http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/07/where-the-home-in-the-valley-met-the-damp-dirty-prison/
by Ron Jacobs
July 22nd, 2009
The fall of 1969 started hopefully. The Woodstock Music and Arts
Festival in upstate New York was a celebration of mythic proportions.
It wasn't all love and roses, but it did announce to the world that
there were lots of young people in western civilization, and
especially in the United States, who were not happy with their lot.
Simultaneously, plans for upcoming antiwar demonstrations in the fall
were falling into place, with more and more people willing to commit
their time and energy to stopping the evil imperial adventure in
Southeast Asia. Of course, none of this was going unnoticed by the
Nixon White House and its ever-growing police state apparatus.
Government agents and provocateurs were everywhere working their
hardest to discredit and sabotage the antiwar movement and the
counterculture. In fact, September 1969 saw the beginning of the
Chicago 8 conspiracy trialthe "conspiracy" was composed of eight men
who had been charged by the feds with "conspiracy to cross state
lines with the intent to riot" after the police riot during the
Democratic convention in Chicago a year earlier. This trial was
perceived by the left and counterculture as a direct attack on its
values and way of life. This perception was correct. The backlash
against the new politics and lifestyles represented by the young was
now government policy. As one popular fundraising ad for the Chicago
defendants put it: "We are the Conspiracy."
Earlier that year, in June 1969, the largest radical organization
(Students for a Democratic SocietySDS) in the United States at the
time fragmented during a tempestuous national convention in Chicago.
This split was the result of a hardening of political stances and
disagreements over lifestyles. Primary among the political
disagreements were those over the war in Vietnam and the role of the
African-American struggle for liberation. The dominant argument over
lifestyle concerned the role of youth in the movement and the
political meaning of the burgeoning youth counterculture. These
issues loomed large in the minds and hearts of the hundreds of
thousands of politically minded youth in the late Sixties and it was
appropriate that they would be played out at the national convention
of the country's largest radical youth group.
The three groups claiming the SDS mantle were the Progressive Labor
Party, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, and the Weatherman
organization. The name "weatherman" was from the line "You don't need
a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" in Bob Dylan's 1965
song "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Weatherman would go on to become
not only an underground group dedicated to its version of armed
struggle, it would also become the most well known of the three SDS
remnants. This was due to its headline grabbing actionsan explosion
in a NYC townhouse that killed three of its members, freeing LSD guru
Timothy Leary from a California jail, setting off bombs in the U.S.
Capitol and Pentagon in protest of military actions by the United
States against the people of Vietnam and Laos, and its support of the
Symbionese Liberation Army.
By October of 1969, Woodstock and its accompanying euphoria had come
and gone. The major antiwar demonstrations planned throughout the
United Statesthe Moratorium scheduled for October 15th and the
National Mobilization to End the War scheduled for November 15th
were the focus of virtually every antiwarrior in the country. Local
organizers sat at tables in shopping centers and universities, and
spoke to community and student groups urging people to make their
opposition to the murder going on in their name known. John and Yoko
Ono Lennon penned and recorded "Give Peace a Chance," and President
Richard Nixon told the press that he would be unaffected by any
demonstrations against his policies. As it turned out, Nixon and his
advisers decided not to attack Hanoi with nuclear weapons after the
massive protests of October and November (which attracted more than
two million people to both days of protest across the country),
fearful that a revolution would break out in America. It was a
revolution the ultra-left hoped for, but would never see.
Meanwhile, the ultra-left, which included most of those who had
attended the SDS convention that June, were organizing protests of
their own. Weatherman was calling people to Chicago for a series of
offensive attacks on the state and its symbols in an attempt to
"bring the war home". RYM had split off from Weatherman and were
planning a series of mass demonstrations in Chicago at the same time.
Both groups then planned to attend the November protest in D.C. The
Weatherman demonstrations became known as the Days of Rage. Despite
the organization's hopes, these protests involved no more than 1000
people and succeeded primarily in alienating the group from much of
the left, at least for the time being. RYM had a bit more success:
their final demonstration attracted around 5000 students and workers
and the support of the local chapter of the Black Panther party.
This chapter of the Panthers was led by the charismatic Fred Hampton.
Hampton was a young man, barely 20, and had been active in civil
rights organizing since junior high and was high on the list of
Panthers who would assume the chairman's position should Huey Newton
remain in prison. His leadership in Chicago had turned the Panther
chapter there into one of the party's strongest and most cohesive.
Besides the standard Panther program involving free
breakfasts-for-kids and Panther schools, Hampton was working on
creating the first Rainbow Coalition-a coalition he hoped would
include the Latino Young Lords, the working-class white Patriots and
the street gang, The Blackstone Rangers. To put it bluntly, the
possibility that this proposed coalition might take hold scared the
pants off the local, state and federal government, who did their best
to sabotage the negotiations that would bring the Rangers into the
group. This ultimately included the December 4, 1969 death squad
murders of both Hampton and Mark Clark-a member of the Illinois state
Panthers. As court testimony later proved, these murders were planned
and executed by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies
working together. These assassinations were part of a concerted
effort by the FBI and other government agencies to destroy the Black
Panther Party.
Musically, the Rolling Stones were touring the country promoting
their new album Let It Bleed , another of their adventures in
reworking North American blues and folk idioms into hard-driving rock
and roll. The song of the summer had been Honky Tonk Women, which
appeared on the album as a boozy country funk. Perhaps the most
important song on the platter, however, was Gimme Shelter, a
blistering indictment of the world of war and greed. Of course, the
Beatles had their own record out as well. Abbey Road appeared in
record stores on September 26 and blasted to the top of the charts. A
bit more whimsical than the Stones' album, it did include a somewhat
acid-drenched song written for Timothy Leary's run for the
governorship of CaliforniaCome Together.
Two days after the Hampton-Clark murders, the Rolling Stones ended
their tour at the Altamont Raceway in California, closing out an
all-day festival which included Santana and the Jefferson Airplane,
as well. The Grateful Dead were scheduled to play after the Stones
that night but changed their minds when the festival careened towards
chaos near the stage after a gun-wielding black man was murdered by
members of the Hells' Angels motorcycle gang. This act was the final
violent act of a very violent day a satanic reflection of August's
Woodstock fest. The Dead had hired the Angels as security believing
that the band's past history with the bikers would pay off and the
festival could be run without any real cops near the stage.
Unfortunately for all, the Angels who showed up to work that day were
mostly hopeful prospects eager to show how tough they could be and
ready to kick anybody's ass who dared defy their authority. As it
turned out, anybody included members of the Jefferson Airplane along
with various concertgoers. The concert ended after the Stones' set
and forever jaded the countercultureit's innocence defiled. The new
dawn heralded by the Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick at the
beginning of the Airplane's Woodstock set had become a wintry night.
A night which would extend into the seventies and, some would argue,
until today.
As Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote in his first song about
the Altamont concert, New Speedway Boogie, "One way or another, this
darkness got to give."
--
Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the
Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is
published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net.
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