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.

Baez still fiery 50 years later

[2 articles]

Baez still fiery 50 years later

http://www.canada.com/entertainment/books/Baez+still+fiery+years+later/1426576/story.html

By Heath McCoy, Canwest News Service
March 25, 2009

It's striking, at first, to hear Joan Baez describe somebody as being
"a little left" of her.

The woman is, after all, a leading voice of the American folk music
revival of the late 1950s -- a movement firmly ingrained in socialist
politics. Baez is sure to go down as an icon of the left wing.

An unrelenting peace activist and antiwar protester, she took on the
war in Iraq with the same righteous passion that she brought to the
table when protesting the Vietnam War decades before. She has also
been a fervent campaigner of civil liberties and gay and lesbian
rights, as well as a dedicated environmentalist and an anti-death
penalty activist.

The Mexican-American singer is synonymous with our picture of the
proverbial folkie at the protest rally.

So when Baez, 68, describes politically crusading singer-songwriter
Steve Earle -- who produced her latest album Day After Tomorrow -- as
being "a little tiny bit to the left of me," that's a comment that
leaps up and announces itself.

"I call him Mr. Pinko and he likes that," she jokes.

Many would assume Baez might have seniority over Earle in that
department. Not so, suggests Baez in an interview in advance of her
three Canadian tour dates.

"That's a bit of a misconception because I've done things on 'the
other side' with just as much fervour," says Baez. "But it's easier
to pigeonhole somebody than it is to stretch the imagination."

Indeed, Baez has fallen seriously out of favour with the political
left at a few points in her career.

In 1989 she supported Vaclav Havel, who was to become the president
of the Czech Republic, when Havel worked to topple the oppressive
communist regime in his country.

Baez had also denounced the government of communist Vietnam for its
human rights violations a decade earlier, a move that drew harsh
criticism from the left.

Among those criticisms was an attack in the media from
actress-activist Jane Fonda.

Baez remembers it all very well.

"You know, (Fonda) did rash things when she was young and she got
criticized for what she did, too," Baez says. "She and I met the
other day for the first time in many years with a big, tearful
embrace because I know she meant absolutely well with what she did."

Indeed, Baez says she's never publicly endorsed an American
politician of any stripe -- "I've never trusted them," she states --
until recently. During the 2008 U.S presidential election, she wrote
a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle in support of Barack Obama.

But even that she offers with one big qualification.

"I have no expectations, no illusions that Obama will do everything
right," Baez says. "I mean, I'm a pacifist and he's the commander in
chief of the army, navy and air force."

However, Baez has much hope for Obama, even comparing him to Martin
Luther King Jr., whom she supported and called a friend.

Baez is excited by the success of her latest release, with Day After
Tomorrow being her highest charting album in nearly three decades.
The disc, which marked Baez's 50th year as a performer, also earned
her a Grammy nomination for best contemporary folk album.

Along with compositions from Earle, the record also finds Baez
covering songs from such acclaimed songwriters as Tom Waits, T Bone
Burnett and Elvis Costello. This continues a Baez tradition that goes
back to her first album.

Baez made her musical reputation as a skilled interpreter of other
artists' songs. Throughout her career she has taken on tunes by
everybody from her old flame Bob Dylan, to Johnny Cash, Joni
Mitchell, the Beatles, the Allman Brothers and the Rolling Stones.

Because she has so firmly established herself an a gifted
interpreter, it's sometimes easy to forget that Baez has also proved
her worth as a songwriter in the past. But that's a skill she hasn't
employed in quite some time.

"I stopped writing about 15 years ago," she says. "I don't really
know why I stopped. If it started again for me I'd be delighted but
if that doesn't come to the forefront it doesn't bother me. I have
all these other people and all their great material."

--------

Baez belts old and new ballads with ageless bravado

http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.php/arts/arts_article/baez_belts_old_and_new_ballads_with_ageless_bravado/3636

Story by Jeff Osteen
Montana Kaimin
March 27, 2009

After all these years, folk icon Joan Baez still has the same smile.
Her hair is short, she dresses hip and she unmistakably revels in the
microphone.

Baez took the stage Tuesday evening for a packed University Theatre
during her international tour in support of her 24th studio album,
"Day After Tomorrow."

The album, recorded in Nashville and released in 2008, is her first
to chart on the Billboard 200 in 29 years and was also nominated for
a Grammy Award. Themes of hope and homecoming pepper "Day After
Tomorrow," a title based on the Tom Waits song, which Baez performs
on the album.

The lights dimmed.

Baez casually sauntered out to a late applause, as if the audience
didn't immediately recognize her.

She opened with the traditional song "Lily of the West," which she
recorded for her second album in 1961 when she was 20 years old. As
she spoke, the audience got reacquainted with the woman who has been
an adamant voice for the protections of civil rights and free speech
since 1959.

"We have many decades to traverse," she said before jumping through
her career's repertoire and rolling into "Scarlett Tide," the Academy
Award- and Grammy Award-nominated song from her latest album.
An acoustic trio backed Baez using, by turns, bass, banjo, mandolin
and fiddle. Together, they had a bluegrass sound, occasionally
breaking into three-part harmonies.

The album was produced by American roots artist Steve Earle.

"Steve writes these things in 24 hours, which pisses me off," Baez
said before beginning "I Am a Wanderer," one of several songs found
on the album penned by Earle.

With that, the band exited the stage and Joan picked up a bright red
teacup with white polka dots. She took a sip and began a story about
a poetry reading in which she was asked to participate.

"They wanted me to read somebody else's poem," she said, "and I said
no, I want to read my own." Laughter bounced from the crowd.

She picked up a few pieces of paper from the stage near her feet and
began reading two poems entitled "Vivian" and "Low, Low Impact Class"
to roaring applause.

Before the crowd could hush their hurrahs, she began belting out
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" a capella.

At 68 years old, with a voice that is a little bit aged and has less
air behind it, Baez can still hit those notes. A man outside the show
later said, "It's mature, not a crystal clear bell, but still ... ."

She picked up her guitar again and gave an introductory anecdote
about weddings.

She said her parents were divorced for 30 years. But when her father
was 91 years old, he wrote her mother a letter to tell her that he
was dying, he wanted to die married and she was the only one he
wanted to be married to.

Baez said her mother replied, "What the hell," and they were
remarried. She then presented her next song as one she sang at their
second wedding.

"Forever Young," was the first song of the evening, written by Bob
Dylan. Baez has spent much of her early career alongside Dylan, after
introducing him to the world in 1963.

Baez left the stage to a roaring crowd and soon returned, band in
tow. After playing the traditional "Long Black Veil," she launched
into the second Dylan tune of the night "Don't Think Twice, It's All
Right," and included a Dylan impersonation at the end of the song
that sent the audience into another fit of laughter.

"I knew you were cool," she said.

She thanked the audience for sharing the evening and, still beaming
with a youthful countenance, though a little slower in her steps,
Baez walked the stage and bowed several times to the standing ovation.

The evening ended with a sing-a-long version of the John Lennon
masterpiece, "Imagine."
--

jeff.osteen@umontana.edu

.

So you wanna be a hipster?

So you wanna be a hipster?

http://badgerherald.com/news/2009/03/27/so_you_wanna_be_a_hi.php

Panel debates definition of term, movement's status as hippie-esque
'counterculture'

by Matt Marx
Friday, March 27, 2009

A panel knowledgeable of "hipster culture" agreed Thursday in front
of an audience at the University of Wisconsin the term escapes rigid
definitions and is not necessarily comprised of a unified group of people.

Many had distinct ideas about the tenets of the culture, although not
one of the five panelists was a self-proclaimed hipster.

Panelist Randall Luecke, a member of local band Crane Your Swan Neck,
thinks the term "hipster" is only a word and has no great definitional impact.

"It's a way for people to group [others], for people on the outside
of the group," Luecke said. "It's not a unifier from the outside;
it's meant to cut it down."

Y Mae Sussman, panelist and Wisconsin Union Directorate Music
Committee member, said the term was pejorative, and "people generally
don't want to be called it."

Dane County Supervisor Wyndham Manning, a panelist, argued the
hipster culture can be derived from previous counterculture movements.

"The way that I see hipsters today is the sort of evolution of (the
hippie) alternative culture, very music-driven," Manning said.

Sussman pointed to how the hipster movement is not a cohesive,
concrete movement, although some similarities among hipsters can be seen.

According to Sussman, some of the characteristics of the culture are
a keen fashion sense and rampant consumption of media, like music and
film. She went on to say some of the more prominent hipsters place
high value on counterculture.

Ryan Huber, a clothing store owner and panelist, attributed some
recognizable features to hipsters such as high-quality clothing like
expensive, tapered jeans, messenger bags, "awesome bicycles" and a
great amount of enthusiasm.

Sussman argued hipster fashion is not so different from the
mainstream today, citing examples of hipster fashion in many of
today's high school students.

Bob Marshall, editor in chief of student music magazine Emmie,
discussed how the hipster movement has become a marketing label.

"It's a target audience. I think people know how to advertise to it,
know how to sell to it," Marshall said.

Sussman agreed with this notion of the term "hipster" as a marketing tool.

"I think marketers and commercial entities have seized upon this
(culture)," Sussman said.

The panelists agreed music is an integral part of the hipster
culture, while no singular musical taste could be found that all hipsters like.

Marshall pointed to Pitchfork Media's website as a leader in what
most hipsters listen to, but said "it was hard to find a formula for
what people listen to."

While not all panelists agreed on whether hipster culture was
counterculture, Luecke said it comprises some elements of the hipster culture.

"If you challenge someone's assumptions about how you should look,
then it's counter to something," Leucke said.

Huber agreed, saying the culture runs against some societal norms.

.

Sgt Lennon’s lonely art club band

[See URL for embedded links.]

Sgt Lennon's lonely art club band

http://deadlinescotland.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/sgt-lennons-lonely-art-club-band-792/

March 27, 2009
By Michael MacLeod

ALL you need is… £500 to own a rare piece of John Lennon's artwork,
thanks to the credit crunch.

Unseen doodles, sketches and paintings by the Beatles legend will be
unveiled on Monday, with organisers anticipating 'a stampede' from
fans of the Fab Four.

They include excerpts from a book of paintings titled 'Real Love'
which the songwriter created for his then baby son Sean in the 1970s.

His widow Yoko Ono says she released the latest works at knock-down
prices in light of the credit crunch and "to showcase his range of talents."

Strict copyright rules on all of John Lennon's work mean that even
reproduced prints are highly sought and fetch as much as £4,700.

Only 300 of each print will be available at a gallery in Edinburgh,
and include handwritten lyrics from 'Imagine' and Lennon's iconic
self portrait.

Yoko's friend Jonathan Poole arranged an exhibition for the 'new'
artwork explained Ono's thinking behind the price cut.

He said: "She cut the prices because is simply being realistic about
the money people have to spend in the face of the current economic climate.

"It probably means we'll have a stampede on Monday, but I wouldn't be
surprised because he is such an icon.

"I've been in the business 30 years and I've rarely sensed such
anticipation about a show."

The exhibition at The Dome on George Street, includes 45 pieces, 14
of which are newly released and shine a light on a more personal side
of Lennon's family life.

He began drawing long before he had a guitar; attending the
prestigious Liverpool Art Institute for three years before the
Beatles became a full-time occupation and he continued to draw
throughout his life.

His primary medium was line drawing either in pen, pencil, or
Japanese sumi ink.

At the time of his death, John had saved and preserved several
hundred drawings that he considered important.

In 1986, Yoko Ono, acting for the John Lennon Estate, began releasing
limited editions of some of the most meaningful drawings, using only
fine art printing techniques, with the goal of re-establishing John
Lennon as an important artist of his time.

Mr Poole added: "It's an insight into John's opinions on everyday
life, his family and his sense of humour – it's a happy show.

"The whole point for Yoko was to showcase John's range of talents.

"It's one hell of a show when you consider how limited these items
are, each limited to 300. While they are prints, they can fetch as
much as £4,700 so it really is unheard of.

"People will walk in with great curiosity and leave with huge smiles
on their faces, and hopefully a bargain under their arm."

Lennon signed each piece of his art using a patented stamp, know as a
chop, which comes from artists in the Orient.

The red stamp was designed to read 'Like a Cloud, Beautiful Sound'
and features on all limited edition prints on sale at the exhibition
include this unique marking.

.

Pictures of Beatles' India visit on display

Pictures of Beatles' India visit on display

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200903291211.htm

Jerusalem (PTI): Rare pictures clicked during British musical group
Beatles' visit to India's holy city Hrishikesh will be on display at
an exhibition in Tel Aviv next month.

The exhibition titled as 'Imagine Liverpool', a joint venture of The
Beatles Story and the Liverpool Soccer Club, tries to encash upon the
two greatest symbols of Liverpool ­ Beatles and the football club.

The exhibition will display photos of the legendary musical group
taken during their stay at Maharishi Yogi's ashram in Hrishikesh that
have been discovered quite recently, news portal 'Ynetnews' reported.

The band members ­ John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and
Ringo Star ­ went to the ashram in order to mend the rift that had
arisen between them. And the experience led to a creative boom
resulting in the writing of 48 new songs.

At the same time, a Canadian Jewish photographer, Paul Saltzman, had
also arrived at the ashram. Saltzman set his tent outside the ashram
and stayed there for several days until the British stars invited him
to join their group.

Almost thirty years after the music band's India trip, Saltzman
stumbled on a forgotten cardboard box in his house that bore the
caption, 'The Beatles – India', the portal said.

Julia Bird, John Lennon's sister, will be the guest of honour at the
inauguration of the exhibition which will also showcase photos from
the soccer club's archive.

.

Doors' dark majesty is about 'real things'

Doors' dark majesty is about 'real things'

http://www.thereporter.com/entertainment/ci_11991467

by Richard Bammer
Posted: 03/25/2009

I have never been awed by The Doors, who, like The Beatles, seem to
be enjoying as much fame in 2009 as they did in their halcyon 1960s days.

Still, I like listening to parts of their debut record from time to
time, from "Light My Fire" and "Alabama Song" (the Brecht-Weill
"Whiskey Song") to "Break on Through (to the Other Side)" and
"Twentieth Century Fox." Singer Jim Morrison's voice possessed an
appealing throaty resonance, while Ray Manzarek's Bach-inspired
keyboards and Robby Krieger's brittle, stinging guitar anchored the
band's trademark avant-garde, blues-based rock and psychedelia.

As I recall, the most coveted recording in early spring 1967 was The
Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." You were envied if
you waved the LP in class, a sign you were hip and knowledgeable
about a game-changer in the world of pop music, even if John, Paul,
George and Ringo -- and producer George Martin -- had largely cribbed
the musical concepts and production values from The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds."

But The Doors? No one at Munich American High School in Munich,
Germany, where I was a junior at the time, was that far out ahead of
the curve of insight into the latest interesting rock sounds coming
from California, particularly San Francisco or The Doors' home turf,
Los Angeles.

After his initial success, Morrison, the son of a Navy officer,
seemed to find a way to stay in the news for drinking and drug use,
but mostly for arrests for lewd simulation of sexual acts and
indecent exposure.

For a while, The Doors' music seemed beside the point, when
Morrison's latest antics were far more interesting. Several
lackluster albums from late 1967 to early 1970, "Strange Days"
"Waiting for the Sun" and "Morrison Hotel," paled against the band's
early success, a couple of radio hits notwithstanding ("Hello, I Love
You" and "Touch Me"). Then in June 1971, the band released "L.A.
Woman" and they were reborn with that 10-tune disc, a re-evaluation
of their blues roots, containing the chart-topping hits "Love Her
Madly" and "Riders on the Storm" and a cover of bluesman John Lee
Hooker's "Crawling Kingsnake."

Rumors of the band's split were in the air, as Morrison relocated to
Paris in spring with his girlfriend. And on July 3, he was found dead
in his bathtub, a victim of an apparent heart attack brought on by a
toxic mix of drugs and booze. His death led to a cult-like status
that continues to this day, encouraged by a number of things, among
them the late 1970s Francis Ford Coppola film, "Apocalypse Now," that
used the disturbing 11-minute epic "The End" as part of the soundtrack.

But more than anything, it seems to me, the cult of Morrison and The
Doors is kept alive today by young people who say the music not only
contains recognizable melodies and trenchant, if not mysterious,
lyrics but also speaks to them of things other than today's baser pop
and hip-hop cultural values (besides sex, of course, always a
youthful pursuit), of bling, cars and money.

As a twentysomething woman told me at the Manzarek-Krieger concert
Saturday in the Napa Valley Opera House, The Doors' music is about
"real things."
--

Reach Reporter staff writer Richard Bammer at RBammer@TheReporter.com.

.

Brown Berets may add Salinas chapter

Brown Berets may add Salinas chapter

http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20090324/NEWS01/903240302

Group was formed in the 1960s to address Mexican-American issues

BY KIMBER SOLANA • ksolana@thecalifornian.com
March 24, 2009

About 20 Salinas young people, many of them students from Alisal High
School, gathered Monday at the Cesar E. Chavez Library to learn about
starting a chapter of an activist Mexican-American youth group.

Hoping to address their main concern ­ gang violence ­ in a more
organized manner, they heard about the prospect of opening an
autonomous chapter of the Brown Berets in Salinas.

In the 1960s, the Brown Berets ­ similar to the Black Panthers ­ was
created to address police harassment, inadequate public schools and
racial discrimination against Mexican Americans.

Those who attended the meeting agree many of the same issues remain,
but their main focus on Monday was to find ways to help their peers
avoid gangs through educational meetings and social events, including
peace rallies and concerts.

"I came because I am sick and tired of all the gangs," said Abigail
Ramirez, a senior at Alisal High School.

The idea for a Brown Beret chapter in Salinas came from organizers
William Medramo, 19, a student at California State University, East
Bay, and Angel Gonzalez, 19, of Salinas.

"We see the news about gangs and it's disturbing," Medramo said. "I
just said, 'Let's do something about it.' "

Jenn Laskin of the Watsonville Brown Berets chapter spoke about how
that group has helped reduce gang violence through peace marches and
rallies, and by providing a place for youth to hang out.

Laskin advised the Salinas group to focus on a certain area in the
city and create ways to raise awareness, such as building a garden as a start.

"Education, job training, events - these things stop gang violence,
not suppression," Laskin said.

Laskin pointed to the funding cuts in education and teacher layoffs,
while methods such as the Monterey County Joint Gang Task Force
continue to receive funding.

"Money is going from prevention to suppression," said Laskin, a high
school teacher in Watsonville.

But despite a certain distrust of authority, organizers, including
Laskin, said their main focus is educating themselves and others
about rights, government and equality.

"The true meaning of this movement is justice and it has to start
organically from the community," said Tomas Alejo, a Watsonville
Brown Beret member.

Salinas Police Cmdr. Kelly McMillin reacted to the idea of a Brown
Berets group setting up in town.

"I can say that any organization that seeks alternative things to do
for our youth is welcome," he said.

McMillin also refuted the notion that increased police patrols are
the problem. "Everyone would agree that the police is not the
solution [to gang problems], they are the symptom," he said.

Medramo said he hopes a Salinas chapter can flourish despite
depending on a commitment of 10 to 20 hours a week from members and
community donations.

"We're just trying to be a positive alternative for our youth," Medramo said.

A second meeting is planned next week.

.

I Want To Hold Your Band

I Want To Hold Your Band

http://sanfernandosun.com/sanfernsun/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3433&Itemid=0

Written by Andres Chavez, Sun Contributing Writer
Wednesday, 25 March 2009

The Beatles, arguably the greatest Rock band ever, broke up in 1970.
But their music, and the their fans love for it, has never
diminished. In fact, the Beatles have been rediscovered by the
current crop of high and middle school students who are urging their
parents to put away those, what'ya call them, LPs, and buy the
digitally re-mastered, 21st century CDs so they can have their own
collection. While it's no longer possible to see a live Beatles's
performance, you can come close with a good Tribute Band. One of the
most successful Beatles Tribute bands is Imagine the Beatles Tribute
Band, as anyone who attended the Flower Power Spring time performance
Saturday at Descanso Gardens in La Cresenta can attest.

Organized in 1989 by Neil Burg, who plays Ringo, Imagine the Beatles
Tribute Band successful run is attributable to the care Burg took in
putting the band together. He spent a year and half, interviewing 40
musicians, including some former members of Beatlemania, before he
picked the other members. Burg also took the extra step in creating
the sound. He searched through many small music stores looking for
instruments from the sixties. "It took me a long time to find them,
but I found them that's how particular I was in trying to get the
music to come across as good as it does."

Sporting Beatle's wigs, costumes and a long repertoire of endless
hits, Imagine, the short name Burg uses when referring to the band,
began touring in 1991 and has been a going concern ever since.
Imagine has played all over the United States, in Europe, in the
Caribbean, on cruise ships, for the USO on board the USS Abraham
Lincoln and at an impressive list of private parties including Tom
Hanks, who plugged them on the Tonight Show, Irwin Winkler, the
producer of the Rocky movies, and Goldie Hawn. But they don't play
just for the rich and famous.

They're available for holiday parties, Anniversaries, Bachelor and
Bachelorette Parties, Banquets, BarMitzvahs, BatMitzvahs, basically
anywhere a Beatles Tribute band would fit in. As Burg puts it, "Every
performance is important."

Through the past 18 years the musicians playing John, Paul and George
have changed. Burg is the driving force behind the band. On stage, he
is Ringo. Backstage, he's the agent, the manager, the guy who signs
all the contracts, occasionally even the roadie.

"There are times when I'm so mentally and physically exhausted, it's
hard to catch up."

