
"at ten to six, Mr. K performs his tricks without a sound." And if the trip hasn't exactly been
either easy or pleasant, still—in the words of another song—
I've got to admit it's getting better,
A little better all the time.
(Portions of this article originally appeared in UCLA Daily Bruin.)
[IMAGE]
The Los Angeles Free Press
June 9, 1967
To Allen Ginsberg by Liza Williams
Dear Holy Jewish Daddy Prophet: those poems are your babies, spilling from your
mouthwomb, nestling in your fur beard, while you, singing from the four wheeled microbus
you ride in (like Jehova in a rubber chariot), are laying love on all the kids, reminding them
that you can bum the candle at both ends while shoving it up your ass.
Great wandering almost oldman symbol. Not dirty but very marked with passage, circling
countries, some sort of mocking bird forever in transit, going south, spreading summer,
strange music, words, chants, visions—making whole populations!
Coming to Los Angeles, holding hands in the Beanery with an old Hassidic your father man.
Letting him sing badly into your giftie tape recorder, tying his tune and your Indian song
into a rock and roll for gigantic exploitation of success! but refusing money. Followed by
Saint Romulus and his tissue paper brother who spend the house hours washing dishes,
zipping flys, combing long hair with a wooden Oaxaca comb, answering neat piles of
postcards, underinventorying the categories of days.
Big telephone poet man speaking to all the states, to all the in and out of jail warblers, to
the maybe obscenity writers, and a thousand operators of the telephone company who
never recognize your name but charge it to your line anyway and pass you on to make your
contact.
Kitchen philosopher chopping melts and lung, garlic and green pepper and celery and onion,
tomatoes and mushrooms and turnip. Adding monosodium glutamate from a peanut butter
jar, pouring in wine, waving the Chinese chopper as you talk, producing plates of stew and
hymns, smoking cigarettes, up-raised finger poised for pronouncement, statement, the
finger-you.
Companion of those lost limbo hours (between ten at night and four in the morning, when
the statistics say most people die). Remember how we went to a year of movies on 42nd
Street, seeing successions of nothing pictures about nobody people while we waited for our
friend to finish work. Or sat in Bickford's forcing patterns on the table top, our fingers
pushing through the spilled sugar, our feet scraping at the tiled floor. We listened to the
parade of pushers and passers who stopped at our tab or sat there with us, drinking hot
water and ketsup.
133
Suddenly your face multiplied across the printed pages, begetting its own image. They
reported you goofing off in London, visioning in India, laying the truth on them across the
campus of the Mid-west. You are published and paraded, and appear (from the minutia of
time represented by a photograph) both puzzled and convinced.
You hate war, and speak out. I think you have a tongue like some great bronze bell from
the municipality of insight. (And personally I don't care whom you fuck, being delighted that
you fuck with pleasure .and can convey the delight of fucking, the news about loving,
breathing, sweating, tasting, the humanness of contact.)
So—old friend who sends me cryptic commands to pass on, chores to do involving lost tape?
and bits of paper, whose midnight friends still call hopefully, whose face cut from Ramparts
magazine hangs over that other face painted in 1950, tender and looking out, who
remembers me by another name, who said to me, be what you are, this letter is to say—
thank you.
The Oracle of Southern California (Los Angeles)
March, 1967 200
Angry Artists to Paint LBJ
A "Faint Your President" contest and an interracial Love-In will highlight the 12-day Angry
Arts Festival, timed to begin the evening before President Johnson's June 23rd visit to Los
Angeles.
The contest will be held in front of the County Museum Thursday, June 22, at 4 P.M. Most of
the portraiture will be converted into picket signs for the 20,000 person anti-war contingent
expected to greet the President at the Century Plaza Hotel. The best of the caricatures will
be offered to LBJ by Angry Arts representatives.
"Johnson once said the official portrait of him was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen," Angry
Arts coordinator Sherman Pearl explained, "but he may not have had a fair sampling."
The Love-In will be held Sunday, June 25, at the Hansen Damsite in Pacoima, in the San
Fernando Valley. Vietnam Summer and the Pacoima-East Los Angeles black power magazine
Social Action Communicator (SAC) share sponsorship.
Most of the entertainment will be provided by Angry Artists: Kaleidoscope, The Grand
Children, and Blue Ice are among the groups slated to perform.
Subsequent events include a war protest candlelight procession along La Cienega Gallery
Row, Monday, June 26, from 8 to 10 P.M. and artists' immolation of their paintings at the
final pageant July 4.
The later days of the program will include theatre productions (including a world premiere
by Lester Cole, one of the Hollywood 10 writers blacklisted during the McCarthy era), dance
concerts, happenings, street shows, film showings (including a touring van truck), a mobile
Poets' caravan, puppet shows, exhibitions and a possible Hollywood Bowl concert. A huge
July 4th anti-war rally will wrap it up.
Entrants in the presidential painting contest can deliver their works in front of the Museum
June 22 or can mail them earlier to the Angry Arts office, 5636 Melrose Ave.
