Sixties Date Machine^™

There are at least three discrepancies in the dating of this event. Linda Hamalian, in A Life of Kenneth Rexroth (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 243, gives the date incorrectly as October 13, 1955.. She mentions that Ginsberg sent out 100 postcard invitations to the reading. Hamalian quotes the postcard: "Six poets at the Six Gallery. Kenneth Rexroth, M.C. Remarkable collection of angels all gathered at once in the same spot. Wine, music, dancing girls, serious poetry, free satori. Small collection for wine and postcards. Charming event."

However, Barry Miles in Howl: original draft facsimile, transcript & variant versions, fully annotated by author, with contemporaneous correspondence, account of first public reading, legal skirmishes, precursor texts & bibliography by Allen Ginsberg, edited by Barry Miles (New York, HarperCollins, 1986), pinpoints the date as October 7, 1955. (See page xiii). On page 165 is reproduced a facsimile of the postcard that Ginsberg sent out. It reads: "6 Poets at 6 Gallery / Philip Lamantia reading mss. of late John Hoffman-- Mike McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder & Phil Whalen--all sharp new straightforward writing-- remarkable collection of angels on one stage reading their poetry. No charge, small collection for wine and postcards. Charming event. / Kenneth Rexroth, M.C. / 8 PM Friday Night October 7, 1955 / 6 Gallery 3119 Fillmore St. / San Fran". Note the discrepancies with Hamalian's transcription of the text of the card. Was there a different card or was Hamalian taking "poetic liberties"?

The other article, "Delving the Diggers" (By George Metevsky, Berkeley Barb, Oct. 21, 1966, p. 3), ostensibly written by a naïve onlooker who tries to make sense of the free food gatherings (which sound more like happenings). In answer to a question about who was providing the food, the now famous reply came: "It's free because it's yours." The article also mentions the Digger Papers that are handed out on Haight Street once or twice a week. "Nobody seems to know who writes them, but most agree that the DIGGERS are behind autonomy." There is a mention of one of the Digger Papers: "COOL CRANBERRY HORSE-HAIRED MOUTH CLUTTERED WITH APPLE CORES" and quotes from that sheet. "Regarding inquiries concerned with the identity and whereabouts of the DIGGERS: We are happy to report that the DIGGERS are not that."

"To Show Love is to fail. To love to fail is the Ideology of Failure. Show Love. Do your thing. Do it for FREE. Do it for Love. We can't fail. And Mr. Jones will never know what's happening here, do you Mr. Jones.

The crux of their argument: "Why is it necessary to pay two and a half dollars to go to a dance. What's revolutionary about that? Bands don't have to join the union. The unions don't care a damn about consumers, they're out for their slice of the pie. Why join except to get your slice? Why pay rent on a hall? Why not pressure the city into putting on block dances, parking lot dances, FREE dances. Would Chet Helm and Bill Graham oppose that? That would be a revolution; something joyous and free in America."

"Where will Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead et al go but up to bigger gigs, better publicity, managers -- etc. until they are ***STARS***. Where's the revolution? Long-hair? Beautiful clothes? Would our soldiers be substantially different if we dressed them mod? John Wayne in Carnaby St. clothes."

"The "hip" merchants along Haight Street with notable exception (Psych shop and Phoenix) are talking about ridding the street of "loiterers" (on public streets?) and panhandlers -- the kids that made the scene they are there to capitalize on. "Money doesn't talk, it swears" so do it for free. Do it for love. That way is safety.

"Charges were dropped yesterday against these five young men, who gave a Halloween puppet show at the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets.

San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Elton C. Lawless acted reluctantly at the urging of Deputy District Attorney Arthur Schaffer, who said, "further investigation indicates that the charges (of creating a public nuisance) should be dismissed in the interests of justice."

Celebrating their release were (from left): Robert Morticello, the sculptor who created the nine-foot puppets; Emmett Grogan and Pierre Minault, actors; Peter Berg, a writer, and Brooks Bucher, unemployed."

Emmett Grogan, in Ringolevio, claimed that this photo gave rise to the hippie peace sign after people adopted a reverse version of the gesture he made to the photographer, the Irish version of the American middle finger.

Emmett describes this event:

The case went before Municipal Court Judge Elton C. Lawless within forty-eight hours--on Emmett's 22nd birthday. His honor reluctantly dismissed the case before anything got started, at the urging of Deputy District Attorney Arthur Schaffer, who said, "Further investigation indicates that the charges of creating a public nuisance should be dismissed in the interests of justice." The further investigation he mentioned was some cocktail conversation he had with the defendants before eating lunch with them. This penal code 370, which they were charged with violating, had been chosen by the park station cops as the main weapon in their declared war of harassment against the Haight Street people, and the puppet quintet was happy to be cut loose. They were in a good mood when they walked out of Lawless's courtroom, and their loudness attracted Bob Cambell, a newspaper photographer who was assigned to cover the municipal court building, which was quiet with the inactivity of a dull afternoon. He got the story from the deputy D.A. and asked the five defendants if they would stand on the outside steps for a photo. They did without thinking anything of it.