Currently, in addition to Burg, Imagine is comprised of Alan Berkoff
, who plays John; David Brighton or David Kaufman as George; and Jeff
Pocczynski or Dan Carson as Paul. At Saturday's Descanso Gardens
performance it was David Kaufman and Dan Carson who played. What
struck many who were seeing Imagine for the first time was that they
were not too much younger than the actual surviving Beatles are
today. They are physically older than what one might expect of a
Beatles Tribute band. Burg has no qualms about it. "We're late
forties, early fifties guys who love the music and have a passion to
do it and that's why the show comes off the way it does. We love what
we do and we like to make people happy and we enjoy doing it at the
same time." During the outdoor concert at Descanso Gardens, Burg
joked, "If we play all the hits, we'll be finished sometime tomorrow.'

Burg's love of the Beatles began February 9, 1964 when they appeared
on the Ed Sullivan Show. The next day, there was only one topic of
discussion at his grammar school. "I remember that day in school,
this was in Long Island in New York, and none of the teachers could
keep the kids under control. All we kept talking about was the
Beatles all day. It was a nonstop discussion all day," Burg said.

Burg listened to all of the Beatles music and taught himself the
drums by listening to Ringo and to Mickey Jones, who played drum on
Dylan's albums, the Band, and, Kenny Rogers and First Edition and
especially Jones's work with Trini Lopez.

But Burg's father was in the carpet installation business and he
learned the trade from his father and by working for other companies.

He moved to California and established a successful carpet company.
The work damaged his knee and the doctor said he had to give up
installing carpets, but he could still play the drums.

Burg makes a comfortable living in the Beatle tribute business but
that's not what really drives him. "I feel very privileged to have
the chance in my lifetime to be able to do what I love to do.

Very few people have a chance or opportunity in their lifetime to do
that and I feel blessed that I've had the opportunity to do it this way."

What makes a Beatle Tribute band different from a band simply playing
Beatle tunes is that the Tribute band will recreate the look and
sound of the Beatles.

That means being able to play the simple tunes and their versions of
rock standards from the early period to the more complex songs of
their later period. It also means two to three costume changes,
reflecting the Beatles evolution during the sixties. "We do an hour
and a half show. What we do is not very easy to do. The guys have to
know which harmony to do, who takes what part; they really have to
know what they're doing," Burg said.

Some people look down their noses at Tribute bands, putting them down
as cheap imitations.

To the people who were at Descanso Gardens on Saturday, there was
nothing cheap about the performance by Imagine the Beatles Tribute.
Young children were dancing in front of the stage. Many of the people
were smiling and singing along with the band. Some of the older folks
who were swaying and dancing in the grass field were clearly reliving
the Love-ins of their youth. Burg, as Ringo, was taking it all in. "I
can sit there, play and enjoy looking at the people and watch them
have a good time. The money helps but the feel of it all for me is to
see everyone's smiling faces and seeing them have a good time, that's
the bottom line for me."
--

You can check out Imagine on line at www.imaginingthebeatles.com

.

Communicating with Jane Fonda

Communicating with Jane Fonda

http://womensmediacenter.com/ex/032709.html

Not content merely to speak to her Broadway audience eight times a
week through a critically acclaimed performance, Jane Fonda is
blogging daily and twittering nightly. She finds herself hooked on
the instant feedback.

by Marianne Schnall
March 27, 2008

In her memoir, My Life So Far (Random House, 2005), Jane Fonda
reveals how it wasn't until age 60, after many life lessons in what
she calls her "third act," that she felt she discovered her voice.
Now that she has it, she is determined to find meaningful ways to use
it, through the many channels that she finds opening up to her.

Ironically, Fonda was in the process of writing her next book on
aging for Random House, when playwright Moisés Kaufman sent her the
script for a play called 33 Variations. Fonda had just been writing
about how many renowned artists like Matisse and Beethoven did some
of their best work later in life, and the part Kaufman was offering
to her was an American musicologist who becomes obsessed with why
Beethoven, in his later years, was driven to write 33 variations on a
waltz by Anton Diabelli. Fonda, who loved the script, took it as a
sign, and returned to Broadway after 46 years to star in the play,
currently performing to rave reviews and standing ovations.

In addition to acting in plays and films that inspire her and working
on her next book, Fonda has also been drawn to some of the newer
media outlets emerging­no surprise since media has long been one of
her interests; she is a co-founder (with Gloria Steinem and Robin
Morgan) of the Women's Media Center. Fonda, who had been slow to
join the Internet and had only googled for the very first time last
year, decided to launch a blog and her own web site, in large part to
"show you can teach an old dog new tricks." Explains Fonda, "I had
just turned 71. It was the start of a new year, and I was going to
Broadway after 46 years. I thought it would be interesting to keep a
daily journal to take folks through the process­the good and the bad,
the ups and the downs." She adds, "It has been fun."

It has been fun for her visitors as well, who get exclusive access to
personal photos and backstage details of interactions with famous
friends like Gloria Steinem, Robert Redford and Lily Tomlin, as well
as personal musings about whether or not to read her reviews, having
to perform while sick, the ritual of her daily nap, the times she
felt unsure of herself and the moments when it all clicked in. Her
blog has been flooded by supportive comments from friends and fans,
including those who have just seen the show. Asked what she likes
best about entering the blogosphere, she answers, "Keeping a record
and getting feedback."

Fonda has even taken to the latest craze of twittering lately,
delivering live tweets during intermission about who is at the show,
or when her dog ran out on stage during a curtain call. She already
has close to 9,000 "followers" on twitter. Asked whether she is
feeling hip and with it these days, she answers, "You betcha."

Her blog, which is candid and revealing, can at times feel like her
autobiography, but as Fonda points out, the process is very
different. "My memoir was far deeper and more detailed. I do the blog
very quickly…five minutes a day maybe."

Fonda sees both benefits and parallels through being able to
communicate different aspects of herself on all these
levels­artistically through the play, and literally through writing
her blog. Says Fonda, "It's immediate audience feedback and immediate
blogosphere feedback. Oddly, I think it helps me be present in the moment."

In addition to chronicling her experience doing the play, Fonda also
has been using her site to promote organizations such as V-Day, the
Women's Media Center, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy
Prevention, The Jane Fonda Center at Emory University, and the
Sisterhood is Global Institute­all causes dear to her heart. The site
includes an Activist section and a section titled "Matters that Move
Me." Visitors are also treated to a slide show of photos from her
past and present, as well as videos, and sections like "Family and
Friends" and "Ask Jane." I ask her what her goals are for the site.
"It's too soon to say anything definitive about my website 'goals,'"
she responds. "There are many interesting aspects to my life and I
thought I might as well expose them­my non-profit involvements,
activism, as well as my professional matters, my books and videos."

She is thinking of how the site might develop in the future. "I may
do another video to go with my book on aging­'maybe' being the
operative word. But if I do, a website is a good way to sell them,
and books." People have already begun pitching her on other
innovative uses for the site. "Someone suggested that I sell canvas
bags with my 1971 mug shot on them as a way to raise money for my
non-profits. Maybe from this post I will hear from folks if they
think this is a good idea or not. I'm kind of learning as I go and
the feedback I get will help inform my decision about whether or not
to continue blogging after the play." As it goes, time itself may
tell. "I am planning two films this year and there are interesting
adventures in the future so there may be reasons to continue writing
about what's happening. If I feel I don't have anything worthwhile to
write about then I will stop."

Asked whether she is enjoying herself with all her many activities
and media outlets, she answers, "Frankly, I have never been happier.
I won't go into the details of this happiness because I'm writing a
book about it, but it is something. It's like all the strands of my
life are coming together."
--

Visit Jane Fonda's web site at http://www.janefonda.com. For
information on 33 Variations, visit http://www.33Variations.com.

.

Dan Hicks unleashes a mighty swing with latest album

Music: Hicksville U.S.A.

http://www.pacificsun.com/news/show_story.php?id=746&e=y

Dan Hicks unleashes a mighty swing with latest album

by Greg Cahill
March 26, 2009

Dan Hicks sports one of the most original sounds in pop music, an
acoustic-based hipster groove coupled with irreverent lyrics that are
delivered with a droll wit. That blend of folk, old-timey jazz, swing
and blues defies easy definition. It's been called sardonic swing and
toe-tapping mountain-hippie swing. Hicks himself has even been
likened to Hoagie Carmichael with a roach clip.

How does this Mill Valley musician describe his sound?

"I call it folk swing," he says dryly and with a bemused twang. "It's
a hybrid of my two favorite kinds of music: folk and jazz. You could
just say that I'm the King of Folk Swing--I'm the father, actually,
of folk swing. I invented the genre and I know exactly what day and what time.

"You got a problem with that?" he chuckles.
No problem.

In fact, Hicks' first studio album in nine years is cued up on the CD
player--and it's a hit. His newly released Tall Tales (Surfdog) finds
the retro raconteur spinning a dozen yarns--eight originals and four
cover tunes--with his red-hot band the Hot Licks. The CD is a return
to form that finds the singer backed by fiddles, upright bass and
female backup singers who split their time between sweet harmonies
and call-and-response quips. It's reminiscent of the classic '70s
band that featured Maryanne Price on vocals and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg
on fiddle and vocals.

It's easy on the ears.

"I like that sound: It's not loud, it's smooth and it's tasty," Hicks
says. "When I signed with Surfdog nine years ago, I started thinking
about returning to that sound. I never got too far away from it, with
the Acoustic Warriors, but we're definitely back with that sound. I
like the whole package."

Guest musicians include mandolinist David Grisman, slide guitarist
Roy Rogers and blues harmonica ace Charlie Musselwhite.

Local fans of Hicks' short-lived Bayside Jazz act at the old
Sweetwater, which found the singer playing traditional jazz tunes on
Sunday afternoons, will recognize his cover of the jazz standard
"Song for My Father," replete with guitarist Bruce Forman and
seldom-recorded lyrics by Dianne Davidson.

It fits right in with Hicks' signature folk swing.

This Santa Rosa native honed his chops in the 1960s as the drummer of
the Charlatans after shuffling onto the national stage in 1969 with
Original Recordings, a departure from the psychedelicized San
Francisco music scene. That Hot Licks debut introduced the campy
outfit that dished up wry country-inflected tunes about diner
waitresses, blue-collar workers and barflies.

It was a brilliant blend of humor, beat sensibility and pseudo-nostalgia.

Several classic albums, three decades and a long dry spell later,
Hicks reemerged in 2000 with the critically acclaimed comeback
Beatin' the Heat, his first studio recording since 1976. It featured
Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Brian Setzer, Bette Midler and Rickie Lee Jones.

Tall Tales is less heavily produced than his recent albums--it's 100
percent pure unadulterated folk swing.

"I'm happy with this album," Hicks says, adding that the CD was
recorded at the Plant studio in Sausalito. "There are no gimmicks, so
it kind of goes back to the way I recorded [in the 1970s at the Blue
Thumb label with [producer Tommy LiPuma when we'd just sing and play
and record it all in one take with very little overdubbing.

"It demonstrates the way we are on stage these days."
--

COMING SOON
Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, with David Grisman, perform at Yoshi's
in San Francisco Saturday, March 28, at 8 and 10pm. $35. 415/655-5600.

.

When Yoko Ono came to stay

[2 items]

A happening in Headingley ­ when Yoko Ono came to stay

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/features/A-happening-in-Headingley-.5105346.jp

25 March 2009
By Chris Bond

BY the mid-1960s, revolution was in the air and nowhere was this more
evident than in art.
A decade after Jackson Pollock's paint extravaganzas had confounded
critics, pop art pioneers like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were
turning the art world on its head. Amid this cultural maelstrom, John
Jones, then a fine art lecturer at Leeds University, travelled to New
York in 1965 to find out more.

He spent two months interviewing nearly a hundred different artists,
including such luminaries as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Willem de
Kooning, as well as a young Japanese performer called Yoko Ono.

"There were art movements popping up all over the place, so I thought
it was a good idea to talk to the artists themselves so they could
explain what their work was about. I met abstract expressionists and
pop artists and through them I was invited to a couple of happenings
and this was when I met Yoko."

Jones says these surreal performances, or "happenings", tried to
challenge traditional concepts of art. "A lot of it was meaningless,
but that was the point."

Yoko was among the artists he spoke to. "She was very interesting
because she was already a well-established artist in New York, which
people don't always realise. She told me she had originally wanted to
be a composer but said she wasn't very good. Then she started writing
poems and became interested in art."

As well as her happenings, she also produced "irrational" art objects
which she sold, including her Disappearing Machine, which claimed to
make an object disappear "when you pushed a button."

A year after his visit to the US, Yoko held a happening at Leeds
College of Art and Jones invited her to stay at his house in
Headingley. Her trip to Yorkshire came shortly before her first,
fateful meeting with John Lennon, and 20 years later Jones was asked
to write about it for a book on the life of the former Beatle, called
The Lennon Companion: Twenty-five years of Comment, a reading of
which takes place tonight at Café Lento, as part of the Headingley
Literature Festival.

Jones, now aged 82, remembers watching Yoko at the college. The first
part of her performance involved her, and her then husband, Tony Cox,
climbing into a black bag on stage.

"The audience watched as they moved around inside wondering what they
were doing, and whether or not they were taking their clothes off.
Which, of course, was the whole point, she wanted the spectators to
imagine what was happening."

The second part was her take on a party game where a message is
whispered to someone and then passed along a row of people. "It was a
bit like Chinese whispers and afterwards she asked members of the
audience what they had heard and they all said something different.
She then revealed what she had said, which was nothing."

Yoko and her husband, along with their young daughter,
Kyoko, stayed with him for the weekend.

"I thought they would want to see the sights of Yorkshire but they
were quite happy spending time with us. I showed Yoko a film I'd made
of my own family which I thought she might like, but she was more
interested in the blank film left over, that was typical of her.

"But she was quite charming company and we got on very well, I
remember she entertained the children by making origami birds and animals."

Before leaving, Yoko mentioned that she needed to raise money for a
film. "I had a bit of spare money, so I lent her £50," he says.

This went towards her underground film Bottoms, which features a
hundred different behinds. Before the film came out, Yoko sent him a
cheque for half the amount she owed and said that Apple, set up by
The Beatles, would pay the remainder, which it did.

That was that, or so he thought. "A few months later, I was working
at the university when a huge bouquet of flowers arrived for me, with
a cheque for £25 and a note which said 'Love and Peace. John and
Yoko'. I posted this extra cheque back to Yoko at Apple, but a week
later it returned, stamped 'Not known at this address'."
--

For more information about the Headingley Literature Festival, visit
www.headingleylitfest.blogspot.com

--------

Lennon, Ono connected to Canada

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/O/Ono_Yoko/2009/03/24/8863006-sun.html

By MARIE-JOELLE PARENT - Sun Media
3/24/2009

NEW YORK -- Spring is back and so is Yoko Ono.

It's been 40 years since the famous Montreal Bed-In and Live Peace
concert in Toronto, but John Lennon's widow continues to spread her
message of love and friendship.

Though the Bed-In was initially scheduled to take place in New York,
John Lennon's conviction for marijuana possession barred him from
entering the United States and forced the couple to change venues.

It was Ono who suggested they move it to Montreal. "I already had a
love for the city because I had visited, before I met John, in 1961
for a modern music festival," said Ono, 76, from her large New York loft.

With no love lost between the couple and the American government at
the time, Ono admitted that she and Lennon had even contemplated
moving to Canada at one point.

However, Ono's heart was in New York and no move to Canada ever
materialized. In fact, she still lives at the Dakota apartments, the
location of Lennon's 1980 assassination.

Following Lennon's death, Ono said she brought her sons to Canada and
to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel to see the room -- suite 1742 -- where
Ono and Lennon held the Bed-In from May 26 to June 1, 1969.

"I wanted them to understand what we lived through," she said of the
protest against Vietnam War and in support of peace.

On the final day of the Bed-In, they recorded Give Peace a Chance,
which marked the first solo project for a member of The Beatles while
the band was still together.

Ono said she and Lennon were shocked by the number of reporters that
came out to cover the event, and though she said they were almost
right up on the bed with them, the couple never felt like their space
was being invaded.

"It was incredible," she said. "We were so in love, we wanted to
share it with the whole world."

And though many journalists in attendance expected to witness Ono and
Lennon fooling around, that particular type of intimacy never
happened. As for drugs, they didn't seem to have a place at the
Bed-In either. According to witnesses, Lennon mostly drank wine.

Ono's memories of the Live Peace Concert in Toronto in September 1969
remain just as vivid. That performance was the first time Lennon had
performed on stage without the other three Beatles.

"John was a bit nervous, but I must say that we were more excited
than nervous," she said. "It was magnificent."

So after 40 years, what remains of the couple's message of peace,
especially now with the United States at war?

"Obviously, John would be mad to see that nothing has changed," said
Ono, who noted that their protest in the 1960s was an isolated act.
Today, Ono estimates that 99% of the world's population wants peace,
while only 1% continues to be interested in violence.

Ono herself hasn't changed a whole lot, and with the body of a
teenager and her childlike laughter, you could easily mistake her for
someone 20 years younger.

She said Lennon gave her the nickname, "the Martian", which she said
was because she has a "big head and a small body."

Her appearance is one of the most striking aspects of Ono. The other
is her barely audible voice, and even after 60 years spent living in
the United States, her Japanese accent remains strong.

She is also a woman still in complete control of her image -- the
hoops an interviewer has to jump through are right out of a Kafka novel.

And as for her late husband, even 28 years after his murder, she
still senses his presence.

"He is always with me and I think that's one of the reasons why I can
stay strong," she said, adding that she feels an energy coming from Lennon.

"Sometimes I get sad, but the negative experiences are gifts too, and
like John said, 'Take a sad song and make it better.'

"It is time for action and action is peace," she said at the
conclusion of the interview, her hands holding mine.

No, Ono definitely hasn't lost her hippie spirit.

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DVD Review: All My Loving

DVD Review: All My Loving

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/03/24/104954.php

Written by Lou Novacheck
Published March 24, 2009

I've always been a big Cream fan, and I must have heard "We're Going
Wrong" at least a couple thousand times. But I've never heard it the
way I did the first time I saw Tony Palmer's magical touch on the
cameras. I have never heard "We're Going Wrong" the way I heard it
when I watched Palmer's one-of-a-number-of-masterpieces, All My
Loving for the first time. I was such a huge Cream fan I once drove
with two other guys over a thousand miles each way to see Cream one weekend.

Unless you're a student of films about music, you'll probably not
recognize the name Tony Palmer. Palmer has made in excess of 100
films on subjects such as The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank
Zappa (200 Motels) in the rock world. In the classical world, his
subjects include Igor Stravinski, Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, and
Yehudi Menuhin. His seven-hour, 45 minute film on Richard Wagner,
starring Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier, and Vanessa Redgrave is
considered by many to be his magnum opus.

In essence, All My Loving is the history of an era that is still
being played out. With no exaggeration, no hyperbole, and no
bullshit, the 1960s was a watershed era. The entire way of life in
the US and in many parts of the world changed radically during the
1960s, with music going from Pat Boone and Perry Como and Liberace,
to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, the Mothers of Invention,
Pink Floyd, The Family Dog, and the Fugs. You also had a sea change
in the American way of life: the destruction of the nuclear family,
use of recreational drugs by young people, you had the Chicago riots,
draft card burnings, bra burnings, topless and bottomless dancers,
the March on the Pentagon, Martin Luther King's speech in Washington,
riots in the black ghettos, Ohio National Guardsmen opening fire on
student demonstrators, and you had people sentenced to life in prison
for possession of a single joint. And that's just the tip of the
iceberg. To me, it made perfect sense to see Hendrix doing "The
Star-Spangled Banner," and he and Pete Townshend splintering and
burning their guitars. It certainly made more sense than life for a joint!

And it's more surprising to me in 2009 to not see far worse being
done in the name of freedom from oppression, the majority of which
seems to fall under the category of "national security."

London's Daily Express tells what the film is about much better than I could:
With hideous, clamorous force, Tony Palmer's film about the pop world
burst out of the TV screen last night - a disturbing piece of
television which no parent could afford to miss. It was certainly not
a film which will die, a psychedelic experience which 10 years from
now will be the definitive document of its time. How often does TV
really make you sit on the edge of your chair?

All My Loving is about all this and much, much more.

"We're Going Wrong" is incredibly intense in its own right. Yet
Palmer manages to arrange a marriage of visual and sonic intensities
into an orgasm of emotion that is veritably tactile. "You could feel
it in your toes, man!" the Medusa-haired lunatic [me] in front of you
is raving.

And if Palmer had been in the room with me when he cut Jack Bruce's
divo performance, at the exact zenith of its intensity, I would have
strangled him. But it was an even more intense shock than everything
that had transpired until then. As if one second you're in a car
speeding down the road at 70 miles an hour, and literally one second
later, the train you hit has stopped you cold. I had to reassemble my
shattered self after that sudden stop.

Another scene that resonated with me was when the narrator was
talking about and filming the destructiveness of The Who and Hendrix
in particular, and in a hundred words or less makes it sound like it
was perfectly logical at the time. "It made perfect sense, man!"
[Crazy man again.]

As Palmer says in the film, these old color cameras were like
elephants, it took four men to move them. So they didn't. When he
filmed Cream, he told Eric Clapton, "That's your camera. Jack, that's
your camera, and Ginger, that's your camera."

All My Loving is a film about the 1960s and the music of the 1960s,
and was a powerful microcosm of the trouble and strife going on
around the globe in 1968, and is every bit as germane to world
politics today as it was then. This film would never have happened if
it wasn't for John Lennon, according to what Palmer says early in his
interview. Lennon was returning a favor. While a student at
Cambridge, Palmer had shown Lennon around the fascinating town;
Lennon was appreciative and gave Palmer his personal phone number in
London. Three years later, Palmer called the number. Lennon went on
to eventually introduce Palmer to the groups who are the "lead
characters" in the film: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Pink
Floyd, Cream, Donovan, Frank Zappa, and Eric Burdon are the ones
mentioned in the liner notes of the DVD.