Marchers for the Century Plaza demonstration the next day will gather at 6 P.M. at the
Chevoit Hill Recreation Center, 2551 Motor Avenue in West Los Angeles.
Further details are available from Sherman Pearl at HO 7-5756.
134
The Los Angeles Free Press
June 9, 1967
Aesthetical Fuck
by Joyce Greller
"Look, Wilbur, isn't that sweet?" "What are those three doing?" "When's the next one?"
"Now stop that lady! This isn't the subway." "Can I buy postcard prints?" "Squares—why
aren't they home doing it instead of watching or drawing it?" 'That's a good way for having
sex if you don't want to look at the person." "Bah … What's so new about looking at this
stuff? It's been around for years."
Thus, the show called "HETEROX IS" that opened at the NYCATA GALLERY, 55 W. 86th, on
December 4th was warmly received. It features one of the most varied and open exhibits
ever revealed to the public on the subject of sex with a fascinating assortment of work from
both prominent and unknown artists.
Tomi Ungerer's drawings of intricate machines made to delight women are intriguing,
stylized and tempting enough to cause one girl to utter, "I wonder how much they cost."
Walter Gutman, a notable financier who calls himself the "Antique American" dabbles in
what brings him his keenest pleasure. His erogenous paintings depicting dominant women
caused a lass to hurtle her date to the floor and stomp on his hand. They were asked to
leave when her huarache fell off.
Mordi Gerstein, filmmaker, whose wooden plank, plastic and epoxy in ecstasy sculpture of a
seated man and woman caused several people to ask for a chair, thinks: "Sex is very
natural subject matter. Everything is erotic anyway."
Charlie Frazier, who usually works with flying sculptures via remote, displayed some
suggestive bronze nudes. He had prepared some flying erotic, but it got away. About his
work he said, "Shucks, I enjoy it."
Dick Ruben who shows a series of mysteriously entertwined line drawings of human forms
in action claims "Everyone has their religion." Charlie Stark, who specializes in carefully
rendered pictures of fannies (female) admits to an obsession with bottoms and says his
beloved renderings of same "keep me interested while I'm solving complex problems of
composition. The emotion brings warmth and love into what has become almost a
mathematical problem."
Sherman and Rosalyn Drexler both contributed their paintings of nude women. Both are
motivated by the tradition of the subject and the artistic possibilities of the most basic of
forms although man and wife differ somewhat in their interpretations. They wholesomely
resolve possible family spats by secretly burning or selling each other's work.
Females seem to dominate the area of erotic art, and their work appears far more honest
and unneurotic.
135
Irene Duggs works with toys and her wind-up tiger lunging at a toy nude girl is quite
playful. Hannah Wilkie's huge startling sculpture of a portion of the male mounted on a wall
plaque has an Oriental feeling in its design. It's titled "Santa Claus." The pair of orange
spheres jutting out of Barbara Bluestain's Water color of a reclining nude man weren't
oranges but caused one little old lady to murmur appreciation. "A good fruit still life is hard
to come by." Joyce Greller was mildly mad about two pairs of very unusual used scanties
and a nightie being abducted from her "Essence of Erotica" suitcase. "The pants were
salvaged from a fetish photographer's studio and the torn negligee donated by a
neighboring doxie. I hope the thief who eloped with them finds happiness, but launders
them first."
Mario Jorin had some original prospectives of men and women and just likes working with
what seems natural. "I cringe when people call what appears to be too real for them porno!"
June Hildebrand, Bob Stanley, Anita Steckel, Robert Rapulis, Joe Roman, Arthur Bardo and
all others who contributed generally agree that they work in erotica occasionally because it
turns them on strictly as artists; or it's colorful and challenging; it's an effective method of
communicating with everyone; or it's even a source of humor. None relate it with
sensationalism. Whether it will "turn on" visitors is doubtful and depends. After all, some get
carried away over lifesavers, hub caps or tin whistles.
The music provided by Calo Scott and his ladyfriend cello and Bihal Ahmedrrahman on
derabeka (drum) and coronet blended in nicely with simultaneous erotic tapes over the top
created by Vinnie Caffarelli. His orgie-moan and hot chatter tapes interspersed with birds,
bees, animals and other sounds from nature perked up most ears.
The erotic environment in the lavatory created by animationist and filmmaker Don Dugga
included rather sensual films projected on walls and any users of the standard facilities and
certainty lent a new dimension to laps and other exposed anatomy, also providing a colorful
protective shield in motion. A collection of fantasy erotic storyboards which Mr. Dugga can't
ordinarily indulge in for commercial purposes and mirrors also graced the John's wall.
But the strain of the musician's amplifiers, erotic tapes, film projectors and extra lighting
was evidently too much for the limited circuits in the small building and all fuses blew.
Twice. Spectators stumbled and groped around in the dark, inspecting pictures with lighters,
reluctant to leave. Enticing rumors started. Finally an emergency extension was brought in,
lights went back on and after some effort the gallery was cleared out.
The show was off to a good start.
