Underground by Mark Rudd

[3 articles]

Mark Rudd Emerges from the Underground

http://www.nypress.com/blog-3728-mark-rudd-emerges-from-the-underground.html

By: Stephanie Lee
3/24/09

Former radical group leader Mark Rudd of the Weather Underground, a
1960s militant offshoot group of Columbia's Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS), returned to New York City to celebrate his new book
Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen.

Now a retired community college instructor living in New Mexico with
his second wife, Rudd continues to stay active locally and spreads
his story of organization and mass movement. "It is not a heroic
story," he says, but Rudd hopes that his personal narrative might
point budding activists in the right direction nevertheless.

Stephanie J. Lee spoke with Rudd before his book party last night for
an inside look on how to organize mass movements.
--

New York Press: Tell me more about this book. What inspired you to
write it? What are you hoping to convey?

Mark Rudd: Basically the book is a story. It's my own story of good
organizing, which is about Columbia, then it's followed by bad
organizing, which is about the Weather Underground. By organizing, I
mean what people do to build a movement and some of the terrible
mistakes you could make while doing it. Good organizing is one-on-one
engagement with people­much like what we did at Columbia. Bad
organizing is the belief that if you just express yourself, people
will join you. I consider Weatherman to be that kind of
self-expression and ineffective.

From what I've been reading, it's unclear whether or not there was
just one specific event that marked the founding of the Weathermen…?

That's interesting. In a way, the specific event was the townhouse
accident­the bomb on Mar. 6, 1970 on West 11 St., where three people
were killed. But the planning for it had begun before that. Its
origins were in the ideas of militancy and armed struggle, you know,
and the expression of how much we hated war and racism. That began at
Columbia in 1968.

In a sense, this is a New York story that I am telling.

Can you speak a bit more to the evolution of the group, namely what
it had become and your opinions on that?

Well SDS very large organization, about 400 chapters on colleges and
high school campuses. There was quite a large number in New York
City. Within that group, some of us took away a lesson from the
Columbia strike of April 1968, which was more militant. That seemed
to be the lesson from Columbia. We linked that lesson with the
knowledge or belief that there would be revolution around the world.
This could be taken from the motto. We were all followers of Che Guevara.

Between 1968 and 1970, we thought [the lesson learned] is what we
were doing. We formed a faction­Weathermen, which wanted to move the
bigger organization into what was based on a piece of paper that
group wrote for a convention in 1969.

After that convention, I was elected national secretary. My faction
won control of the national office in Chicago, and yet, we didn't
really have that many supporters. There were maybe two dozen chapters
that supported this line of anti-imperialism. At the end of '69 we
made a decision to go underground and begin an armed struggle. We
thought we were applying Che's theory.

How successful do you think the Weathermen was in achieving its mission?

Not at all! Everything we set out to do…Nothing we set out to do, we
accomplished!

How did you feel as the leader of this group? Any reflections on that role…

I think part of the problem was that I was in over my head. I was
posing as a great revolutionary, when in fact, I didn't really know
what to do. It didn't take too long for that to catch up with me.

Even though I was a founder of this organization, within months of
being national secretary, I sort of went downward in the leadership.
I demoted myself. I didn't believe I was who I was pretending to
be­the great revolutionary leader. This is not a heroic story.

Why did you leave the group?

I was still a fugitive at the end of 1970. I was a fugitive from Mar.
of 1970, and I officially left as a member at the end of 1970. I
didn't really voice my criticism till much later. I thought that the
problem was mine, that I was not strong enough to be the great heroic
revolutionary that was needed. That's kind of one of the themes of the book.

Can you speak more to the Ayers/Obama controversy?

I would say that I was appalled by the attempt to sort of slur Obama
through this casual acquaintanceship with Bill. As it was happening I
thought geez, the Weather Underground killed three people by a
bizarre accident, and yet John McCain dropped humongous bombs on
people from 10,000 feet in the air on villages and towns. And how
many innocent people did he slaughter? But they all talk about Ayers
being a terrorist. McCain was an actual terrorist! I mean that's what
war is, especially mechanized war­it's terrorism. I think I would
have loved it if that fact had come out. It's terroristic but it's
called war and sanctioned by the state, and therefore it's okay.

The US was murdering millions at the time of Vietnam, and we were all
affected by this violence. I think we were a pale reflection of that
terrorism. So that's what I thought about the whole business.

How do you feel about Obama?

I mean I was a strong supporter during the election. I would like to
see him take a much more principled stand on Israel, and a more
balanced stand rather than an unbalanced pro-Israel stand.

And for him to bring out some new economic policies while taking out
the old Bush policies. Did you read the Paul Krugman article? The one
today about old Bush policies?

I want him to do more and take a better, more moral position, and
also, not pursue the war. I'm a critical supporter of Obama, you
know, to push Obama. And I think he's open for that and that's the
beauty of the situation.

What sort of advice do you have for protesters who are very unhappy
with the way things are going right now, namely the War in Iraq but
certainly the concerns of Iran and Afghanistan as well?

We've got to organize. We've got to organize a mass movement and keep
going and keep pushing Obama. I can put it in a nut shell: We have to
organize a movement for a second New Deal, and we have to fund it by
taking money away from the military. I think security can be
established by diplomacy, but we need a mass movement to make this
happen. We need a total turnaround from the U.S.

Now back to you, why did you leave New York? Why New Mexico?

During the time I was a fugitive, I got to know New Mexico and I fell
in love with the place. I'm literally in love with the land and the
people, and that's where I want to be. But I when I think about it
here in New York, I think one of the wonderful things about New
Mexico is that there's less social segregation than in New York.
People mix a bit more between classes and races. New York is very
segregated internally. Even if you happen to live in the same
building, you don't get to know people. You're stuck in the same
class and in the same clique. I found New York to be way too
segregated for my liking. That's what originally drove me out, and I
don't think it changed any. Do you?

I can live a more integrated life in terms of diversity of friends in
New Mexico.

There was a long period of time when you had no communication with
your parents. Can you tell me more about how your involvement with
this group affected your family life?

Yeah we didn't speak for seven and a half years. My parents were very
hurt and very fearful for me. It was like a time of terror. When I
turned myself in, we made peace with each other. Oh gosh, it's been
30 years since then. I have two children, and I'm about to have
grandchildren. And everyone made peace, but it was a horrible time
especially for my mother and father.

I'm very remorseful about what I put them through. I thought at the
time that it was necessary.

Are you married? Do you have any kids?

Yes, well I'm in my second marriage. My first marriage was with a
woman from the Weather Underground. I dedicated my book to her. I was
a bachelor for 18 years and now I've remarried. And I have two children.

What are you doing now?

I've retired from teaching at the community college. I'm organizing
in my neighborhood for economic justice issues. Over the years I've
been active in peace, labor and environmental movements. I'm doing
lots of different things. I speak a lot at colleges and speak to
college students about organizing. Basically, I tell my story.

--------

'Underground' by Mark Rudd

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-mark-rudd29-2009mar29,0,4098976.story

A memoir by a former member of SDS and the Weathermen -- and we're
not talking about William Ayers.

By Jon Wiener
March 29, 2009

Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen
Mark Rudd
William Morrow: 326 pp., $25.99

Mark Rudd is the guy from the Weather Underground who is not Bill
Ayers. Both were leaders of the group that worked for the violent
overthrow of the United States government in the 1970s, but while
Ayers remains unapologetic, Rudd is full of regrets.

Rudd is not Bill Ayers in other ways: Sarah Palin did not accuse
Barack Obama of palling around with him, nor has he been featured on
the New York Times op-ed page or interviewed on "Fresh Air With Terry
Gross." Instead, he has lived in obscurity, as a community college
math teacher in New Mexico, since the government dropped charges
against him in 1977.

The 2003 documentary "The Weather Underground" celebrated the
"idealistic passion" that led Ayers and his comrades to their
campaign of bombing public buildings. At the end of the film, Rudd
appeared briefly for the first time in 25 years, "a befuddled,
gray-haired, overweight, middle-aged guy" full of "guilt and shame."
At least that's the way he describes himself at the beginning of
"Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen." It was that
image, Rudd says, that drove him to write this book -- because in the
film "I never get to explain what I'm guilty and ashamed of."

The Weather Underground was a splinter faction of Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS), the radical antiwar group that by the late
1960s had chapters on hundreds of campuses. Around 1969, the
Weathermen (who named themselves after Bob Dylan's line "You don't
need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows") concluded that
the American people would never stop the war in Vietnam. Rather, it
was up to them -- a few dozen kids -- to act on behalf of the
Vietnamese people by placing small bombs in places like the Capitol
and the Pentagon.

The kids knew best

This, or so the logic went, would somehow spark an uprising of young
blacks and Latinos to overthrow the government. Even the Vietnamese
Communist leaders believed the Weathermen had the wrong strategy,
that they should work to persuade mainstream Americans to end the
war. But the American kids knew better.

Rudd gets right to the point in the opening pages of "Underground":
"Much of what the Weathermen did had the opposite effect of what we
intended," he writes. "We de-organized SDS while we claimed we were
making it stronger; we isolated ourselves from our friends and allies
as we helped split the larger antiwar movement around the issue of
violence. In general, we played into the hands of the FBI. . . . We
might as well have been on their payroll."

Rudd's story begins with his parents dropping him off at Columbia
University the first day of freshman week 1965. What follows is a
straightforward narrative of events, in which he and millions of
other young Americans were radicalized by the war. The book has a
series of climaxes: first, the triumphant student occupation of
Columbia's administration building in the spring of 1968 and the
brutal police bust that followed -- which made headlines
internationally and set an example for radical students at colleges
across the country.

Next, he details the formation of the Weathermen in 1969 and the
disastrous explosion that killed three members in a Greenwich Village
town house in 1970. After that came seven years of life underground,
lonely and intermittently terrifying. Finally, we get the happy
ending -- Rudd coming up from underground in 1977, settling his legal
case, embracing normal life and returning to antiwar activism when
President George W. Bush invaded Iraq.

Rebellion in bloom

Rudd conveys well the festival-like joy of the springtime campus
uprisings of the late 1960s: passionate discussions under the trees
about the causes of war and strategies for stopping it; music and
drugs on all sides; dancing long into the night; "a fluorescence of
energy and imagination such as Columbia had never seen." It was like
that at hundreds of other schools over the next few years.

The authorities looked at these developments and saw only violence
and destruction. The New York Times quoted a Columbia administrator's
description of Rudd as "totally unscrupulous and morally very
dangerous . . . an adolescent having a temper tantrum." The media
embraced this image of him as quintessential student rebel, but to
his credit, Rudd says that "the organizing at Columbia was the work
of hundreds of people at least as committed, intelligent, and
articulate as I was."

The heart of "Underground" comes about halfway through, in 1969, when
SDS was challenged by the hard-core Maoists of the Progressive Labor
Party. The Progressive Labor faction had a strategy for revolution: a
"worker-student alliance" to overthrow capitalism. The national
leadership of SDS -- Rudd and his friends -- concluded that they
needed one too. What they came up with was to call on young people to
become urban guerrillas to fight "Amerikka." The overwhelming
majority of SDS rejected both perspectives, but the faction fight
destroyed the organization.