The next morning, Emmett walked down his block for a newspaper and a cup of coffee. On the corner there was a sealed container that unlatched a Chronicle when it was fed a dime. He dropped his ten cents into the slot, opened the lid, and what he saw made him lift out two copies instead of one. On the front page was a five-by-seven picture of him and the others, outside the court building after their release the day before. The photo was headlined, "In the Clear" and captioned with their names and a brief synopsis of who they were and what had gone down. He was referred to as an actor, but thankfully there was no mention of the Diggers or even the Mime Troupe. The photo captured each of them striking a pose: La Mortadella was shown with his pinky and forefinger raised in the sign of the cornuto or the cuckold; Slim Minnaux was leaping with arms-stretched, fists-clenched ecstasy; the Hun had his thumb jammed up into an imaginary asshole, and his face was pinched like .someone who just smelled a load of shit; Butcher Brooks was dressed in someone else's style and leaning forward in a stiff, fraternity stance, Emmett, still wearing his army boots, with a scarf knotted around his neck, an IRA cap flopping on his head, and a cigarette loosely hanging from the corner of his smile, was one step upstage from his pals, staring out at the reader from above the middle finger and index finger of his right hand, raised in the sign of a backwards [end page 253] V which to the English and Irish means "Up Your Ass!" and is the equivalent of the American, lone, uplifted, middle finger.

The photo seemed as big as life to Emmett, and he wondered if it meant any trouble. He didn't like too many people knowing about him, and now half the city was probably going to know all their names before the day was out. He finished his coffee and then thumbed a ride up Haight Street to Clayton. As he was walking up the hill to the house where the stew was being fixed and the station wagon was parked, several people called out to him by name and flashed him a V-sign. He stopped a few of them and explained that they had it all wrong. "You've got to turn your hand around 'n flash it backwards. Like giving someone the finger. See . . ." and he showed them. But there were too many to bother about and by the time he went over to the Panhandle at 4 P.M. for something to eat, everyone was waving the V-sign to him and to one another, saying things like, "Peace, brother." "When are you going to run for mayor, Emmett?" It was depressing. There he was, on the front page of the town's only morning newspaper, telling everyone to shove it all up their ass, and they thought he was just imitating Winston Churchill or something. "Fuck it!" He decided there was no way to make the hippies hip to it, and besides he had better things to do.

Chester Anderson and Claude Hayward brought the Gestetner equipment that constituted the free printing presses of the Communication Company, and set up shop in one of the church offices. From there, they issued bulletins and news flashes every few minutes. The resulting body of printed sheets comprises an instant archive of the event, of the free space created within the walls of this liberated Tenderloin neighborhood sanctuary.

Chester was fond of telling about one such sheet, a story which typifies the spontaneous nature of a digger event. He had taken a breather and went for a drink to a bar across the street from Glide. There he overheard a heated discussion between two of the bar's patrons. Chester, the ever-vigilant correspondent, whipped out his notepad and jotted notes of this conversation. He then repaired to the Communication Company temporary facilities and typed up his notes, ran off a few copies of this instant news bulletin, ran back across the street and astounded these very patrons with copies of their conversation memorialized in print.

There were several centers of action throughout the Church, as thousands of people arrived around 8pm on Friday. There was a rock band in the Fellowship Room in the basement, and an orgy room next door filled with shredded plastic. The elevator was also filled with plastic and revelers called "elenauts" sang "Yellow Submarine" as they rode from floor to floor. The main sanctuary on the first floor saw a variety of activities including Hindu chanting, candlelit processions, poetry readings, incense burning, a naked man roaming the room, African drumming, belly dancing, light shows and lovemaking. Meanwhile, the Fellowship Room was host to a discussion on obscenity, including a police officer from the vice squad. There was a film on satellites projected on one wall while rock music blared and a group of belly dancers suddenly burst into the room, drawing partners into a mass sensual dancing. The Diggers fed everyone at 11pm, and the events continued until the wee hours of Saturday morning. Eventually the Church leaders freaked and asked that the festivities move elsewhere. There were plans to move the happening to several locations in the City, but the group that reached Ocean Beach by Playland are confirmed by the Barb account.

Meanwhile, every cubicle of Glide was happening. The elevator to the basement opened to a hallway filled with styrofoam. Wading through this fill was like a dream sequence of being stuck in place while trying mightily to move. In another room, there was a panel discussion on pornography. When it came time for the police vice squad officer to speak, one of the diggers opened up a glass display case from its hidden access panel in the next room, and laid his penis on the shelf. The audience broke apart in hilarity over the irony of these two juxtaposed images, the staid cop discussing in a quite serious tone the dangers of porn, while the anonymous flasher performed his silent interpretation of "do your own thing" behind the podium. The cop never caught on.

The Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation (for the Demystification of Violence) took place in London’s Roundhouse between the 15th and 30th July 1967. Organised by the American radical educationalist and anti-psychiatrist Joe Berke and his colleagues in the Institute of Phenomenological Studies, it was a bold attempt to ‘demystify human violence in all its forms, and the social systems from which it emanates, and to explore new forms of action.’

The congress emerged out of Joe Berke’s involvement with the free universities movement in the United States and out of Alexander Trocchi’s idea for a ‘spontaneous university’ as a ‘detonator’ for revolutionising contemporary existence.