Al DiLauro, who assisted in selecting and hanging the show, including his own erotic
collages and a series of Tree Women in which trees convert to female anatomy from the
torso right down to the roots, said "Our purpose wasn't to create sensation or do anything
wicked. Many artists just happen to work in erotica in addition to their other work. We only
wanted to give them a chance to show their things to an interested audience, and also
maintain some standards of our own."
The East Village Other (New York)
December 15, 1966
Destructive Art: Chicken Destruction Realization
by Ralph Ortiz
Man in white shirt and white pants with a chicken in pants, head and neck protruding from
fly. Woman in white blouse and pants. Woman's dialogue is directed at chicken. Woman
pulls feathers from chicken's neck with each "You don't love me."
136
Scene opens woman feeding chicken, scratching its head and koochee-kooing to it. She
stands back and throws the handful of corn at it shouting "You don't love me."
Dialogue—
Man: "Of course I love you."
Woman: "No you don't love me. You never loved me."
Above dialogue is repeated until chicken's neck is nearly bare.
Woman: "You don't love me. You never show me you love me."
Man: "Of course I love you. Of course I show you I love you. I bought the house because I
love you. I bought the car because I love you. I left my mother because I love you."
Woman: "You don't love me. You just say you love me."
Man: "I know what you want. You want my chicken."
Woman: "Yes, I want your chicken."
Man: "You can't have my chicken. It belongs to my mother."
Woman: "I know it belongs to your mother, but I want your chicken."
Man: "I can't give you my chicken."
Woman: "You see, you don't love me. You never did love me. You hate me. That's what you
do. You hate me."
Man proceeds to cut head off, saying to this woman: "I do love you. I do love you." He
hands woman the head. She becomes jubilant. Clutching the head to her breast she cries
out: "You love me. You do love me. You do love me." Embracing him, cuddling the chicken
head to her face, leaving blood on her face, she skips out singing, "He loves me … He loves
me … He loves me."
Man reaches down and puts his hand on chicken neck looking out to audience, cries
searchingly,
"Mommy …"
The East Village Other
(New York) 1966
Ecstatic Living
by Thad and Rita Ashby
This is a condensed version of "First in a Series: Your Ecstatic Home." This is
art. Division of Interior Decoration.
In the daytime, we want a tree-top house that admits all possible light so the walls and the
floor move slowly in motion, in harmony with what we know of the structure of atomic
physics. Everything is flowing, breathing; Heraclites is our philosopher for reality. The house
should always be changing, the light should always be dazzling.
Then for our nighttime hours, we want another kind of room in the house, one that is the
very opposite of the tree-tops, in the greenhouse. We want a WOMB. Tim Leary has some
womb rooms at Millbrook; there is an Indian cloth on the ceiling and the walls, Indian rugs
on the floor, and an altar and pillows spread around. The purpose of the womb room is
exactly opposite from the purpose of the tree-top room; one opens out into the air and
light, and the other is a return to the womb of the universe.
137
Everything in it should be soft If you drape cloths along the wall and on the ceiling, and turn
on an electric fan or an air conditioning blower the walls tend to undulate with the air. If you
have a stroboscopic light or any little revolving light, you can create the effect of the walls
flowing, of their consisting of liquid.
Everyone should invest in a little electric motor of this kind that revolves things from the
ceiling. Then you can take a large tin can and puncture it with holes and cause it to revolve
around a light bulb and it shines little bits of starlight all over the room.
In addition to the little electric motor for throwing lights and shadows around the room we
might also have a little revolving stage of the kind you see in jewelry store windows. I'm
suggesting something anyone can build. It would consist of a little revolving stage, covered
with bits of mirror. You usually see them with wrist watches on them in a jewelry store
window. Cover this with any visionary object. For a list of visionary objects, you can read
Huxley's The Doors of Perception or Heaven and Hell.
We can create jewels without a very heavy investment. It can be costume jewelry, or it can
be little bits of plastic. Put them on this revolving stage, and then surround the little stage
with a black cloth that would drape down in a circle around the stage so that you can't see
it. Cut holes in the cloth at about eye level for a chair, and insert a teleidoscope in the hole.
Sit in a circle around this thing. You can't see what's in there. You can't see the jewels and
bits of junk, except through the teleidoscope.
Live in this kind of room at night and then in the daytime live in a kind of greenhouse with
lots of plants surrounding you and lots of just natural funky, earthy smells, and lots of light
coming in flickering and dazzling everything. It will change your life!
We want to emphasize everything that's organic in this room. We want to have lots of
animals and lots of anything that lives. You can meditate more easily on a flower or a gold
fish, I think, than you can a statue of the Buddha.
If we think of reality as hard, as the generation of our parents think of reality, then we'll
build hard wall houses. When we think of reality as flowing, as dynamic, as growing, then
we begin to build houses that are more like flowers, more like buds. Imagine, for example,
the absolute ecstasy of living inside a big orange flower about a block wide. We'd ride
around on large, trained butterflies.
The image of the world, that organic unity, is something we can achieve in our house or in a
simple little room. These things that I'm talking about don't cost anything. To put them into
practice, all you need in mind to start with is a visionary experience. We can reproduce it
with twenty-five cents worth of metal foil and a dollar's worth of colored ribbons and maybe
five dollars worth of lights and light cords. We'd begin with a pile of junk and we'd end with
a reproduction of the universe.