"The destruction of SDS was probably the single greatest mistake I've
made in my life," Rudd declares forthrightly. "It was a historical crime."

You might think all that is obvious now. But it isn't -- at least not
to Ayers. He wrote about the Weather Underground in the New York
Times in December 2008, declaring that "our effectiveness can be --
and still is being -- debated." His only real regret, he said on
"Fresh Air," is that the violent tactics of the Weathermen didn't end
the war. But, he added, neither did peaceful protest -- so who can
say who was right and who was wrong?

Both Rudd and Ayers want today's activists to learn from the mistakes
of the 1960s. But nobody opposed to the war in Iraq thinks that
becoming an urban guerrilla and putting a bomb in the Pentagon is
going to help bring the troops home. Rudd's historical judgments are,
to use a phrase from the era, "right on." Still, what may be most
striking about "Underground" is how irrelevant its lessons are for our time.
--

Wiener teaches American history at UC Irvine and is a contributing
editor to the Nation.

--------

Days of Rage Recalled

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123819009072860721.html

An unrepentant 1960s radical recounts his past as protester and fugitive

By STEFAN KANFER
MARCH 28, 2009

Underground
By Mark Rudd
William Morrow, 325 pages, $25.99

Mark Rudd was a prominent student leader in 1968 when the Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) occupied several buildings at Columbia
University in New York. I lived across the street at the time and
well remember their collective tantrum. Taking over the
administrative offices by force, they issued a roster of demands.
These included (a) the abandonment of plans for a gym that Columbia
intended to build in Harlem -- even though community leaders had
approved the proposal seven years earlier; (b) a break between the
university and the Institute for Defense Analyses, a weapons-research
think tank; (c) official denouncement of the Selective Service
System, which was drafting college-age men for military duty in
Vietnam; and (d) total amnesty for Mr. Rudd and the Ruddlets.

Police were brought in and hundreds of students rioted, trashing the
campus along with parts of the surrounding neighborhood. In Mr.
Rudd's "Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen" -- a series
of rationales for the autobiographer's toxic behavior as a young man,
followed by one of the most unconvincing mea culpas since Bernie
Madoff turned himself in -- he cluelessly describes the collision of
authority and adolescence at Columbia. "It certainly didn't help that
we antagonized the cops by calling them 'pigs' and 'm---------ers.' "
(Mr. Rudd doesn't bother with the hyphens.) He goes on to describe
his behavior following an argument with a professor. The prof
actually wanted to teach students rather than help them destroy an
institution of higher learning: "Breaking away . . . I ran down the
street, picked up a brick I saw lying around, and, in a puny gesture,
shattered the post-office window next door. Throwing that brick gave
me no solace."

Not to worry. There were many other balms for self-styled militants.
Mind-altering drugs, for example, group sex, visits to Cuba for
training in revolutionary tactics and, in later years, grabbing
credit for ending the Vietnam War. (In fact, because the Nixon
administration worried about appearing to bow to the radicals'
pressure, they actually helped prolong the conflict.) "To this day,"
Mr. Rudd writes, four decades after the uprising on the Upper West
Side, "I encounter people who tell me the Columbia strike changed
their lives: a woman who gave up French literature to study law and
work for welfare clients; a male career community organizer who found
direction for his life during the strike."

Unmentioned by Mr. Rudd are Columbia students who were pleased with
the direction of their studies but whose classes were shut down and
whose Ph.D. theses, in a some cases, were burned in the riot (a
disaster in the days before the ubiquity of the copying machine). A
more significant casualty of the Columbia violence: the suffocation
of civilized debate on campus.

The university has never fully recovered from the traumas of 1968.
Over the years its presidents and administrations have tacked one way
and another as the winds of political fashion dictate, lest "the
kids" get upset again. In September 2007, when Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at the university, criticism
from outside Columbia that Mr. Ahmadinejad hardly merited the
school's hospitality prompted two ludicrous screeds, one from the
president of the university, the other from the president of Iran.
Both Lee Bollinger and Mr. Ahmadinejad essentially defended the
Iranian's right to free speech in America -- this for the
representative of a country where speaking freely is often rewarded
with prison time. (And, of course, the U.S. military that defends
free speech at Columbia is denied a campus presence in the form of the ROTC.)

By contrast, a year earlier another invited Columbia speaker -- Jim
Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, an independent group
that patrols the border between the U.S. and Mexico -- was mugged
onstage by student intimidators in classic SDS style, and the school
authorities issued only the mildest rebuke.

A trailblazer of that style, of course, was Mr. Rudd. After fomenting
the Columbia brawl in 1968, he moved on to help found a more violent
organization called the Weathermen (later renamed the Weather
Underground). At Indiana University in September 1969, he exhorted
students to follow his lead. In "Underground," he quotes from an FBI
file that he says "all too accurately" captured his remarks that day:
"Some people will get hurt, some killed, to build the revolution. We
want whites to take risks now -- affinity groups will be the main
tactics. Whites in twos and three will off" -- that is, murder --
"the pigs. . . . Don't have non-violent marches."

Of course, Mr. Rudd was not alone in portraying the U.S. as an
imperialist, sexist, racist society led by Caucasian male oppressors
-- in a word, "Amerika." There was, for example, Bernardine Dohrn,
who styled herself as a valorous antifascist fighting the Fourth
Reich. Speaking alongside Mr. Rudd in Chicago in October 1969, she
told a crowd: "We refuse to be good Germans. We live behind enemy lines."

On March 16, 1970, Mr. Rudd's life as a revolutionary took an
unexpected turn. At a townhouse on 11th Street in Greenwich Village
where five of his "comrades" were preparing an attack on a dance at
Fort Dix in New Jersey for noncommissioned officers and their wives
and girlfriends, a bomb loaded with dynamite and nails exploded
prematurely. The blast killed three Weathermen; two others survived
and fled the scene. The group's leadership went underground to avoid arrest.

Mr. Rudd, it should be noted, was fully aware of the planned attack:
One of the bombers who would die in the explosion had told him a few
nights before that they were going to "kill the pigs at a dance at
Fort Dix." The military officers, of course, were meant to "pay for
the American crimes in Vietnam," Mr. Rudd writes. As for their
dancing partners, well, "at that point we had determined that there
were no innocent Americans, at least no white ones."

He stayed on the lam for seven years, dodging federal charges in the
Fort Dix bombing conspiracy and other crimes. Mr. Rudd was unhappy
with the revolution's failure to accomplish much of anything, but he
certainly did not repudiate its methods. In "Underground," he
describes participating, a few weeks after the Greenwich Village
explosion, in a "fund-raising" event that would be colloquially
described as armed robbery at a restaurant, and he recounts a bungled
attempt several months later to bomb the Marin County Courthouse in
California. But he also fell from favor within the organization,
which was rife with political infighting, and drifted into the
"insanely boring" life of a simple fugitive from justice. Still, he
had talked his long-suffering wife into joining him underground, and
in 1974 they had a baby, a son "born under an assumed name."

In 1977, Mr. Rudd finally surfaced in a well-hyped, thoroughly
lawyered surrender to federal authorities. He gloats that at his
arraignment he was "treated more or less as a V.I.P. rather than a
bail jumper and an accused felon revolutionary." Another delight:
Most of the charges against him were dropped, and he got off with two
years' probation and a $2,000 fine.

Since then, the memoirist assures us, he became a sober
community-college math teacher in New Mexico (he retired in 2007),
rueful about the Weathermen's violent history -- though only faintly
so. He is hardly contrite about trying to sow revolution. The U.S. is
still a racist, imperialist stronghold, Mr. Rudd claims, and "there's
no shortage of organizing work to be done." The awakening youth of
America, he says, give him hope.

The real value of "Underground" is not its feeble repentance or its
sham modesty. ("My part in the destruction of the Weather Underground
was actually very small.") Mr. Rudd's essential contribution is his
self-portrait as a youth who persuaded others to wreck rather than
create -- and his snapshots of like-minded contemporaries.

Consider the aforementioned Bernardine Dohrn. In the 1970s, a
"Revolutionary Committee" of fanatical leftists who had deposed her
Weather Underground leadership group released a tape of the contrite
Ms. Dohrn's confession of her antirevolutionary sins. On the tape,
she owned up to "naked white supremacy, white superiority, and
chauvinistic arrogance," Mr. Rudd reports, and to "denying support to
Third World liberation. . . . She even named names of her
co-conspirators." Among the "leading criminals" she denounced, the
author notes, was Bill Ayers.

As the world knows, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn are now man and wife --
and professors well respected in some quarters. Such are the
after-lives of revolutionaries. During the presidential campaign,
because of Mr. Ayers's connection to Barack Obama, the names Ayers,
Dohrn and Rudd were in the air again, occasioning wistful admiration
from the left and fresh anger from the right. Few noticed that the
superannuated rebels now operate at a safe distance from the
barricades. The main activity of these "activists" is offering
alibis, teaching the naïve and writing books about the days before
Amerika got wise to their party line.
--

Mr. Kanfer is a Manhattan Institute scholar and the author, most
recently, of "Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of
Marlon Brando" (Knopf).

.

Anti-war activist Steve Hamilton dies

Anti-war activist Steve Hamilton dies

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/30/BAK21641KE.DTL

Seth Rosenfeld, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, March 30, 2009

A memorial service is planned for May 16 for Steve Hamilton, a
prominent Bay Area anti-war activist and member of the Oakland 7 who
was acquitted in a notorious conspiracy trial.

Mr. Hamilton, 64, died Feb. 1 after a heart attack.

He was part of a group of anti-war activists known as the Oakland 7,
which was charged with conspiracy for organizing huge demonstrations
at the Oakland Army Induction Center in 1967 as part of nationwide
protest called Stop the Draft Week.

It was one of a series of protests, arrests and court cases during
the turbulent '60s involving the soft-spoken and passionate activist
who came from a conservative working class family and once planned to
become a minister.

Steven Charles Hamilton was born in 1944 in Watts (Los Angeles
County). His father worked on an assembly line at the General Motors
plant, contracted lead poisoning, and spent years in Camarillo State
Mental Hospital in Ventura County, undergoing shock treatment. His
mother supported the family by working in a tire factory.

Mr. Hamilton was graduated from South Gate High School and won an
American Baptist Church scholarship to Wheaton College, an
evangelical school in Illinois.

In 1963, the crew-cut sophomore transferred to UC Berkeley as a
divinity student. Some time later, his family saw televised reports
of protests there showing a "rather scruffy-looking guy with long
hair," recalled his sister, Shirley Metcalf.

His family was sure he never would participate in such activities,
she said, and was shocked when on school break "in walked the
scruffy-looking man."

In the fall of 1964, Mr. Hamilton was arrested during the Free Speech
Movement, the first big student protest of the '60s. In 1965, he
joined the anti-war Vietnam Day Committee and the Maoist Progressive
Labor Party.

He was dismissed from Cal in 1966 for manning an unauthorized
literature table on campus.

That August, he and social activist Jerry Rubin were subpoenaed by
the House Un-American Activities Committee. His remarks got him
ejected from the witness stand.

In January 1967, Mr. Hamilton and four other prominent nonstudent
activists - Rubin, Mike Smith, Stew Albert and Mario Savio - were
convicted of trespass in a protest of Navy recruiting on the Cal
campus. He also was convicted of contempt of court for holding a
press conference on the case.