Some scenes which are engraved in the stone of my brain: the strung
out smack freak nodding away in Hashbury [Haight-Ashbury]; the
savagery of a cop whipping a guy with his baton, hitting him once ­
pow! Twice. Pow! Three times. Four times, knocking him off his feet.
Five times, in less than that many seconds; and the organ fugue in
both counterpoint and complement to the presumable napalming of a
Vietnamese man, this flaming still-walking corpse stumbling and
falling, then miraculously getting up again, rabid with the pain,
chunks of burning flesh falling from his body. Then both scene and
sound fade into a continually rearranging juxtaposition of film clips
and still shots, all memorable, with the burning man making a couple
more appearances, all with a speech by Adolf Hitler as the
soundtrack, the fugue also reappearing. All of these depictions take
less than a minute of film, but they could fill four-score and seven volumes.

Palmer manages to reach the musicians, managers, and others on their
individual and collective levels, thereby instilling in them a
feeling of obligation that they've got to open up and "tell it like
it is" to Palmer. Pete Townshend in particular is often bombastic and
sarcastic with press, not to the point of rudeness, because you can
sense it's a defensive front being projected. Palmer interviews and
films Townshend on the bus during one of their famously grueling
15,000-miles-in-six-weeks traveling marathons and opens him up as if
he were popping a champagne cork, the words gushing out of Townshend
like the bubbly spewing from the neck of the bottle.

In a voiceover we hear the announcer: "Increasingly, the strain of
such tours forces the ambitious pop musicians away from live
performance … The first Beatle LP was made in a day. Their recent
Sergeant Pepper song cycle took three months and 700 hours of studio
time. Mozart wrote Don Giovanni in seven weeks."

I've given my impression of less than ten minutes of the film, and
while those ten minutes are not the best parts of the film, they are
certainly among the most indelible. This is one of those few films
that come along in life that is truly impossible to leave. No
bathroom breaks, because even if you're watching it at home, you
don't want to wait for even a minute to see what happens next; you
refuse to stop it. One minute is entirely too long to delay one's
gratification.

Immediately following the Hitler speech comes a remarkably peaceful
pastoral scene which seems to emphasize "brotherhood," or a familial
gathering, which then fades into the closing credits. All My Loving
is a celluloid symphony with a peaceful ending, an appropriately
calming symphony playing just audibly in the background.

Fade to black.

Extras include an extremely interesting and superb interview with Tony Palmer.

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Give Peace Another Chance

[2 articles]

Give Peace Another Chance

http://www.montrealgazette.com/Give+peace+another+chance/1410355/story.html

By Mark Lepage, Special to The Gazette
March 20, 2009

New York ­ Descending the subway steps to the uptown F train, an
instantly recognizable melody wafts up from below. There's a South
American-looking busker on the platform whose motley collection of
equipment includes the pan pipes, serenading the crowd with the
instrumental Andean version of Imagine and I'm thinking: "Nah.
Really?" Followed swiftly by the certainty: Yoko will appreciate this.

"Really?" she says once we've sat down in a hangar-sized photo
studio. "Well, it's not a coincidence, you know? It's like a message."

Meaning some numinous nod to our get-together, and the occasion.
Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John and Yoko opens April 2 at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, running neatly through the 40th
anniversary of the Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

"There's always a reason," Ono says; or possibly, all coincidences
prove is that there are coincidences. But for the occasion, we'll
tweak that logic to admit the otherworld: that the New York subway
spirits, or some other energy, would get involved, because even in
2009, there's fame, and there's John and Yoko.

The Imagine exhibit is just the latest manifestation of Ono's life's
work on the legacy of John and Yoko's life's work. She travels
semi-regularly to Montreal to discuss Love, the Cirque du Soleil's
Beatles show. Before we speak, she will prepare for a photo session,
trying on a selection of whimsical wide-brimmed hats and yellow or
purple-tinged sunglasses in the impossibly bright 15-foot-ceilinged
Daylight Studios overlooking the Hudson River. Straddling a chair
flashing the peace sign, she vets the photos as they are shot. We are
prepared for "hands-on," given a pre-interview process that insisted
on full approval of any and all published photos, as well as
pre-submitted questions. This, then, may be the "Dragon Lady" of whom
the ancients speak.

As is most always the case, the mediation evaporates once you're
sitting together. Seated at a cafeteria table, we're left in the main
alone, and she answers, even when the conversation is borne way from
celebration.

But first, celebration. Yoko remembers that 1969 week in Montreal as
"very intimate. We disappointed all the press people because they
thought that we were gonna make love in front of them or something.
But of course you know" ­ she giggles ­ " we didn't."

Well, you got pretty close on that Two Virgins cover… (which showed
them both naked).

"Yes," she smiles. And the intimacy will be captured in the MMFA.
Strikingly, John and Yoko will be heard whispering and singing to one
another from gallery to gallery as visitors take in Imagine's massive
collection of 140 works, drawings, unpublished photographs, videos,
films, artworks and interactive materials covering the 1966-1972
period and including some of Ono's '90s work. During the planning
stage, the museum dispatched two curators to Ono's apartment in New
York for high-level discussions.

"It was so thorough and creative and original. I was very, very
impressed," she says.

A stand-in for John's iconic white piano, featuring a Disklavier
sound system, will allow fans to play Imagine.

"Isn't that great?" she says. "And the bed will be there."

Not the same bed, surely, but a replica of the one from Suite 1742.

"It's just a very sweet and lovely memory. It was so beautiful, there
was no problem at all." She remembers fans downstairs in the Queen
Elizabeth Hotel, and Suite 1742 crowded with recording technicians
and media (including The Gazette's own Dave Bist) bang their way into
history on guitars and doorjambs to record Give Peace a Chance. "Very
nice people. They made it very easy for us. Those people were always
there. If they're not nice people, we'd feel it, you know?

"It was a very, very intense time in history. Don't you think? We
were very lucky. We were doing something out of love, and it was a
very peaceful environment and atmosphere. It was just an exchange of
love with the people near us, around us, and the world."

Of course, they were exchanging The Love because of The Hate, and the
not-nice people in the world.

"Even in those days, the generation before us were very upset with
what we were doing. But the young ones understood."

Some may see Ono as a relentless happy-talker, which would
conveniently leave out the complete absence of self-pity. Don't
forget ­ during that period, Lennon would spend four years fighting
the U.S. government for his green card. Ono had already lost her
daughter Kyoko in a parental kidnapping following a custody case.
They were the uberfamous couple flashing peace signs, groovily
inspiring the counterculti and, in official channels, being …
"treated like trash," she finishes the sentence. "I do want to
mention one thing, the fact that (John) was a very courageous man.
Even though he knew there was tremendous objection and pressure from
higher up, he didn't want to quit. He was always truthful about it."

"We were very upset about things each time, but it didn't stick to us."

She describes the childlike world of instantaneous free exchange that
is the most public face of their marriage.

"Once we met, we were just like one person. Before I met John … there
were so many ideas that I couldn't realize all of them. When I met
John, we were both that kind of people. So can you imagine the speed
of the things coming out? We didn't even have to finish a sentence."

One sentence they finished, in their own write, will surely be
represented in the exhibit. WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It), the 1969
billboard/newspaper ad blitz, was that rarest of occasions when idea
and wealth met advertising not to sell product, but concept. Which,
pace John, is a theory/conviction running through Yoko Ono's work up
to that time (see sidebar on her career).

"It's a bit tacky to sell people, you know, 'peace'," she says. "In
our case, we were so much in a hurry, we just did it."

Once again, we enjoy interesting times. Obama's election was "kind of
like we won a war or something. I believe in grassroots movements,
definitely, and the people's power. And I'm not that much into
institutional politics, you know. But still ­ once they're there,
it's much better that we get some support and patience and love. But
we have to have belief that we can do it, too, you know."

"Imagining ­ it's like a meditative thing. When you're imagining
peace, you can't kill someone. By imagining peace, you are peace." We
speak briefly about the two of them discussing Imagine, the song,
before it was completed. There is more talk of how each person is
"like a superpower" and "an oasis. We're like 90-per-cent water, each
of us, so before we fight with each other, the water is already connecting."

All of which is as on-message as a peace sign, but certainly there is
another side. A private sense that "I was laying my whole self to the
world, dedicating myself to the world. And John … lived … and died from that."

And so there is risk involved.

"Well I didn't think about the risk. Every risk is a blessing."

And some of this must be painful? To revisit?

"No. Because we were sitting together, and we're still sitting
together. And now we are returning to Montreal. We're not visiting,
we're returning. And so I know that John is very happy. Our memories
were so good. So we're just sort of jumping with excitement!"

"Especially with Montreal, I know we are going back together."

Back to the subway, where the busker has been called to his next gig.
--

Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John and Yoko runs from April 2 to June
21 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Free admission.

--------

Six of Yoko Ono's greatest hits

http://www.montrealgazette.com/Entertainment/Yoko+greatest+hits/1410495/story.html

By Mark Lepage, Special to The Gazette
March 20, 2009

Hubby called Yoko "the world's most famous unknown artist." These are
some notable reasons:

Cut Piece (1964): Variously interpreted by reviewers as feminist act,
peace protest and striptease, it also now feels presciently "rock star."

The performance-art piece had Ono kneeling on a stage, fully dressed,
with a pair of scissors in front of her. Audience members would cut
off bits of her clothing ­ which they could keep as souvenirs ­ until
she was virtually naked. The themes ­ intimacy, vulnerability,
inhibition, threat, martyrdom ­ have been echoed in every female
experimental installation you've seen since.

Grapefruit (1964): Haiku challenges or zen gags? Ono's book appears
to demarcate the artistic line between liberating concept and scam.
Features John's review blurb: "This is the greatest book I've ever burned."

Nail and "Yes" (1966): Lennon (self-described as "The Millionaire")
is brought to London's Indica Gallery where the famous unknown artist
is putting finishing touches to her unopened show. He wants to try
the Hammer A Nail In piece. She says no. He offers her an imaginary 5
shillings to hammer in an imaginary nail. Smart boy. He climbs a
ladder to read a tiny word written above. The word is "Yes." Smart girl.

Live Peace In Toronto (1969): Is there a better word for "caterwaul"?
Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Alan White are the Plastic Ono Band,
and on side one of this album (with its iconic cover), they crank
through dystopic, druggy and altogether raw versions of Money, Dizzy
Miss Lizzy, Yer Blues and Cold Turkey. It's great. On side two, well,
anyone who's heard it will remember their first time.

Among the moments captured in D. A. Pennebaker's footage is the
finale John, John (Let's Hope for Peace), when Clapton briefly rolls
his eyes at her screeches. Find it on YouTube.

Walking on Thin Ice remix tops dance chart (2003): "I think we've
just got your first No. 1, Yoko," said John after finishing up the
guitar on her Walking on Thin Ice. As usual, he was 20-odd years
ahead of the earthlings. Although the original version of the song
brought Ono her first chart success in 1981, that meant No. 58. In
2003, remix efforts by, among others, the Pet Shop Boys (bless their
little disco hearts) took the song to the top of Billboard's dance chart.

"I enjoyed it like I enjoy the weather," Ono told me last week. Great
line, but perhaps a little coy. It may have felt especially sunny
that day. That guitar, incidentally, was the last thing Lennon
recorded, on Dec. 8, 1980. It still feels unearthly to write that.

Ono will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on June 6,
2009, at the Venice Biennale.

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The 50th Anniversary of Aldous Huxley’s UCSB Lecture Series

The 50th Anniversary of Aldous Huxley's UCSB Lecture Series

http://www.independent.com/news/2009/mar/24/50th-anniversary-aldous-huxleys-ucsb-lecture-serie/

Remembering a Genius in a Tourist Town

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
By D.J. Palladino

Among Santa Barbara's finest rumors are some crazy stories about
Aldous Huxley living here. Some maintained that the author of Brave
New World and Crome Yellow once dwelled in Isla Vista, and whilst
across the channel was inspired to write Island. Another tale held
that Huxley's wife would annually procure him a virgin from the
then-new UCSB campus for a springtime ritual cloaked in obvious pagan
and erotic possibilities. Some rumors suggest that Huxley called the
Upham Hotel home while teaching a class at the university, others
that his series of lectures became all the rage, spilling audiences
out from the auditorium located where UCSB's lagoon-hugging UCen now stands.

Actually, the last story is true. The other tales, not so much. It's
true, though, that 50 years ago this month, the university hosted
Huxley as its first visiting professor. Besides teaching courses to a
select corps of English majors, Huxley gave a series of wildly
popular public lectures which can be revisited on tape and in a
hard-to-find paperback volume barely available on Amazon. In the
talks, Huxley isolated major points that would later engage my
generation in angry debates as well as stoned ruminations. Would the
future belong to B.F. Skinner's brand of scientific determinism or
Timothy Leary's mystical adventure? What does it mean to be human in
a pervasively technological culture? How can we talk about the future
under mushroom-clouded skies?

"I deliberately kept the title of this course as vague and as general
as I could," Huxley declared in his February 9, 1959 intro lecture,
"so as not to commit myself too far in advance or to pretend that I
know too much." Modestly titled "The Human Situation," the lectures
today seem remarkably prescient, opening with overpopulation,
pollution, and their plausible effects on the climate, and concluding
with an intriguing inventory of human possibilities. Besides clearly
helping to brand Santa Barbara as the eco-friendly New Age paradise
it is today, Huxley in 1959 anticipated language that would not be
employed by trendy professors, tree-huggers, and San Francisco
hippies for at least another decade.

Forward into the Past

Not everybody was enchanted by the author, essayist, and lifestyle
pioneer. The well-known S.B. actor George Backman was one of the
English majors who took the class. "It was very boring stuff," he
said. "He was so blind he held the notes up practically to his face,
and he read all the lectures. Isherwood was much, much better."
Nevertheless, Backman remembers that the public talks needed
loudspeakers outside for the overspill throngs.

Who knows why the people came? The talks were made possible by UCSB
Proust professor Douwe Stuurman­a khaki-clad, ascot-wearing character
about town­who had attended Oxford's Balliol College with Huxley and
Isherwood. But it wasn't just Anglophilia that made Huxley a hot
ticket. His talks fit the agenda of a once-sleepy tourist town that
suddenly had a UC campus, appealing to both academics and the greater
community. First, Huxley made an impassioned plea for remarrying the
increasingly specialized branches of Academia. He wanted people to
see the world as a combination of "atomic physics" on one hand and
"an immediate experience of value, love, and emotion" on the other.
"The building of this fundamental bridge is an urgent, urgent problem
in our world," he said.

He then called for "more Nature in art"­he found the contemporary art
of his era too theoretical, and would have loved the Oak Group which
formed some 30 years later. But more to the point, he wanted to
reclaim moral life on a biosphere. "Th[e] ethical point of view in
which nature is regarded as having rights, and we are regarded as
having duties, is not found within the Western tradition," he rightly
complained. "Instead we have what seems to me a rather shocking
formulation … that animals have no souls. Therefore they have no
rights and we have no duties toward them, and consequently they may
be treated as things. I feel that this is a most undesirable
doctrine." It's hardly what you would've read on an op ed page in
1959, though I'd venture to say that it's a notion most Santa
Barbarians today, from Wendy McCaw to Marty Blum, would probably embrace.

Braving the New World

Huxley was born in 1894, and grew up into the guttering half-light of
World War I England after losing most of his eyesight and his beloved
brother. His fame came early in bitingly satirical novels like Crome
Yellow, not through family fame, but through sheer hard work. Trained
to teach, he was soon dissuaded away from that profession and toward
fiction and began by promising his publisher two books a year, all
the while traveling and making friends like D.H. Lawrence and
Bertrand Russell. Attaining popular infamy by 1931 after the
publication of the excoriating sci fi dystopia Brave New World,
Huxley came to Southern California, where he mixed literature and
science into a pursuit of transcendent experience. He was a member of
the Vedanta society and a friend of Krishnamurti in Ojai. He first
took psilocybin mushrooms in Mexico, and was given LSD in 1955. He
wrote simply and beautifully about the experience in The Doors of
Perception, a slender book that became a counter-culture Bible.

The UCSB lectures reveal Huxley's hard-won acuity as well as his
humanity. Huxley was a pacifist, and he devoted a hard hour of
thought to underscoring why Marx was so wrong about the proletariat,
who did not join across borders and resist fighting during World War
I but died for nationalist systems that were crushing them. Huxley
was also fascinated by language acquisition and the difference
between nature and nurture in the formation of our ethical selves.
His essay on the Unconscious makes a lucid attempt at understanding
why we use linguistic and amoral constructions like, "I don't know
what came over me," and, "I wasn't myself."

Best, however, reading these lectures opens a door to the group mind
of our city. In 1959, though the university had barely 2,000
students, Santa Barbara was a budding intellectual oasis. There were
citizens of note already assembled here: the great critics Hugh
Kenner and Marvin Mudrick, poets like Edgar Bowers, the crime writer
duo Kenneth (Ross Macdonald) and Margaret Millar, as well as artists
like Howard Warshaw. Beatniks had opened the Somnambulist Coffee
House near the Lobero, and future hippies were establishing space on
Mountain Drive. Huxley was a friend of Robert Hutchins of Montecito's
Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, as well as of Igor
Stravinsky, who helped found the Music Academy of the West.

Huxley ended his UCSB lecture series in late spring with a plea for
objectivity drawn from Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you from the
bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." It's a
quote Huxley believed should be inscribed on every pulpit and lectern
in the land. Fifty years later, though, maybe his own radical words
spoken a few paragraphs earlier serve better as dessert: "If we all
had the doors of our perceptions cleansed and we all saw the world as
infinite and holy, we should all find it a great deal less necessary
to go in for bullfighting, attacking minorities, or working up
frenzies against foreign people." That would be a brave new world we
could start right here.

4•1•1

Tapes of Huxley's 1959 UCSB lecture series can be heard for free at
the university's Special Collections Library. Call (805) 893-3062 or
visit library.ucsb.edu/speccoll. A limited number of copies of the
lectures are also available in book format on Amazon.com.

.

Hearts and Minds [Vietnam War]

HEARTS AND MINDS

http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=11638

by Phil Hall
(2009-03-20)
2009, Un-rated, 112 minutes, Rainbow Releasing
http://www.rainbowreleasing.com/

"Hearts and Minds," Peter Davis' 1974 Academy Award-winning
documentary on the Vietnam War, is returning to theatrical release in
a digitally restored and remastered edition. If you never saw this
film, please try to locate a theater where it is playing. Quite
simply, this is one of the greatest non-fiction films ever made.

"Hearts and Minds" is a cold shock to the system ­ a detailed
dissection of how the U.S. government, over the course of five very
different administrations, repeatedly lied to Americans and put U.S.
troops in harm's way to fight a war that had no moral or political
purpose whatsoever. The film also provides evidence of the
often-shocking ignorance that many Americans had in regard to the
reasons for being involved in Vietnam ­ including frank admissions by
some soldiers on the battlefield that they had no idea who the enemy
was or why the war was raging.

One has to be clear that this is not a 100% objective film ­ abuses
by the North Vietnamese are not documented, and the captivity faced
by a U.S. P.O.W. who is profiled in the film is not explored. But
that lapse does not excuse the blatant falsehoods and shameless
arrogance that went into the U.S. planning of the war, nor does it
condone clearly documented problems that arose in the execution of
those strategies.

"Hearts and Minds" is an ironic title, given that so few Americans
associated with the war seemed to display anything resembling
compassion or intelligence. The most shocking moment is the
unapologetic statement by Gen. William Westmoreland that "The
Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner.
Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient." This follows a
highly emotional scene where the family of a slain Vietnamese soldier
tearfully mourns over his coffin.

There are other interview in which U.S. Air Force pilots casually
acknowledge they never thought twice about the people in the
Vietnamese villages they were bombing. Davis goes to those villages
and finds people whose loved ones were killed and whose homes were
destroyed. Footage of Vietnamese women traveling down roads carrying
children with skin burned off by napalm bombing provides evidence of
the devastation brought on civilians. (Included here is the full
footage of the iconic photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi: Kim Phúc
running naked after being burned in a Vietnam Air Force napalm attack).

From an intellectual standpoint, "Hearts and Minds" is a harsh slap
at how some Americans considered the war. Average Americans are
interviewed, but cannot identify the reasons for the conflict ­ one
trucker actually states the U.S. is backing North Vietnam. George
Coker, the aforementioned P.O.W., actually tells a school audience
that the U.S. won the war! Coker also comments on Vietnam with this
deathless comment: "If it weren't for the people, it would be a
beautiful country." Comments by President Nixon and Bob Hope at a
White House dinner honoring returned P.O.W.s are amazing in their
tactless crassness.

The film also tracks down several veterans ­ some are physically
disabled ­ who speak bitterly of realizing too late about the
implications of what they did in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg, the
military analyst who was responsible for making "The Pentagon Papers"
public, Sen. J. William Fulbright and former Defense Secretary Clark
Clifford speak at length at how they slowly came to realize the lies,
deceptions and twisted logic that pushed the war along. Army deserter
Edward Sowders is also here, and his taboo presence offers a
disturbing view into the underground movement of AWOL military
personnel who rebelled against the system.

It is difficult not to watch "Hearts and Minds" without drawing
parallels between Vietnam and the current wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It would be curious to see how contemporary American
moviegoers view a film that is clearly not gung-ho in its
appreciation of military might. The film was polarizing in its day,
and I assume it will be equally divisive now.

Whether it is viewed as a time capsule from a distant and troubled
past or as a preview of things to come, "Hearts and Minds" represents
a troubling journey into a nightmare of America's own creation. It is
impossible to walk away from the film without being devastated.

.

Arlo Guthrie performs

Arlo Guthrie performs tonight at the Avalon in Grand Junction

http://www.gjfreepress.com/article/20090320/COMMUNITY_NEWS/903199958/1001/NONE%26parentprofile=1059%26title=Arlo%20Guthrie%20performs%20tonight%20at%20the%20Avalon%20in%20Grand%20Junction

By Sharon Sullivan
ssullivan@gjfreepress.com

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. ­ Folk singer Arlo Guthrie cheerfully answered
the phone "Good mornin' ..." when it rang his Denver hotel room
Thursday morning, and the reporter half expected to hear "...
America, how are you? Don't you know me? I'm your native son!"