If each of us would change his own house, it would gradually change the entire moral tone
of bur country. We would begin to think of the earth as a visionary garden. We would
become caretakers of the trees and 'the animals, and the flowers. We would think of
ourselves as creatures in a garden who are all being grown for some great, great cosmic
enjoyment.
138
If everyone built such a home, with a treehouse room for daylight, and a womb-like room
for the night, it would effect the same kind of transformation in our society as it does in the
Buddhist countries where they tend to make their decisions slowly and refer everything to,
say, the Hour of the Tea Ceremony, or the Hour of Meditation. You ask them a direct
question and ask them for an immediate decision; they give you an indirect answer and
postpone the decision until they've gone into their little private temple and thought about it
from every angle. When they come up with an answer it's usually something very subtle,
and something that transcends the conflict of opposites.
The Oracle of Southern California (Los Angeles)
October, 1967
139
THE PERSONALITIES: Say It Like It is
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is editor of The Realist, a magazine of "freethought criticism
and satire." The following is a short excerpt from a long interview.
ORACLE: Well, let's go back. You say you don't see LSD as a panacea.
KRASSNER: Oh. I started to get into this before; I'm glad you reminded me. LSD is a
catalyst to awareness, so what I'm really saying is, "I don't see awareness, leave LSD out of
it, forget the whole chemical thing altogether, I don't see awareness as a panacea. I don't
believe in the Biblical concept, 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make ye free;'
because people have such a fantastic capacity to rationalize the truth."
The San Francisco Oracle
January, 1967
Timothy Leafy, Allen Ginsberg Gary Snyder, Alan Watts
A kind of "summit meeting" was held in 1967 aboard the houseboat of author
and philosopher Alan Watts. Those present included poets Allen Ginsberg and
Gary Snyder; Timothy Leary, founder of the League for Spiritual Discovery;
and staff of The San Francisco Oracle (who are represented in the following
dialogue by "VfA"). What is here is a brief excerpt from "the houseboat tape."
GINSBERG: Now, what can I drop out of?
LEARY: Don't take your teaching post at Cal.
GINSBERG: Don't take my teaching post at Cal … That's one way, but that involves money.
I need the money.
VfA: You should give it away.
GINSBERG: But I've been giving it away … that's why I need money, (laughter) The diggers
say abandon money …
VfA: You don't necessarily have to abandon it.
LEARY: Get rid of it Pass it on faster and faster …
VfA: Money is stored energy—it may be real or it may not be real and should be given away
within the community.
GINSBERG: What about Pound's idea of money? Pound said that where money came from
was that somebody got a million dollars in gold, and then the government gave him sixteen
million dollars credit.
In other words, he could issue sixteen million dollars worth of dollars—for a million in gold.
So just the people who had that gold, presumably, had credit. So Pound's idea was that all
credit should come from the government.
SNYDER: Well, within the subculture it moves more and more towards exchange, towards
giving and exchanging of what you've created, and getting food for pawns, literally … and
keeping it within the community.
GINSBERG: What if you want a piano?
LEARY: Different ones of us, at different times, have more energy that can interact with the
culture.
140
In the last four months, I have been making about eight thousand dollars a week and I
didn't have enough money in Seattle yesterday to buy a package of cigarettes. Let's go on,
and be more practical.
SNYDER: Well, I think there are two problems with practicality. The one is right now, and
the second is when technological advances have made mass unemployment. I mean this
society, at least, is moving towards the point when everybody will just be given money.
As a matter of fact, the American economy could afford right now to put everybody on a
minimum income dole. And it would cost them less, probably, than one-tenth that goes into
social work.
WATTS: And incidentally, Gary, it would cost us less to bribe the whole of Asia than to fight
any wars there.
SNYDER: Just dump money on China.
WATTS: To dump money on China, to give everybody enough clothes, enough food, enough
housing, it would cost us less than fighting the Vietnam war!
SNYDER: So the problem of bread is merely an interim problem, and I see it as being a
question of flexibility, and willingness, and a bodhisattva spirit of service … like being
willing to work for the post office. It's a temporary problem.
GINSBERG: If we were to bribe Asia … bribe China, and feed China and everything like that
… how could we do that and simultaneously drop out into purely separated pueblos, or
family units, or tribes?
LEARY: Well, that's a fantasy of our times. A delightful fantasy to show the ridiculousness of
the robot-fake-prop-television show.
Now Practical Step Number One, I suggest, is that we encourage, in every way we can,
including with our energies, the setting up of meditation centers of tribal landing pads in all
the cities of the United States.
I would say Step Number Two would be to …
GINSBERG: That requires a corporation, doesn't it?
SNYDER: No, it doesn't.
LEARY: Not at all! Nothing like that. It requires Ron and Jay, who've already done that.
SNYDER: But it requires that you be able to serve food next … any good ashram serves
food.
LEARY: So the Diggers have been starting on that.
SNYDER: So now where are we gonna get the food?