Despite resulting jail sentences, he was undeterred. He held that "if
you believe in something, it's worth fighting for," his friend Smith said.

In October 1967, Mr. Hamilton helped organize Stop the Draft Week and
sent a telegram to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. "Debate has accomplished
nothing; the war must be stopped," he wrote. "We plan to shut down
the Oakland Induction Center."

Hundreds of protesters were arrested outside the center amid violence
by both police and demonstrators. The Alameda County district
attorney's office charged the seven with conspiring to induce others
to commit the misdemeanors of trespass and interfering with police.
It was said to be the first use of the state's conspiracy law against
protesters. An 11-week trial ended in acquittals.

Mr. Hamilton later helped found the Marxist Revolutionary Union and
organized at work in Richmond's Bethlehem Steel factory.

He became a therapist trying to better the mental health system in
which his father had suffered, Metcalf said.

Married briefly, he was privately gay, coming out only in 1980, said
his friends. "It was as hard to be a gay communist as it was to be a
gay capitalist," said Reese Erlich, an author and co-defendant in the
conspiracy case.

Mr. Hamilton moved to Kentucky in August and was planning to return
to the Bay Area when he died on Feb. 1. He is survived by his sister,
Shirley Metcalf, and his close friend Roman Esser.

A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. on May 16 at Finnish Brotherhood
Hall, 1970 Chestnut St., Berkeley.
--

E-mail Seth Rosenfeld at srosenfeld@sfchronicle.com.

.

Shopping: Christiania

Select Shopping: Christiania

http://www.cphpost.dk/in-a-out/reviews/45218-select-shopping-christiania.html

Friday, 27 March 2009

Christiania, Cph S

It would seem that the financial crisis has not stopped excessive
shopping in Copenhagen, and if anything just stimulated people to buy
even more. But this consumerist way of life, devoted to making money
and spending it just as quickly, is what the Freetown of Christiania
has rejected since its founding day. The hippie mentality is all
about sustainability - meaning that you only buy essential products
that enrich your life. Shopping, according to this vision, should not
become a way of life but only a way to stay alive. The stores in this
'counter-town in a town' came to be there for their necessity, only
selling products that supported the community. Christiania therefore
became popular with artisans and craftsmen producing and selling
sustainable products that do not alter every season when fashion
changes. Anyone who thinks that the only thing worth buying in the
freetown is hash is terribly wrong and should look further than Pusherstreet.

Caso: Antikke ovne & mobler
Refshalevej 2, Cph K, Mon- Fri: 10.00-17.00, Sat: 11.00-15.00
When Christiania was founded in the early 1970s all the houses were
without electricity or gas, and heating was one of the main problems
of the new 'town'. So this stove store became one of the first shops
in Christiania because of its vital importance to the community. But
even nowadays a lot of residences are still without electrical
heating and stove are used commonly. However the clientele of this
shop does not purely consist of the inhabitants of Christiania. Caso
is one of the few stores in Denmark providing and restoring old
Scandinavian cast iron stoves. The Danish culture embraces the
old-fashioned stove as it represents a piece of their past,
attracting people from all over the country to this well-hidden place
to find a traditional heating device.

Christiania Cyckler
Refshalevej 2, Cph K, Mon-Fri: 10.00-17.30, Tue: 12.00-17.30
It wasn't just stoves that were needed in the founding days -
transportation also had to be improvised. Cars and motorcycles are
banned in the community because of their damaging effect to the
environment. This prohibition means inhabitants have found
alternative way to transport goods and children, with bikes taking
the place of the engine. However, the streets of the town are not
that bike-proof as they are not paved and full of holes. Christiania
Cykler has therefore made sure its bikes can handle all kind of
street conditions. By inventing new kinds of bikes, they developed
the most interesting and renewed ways of transport. Their bikes are
now well known all over the world.

Kvindesmedien
Maelkevejen 83 E, Cph K, Mon-Fri: 9.00- 17.00, Sat: 11.00-15.00
When feminism was big in the '70s women were fighting for the same
rights as men - this meant that they wanted to show they were just as
capable working in positions usually dominated by the other sex. The
blacksmith's was started by leading figures of the feminist movement
in the 1970s, and today a shop and workplace exists were you can buy
all kinds of metalware and gifts. And it is still only run by
women. Even though the shop has only been in Christiania since 1997,
it has built a reputation. The women smiths not only make metal and
ceramic products for the store, they also make awards for the best
film actors in Denmark - something like a golden globe, only not made
of gold but iron, and crafted into a weird little man.

Yak
Wed-Sun: 12.00-18.00
On the main square at the beginning of Pusherstreet you'll find
several market stalls were you can buy all the average hippie things:
scarves, jewellery, handmade hats and gloves. One of these little
stalls has developed into a shop - Yak is the traditional hippie
store with its strong incense smell and filled with things that
remind you of the 1970s. The owner imports her wares from Nepal to
sell to tourists visiting Christiania. Of course the shop is not
founded solemnly for the purpose of making profit - a part of the
money she makes she sends to a school for Nepalese children It's all
about sharing and spreading the love, making Yak a place filled with
good hippie intentions.

.

'70s radical wants to serve parole in Illinois

'70s radical wants to serve parole in Illinois

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-sla-member-parolemar24,0,3922116.story

By Robert Mitchum | Tribune reporter
March 24, 2009

State corrections officials are reviewing a request by a member of a
1970s radical group convicted of murder in California to serve his
parole in Illinois.

James William Kilgore, 61, will be released from a California prison
in May after serving a 6-year sentence for the 1975 killing of Myrna
Opsahl in a bank robbery by members of the radical Symbionese
Liberation Army, which gained international notoriety after it
kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

In advance of his release, Kilgore filed a request to serve his one
year of supervised parole in Illinois, where his wife began a
professorship at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign last year.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections
confirmed that they had received the request and that it was under
consideration.

Last week, two police groups­the National Association of Police
Organizations and the Los Angeles Police Protective League­sent
letters to Govs. Patrick Quinn and Arnold Schwarzenegger opposing
Kilgore's request.

More than 1,000 parolees from the California system are under
supervision in other states, said a spokeswoman for the California
Department of Corrections.

Kilgore's wife, Teresa Barnes, has been an associate professor
teaching gender/women's studies and history at the U. of I. since the
summer of 2008, according to a university Web site.

Kilgore met and married Barnes while hiding from authorities in the
southern Africa nations of Zimbabwe and South Africa under an assumed
name since 1975.

.

Sarah Jane Olson

[2 articles]

Sarah Jane Olson

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/content?oid=932617

Food for thought

By Anthony Peyton Porter
[March 2009]

I met Sarah Jane Olson in 1999. As Kathleen Soliah, Sarah had been
involved with the Symbionese Liberation Army in the early 1970s. In
1975 she took part in a bank robbery during which Myrna Opsahl was
killed, and another time she helped make two bombs that were attached
to two police cars and that never went off. At least that's what she
was eventually convicted of.

Although I had never met her, I offered to help market Serving Time:
America's Most Wanted Recipes, her fundraising cookbook. Just in case
you've seen it, I had nothing to do with its production. I hawked
books and called bookstores, mostly independent and lefty, around the
country to get them to sell some books for us and give us most of the
money, and I set up appearances for Sarah on a planned fundraising
tour. Once I had dinner at Sarah's with my family. She's as good as
they say she is.

I never cared whether Sarah did any of it. Anything the FBI is
involved in is probably paranoid and underhanded anyway. Ditto the
CIA. And I can't support any law as blatantly commie as the one that
makes you responsible for anything bad that happens while you were in
the act of violating a law, even though somebody else, whom you may
not even know well, actually did the bad thing. Johnny threw the
spitball, so nobody gets recess. It's not fair.

I was sorry when Sarah went to prison because I knew that under the
right circumstance when I was 25 or so, I'd've done much more than
blow up some cops. I once considered applying to the FBI because of
what I thought would be opportunities for large-scale sabotage.

Last year I went online to find out the procedure for visiting
Sarah­unfuckingbelievable, by the way­and I once called her old Saint
Paul number. Now she's out and back home with her family in Saint
Paul after seven years in the Central California Women's Facility at
Chowchilla. I'm glad.

I'm also glad she had the guts to resist a system she saw as
repressive and violent, albeit by violent, and so ineffective, means.
It was sad for the Opsahls that Mrs. Opsahl got killed, but I think
Myrna's doing just fine, being eternal and all, not to mention she
was depositing money for her church at the time and probably got
extra credit. I read that Jon Opsahl, her son, is still angry and
wanted Sarah to rot in prison forever. He figures that Sarah was in
jail for her part in his mom's murder for one year out of the seven
she served. I hope he gets over it.

What happened to rehabilitation? People change, all of us. Some of
us, like Sarah, evolve. Some of us don't.

As I'm sure Jesus would say, "Well, listen, the bombs didn't go off,
and you didn't shoot anybody, so go forth and sin no more, Sarah,
especially if I can have another one of those mushroom turnovers."

--------

Olson needs to walk the walk

http://www.austindailyherald.com/news/2009/mar/23/olson-needs-walk-walk/

By Wallace Alcorn | Austin Daily Herald
Published Monday, March 23, 2009

Kathleen Soliah is now on parole from almost a decade in a California
prison, and Sara Jane Olson has come home to St. Paul. Soliah was a
felon, and Olson is no hero or role model. She has earned the right
to return to an ordinary life, but the public good is best served by
then ignoring her.

Kathleen Soliah is her birth name, which she also used as a member of
the radical Symbionese Liberation Army during the 1970s. They were
terrorists of the worst sort. Her specific crimes were participating
in a bank robbery in which a person was killed, holding newspaper
heiress Patty Hearst captive, and placing pipe bombs under two police
vehicles. Actually, this latter was attempted murder of police officers.

After committing these crimes and while others (including her brother
and sister) were being apprehended, tried, and serving prison
sentences, she became a fugitive. She escaped to Africa, hid for a
while elsewhere in this country, and then settled in St. Paul. She
assumed the role of an ordinary, law-abiding private citizen. She
became an actor, even on the stage as well as in her daily life. She
became a DFL activist, as if this were a redeeming virtue. She
married a physician and had children.

The news media in the Cities seem delighted to refer to this as
"hiding in plain sight." This would make sense only if she had spent
all 30 years under a bed. She was anything but "in plain sight" with
her cleaver cover.

I still cannot believe the irresponsible and illogical treatment she
received from the media upon her arrest. Not having blown up any
local police vehicles, robbed yet another bank, killed anyone else,
or kidnapped any more people, she was described as having become
innocent of any crime and, indeed, a paragon of social virtue. This
portrayal was irresponsible because it strongly suggested to other
criminals they can get over crimes, and we will eventually forget
them. It was illogical, because this treatment flouts the law and
flaunts illegality.

The media reported her as having "lived a law-abiding life" all those
post-terrorist years. Nonsense. She broke the law every day she hid
as a fugitive from justice. She broke the law every time she signed
her name as "Sara Jane Olson." She was an inactive criminal, but
fully a criminal. Surely, there were among those closest to her some
who knew something or could have known. They had both legal and moral
obligation to seek justice. She was herself unfair and unkind to
those who sought to be fair with and kind to her.