The event drew together the bohemian culture of New York’s Lower East Side with Europe’s own rebel groups in art, literature, politics and psychiatry, producing what has been justly described as the ‘numero uno seminal event of [London] 67’, a sometimes joyous but often angry anti-coalition of ‘politicos’ and ‘culture wizards.’

‘All men are in chains’, runs a flyer for the congress. ‘There is the bondage of poverty and starvation: the bondage of lust for power, status, possessions. A reign of terror is now perpetrated and perpetuated on a global scale. In the affluent societies, it is masked. There, children are conditioned by violence called love to assume their position as the would-be inheritors of the fruits of the earth. But, in the process, they are reduced to little more than hypothetical points on a dehumanized co-ordinate system. …We shall meet in London on the basis of a wide range of expert knowledge. The dialectics of liberation begin with the clarification of our present condition.’

The congress opened on the morning of the 15th with a lecture by the anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing and closed on the 30th with a lecture by the digger Emmett Grogan, following an happening by Carolee Schneemann and a performance by the British pop group The Social Deviants the previous evening. Gregory Bateson, Stokely Carmichael, Paul Goodman and the German philosopher, Herbert Marcuse were amongst other public figures who spoke. There were seminars in the afternoons and films and poetry readings in the evenings. ‘The Provos were there from Amsterdam. There were students from West Berlin, political activists from Norway and Sweden as well as a large contingent from the New Experimental College, Thy, Denmark. There were representatives from the West Indies, Africa, France, Canada, America, Holland, India, Nigeria and Cuba,’ remarks the poet Susan Sherman, one of Berke’s friends, who covered the congress for Ikon magazine.

The giant main event of the week-long "Dialectics of Liberation" conference was to occur that night, beginning at 8:00 P.M., and a few short hours before that, Emmett made a mistake. He went with some of the men, whom he considered his elders because of their "beat experience," across town to a communal house where many of the old-timers and founding fathers of white hipsterism lived (426) together as expatriates from their various countries or simply as British artists who felt outcast in their own land. It was a spectacular place full of singular originals - the men and women artists and their work. There was also plenty of dope, but unfortunately only two varieties of it, Lebanese hashish and pure London, drugstore heroin which was, of course, legal there for any registered addict.

The group sat in a quick cluster on the thick, Persian-rugged floor of what appeared to be the living room, - all the rooms looked so much alike it was hard to tell any difference between them with the exception of the kitchen and W.C. There was a tray on the floor, and Emmett helped himself to the papers, cigarette tobacco and hash, using about six or seven papers and mixing the loose tobacco with lots of hash to roll a "splif" which is a joint about as fat as a cigar and just as long. It took him nearly half an hour to smoke it with no help from anyone, because they all had their own or were not interested in anything else but the high-grade pharmacy scag. So was Emmett, and by the time he was loaded on smoke, he started getting a real yen to get off behind some of that fine A-1 stuff, and he did, doing himself up as if he had his last fix the day before, instead of a decade ago.

The moment the rush hit and the dope ran through his veins, every cell in Emmett's body snapped with remembrance of the sensation they had never really forgotten during the ten, long, clean, past years. He nodded out right after what was only a cellular memory became again a real feeling enveloping his body in its own erotic warmth. He didn't even have time for any regrets- if he had any - just enough time to nod his head plop! Down on his chest which wasn't heaving with its asthmatic wheeze any longer.

Emmett's nod became a deep sleep with him propped up in the corner of the room, leaning against the interesting walls undisturbed by anything or body. One of the poet elders in the house woke him up after three or four hours, because night was rapidly falling, and Emmett had to get to the "Dialectics of Liberation" conference being held in a gigantic, fantastic, huge dome of a building appropriately called the Roundhouse. It had once been the warehouse, storage depot and garage for the numerous vehicles of London's Metropolitan Transport system.

When Emmett arrived there a little before eight o'clock that Saturday night, he liked the industrial, working-class smell and leftover accoutrements of the brilliantly designed, hollow-mammoth Roundhouse, but he didn't particularly like the look of the weekend crowd (427) of four or five thousand sitting in row after row of collapsible wooden chairs and drinking beer from large gallon cans which was the only way to juice that Saturday night, because all the pubs would be shut down by the time this main session of the conference ended.

Emmett was still loaded with the sleepiness of heroin and very much on the nod, his eyes pinned and glassy and all the love taken from them by a heavy look of coldness. He kept himself together, though, knowing that he had to, because in a few minutes he'd be sitting on the stage with all the left-wing superstars and would make a ten-minute speech. A speech he planned and even researched, but now was too fucked up to deliver properly. He had even forgotten his notes back at the house, but it was no big thing, really, because he'd have another chance the following day when the only speaker billed for the afternoon was him, and he had been assured that the response to hear him rap was well worth his having traveled there. So, tonight he figured he would relax and tomorrow do what he came to do.