Guthrie made famous the Steve Goodman song "City of New Orleans," and
the voice praising the morning sure sounded familiar.

As the son of legendary singer, songwriter and philosopher Woody
Guthrie, Arlo grew up surrounded by musicians such as Pete Seeger,
Ronnie Gilbert and Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

Arlo Guthrie also became an accomplished musician who plays the six-
and 12-string guitar, piano, harmonica and a dozen other instruments.
He's also a natural-born storyteller who engages his audiences with
humorous tales throughout his performances.

Guthrie performed before an appreciative crowd at the Telluride
Bluegrass Festival last summer, ending with a prayerful "My Peace," a
song he said he wrote with his dad.

"My father wrote the lyrics on a little piece of paper and my sister
sent it to me," Guthrie said. The paper had ended up in the family
archives, and his sister thought Guthrie could do something with it.

"I don't know if it was a thought he had or a poem," Guthrie said.

Guthrie changed the words around a little, put music to it and sings
it every night, he said.

"Churches are singing it now," he said. "It's a beautiful little song."

Expect to hear "My Peace" along with songs from Guthrie's latest
release, "32 Cents Postage Due" ­ a record of Woody Guthrie songs
recorded by Arlo and a group called The Dillards.

The Dillards used to perform on the Andy Griffith Show as The Darlin's.

"They're great pickers, old buddies of mine," Guthrie said.

His other most recent recording "In Times Like These" is a collection
of mostly his songs recorded with the University of Kentucky Symphony
Orchestra.

"They're two very different records, different settings, all me," Guthrie said.

Another song "definitely on the menu" for tonight is a beautiful song
called "When a Soldier Makes it Home" ­ a song Guthrie wrote 20 years
ago about soldiers coming home from Afghanistan and Vietnam to
communities out of touch with the soldiers' experiences in faraway lands.

"I get e-mails all the time from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan
saying, 'Thank you for that song,'" Guthrie said. "And I write them back."

"Luckily things have changed," Guthrie said. "There's a lot more
direct concern for how guys are being treated."

Guthrie lives in his tour bus 10 months out of the year and spends
the rest of his time between Washington, Massachusetts and a little
town in Florida called Sebastian.

In 1991, Guthrie bought an old church in Great Barrington, Mass. ­
the very same location where the events that took place on
Thanksgiving 1965 inspired Guthrie to write the 1967 song "Alice's'
Restaurant."

These days the old church is home to the Guthrie Center.

"It's a bring your own God church," where like-minded
spiritually-minded folks gather and where "we do a lot of local old
'60s stuff ­ free community lunches, music and arts programs, yoga
classes," Guthrie said.

The Center employs one paid staff and hosts a group of volunteers who
provide HIV/AIDS services, fundraising for local service
organizations and organize walk-a-thons to raise awareness and money
to find a cure for Huntington's Disease ­ the illness that killed
Woody Guthrie. The Center is also simply a place to meditate.

"There's two things going on there," Guthrie said. "It's an
educational foundation and an interfaith church. We figure between
those two we can cover a whole lot of territory."

The church is located in the hamlet of Van Deusenville, which is in
the village of Housatonic, which is in the town of Great Barrington,
Guthrie said.

That's the confusing kind of address New Englanders are known for,
Guthrie said.

"You have to want to find it."

Guthrie will be performing solo tonight.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said.

Tickets are available at the door.
--

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.

.

Let's truly honor Cesar Chavez

Let's truly honor Cesar Chavez

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/20/2009/3396

by Dick Meister
March 22, 2009

It's way past time that Congress declared the March 31 birthdate of
Cesar Chavez a national holiday. President Obama agrees. So do the
millions of people who are expected to sign petitions being
circulated by the United Farm Workers, the union founded by Chavez.

Eight states and dozens of cities already observe Chavez' birthdate
as an official holiday ­ and for very good reason. As the UFW notes,
"He inspired farm workers and millions of people who never worked on
a farm to commit themselves to social, economic and civil rights
activism. Cesar's legacy continues to educate, inspire and empower
people from all walks of life."

Obama says, "We should honor him for what he's taught us about making
America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation," and for
providing inspirational strength, "as farm workers and laborers
across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages."

Chavez showed, above all, that the poor and oppressed can prevail
against even the most powerful opponents ­ if they can organize
themselves and adopt non-violence as their principal tactic.

"We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our
weapons," Chavez explained.

The cause, of course, was that of the nation's highly exploited farm
workers. Although their work of harvesting the food that sustains us
all is one of society's most important tasks, their pay was at or
near the poverty level, they typically had few fringe benefits and
very little legal protection from employer mistreatment.

Most lacked even such simple on-the-job amenities as toilets and
fresh drinking water and were regularly exposed to pesticide
poisoning and other hazards. Their living conditions were generally
as abominable.

As a farm worker himself, Chavez carefully put together a grass-roots
organization that enabled the workers to form their own union. Then
they won the essential support of millions of outsiders who heeded
the UFW's call to boycott the grapes, lettuce and other produce of
growers who refused to grant them union rights and the decent pay and
conditions that came with unionization.

Many others before Chavez had tried and failed to form an effective
farm workers' union and few ­ if any ­ of those who claimed expertise
in such matters thought Chavez would be any different. But they
failed to account for the tactical brilliance, creativity and just
plain stubbornness of Chavez, a sad-eyed, disarmingly soft-spoken man
who talked of militancy in calm, measured tones, a gentle and
incredibly patient man who hid great strategic talent behind shy
smiles and an appearance of utter candor.

It took five years, but in 1970 the UFW finally won the first farm
union contracts in history. Five years later, the union won the
pioneering California law that requires growers to bargain
collectively with farm workers who vote for unionization. That has
led to marked improvement in the treatment of many of the state's
farm workers. Their pay, benefits and working conditions are still
short of what they should be, but the law has given them the weapon
needed to win better treatment.

What's most needed now is to spread the legal right of unionization
to the hundreds of thousands of mistreated farm workers outside
California. Congress could do that by simply including farm workers
in the National Labor Relations Act, the 73-year-old New Deal law
that grants union rights to most non-agricultural workers.

Jerry Cohen, who served for 14 years as the UFW's chief attorney, is
leading a drive to get Congress to take the necessary action and at
the same time include another group of highly exploited workers ­
domestics -- who are not covered by the law.

In a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis urging the Obama
administration to back the proposal, Cohen compared the exclusion of
farm workers and domestics to the situation in racist South Africa
under Apartheid. "Blacks," as Cohen said, were specifically excluded
from the protections of South Africa's equivalent of the National
Labor Relations Act.

And though in passing the U.S. law in 1935, "Congress was not so
blunt as to deal out 'blacks' and 'browns' specifically," said Cohen,
"most farm workers and domestics are in fact black or brown. For 73
years our sleight of hand has been more subtle but no less damaging
because race, powerlessness and economic injustice are inextricably
intertwined."

Certainly Congress should declare a Cesar Chavez holiday. But more
than that, Congress should finally extend to all Americans the basic
right of unionization that Cesar Chavez spent his life seeking and defending.
---

Dick Meister, a veteran San Francisco journalist, is co-author of "A
Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's farm Workers."
Contact him through his website, www.dicikmeister.com.

.

1968

1968

http://www.bworldonline.com/BW032309/content.php?id=143

By Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III
March 23, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES

I am being transported back to the late 1960s. I just finished
reading a novel titled My Revolutions, written by Hari Kunzru. I
didn't intend to buy books ­ I couldn't even find time to touch a
heap of books purchased through the years that are now gathering
dust. But the sale at The Different Bookshop was enticing. Despite a
resolution not to buy books that would add clutter to the home, I
succumbed to the 30% discount.

The novel is about the post-1968 life of a middle-aged Brit who has
not revealed his true identity to anyone, including his wife and
stepdaughter. He was once a peace activist who turned radical and
later embraced revolutionary terrorism. He disliked the methods of
violence, but he was already deeply integrated into the underground
group. More, he was madly in love with an astonishing, enigmatic comrade.

I had high expectations about the novel. But even before its
conclusion, I was complaining to myself about the thin development of
characters and how incredulous it was to pack the principal character
with so many spectacular life experiences. He developed from being a
peacenik, a student radical, a terrorist, an acid tripper, a wanderer
who journeyed to Asia's most exotic and most dangerous places, a drug
addict, to being a Buddhist monk in Thailand. Rehabilitated from
substance abuse, he returned to England, found a wife, and settled as
a homemaker dad. But his past hounded him.

Yet, the novel captures the moods and the details of 1968 and the
immediate years that followed. The ex-student activist and the
ex-hippie can find resonance in Kunzru's narration of collective
life, criticism, self-criticism; free love, lots of f_ _king and
voyeurism; quotes from Mao; peaceful demonstrations turning violent;
pigs, fascism, decadence.

The next novel I will read, something that I have just pulled out
from the stack of unread books, is Flower Children by Maxine Swann.
As the title suggests, the story revolves around the children of
"devout hippies," who rejected convention and Ivy League and turned
to communal living.

I also plan to replay Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, a story
about unconventional love, friendship, and cinema, set in Paris, May 1968.

The late 1960s and early 1970s fascinated me. The peace movement and
Bertrand Russell. Civil rights, Black power, and Martin Luther King,
Jr. The student uprisings, the wars of national liberation. The chic
of non-conformism and the hippie, bohemian zeitgeist. The music of
the Beatles, Blind Faith, and the Bluesbreakers.

My being a rebel was indirectly influenced by events of the late
1960s, with my Malay cousins as the models of rebellion en vogue. Two
of them, Bobbie and Badi, then students at Sorbonne, participated in
the 1968 Paris uprising. They didn't bring the revolution to the
Philippines. As revolution became fashionable all over the world,
Kabataang Makabayan was gaining strength at home, and Jose Maria
Sison was rebuilding the Communist Party of the Philippines.

I am attached to 1968 for a more personal reason. A few months before
Joma Sison established his ragtag party, my pals graduated from grade
school. I was a year behind grade school, but a number of them were
my playmates, bus mates and neighbors; their parents were my parents'
cohorts or friends.

In high school, the grade school class of 1968 was at the vortex of
woolly activism, fighting against everything: dress code, rules on
haircut, pre-military training, hike in oil prices, dirty elections,
US imperialism, Marcos's corruption and fascism.

Fast forward to the 21st century: from this batch emerged the new
activists, in their 50s, determined to fight Gloria to the end. Chito
U., one of the batch's officers, put it nicely: "I intended to become
an activist upon retiring and reaching 60. But Gloria hastened the
process of my transformation into an activist." Chito cut short his
business activity in the province and drove all the way from Quezon
to Ayala to beef up the ranks of anti-Gloria protesters.

Nolo A, like Chito, does not mind sacrificing business to participate
in collective action and attend meetings on how best to mobilize
people versus Gloria. Joining hard causes is in Nolo's blood, genes
inherited from his loveable, lovely mom.

The list of the new type of (middle-aged) activists from batch 68 is
long. Skip S., the foodie, provides the reliable tsismis or
confidential info. Tony R., the passionate one, sees the wisdom of a
united front that encompasses the Reds and the followers of Erap.
George F. has carved out a space for his politics even as he works
long hours and attends to a seriously ill wife. Atoy B., widower and
devoted father to two good-looking daughters, has the charms to
persuade not only classmates but also an elegant lady in stilettos to
join anti-Gloria rallies.

It's been months since I joined them in political action. And I
missed the homecoming to celebrate their 40th grade school graduation
anniversary.

Recently, I received an e-mail from Mike L. inviting me to be a
Facebook friend. I couldn't ignore the invite of a pleasant, friendly
guy. I'd like to ask Mike how he has maintained a youthful appearance.

So now I'm in Facebook (FB), thanks to Mike. He said FB is a medium
to propagate our causes. Bigger battles still have to be fought, and
we need new weapons like FB to fight an intractable enemy.

Based on inputs from informed people, Global Source, "a network of
independent advisors," thinks that the Gloria Arroyo administration
is considering all options to remain in power after 2010, from
instituting charter change to taking a "less peaceful route," by
imposing martial law. We must thus remain vigilant. We must fight.

One lesson from 1968 is that dreams can come true. The ideals of the
1968 movements shaped Barrack Obama.The revolutions of circa 1968
have undergone dramatic transformation ­ the Left parties, especially
in Latin America, have seized political power through peaceful elections.

We, too, shall overcome. I look forward to seeing again GS 68 pals at
the front line for what might turn out to be our biggest fight.
--

Mr. Sta. Ana coordinates Action for Economic Reforms (www.aer.ph).
The piece is a belated tribute to GS 68, which celebrated its 40th
grade school graduation anniversary in late 2008.

OBIT: Richard Aoki, 1938-2009

[2 articles]

Former Black Panther leaves legacy of activism and Third World solidarity

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_11953825

By Momo Chang
Correspondent
Posted: 03/19/2009

BERKELEY ­ Richard Masato Aoki, a former member of the Black Panther
Party, died Sunday morning at his home in Berkeley from complications
from dialysis. He was 70.

Aoki is a legend in activist circles because of his role in the Black
Panthers as one of its first members and field marshal.

Born Richard Masato Aoki in 1938 in San Leandro, Aoki was uprooted
when his family was interned in a "concentration" camp in Topaz,
Utah, during World War II. The family resettled in West Oakland, by
then a mostly black neighborhood. He befriended Huey Newton and Bobby
Seale at Merritt College. When Newton and Seale founded the Black
Panther Party in October 1966 they created the Ten Point program and
showed their plans to Aoki, who transferred to UC Berkeley around that time.

"He was one consistent, principled person, who stood up and
understood the international necessity for human and community unity
in opposition to oppressors and exploiters," Seale said.

Aoki helped organize some of the Party's first rallies against police
brutality and gave them guns from his personal collection, used to
patrol the police in the party's early days, Seale said.

At UC Berkeley, he became a leader in the Third World Liberation
Front Strike in 1969, representing Asian Americans as a part of the
Asian American Political Alliance.

Lifelong friend Harvey Dong met Aoki in the '60s as students at Berkeley.

"He gave a very important dimension to the Asian-American movement in
terms of linking the struggles of the African-American community with
the Asian-American community," Dong said. Aoki later became one of
the first coordinators of Asian-American studies at UC Berkeley and
taught some of the early classes.

Before the Black Panthers, TWLF and AAPA, Aoki had begun his
political involvement as a member of the Socialist Workers Party and
the Vietnam Day Committee, an anti-war group, said Diane Fujino,
chair and associate professor of Asian-American studies at UC Santa
Barbara, who is writing a book on Aoki.

He is also remembered as a devoted son and caring friend. Aoki was
ill when he checked himself out of a hospital earlier this year to
take care of his mother, Toshiko Kaniye, who had a heart attack and
passed away on Jan. 20. His devotion to his mother stems from his
upbringing. His parents divorced when Aoki was young and he lived
with his father for a period. Kaniye later raised Richard Aoki and
brother David, who has since passed away, as a single mother working
in the laundry business for many years.

"Richard was very unique and marched to his own drummer," said Alze
Roberts, a friend and colleague who met Aoki in 1968 when they
started the Masters in Social Welfare program together, then worked
together as counselors at the Peralta colleges. "His personality was
a blend of the Asian and African-American cultures."

When the Ethnic Studies department was threatened with cuts in 1999
and students held a strike on campus, Aoki came back as one of the
speakers and supporters, 30 years after the original strike.

"His very presence animated the spirit of the strike and it brought
the important connection to the '69 strike itself," said Roberto
Hernandez, who was involved with the 1999 strike.

Last week, UC Berkeley held a commemoration of the 40th anniversary
of the 1969 strike, days before his death. During the events, which
Aoki was too ill to attend, his name was brought up many times,
according to Hernandez.

Ben Wang and Mike Cheng recall meeting him in 2002 as students at UC
Davis, eager to learn from the revolutionary leader.

"At the time, we were just a couple of young college punks and he
didn't have to give us the time of day," Wang said. The two
interviewed him for a student newspaper, where they talked for hours
and joked about making a documentary about Aoki.

Wang and Cheng did embark on the journey of making a documentary on
Aoki, and showed a rough cut of the film at the EastSide Cultural
Center in May 2008 to a packed house.

"We're on his shoulders now," Cheng said. "It's his time to rest and
it's time for us to keep it moving," referring to Aoki's struggle for justice.

According to friends, colleagues, and relatives, Aoki had a way of
staying connected to people. He would often copy news articles and
send them to friends, or bring up current events during dinner. If
there was a book he liked, he would buy multiple copies and give them
away, Cheng said. He said he has more than a dozen books that Aoki
gave to him over the last seven years.

Close friend Shoshana Arai said Aoki was able to maintain friendships
with many people even during times when groups disagreed or became
fractioned. "Richard is probably one of the most amazingly loyal
people I've ever met in my life," she said.

Aoki never married nor had children, in part because of his own
parents' divorce, according to cousin James Aoki, who reconnected
with his cousin in the last 8 years after moving back to Oakland.
Aoki is survived by cousins and extended family.

Activist and friend Yuri Kochiyama puts it most succinctly: "We're
all so saddened (by his death)."

Berkeley High school friend Oliver Petry, with wife Barbara, became
one of Aoki's caregivers in the last few years. Oliver remembers they
would go swimming at the Albany High School pool, which Aoki used as
physical therapy to recover from a stroke he had in 2005.

"He was a sweet guy, I absolutely loved him and I miss him
tremendously," Petry said.

Aoki was also devoted to the younger generation. After leaving UC
Berkeley, he worked in the Peralta College system for 25 years, as a
counselor, instructor and administrator, before retiring in 1994. He
was a counselor at Merritt College and College of Alameda.

A memorial and reception has been planned for Saturday, May 2 at a
location to be announced. In addition, there will be a ceremony and
car caravan on Sunday, May 3, leaving Lil Bobby Hutton Memorial Park
(Defremery Park, 1651 Adeline St. in Oakland). Final services will be
held at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. in Oakland.

--------

Richard Aoki, 1938-2009

http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2009/03/richard-aoki-19382009.html

March 16, 2009

I just heard the news that Richard Aoki passed away Sunday at age
70*. Richard Aoki was one of the first members of the Black Panther
Party and a field marshal of the revolutionary group.

Aoki was born in San Leandro, CA. He and his family were interned
during WWII, and afterwards, resettled in West Oakland. Aoki
befriended Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
at Merritt College in Oakland, where they all went to school. Richard
was also a student leader in the Third World Student Strike at UC
Berkeley in 1968 and a member of the Asian American Political Alliance.

I'm sure Richard will be missed by many friends and people in the
community. Feel free to post a message here. I am writing a full
obituary on him for the local paper, which I will link to later.

Here's an article I wrote about him on the 40th* anniversary of the
Black Panther Party. Here's an article that Neela Banerjee, also a
Hyphen editor, wrote about him in AsianWeek in 2001.

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2006/Black-Panthers-Led8oct06.htm

http://asianweek.com/2001_04_27/feature_richardaoki.html

.

Peralta documentary on Black Panthers to be screened at UN headquarters

Peralta documentary on Black Panthers to be screened at UN headquarters

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11949723

Bay City News Service
Posted: 03/19/2009

A locally produced documentary about the Black Panther Party has been
selected as one of three keynote films to be presented at the United
Nations headquarters in New York in observation of the UN's
"International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the
Transatlantic Slave Trade" weeklong series of events beginning March 22.

The documentary will be screened at an event titled "The Legacy of
the Slave Trade on Modern Society" which will also feature a
discussion panel that includes director and executive producer Jeffrey Heyman.

"It should be very interesting," Heyman said in a telephone interview
Wednesday afternoon. "For our work to be showcased on a global stage
is very much an honor."

Peralta TV at the Peralta Community College District in Oakland
produced "Merritt College: Home of the Black Panthers," which
outlines the formation of the Black Panther Party at Merritt College
in Oakland.

The documentary, narrated by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, features
interviews with original party members and original artwork from
Black Panther publications as well as rarely seen photos and archival footage.

"It is quite an honor for our TV station to have its work featured at
such an important international event," Peralta College chancellor
Elihu Harris said in a prepared statement.

The weeklong series of events in New York will include panel
discussions, art exhibits and a cultural concert in addition to the screenings.

A complete schedule of events is available online at
www.un.org/en/slavery/hg_events.shtml.

.

Ayers says he's sorry

[8 articles]

Ayers says he's sorry

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/235291

Apologizes, but defends cause

Intelligencer Journal
Published: Mar 20, 2009

Bill Ayers did not hesitate Thursday to say he was sorry about
helping to bomb public buildings like the U.S. Capitol during the
Vietnam era to protest the war.

[ Listen to the interview:
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/19/235291 ]
[ Watch the interview: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/18/235291 ]

"Absolutely," he said during a sit-down interview on Millersville
University's campus hours before his much-publicized lecture on urban
education reform.

But simply apologizing for the bombings does not account for the
lives of American soldiers or Vietnamese lost during the Vietnam War,
Ayers said.

"I can completely understand if you or many of your readers would see
(the bombings) as crossing lines of propriety, common sense, the law,
effectiveness. I can see that perspective," he said. "I can see
calling it despicable. But what concerns me always is that 24,000 a
month were being killed (in Vietnam), and there has to be some
accounting for those lives, too."

Ayers answering the question of whether he was sorry ­ which he did
so unflinchingly ­ was about as intense as it would get Thursday as
MU went to great lengths to prepare for massive protests and
potential violence that never came.

Ayers came to MU to deliver a lecture about his urban education
reform proposals, for which he's well-known. But the day was about
much more than that.