Now they are at it again. She was released from prison last week, and
California officials routinely granted her request to return to
Minnesota to serve her one-year parole.

This was in rejection of appeals from police unions in both states
and of our governor's specific request. She invalidates the normal
provision of parole at home by claiming she had already rehabilitated
herself prior to her arrest. Moreover, the law refers to her "last
legal residence," but her St. Paul residence was not legal, being a
fugitive. But she is here, and we should make the best of it.

However, she has already announced the liberal causes she will
promote and for which she will work. And on what basis? Just what is
her moral suasion? Why are we expected to respect her opinions and be
persuaded by her arguments? What moral authority has she?

She complains law enforcement and the court system continue to punish
her husband and children by the way they treat her. It is she who
continues to punish her husband and children. She should have
confessed her multiple felonies, served her time, rehabilitated her
morality, and then offered herself as wife, mother, neighbor and friend.

One Minnesota legislator argues she has served her time, but this
parole is part of her time. While he calls for forgiveness, I listen
for repentance. What I hear is a consistently radical activist whom I
can neither respect nor trust. Sara Jane Olson, welcome back to our
state. Now, walk the walk among us. When you have accomplished this,
we might begin to listen to you talk the talk.

.

Festival headliner has played with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs

Outdoor Art Festival headliner has played with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs

http://www.beacononlinenews.com/news/daily/1577

By Jeff Shepherd
SPECIAL TO THE BEACON
posted Mar 24, 2009

"It's my life experience that comes out in my music," Bob Rafkin said.

That experience cuts a wide swath of places and times, collaborators
and audiences, including a performance on one of the most famous of stages.

"Very prestigious," is how Rafkin recalls his appearance at New
York's Carnegie Hall.

For him, though, it all boils down to his guitar and the music.

"Once you're up there and the lights are on, you can't see anything.
It's kind of like, 'This is it, huh?'" Rafkin said during a phone
interview. "It's the life that I've chosen."

If experience stirs his music, then his music is a rich brew. Born in
New York City, Rafkin grew up in Washington D.C., Cleveland and
Philadelphia, according to his Web site www.bobrafkin.com. It was
mid-1960s Greenwich Village when he met folk singers Phil Ochs and
Eric Andersen, and Eric Jacobsen. Jacobsen was the producer for the
Lovin' Spoonful. Rafkin's Web site also says he played guitar on, and
contributed musical arrangements to, Eric Andersen's 1968 album More
Hits From Tin Can Alley on Vanguard Records.

Andersen and Ochs (who died in 1976) are internationally renowned
artists, each contributing his own pages to the anthology of American music.

From the hotbed of underground folk/rock culture of Greenwich
Village during the late 1960s, Rafkin moved along with some of his
contemporaries to San Francisco. It was the center of the universe
for the new music and culture of the day.

"I was at Haight-Ashbury during the hippie days," Rafkin said. "We
used to go to the ballrooms and listen to Janis Joplin, Jimi
[Hendrix], and Jefferson Airplane."

In the ensuing years, Rafkin plied his trade primarily as a session
guitarist for the likes of Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman in Los
Angeles. Then, in the 1990s, he moved to Central Florida to
accommodate a step in his wife's career as a TV producer. She went to
work for Nickelodeon in Orlando.

West Volusians will soon get a chance to experience the Rafkin
experience! He will perform his original brand of finger-style
guitar, blues-laced, Latin-flavored, rock and folk vocal music at the
DeLand Outdoor Art Festival. Be there to see his show on the stage at
Earl Brown Park at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 29.

"I am looking forward to it," Rafkin said.

...

.

Ibiza: a winter retreat for hedonists

Ibiza: a winter retreat for hedonists

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/destinations/spain/article5939725.ece

Visit off-season for a quieter, more intimate party scene

March 21, 2009
Ruby Warrington

Friday lunchtime at the tail end of January and it's everyone for
fish and chips at Ocho, the restaurant that Leah Tilbury (sister of
the make-up artist Charlotte) opened in Ibiza last summer. Literally,
everyone.

There's Danny Whittle, creative director of Pacha, with his pregnant
Ibicenco wife, Sally; there's Hayden Trethewy, owner of the recently
revamped restaurant and bar Aura; there's Kristie Rogers, a local
journalist for the online magazine White Ibiza; and there's Andy
Baxter, one of Pacha's resident DJs, glowing with a tan from a
new-year trip to Thailand.

Tilbury presides over the lunchtime service, dishing out the little
plates of olives and alioli - "fish 'n' chips for two?" - and the
atmosphere is one of villagey camaraderie.

This, say all the locals, is why they live in Ibiza. The hectic,
hedonistic summers, when you're as likely to have time to linger over
lunch as you are to find a tourist hoping for an early night, are but
a means to this very "chillaxed" end. And now, thanks to Ryanair
finally providing direct winter flights to Ibiza, we're all invited
to spoil the idyll.

Ever since Ibiza's left-wing Government came to power in 2007 it has
been campaigning for a winter tourist season - something Majorca has
always enjoyed. After all, temperatures top 15C in January and are as
high as the mid-twenties by late March. But so far the Government's
efforts have been focused on attracting Spanish pensioners to enjoy
the charms of the White Isle off-season.

But this isn't a Mediterranean Eastbourne. Off-season Ibiza, while
offering ample opportunity for catching up on your yoga, can still
offer all the fun and games of your summer pilgrimage - but at a
fraction of the cost and with a lot more respect for your brain
cells. While in the summer everything is geared up to entice you out
night after wallet-ravaging night, winter party action is restricted
to a very respectable Friday and Saturday.

Later tonight the crowd from Ocho will rendezvous at Grial, a gritty,
late-night bar next to Pacha, for a weekly party called Does Ya Mamma
Know ... hosted by Sophie Macintosh, the woman responsible for the
legend that is Bora Bora.

The DJ is long-time Ibiza resident Anthony Bryans, spinning a
selection of island classics to a hands-in-the-air crowd of local
faces. The vibe is up-all-night house party. Pacha is also open, but
only in a very limited capacity (no terrace, boo!), as is Keepers in
the marina and summer stalwart the Base Bar.

"It feels super-Balearic stopping off for a drink in the harbour this
time of year," says the perma-tanned and perma-smiling owner Jason
Bull. Monthly Saturdays, meanwhile, see crazy fancy-dress action at
Rock Nights - a party with an anything-goes music policy that cut its
teeth in the summer and is still going strong at Somni in Figueretas.

But try to have an early-ish night, because it's true what they all
say about the island at this time of year. The Sun hanging lower in
the sky makes the rugged scenery stand out vividly - the vegetation
is so green it almost glows in the dark.

The photography and location company 365 Productions says that its
busiest months are March and April, when the world's top
photographers flock to the island to snap it for fashion editorials
and ad campaigns.

Walk off a hangover in the deserted north, and stop off among the
almond blossom in Santa Agnes for a restorative tortilla at the
village bar Can Cosmi; or head to Yemanja at Cala Jondal and nurse a
bloody mary while the waves crash dramatically in to shore - a very
different "scene" from the one that sprawls all over neighbouring
Blue Marlin in high summer.

The sun moves several degrees west in winter too, which means that
Cap D'es Falco, the next beach along from Salinas, comes into its own
at sunset.

Ibiza has become so much more than just a clubbers' paradise in
recent years; it caters to an older crowd for whom seven solid nights
of hedonism are no longer viable. Off-season, with its knock-down
prices, intimate party scene, fireside yoga sessions and deserted
beaches, is the new time to enjoy everything the original pleasure
island has to offer.

And don't worry about being intrusive. Ibiza's winter residents might
say that they like having the place to themselves, but anybody who
chooses to base themselves here full time has got a bit of party
animal in them. A few gatecrashers on the scene are always going to
be welcome.
--

Need to know

Where to stay

Ibiza's oldest agroturismo, Can Curreu (00 34 971 335 280,
www.cancurreu.com), is open all year; a suite costs €100 less per
night off-season, at €295; a double room at Atzaro (www.atzaro.com)
costs €150, compared with €340 in high season.

In town, a junior suite at the new five-star Ibiza Gran Hotel (0034
971 806806, www.ibizagranhotel.com), costs €189, compared with €300
in high season, while a double room at the three-star Hostal Parque
in the centre of town (0034 971 301358, www.hostalparque.com) is only
€65 per night.

Getting there

Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) has direct flights all year (from Stansted
and Liverpool).

.

Looking back on the age of Aquarius

[3 articles]

Looking back on the age of Aquarius

http://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_12021620

By Ray Hogan
Staff Writer
Posted: 03/28/2009

No one seemed to be paying much attention to the slow-moving hippie
on the stage of the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on a recent Tuesday night.

But when the lights went down and the actors entered the stage
through the aisles, the audience knew exactly why they were there.

"When the moon is in the seventh house/And Jupiter aligns with
Mars/Then peace will guide the planets/And love will steer the stars."

"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Aquarius! Aquarius!"

"Hair" is back on Broadway

"Hair" is back on Broadway 42 years after it became a theater
sensation by harnessing youth culture, an up-to-the-minute soundtrack
and a general re-imagination of the American musical.

With a fully integrated cast, on-stage nudity and songs that became
pop hits soon after their stage premieres, "Hair" wasn't a rock
opera. It was, however, remarkable in its channeling of youth culture
in almost real time. When it opened in 1967 at the Public Theater, it
fulfilled Joseph Papp's mission of bringing the issues of the day
directly to the Public's stage. After opening on Broadway in April
1968, the show ran for 1,750 performances, followed by nearly 2,000 in London.

Songs like "Aquarius," "Good Morning Starshine" and "Let the Sun
Shine In" became theatrical and popular standards. Songs from the
score have been recorded by Nina Simone, Three Dog Night and The
Fifth Dimension.

"Hair" officially opens Tuesday but the revival's success has already
been tested: A Public Theater production in Central Park became one
of the premiere cultural events of last summer.

James Rado, who wrote the book and lyrics to "Hair" with the late
Gerome Ragni, isn't sure how the musical has connected with a new
audience. "That's a mystery to me," he admits. "All I could think of
was that maybe their parents may have had the album. There's still a
youthfulness to the story and there are modern concerns plus the
tribal thing of kids their own age. 'Hair' kind of reinforces the
(President) Obama message of change, it reinforces that hope for
something new and wonderful to take place. It's very timely."

The "Hair" on stage now is a return to Ragni and Rado's original
vision, which was altered along the way from The Public Theatre
presentation in 1967 to the Great White Way in 1968.

"We wanted to break the mold," Rado says. "Coming from a background
of loving musicals, we felt this was the time"¦We knew we were
breaking form. It was kind of like a little crusade we had to excite
and thrill the audience. Things were very human and thrilling to us
on the street. We were bringing real life and the street into the theater."

"Hair" is the story of a group of New York City teenagers undergoing
extreme awakenings (politically, sexually, psychedelically) against
the backdrop of Vietnam and the traditional ways of their parents.
The two central male characters, Berger, the extroverted dreamer; and
Claude, the conflicted ideologist, are based on Ragni and Rado,
respectively, both of whom played the roles when the show first
opened on Broadway.