They were all standing backstage, and Allen Ginsberg fulfilled his usual sincere diplomatic role by introducing him to everybody, one at a time. Suddenly she was standing in front of him, an elegant, gracefully tall black woman with a coiffeured Afro and dressed in a West African robe. She said her name was Angela Davis and that she had been hearing about Emmett and the Diggers in San Diego where she was a student and teacher in the philosophy department at the University of California. She invited him to look her up whenever he was in that part of the state and then let him go as Allen pulled him away towards the cluster of black people surrounding the man in whose entourage Angela Davis was traveling at the time- Stokely Carmichael.

Allen excused and pardon me'd his way through the group, holding onto Emmett and dragging him toward the center and the man who was all decked out in a bright orange shirt. When they reached him, Allen treated the introduction with the decorum he thought appropriate for a historic meeting. The two men were standing face to face only a few feet apart, and the backstage crowd quieted down to maybe hear what was going to be said as Stokely Carmichael stuck out his hand, his face broadening into a smile, intending to say something like "Glad to meet you, brother." But he didn't, because Emmett didn't raise his hand in greeting or change the cold, hard expression on his face or even give any sign that he intended to. He (428) just stood there, deadpanning Carmichael and his outstretched hand and the smile on Carmichael's face quickly dropped into a frown as he began to realize that this longhaired Digger dude, Emmett Grogan, was making him look like a goddamn fool in front of everybody.

Stokely Carmichael was obviously outraged by this stone affront to his dignity as one of the proclaimed leaders of American radicalism, and he did an abrupt about-face, stomping away and huffin' 'n puffin' thunder and smoke about "Who's that longhaired, motherfuckin' hippie punk think he is … I" He walked away fast and furious with his bodyguards and fellow Black Power advocates following him and glaring back at Emmett, mumbling to one another that they should've guarded their leader better and not have permitted that "white motherfucker!" to insult him.

The rest of the backstage groupies were whispering hard and heavy about what they just witnessed, and reporters were asking around about Emmett, like who he really was and why he didn't shake Carmichael's hand. A few even concluded that he was a racist and didn't want to touch black skin.

Someone finally asked Emmett himself, and he told them he didn't like Stokely Carmichael and hadn't wanted to meet him, but somebody unwittingly brought them together, and he felt he would've been lying the way all politicians, be they radical or conservative, lie, and so he simply refused to smile back at and shake the hand of a man he disliked extremely. "But it was nothing personal, you understand. In fact, very few things I'll do here or ever do anywhere are personal - they're political."

Shortly afterwards, Emmett was led onto the stage where he sat on the same kind of a wooden folding chair in which the five thousand or so persons in the audience were also seated, facing him with their ten thousand eyes, and he was suddenly very glad that he'd worn his wire-rimmed sunglasses to shade the pinning of his eyes.

The speeches were routine and predictable and were all sponsored by token honorariums from the London Institute of Phenomenological Studies, except Emmett's which was free. Psychiatrist R. D. Laing said everyone was crazy, including himself; John Gerassi had recently returned from Cuba and spoke about the necessity for a violent revolution; Gregory Bateson talked about the scientifical apocalyptic aspect of the anxiety syndrome from which everyone was suffering; Allen Ginsberg insisted that the best tactic of psychopolitical action was to "make public all the private hallucinations (429) and fantasies of our priest-hero-politician-military-police leaders, like those of John Edgar Hoover, for instance"; the keynote speaker, Stokely Carmichael, still very upset with Emmett, lashed out at the longhaired hippies who, he claimed, were advocating peace in time of revolutionary warfare and were traitors to the radical movement, because their upper-middle-class affluence afforded them the choice of nonviolence and the means with which to drop out of the fight for liberation which he quoted as "only coming through the barrel of a gun!"; Paul Goodman suggested that governments might begin applying immediate social welfare ideals and principles by paying, for example, people on New York's welfare rolls to live in the country, instead of in the city. "Give them the same money, and say, 'You don't have to live in New York, you can live out of New York!' "; Herbert Marcuse didn't say anything because he wasn't there, having hopefully found something more important to do with the time; Emmett spoke last.

He had been sitting on the stage for over an hour, wavering in and out of the focus of his consciousness behind his tinted, pennybun glasses and every once in a while listening to what someone had to say. The only one he was hardly able to hear was Stokely Carmichael who yelled so goddamn loud that the tone finally became the point of his speech rather than the words. The crowd had given him an enthusiastic round of applause which they directed at the singer and not his song. Then, all of a sudden, Emmett found himself standing stage-center in front of the microphone and removing his shades for want of something to do and because none of the other speakers who were wearing them had taken them off to address the audience. It took him a moment to adjust his eyes to the startling lights, and, when he cleared them of the brilliance he focused on one individual out of that whole crowd of five thousand - William Burroughs, seated in the fourth or fifth row way over to the left of everyone with his tortoiseshell glasses, and his thinning hair combed flat to one side of his head, and his black, porkpie hat of ten years resting on his lap with his bony hands holding on to it so it wouldn't be snatched by one of his old-time pals and sold or exchanged for a nicer cap. He looked like an aging Hitler youth, sitting there erect and waiting with his thin lips pressed together and all dressed in black, waiting to be impressed, his narrow, Missouri face turned upwards, looking dead at Emmett with the wry knowledge of its own evil presence.