GINSBERG: The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is incorporated.
VfA: You get the food by acquiring land. That's the basic thing, to acquire land for people to
go to.
LEARY: That's Step Number Three. As the people move from the city they've got to meet
each other and form these tribal … I would say, reincarnation groups because the people
who are ready to drop out and turn on will come to these centers and they'll wander around
and they'll form natural cellular groups and they will leave the city.
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I would suggest, as Practical Step Number Two, that the Human Be-In in San Francisco be a
model. We've all tried different models of summer schools, of institutes and research
projects and individual drop-outs … psychedelic celebrations and so forth … and the Avalon
and Fillmore and so forth …
I would say that the Human Be-In was a tremendously important thing in the consciousness
of San Francisco. Now if that thing could happen in every large city in the country … And,
again, the beautiful thing about the Be-In was it had no leadership, it had no big financing,
it will just grow automatically.
GINSBERG: Yeah, but we're accused of being the leaders. We're not, though, you know.
What were WE doing up on that platform?
LEARY: That's a charge that doesn't bother me at all.
VfA: There were fifty people on that platform and every one of them was a leader. So were
the people in the audience. The reason was that nobody came out and said, "We ARE the
leaders," because that's bullshit!
GINSBERG: Nobody claims to be the leader, but I remember sitting up there showing my
body off.
VfA: Every time they say "you're a leader," you point to Snyder, you see?
GINSBERG: Well, I do that anyway.
SNYDER: Yeah, I know, but the press has a leadership complex.
WATTS: Oh, they want to find the ringleaders …
GINSBERG: Yeah, they keep calling Gary my disciple … and they have me blowing his conch
horn.
WATTS: … one of the four philosophical questions is: Who started it? And whenever the
police or the press barge into a situation, they want to know who started it.
In other words, because they're still thinking about God and the first cause and they want to
know …
LEARY: Who's in charge …
WATTS: … who started, who's in charge, and so on …
LEARY: Who gets the credit, who gets the blame …
WATTS: Let's get back to a fundamental thing. I think that what you are really—all of you—
are having the courage to say, is that, the absolutely primary thing is that there be a
change of consciousness in the individual … that he escape from the hallucination that he is
a separate ego in an alien universe and that we all come to realize, primarily, that each one
of us is the whole works.
The San Francisco Oracle
February, 1967
Phil Spector
Phil Spector, through his recording activities with many top groups, became in
the -words of one -writer "the first tycoon of teen." Although he still is active
in the music world, he now associates himself more readily with the late
Lenny Bruce; he was a close friend in Bruce's last years. The following is
excerpted from an interview conducted by John Bryan.
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"Lenny should really be around today. We need him to sort out the truth. Society is in such
a tremendous upheaval. The war is even funny. It's so unreal it's funny. And yet people are
torn between a Lenny Brace and an Al Capp for humor. There is no middle, there's only the
extremes.
"That's why Lenny couldn't exist any longer … because in order to be an extremist of any
kind you have to be too healthy and Lenny was a sick boy and an extremist about trying to
free himself.
"When Lenny died he was 200 years old. He'd lived only 40 years but five times as hard as
anybody else and his heart just gave out. If Lenny had had a tooth pulled the day he died it
would have probably killed him and the dentist would have been shocked.
"How he died was never really an important question. It was really an overdose of police as
much as anything, an overdose of a society unwilling to accept the fact that it sleeps
together.
"I mean, you can't be called bad so many years and come through smiling. Because it was
getting him. They were out to get him. They had a rope around his neck. He had one foot
nailed to the floor and he was running.
"Nobody wants to look bad and when he reflected society's image right to its face, it looked
pretty sick. So they said, Ah … it's a sick man there.' …"
"They came to me and asked me to head up that committee to save the Sunset Strip for the
hippies. They were running up and down yelling This is our Strip!' But, I mean, Sunset Strip
belongs to Gloria Swanson or the Indians if it belongs to anyone and what's all this noise
about one little piece of land anyway. It's not really that important.
"I said their movement didn't really mean anything.
'They said, 'You don't know what you're talking about. This movement is really it. We're
going to say something.'
"Well, the movement has since died because it didn't say anything. And the reason it can't
mean anything is because these people are liberals and they don't understand the struggle
for freedom that's going on now.
"I asked them, 'Now, what other class of people are fighting for freedom?' The Negro, right?
So why don't you join with the Negro and you'll really be strong because when the cops are
coming down with the guns I want somebody right next to me who's, just as dedicated to
death as the cops are. 'Cause when the cop goes out each day he tells his wife, 'Look,
honey, I've got a badge, a gun. I'm in a rough business. I may not be home tonight.' She
understands. But the kid on the Strip standing next to me, he may not be that dedicated.
He may tell his mother, Tm coming home six o'clock for dinner.'
"Now the Negro, for him it's life or death, freedom or slavery, like Patrick Henry. These are
the kind of people I want on my side … ."
"All I know is that Drew Pearson says Johnson is a great President because he goes up and
he goes to sleep and he can wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning to find out how the
bombing went and then goes back to sleep again.