Rado stops short of calling "Hair" autobiographical. He and Ragni met
in 1964 while both were acting off-Broadway in "Hang Down Your Head
and Die." "I think there's something of Claude's temperament that was
probably me," Rado says. "I also wrote a lot of Berger and Jerry
wrote a lot of me."

Seeing "Hair" in preview, it's not surprising to see the audience
treating the songs as classics, anticipating them and singing along.
Although re-creating the fashion of the hippies appears slightly
forced, the rest of this show has effortlessly transitioned into the
21st century. It could be easy for many of the songs to be lost in
hippie-dippie nostalgia. Instead, the cast finds new life in them.
The band on stage includes a horn section, but the driving guitars
provide the music's constant.

Martha LoMonaco, director of Fairfield University's Theatre Program,
remembers taking a bus trip as an eighth-grader from her home in
Allentown, Pa., to see the Broadway production. "My friend and I were
so loquacious, filling in the suburban adults," she says. "The
suburban people were allured and fascinated by the phenomenon of the
hippies. This was a safe way to experience the hippie environment."

In 1999, producing her own version of "Hair" in Fairfield as part of
a campuswide project focusing on the 1960s, LoMonaco's research led
her to The Joseph Papp/New York Shakespeare Festival Archives at The
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. As she had
suspected, there were significant differences in the show that opened
at the Public Theatre in 1967 and the one that wound up on Broadway
the following year (there was a pit stop at a midtown discotheque in
between). She has published two essays on her experience with "Hair."
Her research led to the discovery that Rado and Ragni were really
aiming to document a new youth culture, aka the Tribe. In her
articles, LoMonaco traces the show from its counter-cultural origins
to its success as a mainstream commodity. More than a dozen actors
were added for the show's Broadway opening. The plot, not overly
strong to begin with, was loosened even further.

LoMonaco's research proved that "Hair" had moved from a conventional
book musical at the Public to a concept musical, or happening, when
it opened on Broadway. When she produced "Hair" in 1999, LoMonaco
focused on what she believed were the authors' original intentions.
In her production, "Let the Sun Shine In" becomes a hymn for those
like Claude, who were killed in the war. Her production made Claude's
agonizing over the draft central to its plot.

"The show opens with 'Aquarius' and I did see it as an anthem, coming
to the rite and the ritual," she says. "It was huge at the time. The
whole notion of a global community. Now this is trite. Then these
were new ideas, to find community and grounding in new ideas that
young people were parlaying."

"Hair" is returning at a time when the country is in the middle of a
drawn-out war. The draft is central to the plot. Most of the cast
burn their draft cards. Claude is torn and at the show's end we learn
he becomes a casualty of war. How much of that plays with today's
audience remains to be seen.

"The staying power is that it was the first concept musical, the
story line didn't drive it, but the political overtones made it
unique. There really wasn't a rock musical until then," says Robert
Thompson, interim dean at the Purchase Conservatory of Music, who saw
the musical on Broadway in the late 1960s. "What I found unique about
it, it embodied everything about the 1960s with hair being the great
equalizer, making people sort of androgynous."

Thompson recently suggested "Hair" as a Purchase College performance
because students were outside protesting tuition increases while they
discussed what shows to stage in the coming season. "I have not seen
a protest on a college campus in 40 years," he says with pride.
Thompson says he believes today's college students realize the
significance of the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, when rock and
folk music were viewed as vehicles for social change and poets were
respected community voices. "They seem to understand the significance
of it and are longing for authenticity and connection between music
and society in their own lives," Thompson says.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the movie "Hair," which
was directed by Milos Forman, stars Treat Williams and Beverly
D'Angelo and took extreme liberties with the narrative. The film made
the Claude character a Midwesterner who was spending a few days in
New York before being shipped off to war. D'Angelo played Sheila, who
in the musical is the intellectual and wealthy college student with a
left-leaning heart of gold. In Forman's story, she is an outsider who
becomes the object of Claude's affection. The film takes some very
strange twists and turns at the end with Berger mistaken for Claude
and shipped off to war.

Reaction to the film, especially by the theater community, is still
largely negative. John Farr, who operates the Best Movies by Farr Web
site and until recently wrote the DVD Detective column for The
Advocate and Greenwich Time, thinks the movie gets a bad rap.

"When you talk about a movie that's been made from a play, there is
always a weird kind of dynamic of people who see the movie and can't
accept it the way they accepted the play," he says. "It successfully
takes what was a series of vignettes and songs, Milos Forman had the
job of making a film here and come up with a story that glued the
thing together and allowed it to travel, all the things you can do
with film that you can't do with theater."

Yet Farr admits that he didn't see the film, which also boasts
choreography by Twyla Tharp, when it came out because he didn't want
it to diminish his experience of having seen the play. He also
remembers that by the time the movie was released, American youth
culture had moved to disco and "Saturday Night Fever." "Maybe not
enough time had passed to make it fresh," he says. "Now that the play
is being revived, what is the point of seeing the movie? The play is
going to come off better."

"I didn't see the movie until I was doing my research for the show,"
says LoMonaco. "The whole thing was very strange. It's another
example of how 'Hair' permutated in all kinds of directions."

It would seem the closest thing "Hair" has to a historical antecedent
is "Rent," which chronicled youth on New York's Lower East Side at
the height of the AIDS epidemic. Is there any other of era American
youth culture begging for theatrical treatment?

"The grunge era or the punk thing was visually exciting and
mysterious, and just the opposite of the hippie lifestyle," Rado
says. "The hippie would take you and the punk wanted to keep you out."
--

Staff Writer Ray Hogan can be reached at 964-2290 or ray.hogan@scni.co.

--------

It's the Age of Aquarius on Broadway for Hamilton actor

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090329.whair0330/BNStory/Entertainment

by SIMON HOUPT
March 29, 2009

New York ­ Eight shows a week, Caissie Levy finds herself sandwiched
between a couple of hot men on the stage of the Al Hirschfeld
Theatre, and she hasn't quite figured out how she got there. "I don't
know what to tell you," she giggled the other day at an Italian
restaurant on Ninth Avenue. "I do enjoy the offbeat."

Levy is something of a free spirit. In the fall of 2001, after she'd
decided she wanted to make her living as an actor, she left her home
in Hamilton to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy
here in New York rather than one of the classical conservatory
programs offered by Montreal's National Theatre School or George
Brown College in Toronto.

"I wouldn't have stayed," she says of those other programs. "I'm very
disciplined when it comes to being in a show, playing a role, but I'm
not good just being in that whole framework of: paper's due at a
certain time." Even at AMDA, where the program runs less than two
years, she was restless. "I didn't want to be in school all that
much," she admits. "Really, I wanted to be onstage."

How appropriate, then, that these days she is onstage playing a young
woman who is rarely in school. Levy is starring in Broadway's highly
anticipated new production of Hair, opening tomorrow night, as Sheila
Franklin, a New York University student who spends most of her time
hanging out with a tribe of hippies, protesting the Vietnam War and
embodying the ethos of free love. Sheila's sweet on the hippie
leader, a long-haired hunk named Berger, though she's also got room
in her heart (and her bed) for Claude Bukowski, a kid from Queens who
just got drafted.

Everyone seems so friendly and free up there on the stage of the
Hirschfeld, so Summer of Love-ish, that, by the end of the show,
audience members just want to get up and join them. Which, in fact,
many of them do. One of the loveliest aspects of the new production
is an impromptu dance party that breaks out on stage after the
curtain call as the show's powerful house band blasts out a
full-throated rendition of Let the Sunshine In. Hundreds of audience
members swarm the stage, often taking the opportunity to share with
cast members how affected they are.

"They're just overflowing with emotion: 'This is the best show I've
seen!'" says Levy. Many people share their memories with her of
seeing the original production, which began at the Public Theater in
1967 and then transferred to Broadway the following spring for a run
of almost four years.

"People get up and dance, young and old, they are ready to get on
that stage. I think that's just the energy building throughout the
show," says Levy, nibbling on a Caesar salad. "The other night, I met
someone who played Sheila in one of the original companies in San
Francisco, so I introduced her to our director who was onstage
dancing. It's just so cool to be able to do that, to interact with
everyone, to hear everyone's stories."

Levy's own story is fairly straightforward. Now 27, she grew up in
Hamilton, the youngest child and only daughter of a family doctor
whose wife runs the office. The family was, she says, always very
arts-oriented, which is one reason she doesn't think the nudity at
the end of Act One in Hair is such a big deal.

"It doesn't seem that far from who I am," explains Levy, who has the
quiet confidence young actors develop after years of fending for
themselves. "I luckily come from a very liberal household where my
parents are, like, It's art, man." Still, she admits, having her
parents and two brothers there on opening night tomorrow, "I'll be a
little freaked out when they're in the audience and I'm getting
naked, let's be honest."

Hair marks the first time Levy is originating a role for Broadway,
though she's been in the industry since graduating from AMDA in the
spring of 2002. With every other job, she was stepping into a machine
already running. There was the role of Maureen in the non-Equity tour
of Rent that she landed right out of school, a year understudying
Penny Pringle in the Toronto production of Hairspray, more than a
year actually playing Penny during a subsequent tour and on Broadway,
and almost two years in Wicked as Elphaba: first as an understudy on
Broadway, then in the role itself during a stint in Los Angeles.

Which is one reason Hair means so much to her. "This has been, for
sure, the most creatively satisfying experience I've had, just
because I've been able to bring so much of my own ideas to the table
and make them part of the show. I wasn't able to do that before."

There is also Hair's anti-war, pro-love message. "Where we're at with
politics right now and what's going on in our world, I think people
are ready to hear this kind of message again. It's very relevant and
it's very relatable, and I think the young people are just thrilled
that there's something [such as a play] saying something of meaning
onstage. There's a place for all the fun musicals, and all the
spectacle musicals ­ and I've been a part of both of those things and
cherish those ­ but I'm also really proud to be part of something
that's talking about what we're facing in the world."

The show, suggests Levy, is almost Canadian in its outlook. "I have
to say this right," she begins: she doesn't want to offend the U.S.,
which has given her a rewarding livelihood and many friends.

"I've always been really proud to be a Canadian living in the U.S.,
and making that distinction," she says. "I feel like we embody a lot
of the things in Hair, more so than the U.S. does, currently, and now
with Barack in office and hopefully the war's ending, I think the
U.S. is catching up a little bit ­ without sounding completely
condescending. And so I feel really proud to be part of spreading
this message. Kind of representing the Canadian hippies."

--------

March 30 Preview of Broadway's Hair Canceled

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/127667.html

By Andrew Gans
and Adam Hetrick
25 Mar 2009

The March 30 preview performance of the current revival of Hair,
which officially opens March 31 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, has
been canceled.

The performance was canceled "to allow the actors a day of rest in
the midst of a long string of consecutive performances," according to
a show spokesperson.

The 1968 rock musical Hair, which officially introduced Broadway to
the counterculture movement four decades ago, began previews at the
Hirschfeld March 6.

Diane Paulus stages the new production that began life as a 40th
anniversary concert presentation by the Public Theater/New York
Shakespeare Festival at the Central Park's Delacorte Theater in 2007.
The Public later fully produced Hair in summer 2008 as part of its
Shakespeare in the Park season. The al fresco Paulus production
extended three times, and now resurfaces on Broadway.