They locked eyes together for the longest moment as Emmett (430) remembered that this was the writer-poet-genius man who got his wife to place an apple or avocado on her head at a stoned-tequila-drunken party in Mexico, because his marksmanship was challenged by one of his pals or somebody. Then he carefully aimed the .45 pistol or whatever it was, firing a slug point-blank into the center of his wife's forehead which made her cerebrum hemorrhage and the police gasp. But they quickly called it an "accidental homicide," and everybody else said, "Wow!" except Bill Burroughs, who just sat there, like he was sitting there now, knowing full well that no one was ever going to know the secret that lies hidden in his brain.

Bill Burroughs and the rest of the audience were going to have to wait until the following evening to be impressed by Emmett, because he was too tiredly stoned to say what he wanted. What he did do, therefore, was to open his speech with "Today is the first day of the rest of your life!" which was a line he either made up or picked up somewhere during the last year. Shortly after he said it that night, it began appearing on posters and postcards and everywhere, not as a quote attributed to anyone, but just as a simple, declarative sentence to be sold by persons who never had an original thought in their dollar-billed lives.

He kept his speech short and to the point, which was to say, he refuted all of Carmichael's screamed remarks, not by giving away any secrets about himself or the people with whom he worked, but by simply explaining that the work they did together wasn't any Salvation Army trip, and concluding that neither he nor any of his people were so-called flower children, because they'd known ever since they were little boys and girls that " … flowers die too easy, even when they have thorns!"

Then he left. He walked off the stage and down into the audience where he sat and spoke with Michael X, a London black man whom he'd known when he was in London the first time around. Michael X was also the West Indian black leader who was going to end up paying for Stokely Carmichael's bottomless rabble-rousing against "whitey." Michael X was going to pay by being arrested for Carmichael's inciting the residents to riot in the streets of London's black ghetto of Brixton after the conference, creating hysteria and then immediately splitting the country with the promise that he'd be right back, knowing that he'd never return and thereby leaving Michael X to hold the bag which he was to do, for over a year in prison.

Emmett talked solely and briefly with Michael X about money (431) and how and whether he was getting enough to sustain the political-education operation that he and his brothers and sisters had organized and were attempting to maintain for the black people of Brixton. When he heard that money was very scarce and particularly hard for them to come by, Emmett gave Michael X an angle which eventually financially supported the work he and his comrades were doing for at least the following twelve or thirteen months. It had nothing to do with stealing or hurting anyone, and still has nothing to do with you, no matter who you are.

Early the next evening, Emmett found himself standing in front of the same microphone before about one thousand of the younger, heavier members of the same audience. This time, however, he was alone with no one else on the stage. He also felt a lot younger than the previous night, when his chippy shot of drugstore scag made him feel as old as the hills and as numb-dumb-cold-dry as a dead dog. He still couldn't figure out why he hit himself in the vein with the poison of his youth. Had it just been for old time's sake or had he been trying to impress his Beat elders with his own down hipster style? He gave up attempting to answer himself with a vow that he'd never chip again.

The rows of radicals who came to hear what he had to say were anxious but attentive, and Emmett was ready for them. He had memorized his speech the day before and had thoroughly gone over it that afternoon, blocking out its dramatic pauses and polishing up his delivery. When the moderator of the day's symposium of "Liberation," or whatever it was supposed to be, finished introducing Emmett as a "Digger, a hippie, an acidhead and a living mythical legend in his own time," he stepped forward to the applause and waited for it to subside, feeling " … righteously righteous and stone justly just," as his good friend and family doctor once said in a song.

The handclapping died down, and Emmett spoke strong and clearly into the microphone like an actor delivering a soliloquy, and the finger-popping revolutionaries listened to what they wanted to hear:

"Our revolution will do more to effect a real, inner transformation than all of modern history's revolts taken together! … In no stage of our advance, in no stage of our fighting must we let chaos rule! … Nobody can doubt the fact that during the last year, a revolution of the most momentous character has been swelling like a storm among the youth of the West. Look at the strength of awareness (432) of the young people today! Look at our inner unity of will, our unity of spirit and our growing community of thought! Who could compare us with the youth of yesterday? We are unanimously convinced that strength finds its expression not in an army, in tanks and heavy guns, but rather ultimately expresses itself in the common working of a people's will! The will that is uniting our groups with the conviction that men and women must be taught the feeling of community to safeguard against the spirit of class warfare, of class hatred and of class division! … We are approaching a life in common, a common life of revolution! A common life to work for the revolutionary advancement of peace, spiritual prosperity and socialism! Toward a victorious renewal of life itselfl … Our job is to wake everyone up and do away with illusions! So that when the people are finally awakened, never again will they plunge into sleep!

"The revolution will never endl It must ·be allowed to develop into streams of revolutions and be guided into the channel of evolution . . . History will judge the movement not according to the number of swine we have removed or imprisoned, but according to whether the revolution has succeeded in returning the power to the people and in the bridling of that power to enforce the will of the people everywhere I … Power to the people!"