Anywhere he goes now he becomes embroiled in two discussions ­ his
education proposals and his past with the Weather Underground, the
radical organization he co-founded during the Vietnam era.

As Ayers spoke Thursday at Gordinier Hall, curiosity seekers outside
the Student Memorial Center slightly outnumbered the dozen or so protesters.

The curiosity seekers arrived by foot, bicycle and skateboard,
sporting MU hoodies and gawking at the six television vans parked
along South George Street or the massive security presence prowling
the grounds.

The protesters didn't put on any obvious displays of outrage beyond
their signs, one of which said "Invite Teachers, Not Terrorists."
They mostly stood on the sidewalk, chatting among themselves and with
the media.

Janet Kacskos, spokeswoman for MU, said there were no arrests
Thursday related to the Ayers event.

"I'm just thankful there weren't more protesters," Kacskos said. "I'm
just thankful there weren't any incidents."

The campus looked like a fortress. Police from several municipalities
and campus security patrolled the grounds, and barriers kept parts of
streets closed off.

Ayers said he was "dimly" aware of the controversy that had swirled
in Lancaster County during the weeks preceding his lecture, but that
he didn't lose any sleep over it.

"I don't take all of this publicity or this celebrity or this
notoriety all that seriously," he said. "I get up every morning and
do my work as I do every other day."

Ayers' life has taken on a newfound interest to the media and the
public since Sen. Hillary Clinton and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at
separate times during the presidential contest suggested a connection
between the former radical and then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Those who attended the lecture mostly shrugged off his past.

The room in which Ayers spoke Thursday was half-filled with adults
who were most likely children during the Vietnam War and with MU
students born about 15 years after the last American soldier was
evacuated from Saigon.

"It happened so long ago," said 20-year-old Will Trombley, an MU
education major sitting in the front row.

"Personally, to me, he's a professor at Illinois," Trombley's friend,
20-year-old Josh Christman, said. "It's really not that big of a deal."

Ayers said attention to his past during the 2008 presidential
campaign was part of American politics' continued fascination in with
Vietnam. But people under 40 years old simply care less than their
predecessors do about that time, he said.

"The good side of that is it's time to move on." Ayers said. "The bad
side of that is we've never reconciled what the problems were and
what historical lessons we could learn from Vietnam."

Reconciliation was at the heart of the debate over whether
Millersville should have canceled the Ayers event. Seven local
Republican lawmakers wanted the university to do so because they saw
him as an "unrepentant terrorist."

Ayers said he is sorry.

"The carelessness of that, the stupidity of that, is where I would
begin," Ayers continued. "If I would go much deeper, our inability to
end the war, our inability to impact, that led to an awful lot of
rigid thinking, dogmatism, sectarianism. And if I would do it all
over, I wish I would have the wisdom to be more unified, to be more
intelligent, to be more thoughtful."

But he is not sorry for trying to end the war, he said.

"It's also hard for me to say I'm sorry for the destruction of this
property when each time … on that very day a thousand people were
murdered," he said. "I don't see why we can't wrap our minds around
that. And maybe it's too big of a number. We are responsible for
killing 3 million people in a 10-year period in an illegal and unjust
war that was wrong."
--

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com

--------

We are worth the hassle of protests

http://thesnapper.com/2009/03/18/we-are-worth-the-hassle-of-protests/

By Dr. Barb Stengel
March 18, 2009

What are we afraid of? Bill Ayers is here and we're missing a huge
educational opportunity. We've opted, instead, for prudence.

Nobody will ever know for sure if that was the right choice, but we
can at least meditate a bit on the decision.

We could all -­ conservatives and liberals, hippies and preppies,
protestors and supporters ­ have been licking our chops.

We could have planned teach ins and special sessions, sold books and
passed around electronic copies of articles, engaged the whole
community, invited them to join us in our dialogue about who we are
as American educators ­ because Bill Ayers embodies two issues that
are the bread and butter of American politics and American education.

The first issue involves civil disobedience. Ayers protested ­
violently and illegally ­ against the war in Vietnam and the draft
that threatened the lives of his generation of men.

Property was destroyed. Was he right to do so? Does his case meet
Thoreau's standards for challenging the tax collector? How is Ayers'
case different from the Boston Tea Party, for instance?

The second question asks what education is for.

Ayers espouses education for intellectual freedom (rather than for
economic adjustment), not just for those with the means to exercise
such freedom but for those disempowered students who attend urban schools.

Is his position the obvious one for a democratic educator or is it an
anarchist challenge to American capitalism? Or perhaps both?

These are fabulous questions, worthy of our consideration and
definitive of the liberal arts education we claim to provide.

Some say ­ even some who agree with Ayers' educational philosophy and
see, in his Weatherman days, justifiable civil disobedience ­ that we
shouldn't have invited Ayers to give the Lockey Lecture. "Not
prudent" (as Dana Garvey used to say in his imitation of the first
George Bush).

No, it probably wasn't prudent, but it's done now and I'm glad it is.

I have read the often nasty letters to the editor of the past several
weeks, but I have also listened to friends and others ­ near and far
­ comment on how pleased they are that Millersville is hosting Ayers
and/or that the university is not caving to unreasonable demands.

Unfortunately, though, we're not licking our chops. We are hunkered
down, waiting for this too to pass.

Let me be clear. President McNairy has stood tall on the issue of
academic freedom. She has done so in a dignified way in the face of
organized opposition.

I applaud the Administration, not for backing up Bill Ayers, but for
finding a center and staying there. The Administration has exercised
prudence, acting to control the media buzz, the potential circus of
protestors, and the unfortunately real possibility of "counter-terror."

But prudence is preventing learning. We are not engaging the
community; we are excluding them.

Why couldn't CCERP schedule speakers who balanced Ayers' presence,
including especially our own alums who have spoken eloquently on both
sides of both issues?

Why couldn't the Office of Social Equity use their considerable
talents at facilitating dialogue on difficult issues to invite every
single person who wrote a letter to the editor or made a phone call
to sit at a table with a liberal faculty member and conservative
member (there are some, you know), with a conservative student and a
liberal student (there are some, you know) to talk all of this through?

Why isn't the School of Education changing the location to Pucillo
Gym as we did with former Lockey Lecturer Jonathan Kozol in order to
encourage every future and present teacher to attend?

The answer is prudence ­ and that scares me. This "teachable moment"
is passing us by.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with the concept "teachable moment." It
refers to the instant when, for unplanned reasons, the door to the
mind swings open.

All of a sudden, everybody's paying attention because what they have
taken for granted has been challenged. And that, my friends, is the
optimum condition for learning.

Teachable moments are painful ­ even dangerous ­ moments. They are;
there's no way around it.

And often we'd just as soon avoid the teachable moment and pretend
that the problem is temporary and not a persistent opening to growth
and wisdom. But we can't. Once the door is open, students are learning.

So what are they learning now that Bill Ayers' coming opened the door?

They are learning that, we as a community, will stand up for academic
freedom and freedom of speech ­ and that's a wonderful thing. But
they also know that we have chosen prudence over growth ­ and that's
more problematic.

I suppose it isn't prudent of me to write this essay, but no
matter. It is my way of seizing the opportunity that the Ayers'
appearance offers.

I don't know if Ayers is worth the hubbub, but we are. We are worth
the hassle of protests. We are worth the struggle to communicate and
to understand even where we can't agree. That is why we are here.

--------

Millersville U. braces for Ayers Thursday

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/235223

Campus ready for heavy turnout of media, protesters for ex-radical.

Lancaster New Era
Published: Mar 18, 2009
By CINDY STAUFFER, Staff Writer

Remember James Comer?

Of course you don't.

Comer delivered last year's Anna Funk Lockey Education Lecture at
Millersville University.

Comer has educational chops, as a Yale University faculty member and
child development expert. His talk on academic achievement and life
success last March did draw a standing-room-only crowd, but it was
largely made up of education students.

And none of them had to pass a security guard's metal-detecting wand
before they entered the lecture.

No TV cameras or reporters were on hand to record every one of
Comer's words. No police officers monitored the event.

This year's Anna Funk Lockey Education Lecture will be a bit different.

The speaker will be Bill Ayers, and the preparations for his speech
on urban education Thursday at MU have been a bit more extensive.

Ayers' background as a founder of the Weather Underground, a protest
group that bombed federal buildings to protest the Vietnam War, has
unleashed a firestorm of controversy here.

Local Republican lawmakers at first asked MU to cancel the speech by
Ayers, a professor of education and senior university scholar at the
University of Illinois at Chicago.

Seven of them later met with MU's president, Francine McNairy, and
members of its board, as well as the chancellor of the State System
of Higher Education. McNairy said she would not cancel the speech,
citing academic freedom.

Area residents also have written numerous letters and op-ed pieces in
local newspapers about Ayers, who made national news last year when
he was linked to the campaign of President Barack Obama.

As a result of the hoopla:

• MU staff and students quickly snapped up all available 300 tickets
to Ayers' speech, which will be given at 7 p.m. in the Lehr Room of
Gordinier Hall.

Because of the public's interest in the speech, an additional 400
seats are being set up in the Multi-Purpose Room in the Student
Memorial Center, which is across the street from Gordinier. A
simulcast of the speech will be shown on a big screen to people there.

MU has given out 225 of those overflow tickets, with 175 still
available as of presstime today. Remaining tickets can be picked up,
one per person with a photo identification card, until 4 p.m. Thursday.

• Security will be extensive for Ayers' visit.

Backpacks and large bags will not be permitted inside the lecture or
simulcast room. Everyone entering either room will be wanded by
security guards.

The University Police Department has put together a plan for Ayers'
visit, and will use state police troopers, Millersville Borough
officers and others, said university spokeswoman Janet Kacskos.

Members of the South Central Pennsylvania Regional Counter Terrorism
Task Force also will be on hand.

Details of their preparations or plans are not being disclosed for
security reasons.

The cost of the security will not be known until after the event. It
will be paid for by unrestricted private donations to MU, Kacskos said.

• Protesters will be allowed outside the event, as MU's campus is
open, Kacskos said.

The university is suggesting, but not requiring, that protesters
congregate in a designated free speech area near the bell tower at
the Student Memorial Center.

Police will keep protesters from blocking access to Ayers' speech, or
harming anyone going into the speech sites, she said.

• Media coverage of the speech will be extensive.

MU has received requests for credentials from 29 reporters or media
people, including a Fox News crew out of New York.

• Ayers has been interested in seeing some of the advance coverage of
the controversy surrounding his speech. MU has e-mailed him some of it.

"My understanding is he does know about it," Kacskos said.
--

Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com
or 481-6024.

--------

Ayers Speech To Detour Traffic In Millersville

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29761825/

Chicago Professor To Speak Tonight At Millersville University

WGAL-TV
March. 19, 2009

MILLERSVILLE, Pa. - Millersville University in Lancaster County is
getting ready for Thursday's lecture by Bill Ayers.

Ayers is currently a professor from Chicago. But he has a past with
the radical Weather Underground, a group responsible for domestic
bombings in the 1960s and 1970s. Ayers' visit to Millersville is
generating controversy.

"There will be a lot of picketing and protests, but everyone has
freedom of speech," said Millersville sophomore Megan McDannell.

"I disagree with members of the community denouncing the actions of
his past. It happened 30 years ago. Now, he's a viable member of
society," said sophomore Jerrod Mertz.

All 300 tickets for the event have been distributed.

The speech will lead to some detours.

--------

Ayers calls teaching 'magical'

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/235292

Mar 20, 2009
By BRIAN WALLACE, Staff Writer

Amid the police barricades, metal detectors and protesters at
Millersville University, Bill Ayers gave a surprisingly intimate and
upbeat talk Thursday about what it means to be a good teacher.

Ayers, senior university scholar and professor of education at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, was invited to MU to talk about
urban education.

[ Listen to the entire speech:
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/19/235292 ]
[ Watch excerpts: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/18/235292/2467 ]

In a soft-spoken address punctuated with humor, Ayers recalled his
own struggles as a young kindergarten teacher in New York City in the
mid-'60s and said the profession "is powered, at its best, by love."

His words were a stark contrast to the "unrepentant terrorist" label
critics have pinned on him for his involvement in the '60s radical
group Weather Underground, which bombed federal buildings to protest
the Vietnam War.

Ayers made little mention of the controversy surrounding his visit,
saying only that he founf the heightened security "complicated and strange."

He addressed most of his talk to the many students in the audience
studying to be teachers.

"I seriously think teaching is one of the most magical things you can
do," Ayers said.

"It's bottomless in terms of its intellectual challenge, it's
bottomless in terms of its ethical necessity, it's bottomless in
terms of the joy that it can bring you ­ and the tears and heartache."

Ayers said he learned early, as a 21-year-old, that he didn't have
all the answers for his students, as he was led to believe.

"I was 15 minutes into my first class when a kid said to me,
'Teacher, why does the ball bounce?' and I had this look of stricken
dread on my face," Ayers recalled.

"I was 15 minutes into teaching and I couldn't even answer that. ...
I thought, damn, I'm in big trouble."

Later that morning Ayers faced other questions ­ "Why was his skin
pink when the student's was brown?" "Why was that man sleeping in the
gutter when we walked to the park?" ­ he could not answer.

He experienced a crisis.

Wasn't he, as a teacher, supposed to be the "master and commander
clinging to the podium with all his might delivering pearls of
wisdom" to his students?

Ayers said he quickly learned that a teacher is not a know-it-all,
but an adult on a voyage with his or her students, an explorer, a
questioner, a curious person.

"And if you bring to teaching a curious disposition of mind, you
don't have to know the answer to every question," he said.

Ayers implored the future and current teachers in the audience to
avoid "the toxic habit of labeling kids by their deficits."

When a student is identified as "at-risk" or having an attention
deficit or learning disability, Ayers said, a teacher needs to ask
him or herself: "Is the label I'm putting on this kid or the terms
I'm using to describe (him) overdetermining my vision of what this
kid is or who this kid could be?"

Teachers must avoid such labels and treat all students as
"three-dimensional ­ a heart, a mind, a spirit and a soul, all of
which need challenge," he said.

Even seemingly innocuous labels such as "class clown" or "poor
listener" can be counterproductive, he said, because children "are
dynamic, not finished."

"So, when you say 'class clown,' that's only now. Some other day,
(that student) could be a physicist."

It's the role of teachers to see beyond what is to what could be, he said.

"Your job is to welcome and nourish with one hand and challenge and
push with the other," Ayers said. "And if you're doing just one,
you're not doing your job."

Doing both well is "excruciatingly complex," he said.

The best teachers don't labor alone, Ayers said, but find allies in
the adults they work with, often enlisting parents to be advocates
for their children.

They also create classrooms filled with books and maps, words and
equations that encourage learning.

"You have to understand that the environment itself is a very
powerful teacher," he said. "If you have an illiterate environment,
and it's reading time, don't be surprised if your kids aren't hooked
on reading."

Teachers also must be constant critics of their technique.

"You're not perfect," he said. "There's more that could be done in
this corner of the classroom. You could have been smarter in response
to Daryl's questions, and you could have had more options for Maria
when she came to you with a problem.

"So tomorrow you will be better because you criticized yourself today."

The key to this self-critique, though, is "waking up every morning
forgiving yourself for being human, for being limited, for being
partial, for being only partway there," Ayers said.

Teachers must be both critical and forgiving.

"If all you do is forgive yourself, you'll become the very teacher
you most don't want to become: the smug, self-assured, self-righteous
I-know-the- kids-are-a-bunch-of-bums teacher," he said.

"Don't be that teacher. Be a teacher who really makes a difference in
children's lives."
--

E-mail: bwallace@lnpnews.com

--------

No disruptions at Ayers' visit

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/235310

Published: Mar 20, 2009
By AD CRABLE, Staff Writer

There were no hecklers inside where Bill Ayers spoke. And the couple
dozen students and people who supported or protested the former
radical's appearance outside politely agreed to disagree.

With a massive police presence and tight security, feared
confrontations, speech disruptions and even possible violence did not
materialize, and Ayers' entire visit on Millersville University's
campus Thursday took place in peace.

Not that people didn't feel strongly about a man who admitted to
bombing government buildings during the Vietnam War being invited here.

"What he did was so wrong," said Nancy Leed, 56, of Washington Boro,
taking a break from her job as a cashier on campus.
"I know he's not coming here to discuss his past and it will be about
education, but still he left a mark ­ a bad mark ­ and I don't think
this is the place that we need to hear it," said Leed.

"I know people say it was in his past, but hey, I'm from the Vietnam
War era, and he went over the line," she said.

Students from both the Republican and Democrat campus chapters spoke
out vociferously against bringing Ayers to campus.

"We are outraged that he is here," said Ryan Barrick, president of
the college Democrats chapter. "This is an outrage to any student at
Millersville University or resident of Lancaster County.

"His reputation as an unrepentant terrorist precedes him, and for him
to come here to talk about urban education is flat-out wrong."

"MU Why?" read one of the signs group members held outside the
Student Memorial Center, across from where Ayers spoke.

Another group held a sign that said, "MU Grads Against Terrorists."

But right next to them were the six members of the campus chapter of
Students for a Democratic Society, a group that Ayers split from in
the 1960s to form the more radical Weather Underground.

"I don't approve of his tactics, but he is trying to make a better
world," said Josh Redd, SDS chapter president.

Joanne Roda, 56, of Lancaster, attended Ayers' speech because she was
interested in his views on education.

What about the speaker's past? she was asked.

"If there's a problem, then it's with the federal government because
they chose not to prosecute him," she said. "He went on to lead a
good life ­ at least a purposeful life."

Widespread media attention and concerns trouble might erupt in a
charged atmosphere prompted Millersville University officials to
arrange for a huge security presence.

Several dozen police officers included campus police, Pennsylvania
State Police, Lancaster city police, Ephrata police, the Lancaster
County Sheriff's Department, at least two police dogs and about 20
members of the South Central Pennsylvania Regional Counter Terrorism
Task Force, a regional conglomorate of public agencies.

However, the task force asked to man the event as a training exercise.

Police cars and barricades blocked streets around the building where
Ayers spoke and at a closed-circuit broadcast of the speech in the
nearby Student Memorial Center.

MU spokeswoman Janet Kacskos today said she did not know precisely
how many law-enforcement officers were on hand and how much it would
cost to pay for them.

"Anybody who wants to be paid will submit invoices," she said.
However, she emphasized that all costs for security will be paid with
private funds, not by the taxpayers or students.

Asked if the university had any regrets about mobilizing such a large
police presence on campus, Kacskos said no and noted that the
university received "hostile" phone calls and e-mail messages through Thursday.

"We needed to be prepared to protect our students; that's our first
priority," she said.

Ayers' most recent talks, though certainly controversial, have
invoked mixed reactions from those actually attending the events.

Last October, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln uninvited Ayers to
speak on campus after the university's threat-assessment group
identified safety concerns.

His talk in January before 500 people at St. Mary's College in
California drew a mixture of boos and cheers from the audience, some
of whom disrupted his speech before being led away by police.

A March 5 talk at the University of Colorado drew a loud ovation and
no disruptions. Only a few protesters waved signs outside the event.

At Ayers' most recent campus talk, at the University of Illinois last
week, a man was arrested for repeatedly approaching Ayers on four
successive nights. The county's state attorney later decided not to
press charges.
--

Staff writer Ad Crable can be reached at acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.

--------

Man who interrupted speech by Ayers won't be charged

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2009/03/18/man_who_interrupted_speech_by_ayers_wont_be_charged

By Mary Schenk
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

URBANA ­ The Champaign County state's attorney has decided not to
charge a Dewey man in connection with his disruption of an activist's
speech on the University of Illinois campus last week.

"I am simply not interested in giving Mr. Thompson or Mr. Ayers any
more of a platform than they've already had here," said State's
Attorney Julia Rietz.

Mark Thompson, 50, was arrested Thursday night by UI police for
resisting arrest after he disrupted a speech by UI-Chicago professor
Bill Ayers at Allen Hall in Urbana.

Ayers was a guest speaker in residence at Allen all last week, his
trip having been paid for by students who live there.

On Thursday, Thompson showed up for the fourth night in a row to hear
what Ayers had to say and to confront the former Weather Underground
member and anti-Vietnam war activist. Thompson had been warned
earlier in the week that his questions were to come after those from
the students who had paid for Ayers' visit.

UI spokeswoman Robin Kaler said Thursday evening that Thompson tried
to give Ayers a Bible and a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." In
response, Ayers retreated from the stage and police moved in to
arrest Thompson.

"Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to watch the
exchange on You Tube afterwards," said Rietz. "I thought Mr. Thompson
was obnoxious and the UI police were appropriate in their response
but it was clear that the crowd was not impressed by Mr. Thompson so
I don't think he accomplished anything.

"I could charge him with disorderly conduct but that would require us
to bring Mr. Ayers back for a trial and I don't think it is worth it.
It would be a circus for a Class B misdemeanor," she said.

UI police had given Thompson a notice to appear in court on the
charge this week.

--------

UJ votes against Ayers Senate Money Resolution

http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2009/03/17/News/Uj.Votes.Against.Ayers.Senate.Money.Resolution-3673800.shtml

by Destiny Aquino
Staff writer
3/17/09

The Student Union Judiciary ruled unanimously that a $900 Senate
Money Resolution to help bring Bill Ayers and Robert H. King to
campus violated the Union's constitution because the events were not
"Union projects," according to the UJ's majority opinion.

The statement released by the Union Judiciary last Tuesday stated
that "in order to qualify as a Union project, the project must, at
the very least, represent a true collaborative effort between the
Union and another individual or group."

The case was brought before the UJ March 7, when Senator for the
Class of 2009 Eric Alterman filed a petition against the Senate and
Senators for the Class of 2011 Alex Melman and Lev Hirschhorn, who
supported the Union's SMR, whichwas passed March 1.