The revival of Hair reunites much of the young cast from the Central
Park stagings, including Will Swenson as Berger, Allison Case as
Crissy, Kacie Sheik as Jeanie, Bryce Ryness as Woof, Darius Nichols
as Hud, Megan Lawrence as Mother and Andrew Kober as Margaret Mead/Dad.

Returning tribe members also include Steel Burkhardt, Lauren Elder,
Allison Guinn, Anthony Hollock, John Moauro, Ato Blankson-Wood,
Brandon Pearson, Paris Remillard, Maya Sharpe, Theo Stockman, Tommar
Wilson, Jackie Burns, Kaitlin Kiyan, Nicole Lewis, Megan Reinking and
Saycon Sengbloh.

Newly added for Hair's Broadway transfer are Tony nominee Gavin Creel
as Claude, Sasha Allen as Dionne and Caissie Levy as Sheila.

The iconic tribal rock musical has book and lyrics by the late Gerome
Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot.

"With a score including such enduring musical numbers as 'Let the Sun
Shine In,' 'Aquarius,' 'Hair' and 'Good Morning Starshine,' Hair
depicts the birth of a cultural movement in the 60's and 70's that
changed America forever: the musical follows a group of hopeful,
free-spirited young people who advocate a lifestyle of pacifism and
free-love in a society riddled with intolerance and brutality during
the Vietnam War," according to Broadway production notes. "As they
explore sexual identity, challenge racism, experiment with drugs and
burn draft cards, the 'tribe' in Hair creates an irresistible message
of hope, peace and change that continues to resonate with audiences
40 years later."

The Hair creative team includes set designer Scott Pask, costume
designer Michael McDonald, lighting designer Kevin Adams, sound
designer Acme Sound Partners and choreographer Karole Armitage.

For tickets phone (212) 239-6200 or visit Telecharge.

For further information visit HairBroadway. http://hairbroadway.com/

The Al Hirschfeld Theatre is located at 302 West 45th Street.

.

Plan for free festival to mark Woodstock's 40th anniversary

[2 articles]

Outside Edge:
Spirit of '69 minus the peace and love

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04e839f0-1b02-11de-8aa3-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Published: March 27 2009

It is a date the inhabitants of upstate New York have come to dread ­
the anniversary of the Woodstock free festival in 1969, when almost
half a million hippies encamped on a farm in Sullivan County in
search of a counter-cultural New World.

Commemorative events have duly followed in 1979, 1989, 1994 and 1999.
The original's ethos of peace and love has not always been observed:
the 30th anniversary festival, attended by 200,000 people, ended with
pyromania, looting and rioting. It was, as the 1969 generation would
say, a bit of a bummer.

Michael Lang, co-founder of the original festival, admitted this week
that the 1999 concert had "ramifications" but said he thought
Woodstock's integrity was undamaged. The optimistic Mr Lang is
searching for $10m sponsorship for a 40th anniversary event, and has
flagged up Central Park in New York City as a possible venue.

Considering the potential for mayhem, I suspect he has more chance of
holding it in my back garden than Central Park. But Mr Lang will
surely find somewhere to stage Woodstock 2009; not just because
nostalgia is a powerful emotion but also because counter-cultural
forces are once again stirring.

The original Woodstock boasted an extraordinary line-up, from The Who
to Jimi Hendrix. Yet it has passed into popular legend for the
atmosphere as much as the music. The vast numbers attending defied
inadequate sanitation, rain and dire warnings of social breakdown to
come together peacefully in ramshackle but functional communal conditions.

Even as the weekend unfolded, its meaning was clear. There were
almost as many "flower children" present as there were US soldiers in
Vietnam. Woodstock was not merely an opportunity to take powerful
hallucinogens and nod along to the Grateful Dead. It was also proof
that the counter-culture's way of life worked ­ for a long weekend,
at any rate.

Woodstock's triumph did not last much longer than that. The new
movement that hippy idealists imagined sweeping the US did not come
to fruition. Free love, drugs and rock music turned out to be paltry
weapons against the onward march of global capitalism.

The counter-culture did not disappear, however. It flickered on in
the anti-globalisation campaigns of the 1990s, and now, after a
decade of quiescence, is re-emerging with the financial crisis. An
echo of Woodstock will be heard at next week's Group of 20 protests
in London, when a miscellany of anti-capitalists, climate-change
campaigners and anarchists gather to denounce The Man. The question
is, which Woodstock will the protests echo: the peaceful one of 1969
or its violent follow-up in 1999?

No doubt Mr Lang's Woodstock sequel, if it happens, will be a more
sedate affair. He envisages "legacy bands" such as Crosby, Stills and
Nash reprising their 1969 turns for an audience of dewy-eyed baby
boomers. But one aspect of his plans chimes pleasingly with the age
of the credit crunch ­ it won't cost a cent to get in.
--

The writer is the FT's pop critic

-------

Plan for free festival to mark Woodstock's 40th anniversary

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5963439.ece

March 24, 2009
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent

The original Woodstock festival was the high watermark of Sixties
flower power, memorable for its music, its nudity and its mellow atmosphere.

The last attempt to revive it, for a 30th anniversary festival in
1999, ended in chaos with hundreds of police officers called to the
site to stop rampaging fans from torching the stage and looting the
overpriced vendors.

Now Michael Lang, the organiser of both events, is risking the
Woodstock name once again by attempting to put together a free, green
festival for the 40th anniversary.

All he needs is sponsorship of $10million (£7million) in the next
three weeks, he told The Times yesterday. "The chances that something
will happen are probable but I don't really have the answer yet as to
what that will be," he said.

Central Park and various other outdoor spaces in New York City have
been scouted and talks have been opened with a distinctly retro
line-up of bands, including The Who, Santana, Crosby, Stills and
Nash, Joe Cocker, the Dave Matthews Band and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The first four played the original festival. The Who headlined the
second night, sealing their reputation as a live act in America -
although Pete Townshend now recalls their performance as "f***ing awful".

The first Woodstock festival was dreamt up by Mr Lang and three other
people as a profit-making scheme, but such was the turnout that it
ended up being free to many when the fences were cut.

From August 15, 1969, an estimated 400,000 people battled through
epic traffic jams to reach Max Yasgur's dairy farm near Bethel, New
York State, which had a population of about 3,000.

There they spent three era-defining days sitting around waiting for
technical hitches to be sorted out, rolling around in the endless mud
and taking myriad forms of recreational drugs before Jimi Hendrix
closed the festival by inimitably mangling The Star Spangled Banner
into an anti-war protest, some time after nine o'clock on the Monday morning.

For the 1994 and 1999 festivals, punters were charged up to $180 per
ticket, but this time round Mr Lang wants to put on a "free and
totally green event". Unfortunately, this demands a pragmatic
approach at odds with the hippy dream.

Speaking about Woodstock 2009 at the South By Southwest music
festival in Austin, Texas, at the weekend, Mr Lang announced: "It's
got to be sponsor-driven."

For visitors to the 1999 site this brought back memories of the
Planet Hollywood restaurants, Woodstock Platinum cards, Budweiser
beer gardens and $5 bottles of water that rendered laughable the
comparisons with the shambolic but idealistic original.

Some observers blamed the blatant commercialism of the 1999 festival
for the unhappy atmosphere that spilt over into rioting on the final
day. Mr Lang hopes to avoid such problems this time by ensuring that
his sponsors have "green leanings" and exerting a tighter grip on the
musical line-up.

"I think what happened in 1999 was a function of the times and the
music that we booked," he said last night.

"There was a lot of anger around with bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn
who were heavier than I would have liked. It turned into more of an
MTV event than a Woodstock event and that was a lesson learnt. This
time we will go for bands with more of a social conscience."

This summer will be awash with Woodstock nostalgia even if Mr Lang
fails to get Woodstock 4 off the ground. Ang Lee will have a new film
out, called Taking Woodstock, about the hotelier who helped to rescue
the festival by providing a new site for it after the citizens of
Walkill, New York, blocked it at the 11th hour.

There's also a four-hour director's cut of the concert film
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music, which a young Martin Scorsese
worked on, and a six-CD box set of Woodstock performances to listen
to after reading Mr Lang's forthcoming book The Road to Woodstock and
watching the imminent History Channel documentary.
--

Who they came to see in '69

Joan Baez
The Band Blood, Sweat and Tears
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Canned Heat
Joe Cocker
Country Joe and the Fish
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crosby, Stills and Nash and Young
Grateful Dead
Arlo Guthrie
Tim Hardin
Richie Havens
Jimi Hendrix
Incredible String Band
Jefferson Airplane
Janis Joplin
Keef Hartley Band
Melanie
Mountain
Quill
Santana
John Sebastian
Sha-Na-Na
Ravi
Shankar
Sly and the Family Stone
Bert Sommer
Sweetwater
Ten Years After
The Who
Johnny Winter

Source: Woodstock69.com

.

Book Review: Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India

Book Review:
Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India by Rory MacLean

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/03/29/133649.php

Written by Tim Gebhart
Published March 29, 2009

Whether it's because we like to commemorate anniversaries of events
or a perception, right or wrong, that it was a time of promise, we
have a seemingly never-ending fascination with the 1960s. With Magic
Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India, Rory MacLean seeks
to explore a somewhat unique element of '60s culture. To a certain
extent, though, Magic Bus serves almost as a metaphor for the era.

The book seeks to retrace the tracks of the hippie travelers who
headed east to find enlightenment. Thus, MacLean travels from Turkey
through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to "the End of the
Road," Nepal. The hippies headed to Kathmandu and India in search of
enlightenment (and dope). Even if they found dope, the vast majority
didn't find self-realization and returned to become what younger
generations now call "the worst generation." And while the hippie
trail was viewed then to be a source for Eastern wisdom and a
different level of consciousness, the current state of the countries
MacLean visits don't necessarily reflect that the '60s were of great benefit.

The trail spawned a tourism industry in Turkey, where now even
fishing villages are "skimmed by a sheen of tourism." Iran's
revolution brought an end to it being an accessible transit point.
Afghanistan has become a country where, at the gate of a refuge camp
just outside the historic city of Herat, a "cobbler sells single
shoes for one-legged mine victims." The Kabul Museum in Pakistan,
once home to the finest collection of antiquities in Central Asia,
has a sign outside the main door asking, "Is your weapon unloaded?".
India's focus seems to be on making money, not Krishna consciousness.
Nepal is both an "apartheid state of spectacular inequality" and one
which a few decades of tourism turned "into a vulnerable Himalayan theme park."

Granted, none of this can be laid exclusively or squarely at the feet
of the hippie travelers. But it is also proof that regardless of how
anyone views the 1960s, you can't go back. Despite MacLean's keen eye
for detail, that seems a fundamental problem with his goal. Try as he
might, he doesn't' really illuminate the driving force behind or the
experiences of these travelers. Instead, it is as if MacLean, born in
1964, is trying to grab hold of a experience that he holds in awe but
slightly preceded him. This is reflected in the fact that he calls
these journeyers of the 1960s "the Intrepids," evidently because they
were intrepid travelers. Granted, they may have been trailblazers to
some extent but if they were world-changing, it is difficult to see
it today. And while those who lived through the time recall it with
fondness and pleasure, one of the most honest statements may be that
of a now well-to-do Indian bookseller, who tells MacLean, "I lived
for the moment ­ so forgive me if I don't remember much else."