"I couldn't go back to sleep if I found out they'd just dropped 50 tons of bombs on
someone. It would make me nervous. All that napalm. He's a great President because he
can go back to sleep again."
Open City (Los Angeles)
May 12, 1967
143
The Fugs
The Fugs are a rock group from New York's Lower East Side and provide a
sort of nucleus for underground music—producing best-selling albums without
getting any radio air play (tunes like "Kill for Peace" and "River of Shit" make
broadcast difficult). Two of the Fugs, Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, both
poets as well as musicians, are interviewed here by Richard Ogar of The
Berkeley Barb.
Ogar: Would you consider the San Francisco rock scene revolutionary?
Kupferberg: I consider rock and roll revolutionary. I consider the Stones and The Beatles
very important revolutionaries.
Ogar: But how lasting are its effects? Is it really making a significant change in society?
Kupferberg: Well, you have to compare it to what went before, and what went before was a
kind of very primitive and narrow kind of rock music. And before that you had the lindy hop
and the fox-trot. So things really have gotten better. This kind of revolution occurs in spurts
and it has defeats. So you have to judge this against the whole history of the human race,
and there are grounds for optimism. Like, now, I think the Beatles and Stones era—the
traditional rock and roll era—has ended and we're headed into what will be a very creative
and at first confusing period in music.
Ogar: What about the dancing associated with rock and roll? Is this a liberating force?
Kupferberg: Sure. Anyone who really dances would never ask that question. By dancing, I
mean orgiastic kind of dancing, where you get into a kind of contact with your own body
and your own feelings that most people don't have. If everybody could dance the way I'm
talking about, then the revolution would be accomplished.
Ogar: I take it you're not as optimistic as Tuli seems to be about the possibility of radical
socio-political change in America?
Sanders: My motto is "Fuck God in the ass." I don't have any faith at all in the efficacy of
politics. I don't know what's going to happen. I'm political—I vote and hustle and hike, fight
and scream. Non-violently. I don't know what to do. We just try. But the thing is in terms
of, like, political power, political take-over.
I assume that what people want is a transformation of the society, right? They want to set
up a new type of government, a new type of methods for doing almost everything, from
handling the A&P to handling the problems of war and peace—so how is it done? I read
everything I can read, and I go to all the demonstrations, and nobody's even set up a
cabinet … they ought to set up some sort of rebel cabinet and issue big decrees all the time
about where it is they're pissed off. I don't know. The way to do it is really be militant, man,
and get after them … the bastards.
Ogar: What about loving your enemy to death?
Sanders: Love is a strong force if used by a whole bunch of people. Love vibrations have to
be simple. Love energy is like … it melts rather than discriminates, and that's all right. But
as a social tool … First of all, I don't see how you could disrupt the war machinery with
love, because human beings are, like, abstracted from the war machine. That's the way
they've developed it through electronics and computers.
The further away an idea or an institution is from the human mind, the harder it is to
dissolve it with love. It's like trying to make love to an electricity cable, because that's what
it is, … it's all electricity on cards and memory units. If you don't have any love targets, you
know, your love vectors can't grope in on somebody and try to transform them.
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The Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, Calif.)
May 12, 1967
Mort Sahl
The Los Angeles Free Press began its interview with the comedian-turnedsocial critic by questioning Sahl about the continuing investigation (in New
Orleans) of President Kennedy's assassination. Below are excerpts from that
interview.
Free Press: Garrison says he has the photographs of five men firing behind the fence on the
grassy knoll.
Sahl: He has a lot of documentation.
Free Press: Does he know who they are?
Sahl: Yes, he does. He knows their names and the CIA knows that he knows their names.
There are 51 documents the CIA has classified that have to do with the fact that the people
involved in killing the President were all alumni of the CIA. It's getting so everybody in
America's an alumni of the CIA … Garrison's thesis is that the CIA and the Pentagon are so
imbedded that they are bigger than any president, and no president can attack them, and
that the last president who did—President Kennedy—died for his pains. He died for the
finest thing he ever did.
Garrison is no friend of the local judiciary there. But the three judges heard the case and
bound Shaw over for trial. They thought there was sufficient evidence. Shaw will be tried.
Shaw will be tried with a battery of lawyers to defend him and Garrison to prosecute him. I
would suggest that those who are more interested in Garrison's destiny and our own buy
the New Orleans States-Item, because they carry the news. It's front-page news down
there. They don't manage to carry it up here—they're kind of busy. Also the television
newsmen don't carry it. I've found that almost no one is interested in this case—I mean
among the liberal contingent. They're looking the other way. They're busy waiting for
Robert Kennedy to bail them out. This issue will have to be resolved or nothing will be
resolved.
Free Press: One thought comes to mind since the Century City riot last June 23rd. Do you
see anything significant in the rather dramatic increase in police violence against peace
marchers?
Sahl: Yeah, I see the desperation of the establishment
Free Press: Krassner has a Realist story by somebody named Allen which says that the FBI
has 1 million arrest warrants already typed up and the concentration camps are ready to
accommodate them.