Alterman claimed the SMR was in violation of bylaw Article IX,
Section 1. The Bylaw states, "All Senate Money Resolutions must be
used for Student Union Government projects and/or operations."
Hirschhorn and Melman argued that the Ayers event was always meant to
be a Senate project. As the Ayers' visit had the support of the
Social Justice Committee, Melman and Hirschhorn argued that it was a
Senate project.

Referring to previously passed SMRs such as the Brandeis Open Mic
Series' presentation on activist poet Jason Paul and the Winter Gala
in support of hopeFound, the majority decision, written by Chief
Justice Rachel Graham Kagan '09, stated, "Just because these
instances were never ruled on by the UJ does not make them useable as
precedent. Precedent based on a flawed reading of the rule is not
legitimate and incorrect past practice is no justification for future action."

UJ Associate Justice Judah Marans '11 told the Justice "that it is
important to remember that what the senators were attempting to do,
[bringing the event to campus], was not disingenuous. Simply the way
in which they went about doing it, [seeking money from the Senate for
a non-Senate project], went against the spirit of the written Student
Union law."

Alterman commented, "I think that worthwhile projects where the
planners want to involve the Union in a significant way will still be
able to bring their projects before the discretionary fund as long as
they show that they're not solely involving the Union for financial reasons."

Hirschhorn stated, "I feel the ruling sets a bad precedent because
the Senate Discretionary [Fund] should be used to support and fund
projects on campus, and I think this severely limits the Senate's
ability to support projects that were originally created by clubs."

Castle Senator Nathan Robinson '11, the Union's counsel, said, "I do
feel the verdict sets a poor precedent for future uses of Senate
money and greatly restricts what the Senate can do with its
discretionary money, which should be left up to [the Union's] discretion."

He added, "I do think a number of our arguments and points were
misinterpreted or misconstrued by the justices. Perhaps it's our
fault for not presenting in the most clear way we could."

.

1970s radical Sara Jane Olson released

[9 articles]

1970s radical Sara Jane Olson released from Calif prison

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11931966

By Don Thompson, Associated Press Writer
Posted: 03/17/2009

CHOWCHILLA, Calif. (AP) - A former 1970s radical associated with the
group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst finished her
California prison sentence Tuesday, ending a legal drama that
harkened back to a violent era of social unrest.

Sara Jane Olson, 62, was freed from the Central California Women's
Facility in Chowchilla shortly after midnight and was allowed to
serve her year-long parole in Minnesota, the state she adopted during
a 24-year flight from justice.

Olson served seven years - half her sentence - after pleading guilty
to helping place pipe bombs under Los Angeles Police Department
patrol cars and participating in the deadly robbery of a bank in a
Sacramento suburb. The crimes took place while she was a member of
the Symbionese Liberation Army, a relatively short-lived but violent
group that sought to overthrow the government while engaging in
killings, robberies and gun battles with police.

Among the group's victims was 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl, a mother of
four who was gunned down during a 1975 robbery of the Crocker
National Bank in a Sacramento suburb.

"I'm just glad that the former SLA members were finally held
accountable for the murder of my mom," Jon Opsahl, who is now living
in Southern California, said Tuesday after hearing of Olson's release.

"It does finish out this chapter, and I hope it's the last chapter,"
he said. "I'm glad she's leaving the state."

Olson was released by mistake a year ago after California corrections
officials miscalculated her parole date, joining her family for five
days before she was re-arrested. Authorities now say she has served
the proper seven-year sentence.

"She was definitely relieved that it all went smoothly," said David
Nickerson, one of Olson's attorneys.

He said Olson and her husband, Dr. Gerald "Fred" Peterson, were
trying to make travel arrangements to return to their home in St.
Paul, Minn., and their three daughters. A bouquet of flowers was left
at the couple's home Tuesday morning, but no one was there to receive it.

Not everyone in Minnesota will be happy to see Olson return.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and police protective leagues in Los
Angeles and St. Paul wrote Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, urging him to
have Olson serve her parole in California. Some Minnesota lawmakers
also called for Olson to remain in California.

The Los Angeles police union said she should finish her parole in the
state where she committed her crimes.

"I think today is a slap in the face of California law enforcement
and (other) law enforcement ... with her release and the governor's
abdicating his responsibility to let her leave the state and go back
to Minnesota," Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul
Weber said in an interview. "The police officers here and around the
state are outraged."

Schwarzenegger said he deferred the decision to the corrections
department. Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said parole
decisions are intended to give former prisoners the best chance of
reintegrating into society and avoiding re-arrest.

"Being with their family increases the chances that they will succeed
on parole," she said.

More than 1,000 California parolees are being supervised in other
states. They typically have a week to report to the state in which
they will serve their parole.

Several hours after her release from the prison, which sits among
orchards and vineyards about 150 miles southeast of San Francisco,
Olson and her husband returned to a Madera County parole office to
finish paperwork.

Neither her lawyers nor corrections officials would say where they
went afterward, other than to say they were making arrangements to
leave the state.

Olson's mother and younger sister declined to speak to reporters when
they returned Tuesday afternoon to the family home in Palmdale, a
working class suburb in the high desert north of Los Angeles.

In a brief telephone conversation, the younger woman identified
herself only as Martha and said she was 3 years old when her sister -
then known as Kathleen Soliah - left home.

The woman said she had not spoken to her older sister since her
release from prison but had heard through someone else that she was
doing fine and looking forward to going home. When asked how her
mother, Elsie Soliah, was doing, the younger woman said, "She's just
glad everything is over."

In Minnesota, Olson developed an identity that was worlds apart from
her California past. She volunteered in social causes and acted in
community theater while raising the couple's daughters. The Olson
home was a frequent site of dinner parties.

When she returns, she'll likely assume the type of comfortable,
middle class lifestyle she once denounced as a member of the
Symbionese Liberation Army, settling into her St. Paul neighborhood
among lawyers, doctors and professors.

Her past resurfaced in 1999, when she was arrested while driving a
minivan after she was profiled on the television show "America's Most Wanted."

The SLA was a band of mostly white, middle class young people. In
addition to the 1974 Hearst kidnapping, it claimed responsibility for
assassinating Oakland Schools Superintendent Marcus Foster and was
involved in a shootout with Los Angeles police officers that killed
five SLA members.

In a sign of those turbulent times, the group adopted a seven-headed
snake as its symbol and the slogan, "Death to the fascist insect that
preys upon the life of the people."

All but one other former SLA member have been released from prison
after pleading guilty in 2002 to taking part in the 1975 bank robbery.

Emily Montague-Harris was paroled in February 2007 after serving half
her eight-year sentence. She says she accidentally fired the shotgun
that killed Myrna Opsahl.

Montague-Harris' former husband, William Harris, was paroled in
September 2006 after serving half his seven-year sentence for acting
as a lookout during the robbery. The couple previously spent eight
years in prison for kidnapping Hearst, who was 19 at the time.

Michael Bortin was paroled in February 2006.

Hearst herself spent nearly two years in prison after a 1976
conviction for robbing the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco with the
SLA, during which a security camera photographed her carrying a
semiautomatic carbine. A granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst,
she had her sentence commuted by President Jimmy Carter and was
pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.

Only James Kilgore remains in prison. He eluded capture in South
Africa until his arrest in November 2002 and was sentenced in May
2004. He is scheduled for release in May.

Olson's brother, Steven Soliah, was acquitted in 1976 of charges
alleging involvement in the fatal bank robbery. He declined to be
interviewed when a reporter showed up at his Berkeley home Monday night.

"We were young and foolish. We felt we were committing an idealized,
ideological action to obtain government-insured money and that we
were not stealing from ordinary people," Olson wrote in an apology
before her sentencing for the bank robbery. "In the end, we stole
someone's life."

The terms of Olson's parole specify that she cannot associate with
former SLA members or co-defendants, including her brother.

--------

Letting go of Sara Jane Olson

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-olson19-2009mar18,0,430148.story

The former radical has served her time and is going home. Now we have
to start moving toward closure.

March 18, 2009

Sara Jane Olson was released Tuesday from the Central California
Women's Facility in Chowchilla after serving seven years for murder
and other crimes. We'd like to say that this brings a measure of
closure to her case, but of course it doesn't.

Olson was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a self-styled
urban guerrilla group most notorious for kidnapping heiress Patty
Hearst in the early 1970s. Then known as Kathleen Soliah, Olson
placed nail-packed pipe bombs beneath two Los Angeles police cars and
helped carry out a bank robbery near Sacramento that led to the death
of a mother of four who was depositing her church's collection money.

Before she could be brought to trial, Olson vanished. She fled the
state, changed her name and married a man who says he knew nothing of
her past, raising three daughters with him in an upscale neighborhood
in St. Paul, Minn. She was not caught until she was profiled on
"America's Most Wanted" in 1999. A tip led to her arrest.

It's now been almost 35 years since her crimes were committed; Olson
is 62. But these old cultural battles refuse to go away; they are
among our country's great unhealed issues. Just a few months ago, a
passing acquaintance with former Weather Underground leader Bill
Ayers threatened Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

How should we think about such people today? In recent years,
novelists Peter Carey, Dana Spiotta and Hari Kunzru have written
not-unsympathetic but nuanced stories of radicals on the lam.
Conservative pundits view the Olsons and Ayerses of the world as
terrorists whose crimes cannot be expiated. And the 1988 movie
"Running on Empty" starred a lovable Judd Hirsch as an old 1960s
fugitive trying to hold his family together while living underground.

Our position is simple: Crimes are crimes. No matter what you think
of the Vietnam War or capitalism or Richard Nixon, the tiny minority
who chose violence in that period were wrong.

Olson was very wrong. Distorted ideals, no doubt, led her to terrible
acts. But she's served her time. She's been paroled, like other
inmates, and permitted to go home to Minnesota, where her husband and
children live.

The L.A. police union wanted to keep her here. But California allows
some parolees to move to another state if that state approves (and
supervises the parole). Olson met the criteria.

Letting her leave was the right decision. We don't have to forgive
her, or even understand her. We don't have to make a movie about her.
But she's finished her sentence, and now we're done with her. With
luck, closure will come eventually.

--------

Olson meets parole officer, gets list of do's and don'ts

http://www.startribune.com/local/41502422.html

No outstate travel. No guns or booze, or any communication with SLA
operatives, their victims or families . Those are among Sara Jane
Olson's parole conditions.

By JEAN HOPFENSPERGER and PAUL WALSH, Star Tribune staff writers
March 19, 2009

On her first day back in Minnesota after seven years in a California
prison, Sara Jane Olson met with her Ramsey County parole agent
Thursday to discuss the restrictions she must comply with in the year ahead.

The 1970s-era militant, now 62, cannot move to another home or travel
to another state without her parole officer's consent. She cannot buy
or possess firearms. She must remain law-abiding. And she must
"refrain from the use or possession of intoxicants."

That means no champagne to celebrate her return -- not even a Bud Light.

Olson's mandatory meeting in St. Paul "went very well," said county
Corrections spokesman Chris Crutchfield, who outlined the conditions
of her parole.

In addition, California requires that Olson have no contact with
former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the 1970s guerrilla
group she belonged to. Nor can she have contact with any of the SLA's
victims or their families.

On Thursday, a young woman who answered the phone at the family's St.
Paul home said, "We're happy our mother is home."

Her husband, Fred Peterson, said in an e-mail to the Associated Press
that Olson cannot do interviews because they "do not comply with the
conditions of Sara's parole." But in a follow-up note, he instead
cited opposition by some to Olson serving her parole in Minnesota.
"Giving the police union's and Gov. [Tim] Pawlenty's statements ...
our interpretation of parole conditions is that Sara should not make
public comments, for our family's safety," he wrote.

Olson served seven years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles
police cars and participating in a bank robbery in 1975 in which a
customer was killed. At the time, she was a member of the SLA.

Before her arrest a decade ago, Olson had changed her name from
Kathleen Soliah and assumed a new identity in St. Paul, raising three
daughters, acting in local theater and working for progressive causes.

--------

Once justice is served, then what?

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/41396507.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

By Eric Ringham
March 17, 2009

Only among Minnesotans would it seem like a punishment to make
someone stay in California.

That is just one of the ways the effort to keep Sara Jane Olson away
from home doesn't add up. Here's another: Parole, presumably, is
meant to cushion a convict's return to society, to provide some
structure and supervision to a process that too often goes wrong and
leads the offender back to prison. So it only makes sense that
society would want each paroled inmate to have the best possible
chance of a successful life in society ­ the kind of life that comes
with support networks, friends, family, a home, that sort of thing.

Such as Olson has waiting for her in Minnesota. Among the population
being released from prison this week, she enjoys relative advantages
that put her at low risk of reoffending.

But the case of Olson ­ or, by the ­exotic-sounding birth name her
denouncers still use, Kathleen Soliah ­ has little to do with the
ordinary workings of the corrections system or with any risk that she
will reoffend. Nobody thinks she's a danger. If California officials
thought she were a danger, they wouldn't release her.

Nor do Minnesota officials think she's a danger. They just think
she's an outrage.

They're right, of course. As Olson's large community of friends and
fellow actors discovered when they rallied to defend her in 1999,
she's indefensible. To argue that she didn't deserve punishment for
what she did as a member of the grandiosely self-styled Symbionese
Liberation Army is to play a loser's game.

It also misses a truth of human nature: People are not all good or
all bad. You don't have to like Olson as she was then to like her as
she is now. Olson embraced the same ideology and tactics as another
Minnesotan in the SLA, Camilla Hall. Hall was a Minneapolis pastor's
kid who attended Washburn High School and the University of
Minnesota. She wound up dead in a shootout with the Los Angeles police.

Anybody who sees Olson's past through a gauzy montage of Jane Fonda
and Abbie Hoffman should look again. The SLA carried guns for the
purpose of using them.

Olson was caught, tried and sent to prison, as she deserved. She was
also duly paroled ­ in a state that, for parole purposes, has what
university students would call reciprocity. Our parolees can go there
and theirs can come here. There is also a law that says parolees
should go where their chances of success are best.

But another truth of human nature is that we find comfort ­ even
political advantage ­ in punishing the wicked, or at least the easy
calls. Especially in scary times like these. So a U.S. senator can
safely suggest that a corporate officer who takes a big bonus after
reaping a taxpayer bailout might want to commit suicide. And a
governor can recommend that a wife and mother who's done her time in
prison should do an extended term in exile. And a police union
official can suggest that her neighborhood can't be trusted to turn
her in if she violates parole.

We need to think better about justice and revenge, about why we send
people to prison and why we let them out. And we have to be more
careful about the difference between prosecution and persecution.
--

Eric Ringham is the Star Tribune's commentary editor. He is at
eringham@startribune.com.

--------

Symbionese Liberation Parolee

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/opinion/22flanagan.html

By CAITLIN FLANAGAN
Published: March 21, 2009

Los Angeles -- THE first time I encountered the word "kleptomaniac,"
I asked my mother what it meant.

She said, "That's what they call it when a rich person steals something."

And now, thanks to Sara Jane Olson and her return to the spacious
house and gracious life she's made for herself in St. Paul, we know
what it's called when a rich, white woman gets convicted of trying to
kill cops and robbing a bank: "idealism."

We should review, very briefly: Sara Jane Olson, née Kathleen Soliah,
was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the '70s militant
group most notorious for both kidnapping the newspaper heiress Patty
Hearst and espousing a philosophy at one with the age: "Death to the
fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people."

Ms. Soliah robbed a bank in Carmichael, Calif., during which a mother
of four was murdered, and a young pregnant bank teller was kicked in
the belly and later had a miscarriage. According to Ms. Hearst, who
has proved to be a reliable informant on the actions of the S.L.A.
(and who was driving the getaway car), it was Ms. Soliah who did the
kicking. Furthermore, bullets found in the dead woman's body and
scattered on the floor of the bank matched a gun found in a dresser
drawer in Ms. Soliah's room in the S.L.A. safehouse. Ms. Soliah was
also part of a plot to murder Los Angeles police officers by placing
pipe bombs packed with nails under two squad cars.

Ms. Soliah was indicted, but then fled to Zimbabwe. Eventually, she
returned under her new alias and married a well-to-do and highly
respected doctor in St. Paul, where she became a pillar of the
community and a mom of three straight-arrow children, and where she
confined her terrorist activities to dinner theater. (She became an
amateur actress, with a specialty in ­ God help us all ­ Shakespeare.)

What the F.B.I. could not do for two long decades, A.M.W.
accomplished in 24 hours. Ms. Soliah was featured on that peerless
instrument of law enforcement (I refer, of course, to "America's Most
Wanted," a television program that ought to get a share of stimulus
money, because it gets the job done, and on a shoestring). Before you
could say "the quality of mercy is not strained" she was extradited
to California and put on trial for some of the most serious crimes imaginable.

In the courtroom, Ms. Olson was a real prize, changing her plea so
many times that the frustrated judge asked her, "Were you lying to me
then, or are you lying to me now?" Eventually she was convicted and
sent to prison, but not before making it abundantly clear that while
she admits guilt to a variety of charges, she does not feel remorse
for her actions: she chalks them up to idealism and to the fact that
­ O, sweet bird of youth ­ she believed herself to have been "saving lives."

She served seven years and was released last week, and that's when
her long story came once again to the national fore: her lawyers
persuaded California officials to let her serve parole back home in Minnesota.

The legal maneuvering by which this bit of comfort has been extended
to her ­ and by which it is now being challenged ­ is interesting.
Because studies have proved that recidivism is lower in those cases
in which a prisoner is released to his family, lawyers sometimes
argue that the location of parole should be moved if such support is
available elsewhere. But it's a hard case to argue. Only about 1
percent of those currently serving parole ordered by the California
Department of Corrections are doing so out of state.

Clearly, factors of race and class have come into play. As Celeste
Fremon, an expert on gangs and criminal justice, observed on her blog
Witness LA: "Over and over again I see young men of color sent away
for decades for crimes of far lesser magnitude in which no one was
injured. And when they get out on parole, they usually can't even get
their paroles transferred to Riverside ­ if that's what they need to
be out of harm's way, get a job and be with their families ­ much
less Minnesota."

The Los Angeles police union (understandably hopping mad that special
treatment is being given to a woman who tried to assassinate police
officers) is waging an interesting counterargument to Ms. Olson's
lawyers. As their spokesman, Eric Rose, explained to me, her own
family has not only refused to acknowledge her guilt, but also
harbored her as a fugitive for more than two decades. Under the kind
of scrutiny the justice system would put a family through if the
parolee had committed another kind of crime ­ drug dealing, for
example ­ Ms. Olson's family wouldn't pass muster on the first go-round.

Obviously, what we have here ­ among the woman's many supporters, and
among her adversaries ­ is a conflict of ideology. The former view
radical actions of the early '70s as an almost necessary reaction to
the times (and particularly to the war in Vietnam). They believe that
a small group of people ­ including, most notably of late, William
Ayers ­ may have been moved to violent action of a kind that is now
regrettable, but which they are not likely ever to repeat. The latter
define criminal behavior as just that: illegal actions, the
punishment of which should not be influenced by the youthful beliefs
that spurred them.

So, what to do with Sara Jane Olson?

For starters, she must be required to serve her year of parole in
California, and the reason lies in the specific nature of the gang
whose values she held so dearly. Unlike many other radical factions
that emerged in the '70s, the S.L.A. combined a set of generally
laudable goals ­ they wanted to end poverty, improve public schools
and eradicate racism and sexism ­ with the leadership and tactics of
an unrepentant street criminal with a gun fixation.

Donald DeFreeze ­ known as Cinque ­ began his career as a thug at 14
when he joined a gang in New York, and he was serving a prison
sentence for armed robbery of the distinctly non-idealistic variety
when he got introduced to radical thinking and decided to bust out,
gather a harem of addle-brained Berkeley students and force them to
put down their copies of "The Little Red Book" so they could train,
relentlessly, with the guns and ammo he loved so well. Consequently,
for a bunch of hippies, the S.L.A. was a gang that could actually
shoot straight. (That Ms. Soliah's bombs were duds is almost
certainly the result of their having been built after DeFreeze had
died; trust a Berkeley radical to get the rhetoric right but the
wiring wrong.)

It is Sara Jane Olson's criminal behavior that society has a right to
punish, not her ideology. In her case, however, we have a rare
opportunity to censure the former and honor the latter.

The irreducible starting point of the S.L.A.'s agenda was the belief
that the justice system treated blacks differently from whites. By
offering herself up to serve her parole in the state, she will do her
part to ensure that there are not two standards of justice, one for
the white women who have Tudor-style houses and shadowed lawns to
return to in a distant state ­ let us call such women the "fascist
insect" ­ and the other for African-American women ­ let us call them
"the people" ­ who enter the system with very little and leave it
with even less.
--

Caitlin Flanagan, the author of "To Hell With All That," is at work
on a book about female adolescence.

--------

Few people in Hatton talk about Olson

http://www.jamestownsun.com/articles/index.cfm?id=82407&section=news

The Jamestown Sun
Published Friday, March 20, 2009

HATTON, N.D. (AP) ­ Sara Jane Olson was born in North Dakota and
visited her grandparents in Hatton, but her release from a California
prison this week drew little reaction from people in the area.

Olson was born Kathleen Soliah in Fargo and spent her early years in
Barnesville, Minn.

The former 1970s radical, now 62, returned to Minnesota this week
after serving seven years in a California prison for crimes with the
Symbionese Liberation Army. She spent more than 20 years as a
fugitive and had changed her name.

H.L. "Curly" McLain, 82, the former school superintendent in Hatton,
said he knew Kathleen's father, Martin "Marty" Soliah, through
coaching. He remembered that one summer, he helped paint the Soliah
house about four miles outside Hatton.

"Everybody was aware of it," he said, referring to when Olson's SLA
activities became news. Most people in the area "were very quiet
about it" out of respect for the Soliahs, he said.

"That's the way I felt about it," McLain said. "Marty had a lot of
respect, growing up here."

A few distant relatives of the Soliah children still live in the
Hatton area but are not inclined to discuss her situation.