All things considered, Magic Bus is perhaps stronger as a travel book
than cultural history. That is not surprising given that MacLean is a
well-recognized travel writer. His observations of both Afghanistan
and Pakistan, for example, stand out in comparison to his discussions
with those who remember the hippie trail as it was. Additionally, he
explores how the hippie trail led to the birth of the modern travel
guide. The first book from the company now know as Lonely Planet was
about an overland journey in the early 1970s through the same
countries and it first focused on guidebooks for those following the
hippie trail. At the same time, MacLean is not hesitant to examine
how the development of this industry changed the types of travelers
on the road and the impact of those changes.

MacLean's search for enlightenment about the hippie trail may
reinforce one universal truth ­ you can't recapture the past. Or, to
paraphrase a Joan Baez song, the sixties are over so set them free.

.

Music Review: Sly & The Family Stone - Life

Music Review: Sly & The Family Stone - Life

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/03/28/165456.php

Written by David Bowling
Published March 28, 2009

Life was the third album released by Sly & The Family Stone and their
second of 1968. While it was a very good album in its own right, it
had the back luck to be issued between the exuberant Dance To The
Music and the five-star Stand.

Life would be a bit more undisciplined than the two previously
mentioned albums. It would take the fusions of Dance To The Music and
split them into their parts before they were re-assembled on Stand.
The songs are psychedelic, soul, blues, and some straight funk. The
album would also not contain a successful single, which would hurt it
commercially.

What would be consistent would be the guitar virtuosity of Freddie
Stone, the fuzz bass tones of Larry Graham, and drum rhythms of Greg
Errico. Sly Stone would continue to experiment with multiple lead
vocalists who would trade lines within the same song. Rosie Stone was
now a secure part of the band and Cynthia Robinson would interject
scattered trumpet notes and vocal ad-libs throughout many of the tracks.

"Dynamite" would feature a classic psychedelic opening guitar line by
Freddie Stone. "M'Lady" would be a foray into straight funk with
over-the-top production. "Plastic Jim" had cutting lyrics about how
people act and has a blues feel to it.

Sly would begin to explore lyrical themes that would reappear on
future releases. "Harmony" which really takes off after a disjointed
beginning and "Love City" explored integration and love of neighbor.
"Jane Is A Groupie" is self explanatory as it told the story of fans
who follow bands. The title song began the exploration of the themes
of life's realisms which would recur over and over again in the future.

The best track may be "Into My Own Thing" with its familiar horns,
organ, bass, and drums going in all directions yet returning to
create a classic Sly & The Family Stone sound.

Life is one of those releases that contains a lot of very good parts
that add up to an album that's above average, but not brilliant. Two
albums within the same year may have been a little much for the group
at this stage of their career. However, it did set the stage for
several of the best and most influential albums in American music
history that would follow during the next several years.

.

A different perspective on Vietnam

A different perspective on Vietnam

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=5b9b0ba9-1e89-4493-8b5e-af03dacaa0bc

Published on 3/25/2009
Paul Choiniere
Editorial Page Editor
Phone No.: (860) 701 - 4306

This was a first.

On Tuesday evening I sat in the Blaustein Hall at Connecticut College
and listened to author Mark Moyar describe some of the conclusions he
had reached about the Vietnam War based on his own research. I've
listened to numerous historical lectures, but this was the first time
I was listening to a historian describe something they never
experienced ­ but I did, albeit indirectly.

Moyar, who was addressing the Southeastern Connecticut Committee on
Foreign Relations, delivered his points with the emotional detachment
of an academic whose knowledge of the era comes from the documents he
reviewed. A professor at the United States Marine Corps University,
Moyar was born in 1971. That year Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon
Papers, a top-secret summary of U.S. participation in the Vietnam
War, to the New York Times. They revealed how much the government had
been lying and keeping from the people ­ the carpet bombing in Laos
and Cambodia, the U.S. backing of the violent overthrow and murder of
South Vietnam leader Ngo Dinh Diem. The administration of President
Nixon stopped publication for a time, but the freedom of the press
prevailed when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the news media.

I had my first stirrings that I might want to go into politics, or journalism.

I was too young, barely, to experience the war firsthand, but an
older brother was drafted, served, and was forever changed. When the
war ended with the chaotic fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, I was a
freshman in college. I greeted the news with mixed emotions ­ relief
that a war that had so divided the country was over, sadness that so
many died in a losing cause.

Moyar could not know, at an emotional level, the anger among the
young about the military draft for that unpopular war or how bitter
and deep was the divide between those who opposed the war and those
who supported it. For me "Vietnam" causes a visceral reaction, for
Moyar and his generation of historians it is an academic pursuit.

He is the author of "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-1965."
Well researched, it is revisionist history. Moyar's controversial
conclusions include his belief that that a quick Vietnam defeat would
have caused a series of neighboring countries to fall to the
communists. In other words, his research backs the "domino theory,"
dismissed by the vast majority of historians. He defends Diem, seen
my most historians as a ruthless despot, and describes him as an
effective, transitional leader. Supporting the coup against Diem was
a key reason for eventual U.S. defeat, Moyar contends in a unique
take on the war. He dismisses Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David
Halberstam as a dupe of the communists and blames his reporting for
undermining support for the war and encouraging the overthrow of
Diem. The communists also manipulated Vietnam's Buddhist monks, whose
peaceful protests brought world attention to Diem's religious
persecution of them, argues Moyar.

It makes for fascinating reading. But I don't buy it. The war was a
mistake. The soldiers served bravely, but their sacrifice was
unnecessary. The Buddhists were persecuted. The news reporting was
courageous and largely accurate. The dominoes did not fall.

Yet it is interesting that having been part of history, even if
indirectly, I now get to read about it from someone who wasn't.

.

Alumnus Reflects on Takeover [Columbia]

[2 articles]

Alumnus Reflects on Takeover

http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2009/03/12/alumnus-reflects-takeover

March 12, 2009
By Ben Eisen

This is the first in a series of four interviews with people involved
with the Willard Straight takeover of 1969, in which armed black
students took over the Straight to demand greater equality for black
students at Cornell. The interviews, along with a newspaper
supplement and panel discussion in April, will commemorate the 40th
anniversary of the Takeover.
--

Robert Gottlieb '72 vividly remembers the day students walked out of
the Straight wielding rifles and demanding justice. As one of the
first students to serve on the Board of Trustees ­ student
participation on which was a direct result of the takeover ­ Gottlieb
continued to fight for students during these tumultuous times. Now a
defense attorney in New York, Gottlieb found strong comparisons
between the takeover at Cornell and the takeover of a building at New
York University earlier this year. In fact, Gottlieb called to offer
his legal council to the NYU students in the midst of their
demonstration. The Sun chatted with Gottlieb about student activism
in the 60s, activism today, and the current state of our country's
education system.

The Sun: You were a freshman when the Takeover took place at Cornell.
What was your memory of the event and the context in which it took place?

Robert Gottlieb: Cornell was still governed under the old rules. The
takeover was indicative of the main problems that were facing Cornell
at the time involving African American students and the need for
African American studies. But at that time there was also growing
resentment against the war, so there were demonstrations and tension
involving the efforts to stop the war in Vietnam. There were also
calls already under way to divest Cornell's moneys from companies
that were doing business in South Africa.

At the time, the campus was already beginning to be divided within
itself, not only involving racial issues but national issues
concerning the war in Vietnam and national issues concerning how we
were supporting countries that were oppressive.

Sun: Since the takeover ended, do you think Cornell has made progress
in meeting the demands of the students?

RG: I don't know how far Cornell has come since then. I do know that
at the time, immediately following the takeover, my sense was that
the powers that be at Cornell were forced to become more sensitive to
the problems faced by African American students and faculty.

As far as and as well as future students, immediately in the
aftermath my sense both as a student and a student trustee ­ when I
became privy to internal conversations on the Board of Trustees ­
there was a sense that Cornell was beginning to reflect a more
sensitive and enlightened approach to African American students and
all minorities.

Following the Straight takeover, we were able to pass legislation
requiring the Board of Trustees to allow four students to serve on
the board as voting members, and one student had to be appointed to
the executive committee where all the important decisions were made.

Sun: So the initiative to elect students to the Board of Trustees
resulted directly from the takeover?

RG: No question about it, because what the Straight takeover did was
it burst the false image of a tranquil University with an idyllic
campus. In addressing the problems, that came to the floor loud and
clear, because the Straight takeover and the Board of Trustees were
required to address other long-festering problems. One of which was
that no matter what the social issue of the day is, the appropriate
way to address the problems within the University community is to
have a real cross-section on the Board of Trustees, the governing
body. You can't have a real understanding of the problems on campus
affecting students unless the students are in a position to have the
ear of the men and women who are going to ultimately vote on various proposals.

My concern today is, my understanding is that Cornell has retreated
from that significant change. My understanding is that today it's not
a requirement that there be a student on the executive committee as a
voting member and I don't think there are four students on the Board
of Trustees.

The reality is that every important decision is made by the much
smaller Executive Committee. That's why to really have a significant
impact on students, a student should be on the Executive Committee.

(Editor's Note: There are currently two student Trustees, neither of
whom serves on the Executive Committee).

Sun: Amidst such a powerful group of people, were the student
trustees able to make their voices heard?

RG: Yes, there's no question. We all had our own styles, but we were
all very outspoken. It's no question there was a great deal of
tension between us and the majority of Board members. You have to
remember that there were very few women on the Board back then. There
were very few minorities, so you had an overwhelming majority of
white older men who came primarily from the investment and financial
field, who were quite wealthy, who really looked at the students
having a seat next to them as something that in their wildest
imagination they thought would never have thought possible.

Sun: There must have been a lot of resentment to the changing of the old order.

RG: I think there was a great deal of resentment, and I think many of
the Board of Trustees had to be brought along kicking and screaming.

Sun: So, for all of the fighting to get students on the Board, what
was the biggest accomplishment?

RG: There is no question that the biggest accomplishment was just
being there. Governance of any institution, whether it's a country,
whether it's a university, in order to be legitimate, must be
comprised of all segments of the community. By forcing ourselves on
them, by them having to allow us to sit side by side with the same
voting and speaking rights, that was the major accomplishment.

That's not to say that just being there is sufficient as time goes
on, but there is no minimizing the significance that in 1970; that
was a very significant step forward.

Sun: Jumping ahead 40 years, what about the NYU takeover jogged your
memory of the Straight takeover?

RG: Two things. Many of their demands were similar to the demands we
made during the time of the Straight takeover, including that there
be student voting members of the Board of Trustees. They also
included wanting to have an impact on the investments that NYU makes.
So there were many similar demands, but just as important, and was
the reaction of the administration to the­ students who occupied the
building. And that was: what would their parents think if they knew
that instead of studying for exams, they were occupying a building,
treating it almost as a joke and not taking students seriously. That
was the same exact reaction by many both within and outside the
Cornell community back in the '60s, that students should really stick
to studying and spending their time in Olin Library, and how dare
they tell the powers that be how to run the educational institution?
The response in 2009 was the same response that I saw back in 1969.

Sun: What does that make you think about how far our society has come?