The entire speech lasted for over ten minutes, and Emmett was satisfied with his convincing delivery that now had the whole audience up on its feet giving him an enthusiastic, standing ovation. He stood motionless by the microphone, where seconds before he was gesticulating like mad, dramatizing every word. He stood still, not bowing, or waving, or moving his lips to say, "Thank youl Thank youl" He just stood there and waited for the crowd to settle back down, so he could finally tell them what he really came there to say.

It was a couple of minutes before it was quiet enough for him to again place his mouth near the microphone and say, "I can sincerely appreciate your enthusiasm and honestly understand your excited applause, but, to be perfectly truthful, I can accept neither. You see, I neither wrote nor was I the first person to have ever given this speech. I really don't know who wrote it. I have an idea, but I really don't know. However, I do know who was the first man to make this speech. His name was Adolf Hitler, and he made his delivery of these same words at the Reichstag in, I believe, 1937. Thank you, 'n be seein' you." (433)

…. There wasn't a sound in the huge main hall of the Roundhouse for a full thirty seconds or more. Nobody even moved. Then, all at once, it exploded with the fury of one thousand persons who thought they'd been had, been messed over, come out on the short ~nd of a dirty deal I They directed their rage at Emmett who got his ass out of there real quick, and then they completely flipped, breaking things up, setting stuff on fire, and spilling their anger outside onto the street where they began fighting with those few who thought that Emmett Grogan had showed them just how jive rhetoric really was by putting them all on, beautifully.

Emmett was still laughing the next day when he returned to the Roundhouse for a discussion workshop that was arranged by those few hundred radicals who dug what he taught them about themselves and revolution. They wanted to learn anything else he could teach them before he left later that afternoon on his week-long return trip to the United States through more than a dozen cities in six or seven countries.

So he opened up his bag of experience, showing them everything he knew that wasn't supposed to be kept secret, and closed the bag by advising them that some of Adolf Hitler's early speeches weren't bad or wrong at all. It was just another case of people " … picking up on the singer and not the song, which, of course, usually blows the singer's mind, like it did Schicklgruber's who began to take seriously the lunacy of his own fantasies and proceeded to actualize them, using the people as his pawns. I mean, the cat knew they were digging him and the way he said things, rather than what he had to say. He was all he had to say, as far as they were concerned! You can see that in any old newsreel film clip of him standin' up at some podium in the middle of a few hundred thousand screamers and all he's sayin' is numbers! EINS! ZWEll DREI! You know what I mean?''

Emmett recounts the incident in Ringolevio, p. 448-454:

One day a strange thing happened which afforded Emmett a golden opportunity to scare the living shit out of a man who might have been and still may be elected President of the United States. It was late in the afternoon, and he had just finished delivering most of the Free Food with only a few more stops to make before he completed his rounds, when he turned south of Buena Vista Park and drove down to Broderick Street, where there was a giant crowd gathered in front of Huckleberry House, the referral center for runaways. The street being blocked by the throng, he pulled over to have a look at what was taking place.

As soon as he stepped from the pickup, he heard someone calling to him from atop the front stairs of Huckleberry House, insisting, "Emmett! Emmett Grogan! Come on up here! Come on!" It was one of the ministers and leading officials of Glide Church which administered the referral center, and Emmett did what he was told and went up the stairs and inside where he was introduced, with the usual reference to his being a "legendary myth," to none other than the then Governor of Michigan, George Romney, and his pert, little wife Lenore, both of whom were touring the country to test the water for his upcoming campaign as a candidate in the Republican primary elections for President of the whole goddamn country~

Emmett was impressed when George Romney told him that he'd been hearing about his fine charitable work among the poor and misguided youth who found themselves alone and hungry and away from home on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, and he had the utmost [end page 448] respect for the alms-giving services that Emmett and his fellow "What do you call them? Oh, yes, Diggers!" were doing for the young people of the nation who strayed to San Francisco.

A coincidence popped into Emmett's mind, and he couldn't pass up the chance to see if he could pull off a fabulous score--the kidnapping of the governor and his wife. In the most sincere and charming tone of voice he could muster, Emmett informed George and Lenore Romney that coincidentally, at that very moment, there were more than one hundred Indians from his home state of Michigan eating in the park with the "hippies," and it would be wonderful and extremely thoughtful of the governor and first lady to stop by and visit with the people from home. He didn't have to say anything about what good publicity it would be for the folks back in the Midwest. The good governor had already weighed its value, and Emmett watched as it registered with a click of his eyes and a cluck of his tongue.

What happened next, Emmett didn't exactly expect, but immediately picked up on it. The governor threw his arms around him and said with a smile, "Emmett, suppose you take me and my wife over there to meet with your people and the Indians from our state. What about it?"

"My truck's right out front, Governor, and I'd be more than happy to oblige. In fact, sir, it'd be an honor."

The three of them moved quickly outside, and George Romney helped his wife, Lenore, into the cab of Emmett's Free Food pickup, just like a midwestern farmer would've helped his wife into a pickup truck, all dressed up for Sunday and on their way to church. Maybe that's when Emmett decided not to do what he didn't, and then again, maybe not.