"This is a house that has no comment," said a man who answered the
phone at a Soliah residence in Mayville on Monday night.

--------

Radical's release leaves 1 SLA member in prison

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBZi2zkFM0TDquI5RaKVS0H2lazAD971KOA80

By DON THOMPSON
3/20/09

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) ­ This week's release of Sara Jane Olson to
her adopted home state of Minnesota leaves one last member of the
violent 1970s-era Symbionese Liberation Army still in prison, serving
out the final months of his California sentence.

James William Kilgore managed to elude authorities the longest of any
of his former radical comrades, who made headlines with their
kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, the murder of an
Oakland school official and numerous bank robberies. Kilgore stayed
underground for nearly three decades before being arrested in 2002 in
Cape Town, South Africa.

Like Olson ­ his former girlfriend who was unmasked three years
earlier ­ the aging former radical had built a prosperous new life
during his decades on the run.

While Olson spent 24 years as a doctor's wife raising three
daughters, Kilgore became a University of Cape Town professor,
writing one of South Africa's most popular high school history books,
"Making History," under his alias of Charles William Pape.

And like Olson, who returned to St. Paul on Tuesday after serving a
seven-year sentence, Kilgore wants to rejoin his family in the
Midwest. Kilgore is asking that he be allowed to serve his year of
parole in Illinois, though state prison officials have not decided
whether to grant the request.

"He's going to live in the States. His family has moved here," said
attorney Louis Freeman of New York City, who represented Kilgore
after his arrest and remains in contact with his former client.

Kilgore, now 61, had married an American woman while living in South
Africa. His wife teaches at a university, and his two sons have grown
up while he's been in prison; one is in college, the other in high school.

He is set to be released from High Desert State Prison at Susanville
in May after completing a six-year sentence for the killing of
suburban Sacramento housewife Myrna Opsahl during an April 1975 bank robbery.

The state sentence is on top of a 54-month federal prison sentence
for using the birth certificate of a dead baby to obtain a passport
in Seattle and for possession of a pipe bomb that federal authorities
said they found in his Daly City apartment in 1975.

Kilgore was born in Portland, Ore., in 1947, but grew up near San
Francisco. He was an athlete and honors student at San Rafael High
School athlete, then graduated in 1969 from the University of
California, Santa Barbara.

He grew into an SLA bomb-maker during the tumultuous days surrounding
the collapse of the Vietnam War and resignation of disgraced
President Richard M. Nixon. He escaped a 1974 shootout with Los
Angeles police that killed six of the SLA's original members.

The group was most notorious for murdering Oakland school
superintendent Marcus Foster and kidnapping Hearst. The heiress, who
later contended she had been brainwashed, helped the group commit
bank robberies including the one that killed Opsahl, a 42-year-old
mother of four who was there to deposit a church collection. The
robbery netted $15,000.

"I can say if there is one day in my life I could live again, it
would be that moment," Kilgore said at his sentencing for
second-degree murder in 2004.

William Harris; Harris' former wife, Emily Montague; Michael Bortin;
and now Olson have all served time for the murder and been released.

Kilgore disappeared from San Francisco on Sept. 18, 1975, the day FBI
agents arrested Hearst and four other SLA members. He went with
Olson, known then as Kathy Soliah, first to Minneapolis, then to
Zimbabwe. Olson returned to the United States, while he remained in
Africa until his arrest.

Freeman, his attorney, said Kilgore has served his prison time like
he lived his life after he fled the country: teaching.

He taught other inmates Spanish and English as a second language, and
learned sign language himself. Both Freeman and a 2003 probation
report refer to Kilgore as a "model inmate" with no disciplinary problems.

"He's just the kind of person who makes the best of every situation,"
said Freeman. "He's not somebody who grouses or complains or can't
wait to get out."

He expects Kilgore will return to teaching and writing, following the
mold of former '60s radicals Angela Davis and Bill Ayers.

Kilgore won grudging sympathy even from Jon Opsahl, who was 15 when
his mother died of a shotgun blast during the bank robbery.

"I had the most compassion, I think, for James Kilgore," Opsahl said.
"I don't know why. I just think he had a little more of a pure,
idealistic philosophy. ... He did not want anyone to get hurt. Even
though he was the explosives expert, he always insisted that they go
to great lengths to make sure no one was harmed.

"I think he wanted to do good someplace in the world and he got in
with the wrong crowd," Opsahl said.

Kilgore apologized at his federal sentencing for violent acts he said
were "misguided and misdirected."

"There aren't any shortcuts to meaningful social change," he told the
federal judge.

--------

Final imprisoned SLA member seeks parole deal

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/03/sla-redux.html

March 19, 2009
by Andrew Blankstein

Just as the controversy surrounding Sara Jane Olson's release to
Minnesota is beginning to fade, another could be heating up with word
that one of her imprisoned Symbionese Liberation Army comrades is
seeking a similar parole arrangement when he is released.

James William Kilgore, 61, recently asked officials at the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to allow him supervised
parole in Illinois after his scheduled release in May from High
Desert State prison in Susanville, in far northeastern California.

Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said it is early in the
process, and that Kilgore's request has been forwarded to Illinois,
which must approve the request together with California prison officials.

Kilgore was one of five SLA members ­ including Michael Alexander
Bortin, Emily Montague-Harris, William Taylor Harris and Olson ­ who
pleaded guilty in Sacramento County in 2002 to second-degree murder
in the death of Myrna Opsahl during the April 21, 1975, robbery of
Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, Calif. He admitted that he
entered the bank with a revolver, but said he did not open fire.

The former honors student and UC Santa Barbara graduate participated
in the SLA's radical activities in the 1970s and was one of nation's
most wanted fugitives for a quarter-century before he was arrested in
Cape Town, South Africa.

Similar to Olson, who refashioned herself from radical Katherine
Soliah into a Midwestern soccer mom, Kilgore became a university
professor under an assumed name, Charles William Pape.

He eventually was sentenced to six years in prison. During his stint
behind bars, he was transferred to federal custody and served time
for federal explosives and passport fraud convictions.

Kilgore said at his sentencing that he accepted full responsibility
for his actions, adding, "I apologize with all my heart to the Opsahl family."

UPDATED, 5 p.m.: Officials with the Los Angeles Police Protective
League sent a letter Thursday to state prison officials stating their
opposition to granting Kilgore supervised parole in Illinois.

"I urge you not to grant supervised out-of-state parole to James
William Kilgore," union President Paul M. Weber wrote in a letter to
the parole board for High Desert State Prison and Illinois Gov.
Patrick J. Quinn. A copy was provided to The Times. Kilgore "is a
terrorist who participated in two bank robberies and a bombing
campaign directed against police officers in the San Francisco Bay
Area and Los Angeles, then fled from justice."

--------

Another Communist Terrorist to be Free

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200903174034/editorial/another-communist-terrorist-to-be-free.html

March 17, 2009
By Cliff Kincaid

Another one of Bill Ayers' and Bernardine Dohrn's terrorist comrades
is being released on the streets of America. Sara Jane Olson, a
member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an off-shoot of the
Weather Underground, has served only seven years for involvement in
the murder of a bank customer and the attempted murder of Los Angeles
police officers by bombing their cars.

Meanwhile, justice continues to be sought for the victims of Weather
Underground terrorism such as San Francisco Police Sergeant Brian V.
McDonnell, who was killed by a bomb on February 16, 1970. Former FBI
informant Larry Grathwohl has testified under oath that Ayers told
him that Dohrn planted the bomb. The case has been re-opened and
evidence is still being gathered.

While the SLA committed murders, bank robberies and other acts of
violence, it became notorious for kidnapping the granddaughter of
newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst.

In the document, "The Last SLA Statement," Bill Harris of the SLA
declared that "The long run aim of the SLA was to work toward the
annihilation of U.S. imperialism and the culture and institutions
that support it." The SLA was part of "a people's army" to accomplish
this goal.

Ayers and Dohrn, leading members of the Weather Underground, had
served as supporters of the "Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee,"
along with such luminaries as Keith Ellison, now a Democratic member
of Congress from Minnesota. Olson was a fugitive for about 25 years
until in 1999 she was discovered and apprehended and put on trial for
her crimes. She pleaded guilty in 2002 to murdering a bank customer,
Myrna Opsahl in 1975, and planting bombs intended to kill police.
Opsahl was a 42-year-old mother of four who was trying to deposit
money from a church collection.

Olson, also known as Katherine Soliah, was sentenced to 14 years and
became eligible for parole after seven years.

Officials in Minnesota, where Olson hid out, and California, where
her crimes were committed, have been arguing about where she should
serve her probation. More attention should be paid to a dysfunctional
justice system that permits a murderer to get out of prison after
only seven years.

In addition, the Olson support apparatus also deserves serious scrutiny.

Ellison, the only Muslim member of Congress, was an attorney and
member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which handled Olson's
defense. The NLG was cited as a Communist Party front organization by
the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Today, the NLG
specializes in accusing the U.S. Government of being too tough on
terrorists and cop-killers and is still an affiliate of the
International Association of Democratic Lawyers, officially
designated a Soviet front during the Cold War.

News reports about Olson's impending release have inaccurately called
her a "domestic terrorist" and have ignored her associations with
Ayers and Dohrn. However, former Congressional investigator Herbert
Romerstein points out that the SLA was in fact a group or section of
the Weather Underground, which had connections to the Cuban
intelligence service, the DGI, and the Soviet KGB.

He notes that a Weather Underground communiqué dated February 20,
1974, and signed by Bernardine Dohrn discussed the work of the SLA
and said that the purpose of the kidnapping of Patty Hearst was: "the
guerillas have kidnapped the daughter of a rich and powerful man in
order to provide food to the poor. Their action has unleashed an
astonishing p(r)actical unity among people's organizations, and a
leap in everyone's consciousness about the fundamental reality which
will not die or pass into the memoires [sic] of a previous decade.
That is, the war between the rich and the poor."

Dohrn did question the SLA's murder of black educator Marcus Foster,
the superintendent of Oakland's public schools, as he was not a
"recognized enemy." But Dohrn said "it wrong to allow such questions
to become a grant of immunity to enemies and executioners of the
oppressed." So Dohrn wasn't too upset about the senseless murder of
an innocent man, comments Romerstein. (See pages 17-20 of this report
for the Dohrn communiqué.)

A Court TV account of the Foster murder noted, "In a communiqué
delivered to a radio station the next day, the SLA claimed
responsibility for the murder and gave their motive: Foster's
supposed support for mandatory photo ID cards for high school
students. The SLA contended the program was a government scheme to
establish prison-like surveillance at schools and that Foster was a
CIA agent."

Former FBI informant Grathwohl commented to AIM on Olson's release:
"Isn't this wonderful? I see another book in the offing explaining
why she did what she did! It is just another terrorist in our midst.
Look at the list of endorsements to set Olson free. Bill Ayers and
Bernardine Dohrn were right there advocating her release. Why not?
She's just a gray haired lady who didn't mean to hurt anyone. It's
the same BS we've been listening to from Bill and Bernardine for years."

In response to the incessant claims of Ayers and Dohrn that they
never killed anybody, Grathwhol comments, "Marcus Foster was killed
by the SLA and their association with the Weather Underground is
documented." Grathwohl participated in a March 12 news conference
demanding that charges be pursued against Ayers and Dohrn in
connection with the McDonnell murder.

He adds, "Where has our reason gone if somehow we can now accept
bombings and terrorism as a means of protest? No wonder Mark Rudd
admits his role in the plans to place bombs at Ft. Dix. They think
they're bullet-proof and they can get away with anything. They might
be right." Rudd was a Cuban-trained comrade of Ayers and Dohrn in the
Weather Underground.

Grathwohl's latter comments are a reference to Rudd's forthcoming
book from Harper Collins, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News
Corporation. Accuracy in Media has encouraged the public to appeal to
Murdoch to cancel the book, out of sensitivity to the victims of
Weather Underground terrorism.

News Corporation executives in New York can be reached here.

AIM is also asking Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and other TV
personalities on the Fox News Channel, another subsidiary of News
Corporation, to intervene with Murdoch and ask him to withdraw the
Rudd book from publication. The Fox News Channel can be reached in
Washington, D.C. at 202-824-6300. Please ask that they cover the
controversy over the Mark Rudd book by going to the AIM site
http://www.aim.org/ for information.

.

Churchill takes stand in his civil case

[2 articles]

Churchill takes stand in his civil case

http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_11977426

By Felisa Cardona and Kevin Vaughan
The Denver Post
Posted: 03/23/2009

3:29 P.M.

Churchill is discussing why he resigned in 2005 as chair of the
ethnic studies department.

"If you had not done anything wrong, then why resign?" Lane asked.

"The nature of the publicity, the developing circumstance of media
frenzy which was bound to distract me from dealing with things as
chair," Churchill said.

3:20 P.M.

Court is back in session

2:55 P.M.

Judge Naves has called a recess for 15 minute afternoon break.

2:55 P.M.

"If the country wanted to avoid a repeat performance, maybe they
should stop doing what it was that prompted the attack in the first place."

Churchill said people did not understand that Eichmann was a
"bureaucrat, a desk murderer" and his mistake was assuming people
understood Eichmann's role when they read the essay.

"When you bring your skills to bear for profit for yourself and your
clients, you are the moral equivelant of Adolf Eichmann," Churchill
said. "He never killed anyone, but without him the killing would have
taken a very different or inefficient form."

2:43 P.M.

Churchill is putting the meaning of his 9/11 essay in context for the
jury. "I am not in favor of terror," he said.

2:30 P.M.

Lane asked Churchill about awards he has won.

Churchill responded that he won the President's University Services
Award from CU.

"What year was that?" Lane asked.

"1987, but I don't want to be called on research misconduct if the
year is wrong" Churchill said, inspiring laughter from the courtroom audience.

2:19 P.M.

"Do you wish to be called Prof. Churchill?" his attorney David Lane
asked. "I prefer professor, but doctor will do," Churchill said

2:18 P.M.

Ward Churchill is now on the stand

2:15 P.M.

Russell Means, facilitator of the Republic of Lakota, is now on the
stand testifying on behalf of Churchill. He's known Churchill for
years and wrote a chapter in one of his books and also served in the
American Indian Movement together.

Means testified Churchill is "writing the wrongs of history ­ literally."

Means choked up on the witness stand and said "to take a small phrase
and besmirch him and try to ruin his reputation among the people who
know what he writes. It is a scholarly massacre ­ it's what I call
it. It's not right and it's full of holes...they do not treat white
professors at CU the same way."

Noon:

One of the five members of an investigative committee who looked into
Ward Churchill's scholarship was a strong supporter of the ethnic
studies professor and said today he would have resigned if he saw any
evidence of unfair treatment.

Michael Radelet, the chair of the sociology department at the
University of Colorado Boulder, testified this morning that when
Churchill's conduct first came into question in 2005 he feared that
he would be "railroaded." And Radelet joined other professors in
writing an e-mail in support of Churchill's free speech rights.

But later, during his four months of work looking into Churchill's
scholarship, he saw no unfair treatment, he testified as the
controversial former ethnic studies professor continued his fight in
a Denver courtroom to win back his job.

"We leaned over backward to give professor Churchill the benefit of
the doubt, to give him all the due process we could, to give him a
break where a break was needed," Radelet said. "I feel my work in
prisons, with people who had been falsely accused, made me lean over
even further."

Later, Radelet testified that he would have "blown the whistle,
objected, raised hell and perhaps resigned from the committee" if
anyone had been in "any way unfair" to Churchill during the
four-month investigation. 2005

Churchill, long a controversial figure in the ethnic studies world,
burst into the public consciousness in early 2005 just as he was to
deliver a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. The student
newspaper, in an article about his talk, wrote about an obscure essay
of his in which he referred to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks as "Little Eichmanns" ­ a reference to an infamous Nazi.

Churchill came under fire, and his work underwent scrutiny it had not
previously received. The university launched an investigation, and
although it ultimately concluded that what he wrote about Sept. 11
was protected by the First Amendment it began a broader examination
of his work.

The university ultimately fired Churchill in 2007 after a committee
found that he had "committed serious, repeated and deliberate
research misconduct." That committee concluded that Churchill's
voluminous writings were rife with problems, that he plagiarized the
work of others and fabricated some material.

Churchill filed suit, alleging that he was fired for the essay in a
move that violated his free speech rights. The crux of his argument
is that numerous complaints had been lodged over the years about his
scholarship that were never investigated by the university; only
after the essay generated controversy did CU officials look into his work.

Churchill is expected to testify, perhaps as soon as this afternoon.

Radelet, a witness for CU who testified out of order, was suggested
by Churchill himself for the investigative committee.

But during his work on the committee, he concluded that Churchill
committed numerous acts of academic misconduct.

Radelet himself examined one of Churchill's smallpox claims ­ that
"strong circumstantial evidence" existed to show that explorer John
Smith intentionally spread the disease among the Wampanoag tribe in
the early 1600s. But when Radelet examined the book Churchill cited
as a source he found nothing to back the claim, except that Smith was
in New England and disliked Indians.

"We felt that allegations was simply made up, simply false," Radelet
testified.

After more than an hour on the stand, Radelet faced cross-examination
by David Lane, Churchill's lead attorney.

Lane attempted to show that Mimi Wesson, a CU law professor who
headed the investigative committee was biased, pointing to an e-mail
she wrote in which Lane said she referred to Churchill as "yet
another celebrity wrongdoer the likes of Michael Jackson, O.J.
Simpson and Bill Clinton."

Radelet said "no" when asked whether that showed bias, but Lane cut
him off when he attempted to explain his answer.

Radelet did not back down on the question of whether Churchill could
claim that his assertions about smallpox were merely opinion, arguing
that claims that are footnoted should stand for something in the
academic world. Lane also attempted to show that Churchill's
statements about Smith and smallpox constituted only a few lines in a
much larger 40-page essay, but Radelet disagreed with the assertion
that it wasn't that big a deal.

"It is a big deal when a centerpiece of the theme of the essay is
built on a false assertion," Radelet said.

That theme, he pointed out, was the systematic genocide perpetuated
by Europeans and white Americans against American Indians. And he
argued that Churchill's claims about Smith and smallpox were
"girders" in his argument, and therefore important.

Radelet said by Churchill's way of thinking, he could be a suspect in
the murder of JonBenet Ramsey because he was in Boulder in 1996 and
he hated the Miss America Pageant.

"It's the same amount of evidence, the same amount of circumstantial
evidence that the Boulder police have on me for killing JonBenet
Ramsey," Radelet said.

Radelet also rejected Lane's argument that Churchill did not even
need to use footnotes in his work.

In making a claim, "then you need to explain that, and the way you do
that is by citation," Radelet said.

Later, under Lane's questioning, Radelet did acknowledge that the
investigating committee had "concern" about the timing and motive of
the investigation.

--------

Controversy involves Indian issues in a professor's firing appeal

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/41568627.html

By Carol Berry, Today correspondent
Story Published: Mar 23, 2009

DENVER ­ A battle over academic freedom moved from campus to
courtroom March 9, when a controversial Indian rights advocate vowed
to fight to regain his professorship.

Ward Churchill, 61, was fired from the University of Colorado's
ethnic studies department in 2007, two years after public attention
was drawn to an essay he wrote that seemed to blame 9/11 victims for
furthering U.S. government policies that led to the 2001 attack on
the World Trade Center.

After the essay came to light, a former Colorado governor and
prominent others called for Churchill's dismissal and an
investigation was begun into his background and publications.
Following several levels of review and appeal, he was fired from his
tenured position because of findings of research misconduct,
triggering a firestorm of controversy over the limits of protected
speech and tenure security in academia.

Now Churchill is asking a Denver District Court jury to find that he
was wrongfully terminated, should be rehired and receive damages.

A distinctively Native thread runs through the protracted argument
surrounding Churchill, who has been affiliated with the American
Indian Movement and whose writings often center on the North American
genocide, the legacy and structure of colonialism, the limits of
peaceful protest, institutional racism, blood quantum and related topics.

"I think history is written by white guys in suits," observed noted
civil rights attorney David Lane, lead counsel for Churchill. "Ward
Churchill gives a different aspect that affects and frightens white
guys in suits."

There is a controversial side to the man himself that has been used
to color views about his scholarship.

Despite his claims, Churchill has been unable to substantiate a
family belief that he has Native ancestry to the satisfaction of his
critics, and after the public furor over his essay, the United
Keetoowah Band of Cherokee said his associate membership with the
band was honorary and did not confer enrollment.

CU officials said his alleged "misrepresentation (of his ethnicity)
might constitute research misconduct and failure to meet the
standards of professional integrity," a charge that was not included
in the formal reasons for his dismissal.

Although Churchill was initially regarded publicly as Indian and his
writing attacked on that basis, later it was charged that he was not
Indian and his views were therefore not those of most Native people as a whole.

"There was a lot of purposeful confusion ­ they (university
officials) fostered the confusion in an attempt to drive Ward out,
hoping he would just leave," said Bob Bruce, co-counsel for Churchill.

"They asked around to other American Indian scholars ­ 'If it turns
out he is non-Native, does that make his scholarship less?'" Bruce
said, noting "they couldn't find any, so they dropped it as a formal attack."

"The University of Colorado obviously disrespects American Indian
studies," he said, and one can draw one's own conclusions as to
whether "that means they disrespect Native people."

CU policy permitted ethnic self-identification at the time Churchill
was hired, officials said, but some of his writings about Indian
history were called into question by the university's Investigative
Committee and its Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

The committees contended, among other charges, that Churchill
misrepresented circumstances surrounding smallpox epidemics among the
Mandan in 1837 and among Wampanoag tribal members in 1614, and also
that he erroneously attributed a blood quantum requirement to the
General Allotment Act.

A notice of intent to dismiss Churchill in 2006 from Phil DiStefano,
the university's interim chancellor, said that academic freedom
carries with it the responsibility for accuracy, among other things
and that committee findings "have been focused on the research
misconduct of one faculty member only,"
according to a CU news release.