RG: I don't think this country has come far enough, but I'm not sure
it ever can. What I mean is that, in any society, in any community,
the people who have the influence and the power do not easily or
readily share it with others unless they are forced to. That's human
nature, and how you then force people with power to share their power
and influence determines whether or not we're really civilized. If
you can debate it and talk out your differences and then find a
common area of support, that's civilized. If you cannot reach an
agreement, and there continues to be insensitive wielding of power,
that's what creates in many instances tensions that often erupt into
violence, or civil disobedience.

Sun: How were you involved with the NYU takeover?

RG: I was following it in the news and I reached out to people who I
heard were involved to let them know that I am a criminal defense
attorney here in [New York City], and I knew that there was a real
potential of arrests, and that they were certainly entitled to
representation should they be arrested. That's what I do; I wanted
them to know that they could call me, so I reached out to them.

Sun: Do you think that NYU will eventually change in the same ways Cornell did?

RG: I don't know. I'm not as optimistic because the times are
different today. In 1969, in 1970, when student demands, as well as
faculty who were supporting the students, but back then, that was in
the context of the entire country, the entire power structure was
going through the throws of real change. It wasn't only on university
campuses, it was also in Congress. It was like an earthquake, and you
didn't know where it was going to end. Today it is more isolated.
There is not a general upheaval going on even though, quite frankly,
the election of Barack Obama may be the most wonderful earthquake
that's come along in a long time. But I don't know if the overall
environment is as conducive today as it was in the '60s to real
change in an institution like NYU.

Sun: One of the biggest things that came of the NYU takeover was the
media coverage. Do you think that might set off some sort of domino
effect on college campuses?

RG: It really does remain to be seen. We are living in a different
era. Back then we didn't have the internet, we didn't have live
coverage. We didn't need that kind of live coverage to have an effect
nationwide. The act itself reflected, I believe, what was going on in
the nation, which was a different sort of revolution than occurred in
the 1700s. The country was changing, and Cornell was part of the
country, and suffered through the same pains that the country
suffered. It's not the coverage that affects areas like this, whether
other universities will follow. Its whether or not policies in the
Congress, in state legislature, reflect the hopes and dreams of
students attending college today.

Sun: Do you think our country right now could take a lesson from the '60s?

RG: The reality is, and I'm not speaking hyperbole, I think the
election we just went through reflects one of the effects of our
entire history, which includes the tensions, the disruptions that
Cornell suffered during the '60s and '70s. Without having gone
through that back then, I don't think Obama would have been elected today.

I left Cornell my senior year, in January of 1972, to work for
Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm, who was the first black woman to run
for president.

Everything that happened in 1972 when Chisholm ran for president,
everything that Cornell went through, Columbia went through, Berkeley
went through, back in the '60s and '70s, all of that was part of the
process that resulted in the election of Barack Obama. But it's not
one demonstration, it's not one issue that brought the country to
where we are today. It's our entire history. Its been a slow history,
its been a painful history for so many people, but it all ultimately
affects the future.

Sun: I'm sure you would agree that we still have a long way to go.
What would be your advice for the students of today?

RG: The lesson then and the lesson today for everybody is that you
have to stand up and be counted. You cannot cede your dreams, your
moral beliefs to someone else. And that's what the country did with
George Bush. We let him, we let Cheney, we let Rumsfeld, steal our
country for us. And thankfully, the country took it back with the
election of Barack Obama. But the lesson is that you can never fall
asleep at the switch, or else we're gonna lose this country.

Sun: What would you say is the biggest issue facing us today?

RG: I deal with it in the courts all the time, I represent
defendants, some of whom are charged with most unspeakable crimes.
I've often said that when I represent them, I'm not representing the
individual, I'm representing the Constitution. I truly believe that
the most important issue for this country is whether or not we will
continue to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
in all respects. Equality. Real freedom. Religious freedom. Because
it has been under attack unmercifully for too many years.

And I see day in and day out, this country should never believe that
there aren't people out there who would love to destroy our
Constitution for their own narrow purposes. It's up to students and
faculty and employees of Cornell to continue to fight the good fight.

--------

Student of Straight Takeover Reflects on Cornell Activism

http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2009/03/26/student-straight-takeover-re%EF%AC%82ects-cornell-activism

March 26, 2009
By Ben Eisen

Correction Appended

This is the second in a series of four interviews with people
involved with the Willard Straight Takeover of 1969, in which armed
black students took over the Straight to demand greater equality for
minority students at Cornell. The interviews, along with a newspaper
supplement and panel discussion in April, will commemorate the 40th
anniversary of the takeover.
--

The takeover had a lasting impact on everyone who was associated with
Cornell at the time. For Steve Wallenstein '69, currently a professor
at Duke, he made peace with the event by researching and writing a
600-page manuscript detailing the history of the takeover. The book
was never published, but currently has a "cult status among the few
Cornellians who know of it," according to the book, Cornell '69. The
Sun chatted with Wallenstein about his manuscript, his Cornell
experience and his assessment of the takeover.

The Sun: You graduated from Cornell just as racial tensions at
Cornell boiled over in the form of the takeover. What was that like?

Steve Wallenstein: Yeah our final exams, I think, were canceled.
There were all these things going on on college campuses. Ithaca is
very isolated, and Ithaca was in some sense an unlikely place for
what happened, given that there may have been 50 blacks on campus,
and Ithaca was not a metropolis, and it was just sort of tucked away.

When the black students took over the student union and brought in
guns, I think that was sort of over the top. I guess it was a lot of
stuff building and things sort of finally took center stage. And, you
know, 40 years ago we didn't even dream of having a black president.
I think the black students at Cornell felt particularly out of place,
given that there was no community in Ithaca. And I guess the
political climate was just crazy.

There were a lot of professors that I was sort of close to in terms
of the research, and some of whom were considered fairly right wing.
A lot of the government professors were really outraged by the
University response. In not pursuing charges and claiming it a
victory when the black students left the Straight. Well, Perkins
didn't last, right? He was sort of forced out because of the way he
handled the situation

Sun: What was the defining moment of the takeover for you?

S.W.: I think I was outside watching because I was so fascinated.
They had encouraged students to stay away. And you could see from a
distance the black students walking across the campus with the guns,
with the ammunition, that was an amazing moment. It was such a sense
of relief that the incident ended without any shots being fired or
anyone getting hurt because it was so crazy that they had machine guns.

Sun: When the takeover happened, did it immediately occur to you that
this was history in the making?

S.W.: Yeah, sure. It was on the front page of The New York Times.

Sun: What led you to turn your experiences into a book?

S.W.: I was on the faculty committee for student affairs that had
disciplined the students [involved with the takeover] from the
beginning, and I was intrigued by the reaction of the government
department and the resignations of some of the professors who I had a
lot of respect for, since I was a government major, so I was trying
to figure out why some people reacted the way they did.

And the political climate was just unbelievable. We had Nixon as
president. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated. The Vietnam War
was going on, people were burning draft cards, and Cornell was a
hotbed of that radicalism, with David Burak from [Students for a
Democratic Society] and so on. I remember counterculture, pot
smoking, the usual.

There was all this stuff going on, and I probably wrote the book
because I was trying to sort it out in my own mind. I think I had an
oral history grant from the library or something to do oral histories
with people that summer. And I think that sparked my interest.

The New Yorker was interested in publishing the book as a two part
series. There is an edited version that I can no longer find. It was
edited by The New Yorker, and there was all this pressure on The New
Yorker not to publish it by Cornell, because Cornell didn't want all
the press. They didn't want more disdidn't want all the press. They
didn't want more discussion about it. I was also in graduate school,
and then I took some time off to try to finish it. Then I gave up and
went to law school.

Sun: Even though the book was never published, it is said to have a
cult-following. How many people have seen the manuscript?

S.W.: I think there are probably a fair number. I mean a
'cult-following' is cute. What are we taking about, maybe 50-75,
people? Not a lot. It's not like we have secret meetings or anything.

Sun: But there are a lot people who are really into the history of
the takeover.

S.W.: I think you're right, absolutely. I think people were really
affected by it. A president resigned, professors resigned. A
professor became so depressed that he killed himself over this. He
was in the government department, and [he] supported [President James
Perkins' decisions during the takeover] initially, and he received
the scorn of a lot of his colleagues. I think that [he] became very
isolated and depressed and killed himself.

Sun: So who is this group of takeover followers?

S.W.: I think it's, you know, a bunch of liberal Jewish kids from New
York, for whom SDS was just a little too radical in terms of burning
draft cards and going off to live in a commune. But we were
sympathetic because of the war and the draft and all of that terrible
stuff. And there was this war in Vietnam going on, and they were
drafting people really out of college. There's really nothing like it today.

Sun: So did all of the activism of the '60s make a difference?

S.W.: Sure.

Sun: What was the most lasting change?

S.W.: I think that it probably had a lot to do with the end of the
war in Vietnam and the resignation of Nixon. I think it sort of
helped change American foreign policy.

Sun: With the NYU building takeover in January, do you think activism
is coming back?

S.W.: As economic times get hard and as jobs become really difficult
for people like you, who are graduating –– and the unemployment rates
are really high for young people –– it's usually that sort of thing
that drives it and makes a movement out of it. So perhaps we will see
more activism.

Sun: Can you tell me about how you put the book together?

S.W.: I had interviewed everybody I could find. I guess I interviewed
a lot of people for this oral history project. I was influenced by
some of the government professors. I talked to people in the
administration. I talked to students.

I guess I had this opinion. I was really sort of skeptical about the
way that it was handled and the opportunistic nature of, well,
certainly bringing guns. It's one thing to take over a building, it's
another thing to bring in guns. And then, you say you bring in the
guns in self-defense. If you're afraid you can always leave and get a
police escort or something like that. Some of the people like Tom
Jones, who were the real leaders of this, who I think are brilliant
oratory kind of guys, took advantage of a radicalized situation for
their own agenda.

I think it didn't have to be dealt with this way. The things that
were being protested, they were questioning the whole legitimacy of
the system and you know, the system had students on it. I think it
was a tremendous overreaction to whatever the disciplinary action
was, which I don't recall, but taking over the Straight with guns was
certainly a world of excess to the proper reaction.

I was relieved when the book never got published because it wasn't
politically correct. It was going to be a more balanced version of
things than just one side. The white student leaders also took
advantage of the situation. It was a real power thing; it was way overboard.

Sun: Was this ever said it your manuscript or is this your personal conclusion?

S.W.: That was the conclusion of doing all the research, and the book
was skeptical. I was confused. I was 22-23 years old, and I was
trying to interpret a reality that I had just lived through, and that
I knew was important and so on, but I think in the process of writing
it, I didn't know what to believe.

Sun: So this was more of a personal discovery for yourself than anything else?

S.W.: I think that's a good way to put it.
--

Read excerpts of Wallenstein's book in the Straight Takeover
Commemoration Issue to be published on April 16.
--

This article incorrectly stated the year of the Kent State massacre,
which in fact occurred on May 4, 1970. In addition, the article
stated that John F. Kennedy had recently been assassinated. In fact,
Prof. Wallenstein, the subject of the article's interview, had been
referring to the death of Bobby Kennedy, whose assassination had
contributed significantly to the context in which the takeover took place.