Besides the three of them, everybody else was confused; the state troopers, the city cops, the FBI, the reporters, the Methodist ministers, everyone, and the only thing they all could think of doing was to go along with the three, in the flatbed open back of the pickup truck. They all started climbing onto the rear of the truck at once. There were over a hundred of them, all fighting for a place to stand, with the reporters pushing and shoving each other but remaining very careful to avoid nudging any of the FBI men, who were already standing up straight in each of the four corners of the truck's rear. They had everything covered.

The half-ton pickup was just about to collapse under the weight of the maddening crowd, when Emmett yelled to the governor to [end page 449] "please tell all them suckers to get off o' the truck, Governor, sir, 'cause it's the only one still running good 'nough to deliver the Free Food, 'n they're gonna break it down for keeps!" George Romney didn't hesitate for a moment. He stood right out up there on the running board and told all them guys to "get down out of this man's truck, immediately! Can't you see what you're doing to it? He needs this pickup more than any of you need a ride, so get off, 'n get off now! You hear me?" Then he waited until every last one of them got out of the vehicle, including the heat, before he sat back down in the front seat, slammed the door closed, and put his arm 'round his wife, Lenore. And maybe that was when Emmett decided not to do it.

A man in a blue suit and sunglasses popped his face into the window on the driver's side and asked where they were going. Emmett looked at the governor, and the governor looked back at him, asking, "Where are we going?" Emmett answered, 'Golden Gate Park. We'll meet them there!"

Emmett must have been at least two or three blocks away when the security man realized that Golden Gate Park was a very, very big place and turned back to ask "Where in Golden Gate Park?" only to find that they had already gone with no one following them or anyone knowing where they went except him, and all he knew was that they were going to Golden Gate Park which is thousands and thousands of acres square and extremely easy to get lost in, and practically impossible to find someone in if you have no idea in what direction they're headed. The guy got sick, and hysterically hurried the Greyhound coach carrying the governor's entourage of reporters to Golden Gate Park where he dispersed the cops on motorcycles and in squadrols throughout the huge area, ordering them to search every goddamn inch, "But find the governor!'~

Emmett had purposely not specified where in Golden Gate Park, because they didn't drive to Golden Gate Park. At least, not what was considered by most to be the Park proper, but was known as its Panhandle. It was to that long strip of green ground that extends about a dozen blocks from the park's entrance between the two main avenues in and out of town, that Emmett brought George Romney and his wife to meet not a hundred Indians from Michigan, but one Indian, who was or claimed to be a hundred years old, and about five hundred stone-street-freaks and crazies who didn't like the governor very much.

It was only a short, ten-block drive from Huckleberry House to [end page 450] that place in the Panhandle where the Free Food had been eaten every day at 4:oo P.M. for over a year by then. But Emmett didn't go directly there. Instead, he swung around in the opposite direction to make sure none of the cops or the Greyhound would find or catch up to his '~6 green Chevy pickup truck, because he wanted to be alone with Governor George Romney and his petite wife for a while or maybe even longer than that, but definitely for as long as it took him to display what he knew about power.

It only took Emmett a couple of sentences to stop the governor's enthusiastic attempt to appear sincerely concerned about the plague he considered Haight-Ashbury to be and to halt the stream of hollow questions that were sure to follow.

"Governor, do you always take these kinds of risks?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you don't know me. Nobody knows me. And yet here you are with your wife, being driven in a pickup truck by me without even knowin' where you're goin' and with no one following us to make sure we ever get there. You see what I mean?"

The governor abruptly turned his head around to look through the cab's rear window back along Oak Street to see if what he just heard was true. And it was. There was no Greyhound bus and no cops anywhere behind them or even within sight.

"Technically speaking, Governor 'n Mrs. Romney, I've just kidnapped both of you. Don't worry about it, though. I ain't gonna do nothin' but talk to you for a minute 'n try to explain something that I think I ought to. Then we'll go eat some corn on the cob with your home folks, okay? Good. Now listen careful, 'cause we only got a minute or two, 'n don't interrupt me until I finish, because I want to say it to you."

Emmett shot a look at the two of them and saw that they were no longer smiling, and the way both of their faces were set told him that they knew whatever happened next was entirely up to him-- which was the thing Emmett wanted to show the governor about power.

He talked plain and clear for two solid minutes and one red light about how there will sooner or later no longer be any need for politicians like Governor Romney, because the people, meaning those people who didn't already know and needed to know more than anyone, were going to realize, understand, be educated to the truth, the fact that politics wasn't supposed to be the business of just a few who claimed to be representing the many. It wasn't supposed [end page 451] to be a business! "Politics is life! All our lives, 'n not no profession like you guys make it out to be, 'n want to keep it, so you won't lose your jobs!" And he went on to explain how and why the professional politicians' days were numbered and the games they played in every country in the world, except maybe one, were going to be phased into extinction.

"You see, what you got sitting next to you here ain't just a man, a plain old homo sapiens; he's a political animal. And a political animal is anyone who knows whatever the score is and still refuses to submit to someone else's rule. Anyone who wants to live his own life, and be the only one to control the way he wants to live without messin' over anyone else's right to live the way they damn well want, and vice versa. Now in order to become a political animal, you gotta understand that politics isn't just everyone's business, it's every one of our lives, and it's never been anyone's vote!