Mort Sahl: Allen can document that, he says. As Garrison points out, Hoover—with 44 years
in office—is the finest director the Bureau has ever had. Garrison says the tragedy of
Hoover's career will be that he didn't try to find who killed the President. He believes the
FBI could have found them in two weeks—and I don't think it would have taken that long.
They were all around.
The wild part is, this is all happening under a Democratic Administration. And people are
still sitting around, rationalizing, saying, "Well, gee, I hope they don't run Reagan …" They
haven't had enough, right? They're worried about Reagan. They haven't had enough, right?
Concentration camps, federal police, death in Vietnam and they're still coming up with,
"Well, gee … what can I do?" The expiation of guilt. The liberals, boy. They are really
something … .
145
Free Press: Then you feel that universal affluence and leisure for everybody really isn't
enough?
Sahl: They think they can bribe the Chinese with it. They think with indoor plumbing and a
Mustang they'll stop making war. Is it enough? Look at the people you know. Are they
hollow? This is Saturday, Sunday's coming up, and boy, do they dread it. Panic city. The
guy's building up his defenses with pro football and the beer cans—and the wife is going
crazy. She'll hack off her hair, then she'll add a fall, and then she'll put fake nails on and
then she'll take them off. It's another manifestation of what the hell am I doing here? …
Sahl: … it's done in John Corey's book The Manchester Affair, which is a report on
Manchester and Bob Kennedy. He says Bob Kennedy never moved against Manchester
overtly, he never said, "get him." What happened was at Bob Kennedy's table which is
populated by senators, congressmen, judges and all the ambitious people, who want to be
in good with the new president, Manchester's name comes up and Bob Kennedy says, "Oh,
him?" and he just thumbs down on the thing, you know, "That guy's crazy," and it all filters
down, and everybody knows what their job is. To document the charge, and stop that guy.
And that's how it's done. In the most cowardly way possible. It's assassination by inference,
and by all the below-the-belt weapons.
It is wholly unAmerican and the worst day in our lives was when wealthy men started to use
the instrument of government as an instrument of vengeance. Because guys like Hearst,
who were outside the government—these guys are in the government. Robert Kennedy has
his enemies, but when he has the Justice Department to get even with them, I start
worrying. Even if he would end the war, I don't know what the Administration would be like
here at home. I don't know that there's any indication that he would end the war. Donald
Duncan said to me recently, "I believe that Kennedy is more dangerous than Johnson." I
asked why. "The Presidency is the application of power, and Johnson is an amateur."
The Los Angeles Free Press'
September 29, 1967
Barbara Garson
Barbara Garson is author of the biting anti-Establishment play MacBird. Below
are excerpts from an interview conducted by Malcolm Jones and Ken Brown of
England's Peace News.
BROWN: You've been criticized a lot, at least over here, for the implication that the
assassination plot was engineered by Johnson. But this isn't really the point of the play
anyway, is it?
BARBARA: It's not the point of the play, and I can't get over such literal mindedness. Of
course, one of the things is 'that, first of all, what happened very often was, after I wrote
the play, I'd show it to people who'd say, "My god, I thought the same myself, but I put it
out of my mind." No, I never , thought the same myself; however, I wouldn't put it out of
my mind. I don't think it's true but I don't mind playing with the idea. I don't have this
feeling that everything is suddenly gonna come to an end if the President is unfit, because I
think he is unfit.
You know, people go around thinking, "Well, I don't know what's wrong in Vietnam, there's
something wrong in Vietnam, I don't know what's going on, but he must know," and I say
that he doesn't know, and I bear that responsibility myself, that we may be just walking
into a quagmire of destruction with no meaning or significance. I've always been willing to
accept the fact that these people are capable of anything. Did Johnson kill Kennedy? If he
did, that's the least of his crimes. I don't care who killed Kennedy.
146
There may
meantime,
behind the
main thing
wall where
be many senators who want us to get out of the Vietnam war, but in the
if they know the real casualty figures they don't disclose them. They line up
President. They may feel that he's going entirely in the wrong direction. The
is that though they may fight it out among themselves, they line up in a solid
the people are concerned, and they say, "Well, everything is going all right." …
BARBARA: I see worse times ahead for the United States, as we take over the whole burden
of world imperialism, shoving Prance and England from Africa and South East Asia, and so
on. And I see a very bad time in which the American people are fighting costly battles
abroad where they don't really benefit, and becoming more and more paranoid.
MARVIN GARSON (Barbara's husband, present during the interview): And internally, I think
there is going to be a lot of hysteria over sex and dope, which is really what the election of
Reagan in California was all about, in my view.
BARBARA: I would broaden that to mean hysteria over all these young people who don't put
any value on all the achievements that the older people got from sacrifice. Again, it's
saying: What you did was a whole waste. Whatever little sacrifices, or big sacrifices, you
made to keep your family together, we don't even want to bother. You earn money to put
me through college, and I don't even want to be a lawyer or a doctor. And the older people
get quite hysterical … .
