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emerging young radical street leaders in their fight against the poverty and hard-drug epidemic in that Spanish community of the city.

Every night Emmett would try to piece together some message to himself and anyone who cared to read and understand. He attacked the lackadaisical hedonism of the Haight by shouting over and over that ". . . the point of life is not rest, but action. Death is rest! And everyone will have enough rest for eternity. Now is the time for action, because the world must be seen clearly . . . Western society has destroyed itself. The culture is extinct. Politics are as dead as the culture they supported. Ours is the first skirmish of an enormous struggle, infinite in its implications." And on and on, every chance he got, Emmett tried to smack awake those people who he felt were being duped to death by themselves and others.

Who the fuck are you, anyway! Sitting there in lotus and desperately suffering Anglo Entertainment Syndrome. Hungry for rituals and tribal touch. Lack of elders to initiate you into the magic of yourselves. You are starving! Most of you would be soldiers if not acid. Dig the lack of sensitivity to the Indian thing, obvious on its face; murder all over again. First: the physically meat bodies of Indians gunned down all over the place. Second: the treatment of Indians as property by the Haight Independent Proprietors' attempted wipe-out of the Indian soul simply by camping on it. You're all romantically Indian struck! Witness the horror of HIP Oracle newspaper staff sitting on Third Mesa in Hopiland, chanting Anglo, Super-Culture Prostitution of Hari Krishna to uninitiated children. Nervous status maneuvers! The timeworn, white-man arrogance of a million questions with backup answers. The Indian message to mankind is simply, "Go with silence and closed eyes." Stop looking into another man's world! Turn onto yourself! Don't consume someone else! Eat yourself and kiss the now with full-blown lips! Courage is implicit!

One day Emmett found a hand-lettered poem taped onto the steering wheel of the pickup truck. He had just stepped out for a moment to buy a can of Ballantine Ale:

IF I AM DOING IT

AT ALL, IT'S FOR

LOVE NOT FOR OIL.

I LOVE CRUSADERS

WHOES GOT THE GRAIL?!

IF IT'S FULL OF OIL

[end page 384]

 

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