"After learnin' that, then you have to figure out how you can get hold of enough power to live your life the way you want. And you can't get that kind of power by making a whole lotta money, or by stealing a whole lotta money, or by joining a club that allows you to transcend your blues once a week, or by getting yourself into public office where you can exercise control over the way others live their lives. No, that's all make-believe. It does satisfy quite a few people, but it's never gonna be able to satisfy a whole lotta young people who are just now growing up, and a whole bunch more whose fathers and mothers haven't even met yet. And that goes for all the races, all over the world.

"We're gonna get the power to live our lives the way we want through revolution. And not the same kind of revolution like it's always been, where the few rich people are killed and their property taken away and redistributed among the ones who get there first. Ours is going to be a revolt against power and against leaders and against property. We want it to be free, autonomous, and classlessly equal! All of it! And how we achieve that will be entirely up to you and those like you, because we only believe in defending ourselves when attacked, and we don't want anything from you, except to be left alone! We meaning those people sitting on the grass out your window, over there."

Emmett pulled the truck into a space alongside the Panhandle and told Governor George Romney and his wife, Lenore, that they were now where they should be, and he had nothing more to say, except "Let's go 'n eat some corn!" The man and his wife stepped [end page 452] out onto the grass and began walking towards the seated crowd, but before Emmett himself got out of the truck, he tugged his revolver from its brackets and called for the governor to return to the pickup for a second. When he did, Emmett pointed to the .38 Iying on the seat inside the cab and asked Governor Romney if he'd forgotten something.

"No . . .

"Well someone did, and it sure looks like they're not fooling," Emmett said, as he led the governor back to his wife and toward the hundred-year-old Indian from Michigan and the five hundred or so people who were going to keep the governor and his wife in the state of near panic that Emmett had induced. He decided, however, not to exaggerate their panic by holding them, say, for the exchange of unquestionably political prisoners like John Sinclair, a Detroit poet sentenced to ten years for one marijuana cigarette and his radical, political leadership, and many, many others, too numerous to list. Emmett didn't feel like it.

As soon as Emmett moved the governor and his wife into the center of the still-seated circle of a thousand faces, he introduced them, got someone to get each of them a cob of hot, buttered corn, and left them standing there, all alone, to be terrified by the intense sincerity of the contempt that each of those young, surrounding faces had for him, Governor George Romney, and for her, his wife Lenore. The two of them were forced to stand there for twenty minutes heavy with abuse and accusations regarding "his" and "her" roles in the continuing Vietnam genocidal war, and in the police riot in Detroit, and in the Algiers Motel executions, and everything else that the political animality of those young people told them the governor and his first lady were responsible for, or had participated in.

A squad car noticed the scene and radioed to the others that they'd found Governor Romney. The Michigan state police with their siren blaring led the Greyhound bus down Oak Street to the spot in the Panhandle where the shouting and waving of clenched fists had reached the point where it looked like there was going to be a hanging with somebody having already gone to get the rope. The governor's aides arrived none too soon and whisked him away without so much as a goodbye, but with about a dozen joints that kids shoved in his coat pockets, hoping for god-knows-what to happen.

Emmett hadn't seen any of that go down, but heard about it later from Slim Minnaux whose photo was in all the papers during that [end page 453] week, standing tall above the seated crowd pointing his long outstretched arm and a stern finger at Governor George Romney, his face all on fire and his mouth shouting, "J'accuse! J'accuse!"

Emmett hadn't seen any of that because he drove away after leading the good governor and his first lady into the eye of the storm. He left them there alone because he felt he did all he could by delivering them to the Panhandle and, more important, because he had to complete the rest of his rounds to the customers of the Free Food Home Delivery Service.

The San Francisco Weather Report

Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's Starting to Rain

Oh, Marcia, I Want your long blonde beauty to be taught in high school, so kids will learn that God lives like music in the skin and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord. I want high school report cards to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia's Long Blond Beauty
A+!

Later that afternoon, a gathering of hundreds outside San Quentin enjoyed the Grateful Dead and The Phoenix. The event was in solidarity with prisoners who had been reported to be planning a strike as reported in the Berkeley Barb. The strike did not materialize according to the Warden. One Free City spokesperson said, "People aren't going to know what prison is until they see a lot of freedom."

Subsequently, all charges were dropped on all five defendants at a court hearing on May 22 at the request of the assistant district attorney who declared that "there was a lot of confusion as to what went on at that poetry bust." Those who had been arrested included: Ronald Thelin, 30, 1324 Willard St. (arrested for "intent to conceal his identity," Section 650a of the Penal Code); Thomas Baker III, 26 (arrested for wearing an American flag); Charles Perkel, 21, 1360 Fell St. (arrested for profanity); Phyllis Wilner, 19, 110 Pierce St.; Israel Jacton, 1324 Willard St. The article mentions that the Asst. D.A. (Granklin Gentes) at one point "began to fidget nervously with a sheaf of papers" and that after the end of the proceeding, he "walked hurriedly out of court."

The two locations where the program is happening in Oakland are St. Augustine's Church, 27th and West, and the Black Community Center, at 42nd and Grove Streets in West Oakland.