BARBARA: I think one of the dangers now is that the increasing size of the American left
wing movement, unfortunately, is based on the odiousness of Johnson and how obvious he
comes on, so that everybody knows what the war in Vietnam is when he talks about it,
when he goes down to Vietnam and he says to the soldiers, "Remember, bring those
coonskins home to hang on the wall." Then all the liberals have to face what a vile thing it
is.
And the problem is that a lot of the movement isn't now directed against what he's doing,
it's directed against him. And when somebody smoother and more elegant, like Bobby
Kennedy, comes into power, to carry on the same program, then this movement will drift
away. I think that's a very real possibility. And it's in that sense that Bobby Kennedy is
more of a villain; not that he will be worse, but that the same policies, or even better
policies, with less opposition, is worse for us… .
BARBARA: In the play, we have him (Johnson) believing his own comments, no matter
what. First he says black, and then he says white, and boy, he believes them at the
moment. He, if nobody else, is convinced by his own rhetoric. And so we've elevated him to
a character of that stature, from whatever he really is. You couldn't put what Johnson
actually says in a play; it's too absurd.
Peace News (London)
David Crosby
David Crosby was the lead singer of one of pop music's most successful and
influential groups. The Byrds. The following comments are excerpted from a
long tape he made and transcribed.
I smoke pot, which helps, and once every two or three months I take an acid trip, which
also helps. It clears the deck and shakes everything up and loosens up the whole thing and
keeps it from getting too static. It seems to have a salutary effect; I can't really define what
it does, because we don't have words yet for most of what goes on in a trip. That's not to
say that we should because things are like soap bubbles; trying to put them into words
would be like trying to handle soap bubbles with iron gloves. It doesn't work. If you brought
them down to a verbal state of consciousness—they would shatter and fade and disappear
like dreams do when you Wake up. I would rather keep them where they are.
147
I get high a lotta different ways, mostly on myself; a lot on music, a lot on making love,
when I'm lucky I'm sailing, playing my guitar; talking to people, drugs, groovy foods,
making love, making love, making love as often as possible, which isn't ALL the time. That's
not easy to say that I'm some weird kind of freak who fucks ten times a day, or something.
When it happens it's a groove. I get high on everything I can, man, and I'm trying to get
high on everything. Buddha and Christ and Shiva and Krishna and Mohammad and
everybody all seem to say that you should get high on the flowers and on yourself and on
making love and you ARE love, and thou art God, and God grows, and the grass is God and
the grass grows, and everything is IT, and if you get into it the whole universe is yours:
playground, playpen, universe! Any label makes it small, puts fences up. The whole
universe is your home if you can get big enough to live in it. It's there. It doesn't care. You
can come out and live there. You just have to get big enough … .
I see President Johnson and these other cats with huge monster egos walking around like
grunting gladiators in a ring, man! They don't realize that the world is the size of a golf ball;
there isn't room to do that anymore. It is like six cats in a closet; each has a hand grenade
and they hate each other, anybody pulls the pin, they all get it! It's not a war, it's just a bad
scene.
We've got to find some way to cool out all the egos. Not just President Johnson's, but mine
and everybody else's, a lot more than we've been doing. Maybe my children will know how
to do it if I don't teach them all that repressive stuff.
Excuse me, but I get high and I think it's a groove. I'm not trying to blow your mind or fuck
with you, or inflict it on you. I'm not telling YOU to get high, but I'm stoned. That's the only
political ethic in all the people I know. It's based on the Golden Rule, "Don't mess with me,
and I won't mess with you, and you live any way you want and please let me live the way I
want and don't inflict your thing on me and I won't inflict my thing on you." It's the only
political ethic that they will accept. We must find some way to cool out the people who feel
they must inflict their way on us… .
People who don't dig change as a way of life are soon going to watch their world changing
so fast around them that they will have to go out to Sunnyland Acres in the middle of the
desert and play bridge, and ignore the world and pretend those rocket ships are not going
over their house or go crazy and flip out and kill themselves. That's what an awful lot of
people are going to do in the next ten years, old people. "Old people" does not necessarily
mean age chronologically because age is, an attitude. I know some very old fifteen-yearolds who bought the whole Orange County number and are forty already. And I know some
other kids from the same place who are very young and very beautiful and very alive and
they're seventy-five or eighty.
I met an old farm lady in New Hampshire who's one of the hippest, most aware, most
ALIVE, VIBRANTLY GROOVY PEOPLE I HAVE EVER MET in my life and she's eighty-two!
She's younger than me! SHE WAS TURNED ON. Tho sun came up in the morning and it got
her high, made her happy, made her blood flow, made her tingle, be happy! The fresh
orange juice, when it came over her tongue, grooved her right out. The smell of coffee got
her stoned. She was a groove… .
There's a million roads up the mountain and they all expand your consciousness. Everybody
can have their own. And drugs won't do it by themselves, man. YOU MUST WANT TO
EXPAND YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. THAT'S THE REAL EXPANDER … THE WANTING TO … AND
BEING UNAFRAID TO … ya gotta dig change. As a matter Of fact, CHANGE IS WHAT'S
HAPPENING!
The Oracle of Southern California (Los Angeles)
October, 1967
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