The Digger Papers (August, 1968)
Page Twelve
Rushes
The boy said the killer looked a lot like himself.
naked in violent death, they were sprawled in the nude, 10 feet apart,
face down on the dirty concrete floor, their heads bashed in, their blood
splashed . . . mixed with wine bottles, the old newspapers, the moth-eaten
sweaters, broken light bulb, the dog food.
Then the cops came.
and so, on the surface of daily life, consciousness forms
beings and bodies that one can see gathering and colliding in the
atmosphere, to distinguish their personalities. and these bodies from
hideous cabals where every eventuality comes into the world to argue
against what is beyond appeal. i am not andre breton and i did not go to
baltimore but this is what i saw on the banks of the hudson. the residents
of the area were overcome with an insatiable curiosity, wondering whether
the hippies were at it again over in tompkins square park.
The morgue attendents brought the first body bag out of 169
Ave. A. And the neighbors knew what happened. A body bag has a sobering
effect on people. Two body bags have twice that elfect.
a stout elderly black woman said, "When I works, I works hard.
When I thinks, I goes to sleep."
Even the police didn't know.
There is a computer in the attorney general's offlce which is said to
be able to predict when and where riots are going to break out . . .
Death to intelligence! Hurrah for death!
How to make a fire bomb: Fill a glass bottle about one-fifth to
one-fourth full with sulphuric acid. Fill the remainder with gasoline,
kerosene, or a combination of both. Add water to potassium chlorate and
sugar mix, and soak rags in the mix. Wrap the rags around the bottle, tie
in place, and allow to dry. When thrown the bottle will break, the acid
will ignite the chlorate sugar saturated rags, which in turn will ignite
the fuel. Caution!!! Improvised explosives are much more dangerous to
handle than conventional explosives. Such mixtures as above can be ignited
or detonated by a single spark, excessive heat, or merely by friction
generated by stirring or mixing ingredients together. Danger in handling
these items cannot be overemphasized.
In New York in 1966 there was not one record of a Puerto Rican
suicide, but in the Tombs prison 15 young Puerto Rican men supposedly
committed suicide in their cells.
We don't talk very much of Marxism anymore. Our goal is a Free Society,
a genuine democracy in which all the people are integrated through their
own constant, active participation in the continuing struggle required for
a man to feel free and be free.
To achieve the basis of that kind of society, man must first defeat his
exploiter. To do so, in view of the reality that the exploiter is always
richer, stronger, bigger, each man must particularize the struggle into
his personal commitment; if he can, he can defeat any exploiter whose
motivation is greed and possession.
That is why the Vietnamese cannot be defeated by the armed
technological might of the United States. Each Vietnamese fights for his
revolution. His own and all of theirs together. He fights for himself, for
his country, and for his vision of a just world. That combination is
undefeatable. We, too, in the Americas, are gaining such a combination.
The detectives investigating the double killing were beginning to
fashion a portrait of the dead couple in all the sordid surroundings and
the slovenly way of life in which they had existed. Reporters asked
Inspector McLaughlin if the murder victims were hippies. "Well,"
he responded, "they were found in the environment of it, and in the
area of it . . . and they were young people . . . Yes, you could classify
them as being in that category."
the issue is no longer the status of an american minority, but
the status of america.
. . . I'm not for wanton violence . . . I'm for truth, no matter who
tells it, I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against . . . I'm a
human being first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever
benefits humanity as a whole . . .
The recidivist problem . . . the rebirth of the hopelessly homicidal
mind.
They are the fringe whites . . . outcasts . . . worse than
being a Negro or Puerto Rican. Assistant Chief Inspector Joseph
McLaughlin, boss of Manhattan South detectives, is tempted to send all
these freaks to Hell.
after you get inside, all your fear more or less is gone. and you
concentrate on the safe, and you can look at it and . . . of course you
always know what kind of safe it is before you make your entrance and
everything. You go in, you got your tools and everything, and you can
estimate what's in the safe.
if it's a place that has delivery trucks you can figure 500 dollars per
truck for every truck they got and they'll have that much in the safe. i
mean that's the average for any kind of business whether it be beer trucks
or a dry cleaning place.
but still in all, that jewel might be the one. it just might be the guy
that's beating the income tax, or it might be the guy that's booking all
the big football payoff or layoff or something.
and there's no charge in the world like when you see that smoke . . .
and when you're punching it and you hear that pin hit the back of the
safe: clinggg! you know you're home free. or if you're peeling it you see
that smoke come out . . .
whenever you pop that door and see the smoke you know that you've
cracked the rivets and it's all yours. and when you see that safe door
open, man, it's sweet times and the hell with death!
when it is no longer bought with money, commodities lie open to
criticism and modification . . . the cops' job is to ensure that a
commodity maintains the magical property of having to be paid for instead
of becoming a mute, passive, insensible, submissive thing.
A child was found beaten today and they report that the
President has gone mad.
. . . Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have greater
spiritual insights into what is happening in America between black and
white. The black American never can be blamed for his racial animosities
-- he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the
American whites.
But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the
experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger
generation, in the cities and universities, wlll see the handwriting on
the wall and many of then will turn to the spiritual path of truth -- the
only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably
must lead to.
He was 5 feet 11 and his body weighed no more than 140 pounds
when police found him sprawled on that basement concrete floor in goddamn
death. The girl's clothes were in a neat little pile . . . they were not
the clothes the daughter of a wealthy Greenwich, Conn. company president
would wear around the Baronial 30-room mansion she was raised in.
no brassiere was found at the murder scene.
The girl didn't want any more culture, any more classes . . . she
simply wanted to paint. Her mother wanted her to be a dancer when she was
young.
how do men make history, starting from the pre-established conditions
to persuade them not to take a hand in it? ? ? Watts! Drop-outs! Black
Panthers! Niggers! and the revolutionist and communal gangs of every area.
Are you aware that some Protestant theologians, in their writings are
using the phrase "post-Christian era" --- and they mean now?
Pagan energy.
Affluence is by no means natural or human; it is simply an
abundance of goods.
even if the murderer hadn't betrayed any strange behavior, the green
carboard sticker on his apartment door was enough to make the cops ask
questions. it bore the insignia of one of the country's most militant
forces -- the Black Panther and the legend "Black Power."
. . . Oh, Sir, get a doll a roofing. You can play jacks and girls do
that with a softball and do tricks with it. I take all events into
consideration. No, no and it is no! It is confused and it says no. A boy
has never wept nor bashed a thousand kin for nothing. Did you hear me? .
. .
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