The fact that Churchill alone was singled out for intensive scrutiny
may lend weight to a defense argument that his firing was politically
motivated and contrary to guarantees of protected speech in academia.

During the complex controversy, some have expressed that Churchill's
Indian stance fueled the initial furor over his 9/11 remarks, while
others have condemned him as a careless scholar, a "wannabe," or
simply unpatriotic, while still others have seen him as a gifted
educator, a strong advocate for Native people, and a victim of
political and academic repression.

The predominantly non-Anglo jury of four women and two men is
expected to hear testimony from as many as 30 witnesses, including
the former state governor who called on Churchill to resign, CU
regents, a former CU president and other university officials.

.

Alger Hiss -- a case for our time

Alger Hiss -- a case for our time

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jacoby22-2009mar22,0,7648164.story

For the left and the right, the story remains an emblem of their values.

By Susan Jacoby
March 22, 2009

Fifty-eight years ago today, Alger Hiss -- the defendant in an
emblematic Cold War prosecution once called "the trial of the
century" -- began serving a federal prison sentence for perjury.
Until his death in 1996, Hiss maintained that he had never been a
Communist or a spy and had been framed by the U.S. government.

When I told my 86-year-old mother that I was writing about the long
intellectual controversy over the Hiss case, her response was,
"You'll have to explain why anyone under 80 would still care about that."

One obvious reason the case remains so important to right-wing and
left-wing political intellectuals is that it stands, symbolically and
in real time, at the beginning of the era that now bears Sen. Joseph
R. McCarthy's name. Only two weeks after Hiss -- once a rising star
in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's State Department -- was
sentenced for perjury, McCarthy made his famous "I have here in my
hand" speech, charging extensive communist infiltration of America's
foreign policy establishment. And McCarthy remains very relevant
today. Ask people what they think about the McCarthy era today and
you have a good idea of where they stand on civil liberties
violations associated with U.S. anti-terrorist efforts today.

The legacy of the Hiss case also sits atop a domestic fault line
dividing those who believe in the kind of government activism that
defined the New Deal from those who consider government interference
with "the market" an insult to American capitalist values. As the
nation struggles with its worst economic crisis since the Depression,
we are witnessing a revival of right-wing, anti-New Deal,
anti-socialist and even anti-communist rhetoric that seems to belong
to another era in the distant past.

To make a very long story short, Hiss was a lawyer and committed New
Dealer, first in FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Administration and
then in the State Department. He was in charge of administrative
arrangements for the 1945 Yalta Conference, where Roosevelt, Winston
Churchill and Josef Stalin met to discuss plans for a postwar world,
and of the San Francisco conference that drafted the United Nations Charter.

In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a Time magazine editor and repentant
ex-Communist, testified before the House Un-American Activities
Committee (known as HUAC) that Hiss had once been his best friend in
the Communist Party. Hiss initially denied having known Chambers, but
then admitted that he had been acquainted with his accuser under
another name. Eventually, Chambers led FBI investigators to a cache
of microfilm, supposedly of government documents passed on by Hiss,
in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his farm. Hiss' chief HUAC antagonist
was the future vice president and president, Richard M. Nixon, then a
congressman from California.

Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 after two trials, and was never
charged with spying (the real political accusation against him)
because the statute of limitations had expired. His conviction
perfectly suited the right's contention that if you scratched a New
Deal liberal, you would find a socialist or a communist.

It is impossible, in a short article, to evaluate all of the
doorstop-weight books that have been written about Hiss and Chambers
over the last 50 years, but after reading most of them, I have
concluded that Hiss was guilty of perjury and am 95% certain that he
did pass on government documents.

And here is where the past meets the present. It has always been
difficult for liberals to look objectively at evidence pointing to
Hiss' guilt, because the case cannot be separated, then or now, from
the right's contempt for the New Deal and its unending attempts to
conflate liberalism, socialism and communism.

Who would have predicted that right-wing Republicans would respond to
the current economic crisis by insisting that President Obama's
stimulus efforts won't work because "everyone knows" that the New
Deal didn't work? Tell that to people who fondly remember getting a
paycheck from the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and who
depend on Social Security -- the permanent New Deal legacy -- in
their old age.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington in
February, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee declared that "Lenin and
Stalin would love this stuff." Obama's economic stimulus package,
Huckabee added, would help create "socialist republics" in the United
States. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) ceased to
exist in 1991, but a bumper sticker decrying "Comrade Obama" labels
the president as someone who wants to turn the United States into the "USSA."

On what planet are these people living?

In a sense, they are living on the same planet as the editors of the
Chicago Tribune after Hiss' conviction in 1950. "So we find this
traitor hobnobbing through the years with the mightiest of the New
Deal mighty," the Tribune declared, asserting magisterially that "the
guilt is collective" and "spreads over the New Deal, which sponsored
and protected this monstrous conspiracy against America." Time
marches on, but ideological anti-rationalism does not.

The conspicuous trait uniting those who are still obsessed with Hiss
(whether on the left or the right) is the need to vindicate not only
their verdict on American history but the governmental policies they
espouse today.

On the left, the reluctance to let go of the Hiss case has a pedigree
extending from the 1930s: The right was wrong about the threat of
Nazism, wrong about the existence of an internal communist threat in
America and wrong about the Vietnam War. Finally, of course, liberals
believe that the right is wrong in its willingness to sacrifice civil
liberties, and to deliberately ratchet up public fear, in the
legitimate cause of fighting Islamist terrorism.

The right-wing line goes something like this: Liberals were wrong
about Stalinism in the 1930s, wrong about the Vietnam War and wrong
about the Soviet threat. So it stands to reason that liberals must be
wrong today about the war in Iraq, wrong about the use of torture on
detainees, wrong about the need to protect civil liberties and wrong,
wrong, wrong about the desirability of government intervention in the economy.

By referring back to Lenin and Stalin today, the right is betting
once again that Americans can be swayed by the identification of
government activism with alien, "un-American" ideas. This turned out
to be a bad bet in the 1950s, when, in spite of their fear of
communism, most Americans went right on thinking that the New Deal
stood not for Reds but for red, white and blue.

My guess is that these tactics will backfire even more swiftly today.
Sane Americans, in spite of our ahistoricism, really do know that
Leninism and Stalinism are dead. And the emblematic traitor of our
day is not a left-wing intellectual figure like Alger Hiss but the
capitalist crook Bernard Madoff.
--

Susan Jacoby is the author, most recently, of "Alger Hiss and the
Battle for History."

.

The Power of Protest

The Power of Protest

http://japanfocus.org/-Lawrence_S_-Wittner/1848

The campaign against nuclear weapons was not simply an ideological
movement; it was a potent political force.

by Lawrence S. Wittner

[Introduction: Six decades into the nuclear age, it is worth
reflecting on the fact that the United States remains the only nation
to have detonated a nuclear weapon in combat, that Japan alone among
nations has experienced nuclear attack, and that for all the terror
unleashed in subsequent wars, no nation has launched nuclear weapons
on an enemy since 1945. What forces have prevented nuclear war, and
what lessons can be drawn from this experience for the future?
Lawrence Wittner finds important answers to these questions in the
world anti- nuclear movement.

Japan has played an important role in this world movement from its
inception. The Japanese antinuclear movement began in response to the
atomic bombing of Japan. In 1946, citizens' groups in Hiroshima,
meeting to commemorate the sufferings of the population, gradually,
turned to agitation against the nuclear arms race. By warning the
world of the horrors of nuclear war, hibakusha and their supporters
believed, the suffering and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would acquire transcendent
meaning. Although U.S. censorship and other restraints barred
publication detailing the horror inflicted by the atomic bombs, a
campaign against the Bomb gradually gathered strength.

That campaign took off as a mass movement after March 1954, when U.S.
nuclear testing irradiated the crew of a Japanese fishing boat, the
Lucky Dragon and citizens of Bikini. This led to an antinuclear
petition initiated by women and eventually signed by 32 million
people in the largest anti-nuclear protest ever. The movement quickly
became international. In August 1955, tens of thousands of delegates
-- most of them Japanese -- convened in Hiroshima for the First World
Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. The Japan Council
Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo) was organized to
continue the antinuclear crusade in Japan, which continued to rage in
the following years.

However, the Cold War partisanship of the Japan Communist Party (JCP)
within Gensuikyo generated intense friction inside the organization.
Consequently, in 1965 the Japan Socialist Party, Sohyo, and other
organizations calling for a more evenhanded approach critical of the
nuclear stance of all nuclear powers created a rival group, the Japan
Congress Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikin). Attempts in
the late 1970s and early 1980s to foster greater cooperation between
the two organizations resulted in another outpouring of nuclear
disarmament activism in the early 1980s. Hundreds of thousands of
Japanese demonstrated against nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Tokyo.
Once again, tens of millions of people signed antinuclear petitions.
Although this activism fell off in subsequent years, the idea of
nuclear disarmament, a centerpiece of Japanese pacifism, has retained
enormous popular appeal. Polls in 1998 showed that 78 percent of the
Japanese public favored the complete destruction of nuclear weapons.

In a post-9/11 world with a single superpower, what strategies will
anti-nuclear activists devise to prevent nuclear war? With Japan
dispatching troops to Iraq in violation of its own constitution, and
with rising pressures to revise the constitutional ban on war, the
issues are particularly salient for Japan. The answer to that
question may hinge on the ability of anti-war and anti-nuclear
activists to unify their movements. By Japan Focus coordinator]
--

One of the most striking facts about the modern world is that, for
the past 58 years, we have managed to avoid nuclear war. After all, a
nation that has developed weapons tends to use them. For example,
immediately after the U.S. government built nuclear weapons, it
employed them to destroy Japanese cities. Just as startling, a nation
that has devoted vast resources to developing weapons usually does
not get rid of them -- at least until it develops more powerful weapons.

But since August 1945, no nation has attacked another with nuclear
weapons, and only a relatively small number of nations have chosen to
build them. Also, those nations that have developed nuclear weapons
have for the most part accepted nuclear arms control and disarmament
measures: the Partial Test Ban Treaty; the Strategic Arms Limitation
Treaties (I and II); the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty;
the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (I and II); and the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Why have they adopted these policies
of nuclear restraint?

The answer lies in a massive grassroots campaign that has mobilized
millions of people in nations around the globe: the world nuclear
disarmament movement. Indeed, the history of nuclear restraint
without the nuclear disarmament movement is like the history of civil
rights legislation without the civil rights movement.

A message from the masses

Nuclear restraint did not come naturally to government officials, who
initially viewed nuclear weapons as useful additions to their
nations' military might.

This certainly included U.S. officials. Learning of the successful
destruction of Hiroshima, President Truman called the atomic bomb
"the greatest thing in history" and moved forward with the nuclear
annihilation of Nagasaki. He also ordered the creation of a vast
nuclear arsenal for the United States, including hydrogen bombs.

Truman's successor, Dwight Eisenhower, came to office with no
interest whatsoever in nuclear arms controls or disarmament. Instead,
Eisenhower favored what he called "massive retaliation" and the
integration of nuclear weapons into conventional war. Nuclear
weapons, Eisenhower declared, should "be used exactly as you would
use a bullet or anything else." John F. Kennedy campaigned for the
Presidency by pledging a U.S. nuclear buildup to close the supposed
"missile gap" between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Even Jimmy Carter -- as much a man of peace as any who has reached
the White House -- championed the development of the neutron bomb and
the MX missile. Ronald Reagan, of course, entered office as an
opponent of every nuclear arms control treaty signed by his
Democratic and Republican predecessors. Furthermore, he talked glibly
about fighting and winning nuclear wars. His successor, George H. W.
Bush, halted nuclear arms control and disarmament negotiations in one
of his first acts in office.

But they all came around to rejecting nuclear war and championing
nuclear arms control and disarmament measures.

This reversal occurred because of a massive, worldwide campaign of
public protest against the nuclear arms race and nuclear war. Atomic
scientists, pacifists, professional groups, religious bodies, unions,
intellectuals, and just plain folks were horrified at the nuclear
recklessness of government officials -- including their own -- and
demanded nuclear disarmament. Powerful anti-nuclear groups sprang up
around the world. In the United States, they included the Federation
of American Scientists, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy
(SANE), Women Strike for Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility,
and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. These constituencies
demanded that the nuclear arms race stop, that nuclear disarmament
begin, and that nuclear war be banned. For the most part, the general
public agreed. During the 1980s, polls found that 70 to 80 percent of
Americans supported the Nuclear Freeze proposal for a Soviet-American
treaty to halt the testing, development, and deployment of nuclear
weapons. The waging of nuclear war inspired widespread popular revulsion.

This public resistance to nuclear weapons startled government
officials and gradually pushed them back from implementing their
nuclear ambitions. As U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles put
it, there had developed "a popular and diplomatic pressure for
limitation of armament that cannot be resisted by the United States
without our forfeiting the good will of our allies and the support of
a large part of our own people." When the Soviet Union began a
unilateral halt to nuclear testing in 1958, the U.S. government could
no longer resist. Testing was "not evil," Eisenhower remarked in
exasperation, but "people have been brought to believe that it is!"
And so the U.S. and British governments joined the Russians in
halting nuclear testing. When some Eisenhower administration
officials called for greater flexibility in the use of nuclear
weapons, the President brushed them off. "The use of nuclear
weapons," he said, "would raise serious political problems in view of
the current state of world opinion."

The Kennedy administration also felt besieged by protests against
nuclear weapons. According to the minutes of a November 1961 National
Security Council meeting, "the President voiced doubts that we could
ever test in Nevada again for domestic political reasons," while the
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, "pointed up
the difficulty of testing at Eniwetok." Ultimately, Kennedy turned to
Norman Cousins, the founder and co-chair of SANE, and urged him to
use his meeting with Nikita Khrushchev to smooth the path toward a
nuclear test ban treaty. That's just what Cousins did, and the result
was the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Jerome Wiesner, Kennedy's
White House Science adviser, gave the major credit for the treaty to
SANE and Women Strike for Peace. According to McGeorge Bundy,
Kennedy's national security adviser, the treaty "was achieved
primarily by world opinion."

When it came to the Vietnam War, Bundy recalled, the U.S. government
did not dare to use nuclear weapons. Why? There would have been a
terrible public reaction abroad, Bundy said; even more significant
was the prospect of public upheaval in the United States, for -- as
he recalled -- "no president could hope for understanding and support
from his own countrymen if he used the bomb." Explaining his own
restraint in the war, Richard Nixon recalled bitterly that, had he
used nuclear weapons or bombed North Vietnamese dikes, "The resulting
domestic and international uproar would have damaged our foreign
policy on all fronts."

Taking "yes" for an answer

Even the hawkish Ronald Reagan had the good sense to get out of the
way of the political steamroller. In an effort to dampen popular
protest against his nuclear buildup, he endorsed the "zero option --
a proposal to remove all the intermediate range nuclear missiles from
Europe. Then he dropped plans to deploy the neutron bomb. Then he
agreed to abide by the provisions of SALT II -- though it was never
ratified and, during the 1980 campaign, he had condemned it as an act
of "appeasement." Although Reagan proceeded with the deployment of
U.S. missiles in Western Europe, he was so rattled by the massive
protests against them that, in October 1983, he told his startled
secretary of state: "If things get hotter and hotter and arms control
remains an issue, maybe I should go see [Soviet Premier Yuri]
Andropov and propose eliminating all nuclear weapons." And, despite
protests from his advisers, he did propose that, in a remarkable
speech in January 1984. Moreover, as early as April 1982 he began
declaring publicly that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never
be fought." He added, "To those who protest against nuclear war, I
can only say: 'I'm with you!'"

All this happened during Reagan's first term in office, during the
reigns of Leonid Brezhnev, Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko in the
Soviet Union -- before the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachev's rise to power in March 1985 removed the Soviet stumbling
block in the path of arms control and disarmament agreements, for the
new Soviet party leader was a movement convert. Gorbachev's "New
Thinking" -- by which he meant the necessity for peace and
disarmament in the nuclear age -- came from a well-known anti-nuclear
statement by Albert Einstein in 1946, reiterated in the famous
Russell-Einstein appeal of 1955. Gorbachev's advisers have frequently
pointed to the powerful influence of the nuclear disarmament campaign
upon the Soviet leader, and Gorbachev himself declared that the new
thinking took into consideration the conclusions and demands of the
antiwar organizations and anti-nuclear activists.

Gorbachev met frequently with leaders of the nuclear disarmament
movement and often followed their suggestions. On the advice of
nuclear disarmament activists, he initiated and later continued a
unilateral Soviet nuclear testing moratorium, decided against
building a Star Wars antimissile system, and split the issue of Star
Wars from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, thus taking the
crucial step toward the 1987 agreement that removed all
intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe.

When Gorbachev suddenly called the U.S. bluff by agreeing to remove
all the Euromissiles (the zero option), it horrified NATO's hawks --
including Margaret Thatcher in Britain, the Christian Democrats in
West Germany, and key Republican leaders in the United States, such
as Robert Dole, Jesse Helms, and Henry Kissinger. But, as U.S.
Secretary of State George Shultz recalled: "If the United States
reversed its stand now . . . such a reversal would be political
dynamite!" Or, as Kenneth Adelman, Reagan's hawkish director of the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, put it: "We had to take yes for
an answer."

In response to anti-nuclear agitation during these years, there were
also important shifts in other lands. New Zealand banned nuclear
warships in its ports; Australia refused to test MX missiles. India
halted work on nuclear weapons, and its prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi,
joined with Gorbachev in calling for nuclear abolition. The
Philippines adopted a nuclear-free constitution and shut down U.S.
military bases that housed nuclear weapons. South Africa scrapped its
nuclear weapons program. No new nations joined the nuclear club.

Although the movement began to decline in the late 1980s, it retained
some influence. President George H. W. Bush and his secretary of
state, James Baker, felt that Reagan had moved too fast and too far
toward nuclear disarmament and abruptly halted disarmament
negotiations. But their reluctance soon collapsed.

The U.S. and British governments wanted to significantly upgrade
short-range nuclear forces in Western Europe. However, a number of
West European governments, frightened at the prospect of a revival of
public protest, resisted. When Gorbachev unilaterally removed
short-range missiles from Eastern Europe, thus encouraging popular
protests against the missiles in Western Europe, Baker was horrified.
"We were losing the battle for public opinion. We had to do
something," he wrote in his memoirs. "NATO could not afford another
crisis over deploying nuclear weapons. The alliance . . . would not
be able to survive." Thus, the Bush administration backed off and
agreed to negotiate missile reductions. Eventually, in a sharp
departure from past practice, it unilaterally withdrew its
short-range missiles from Western Europe.

Stopping the tests

The impact of the anti-nuclear movement upon nuclear testing was even
more direct. Since the mid-1980s, disarmament groups around the world
had been working to stop underground nuclear weapons explosions.
Thanks to their pleas, Gorbachev initiated and continued his
unilateral nuclear testing moratorium. But, after eighteen months of
Reagan administration rebuffs to the moratorium and to a test ban
treaty, in February 1987 the Soviets resumed testing. This setback,
however, only heightened anti-nuclear agitation.

Protesters organized large demonstrations at the Nevada Test Site.
Police arrested thousands of Americans each year for nonviolent civil
disobedience. Inspired by these actions, a massive
Nevada-Semipalatinsk nuclear disarmament movement emerged in the
Soviet Union, eventually forcing the closure of the Soviet nuclear test sites.

Meanwhile, sympathetic members of Congress introduced a variety of
bills to halt U.S. nuclear testing. In 1991, pressed hard by
disarmament groups, they pushed for action again. The final
legislation, passed in the summer of 1992, halted underground nuclear
testing for nine months, placed strict conditions on further U.S.
testing, and required test ban negotiations and an end to U.S.
testing by late 1996.

Having halted U.S. and Soviet nuclear testing, the movement pushed on
in the following years to secure the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
(CTBT). During his presidential campaign, Bill Clinton -- recognizing
the popular appeal of ending nuclear testing -- had pledged to
support the test ban treaty. But after he entered the White House in
January 1993, Clinton began to renege. Disarmament groups and
anti-nuclear members of Congress stirred up a test ban campaign later
that year, and the administration extended the U.S. nuclear testing
moratorium, pressed other nuclear powers to join it, and began
worldwide efforts to secure a treaty. Finally, in September 1996,
representatives of countries around the world celebrated the signing
of the CTBT. Speaking at the U.N. ceremonies, U.S. Amb. Madeleine
Albright declared: "This was a treaty sought by ordinary people
everywhere, and today the power of that universal wish could not be denied."

That is the good news.

What can be done?

The bad news is that since the end of the Cold War popular pressure
against nuclear weapons has waned, and -- as a result -- hawkish
government officials have felt freer to go about their traditional
business of preparing for war, including nuclear war. India and
Pakistan became nuclear weapons powers and threatened one another
with nuclear annihilation. The U.S. Senate rejected ratification of
the CTBT. And the administration of George W. Bush -- playing upon
fears generated by 9/11 -- has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, opposed the CTBT, and laid plans for building new
nuclear weapons.

Decades of struggle against the Bomb offer some strategic lessons.
One is that the threat nuclear weapons pose to human survival
provides a very effective basis for sparking mass mobilization
against them. Even so, playing on fear can backfire, for hawkish
forces can use it to make the case for more nuclear weapons.
Consequently, disarmament advocates must not only stress the dangers
of a nuclear buildup, but also provide a practical, positive
alternative. On a short-term basis, this means nuclear arms control
and disarmament under international control; on a long-term basis,
the strengthening of international authority to prevent war and aggression.

Furthermore, because the mass media usually avoid discussing nuclear
weapons issues and because much of the public would prefer not to
think about nuclear annihilation, many people are ignorant about
their governments' nuclear ambitions. Therefore, to stir up mass
mobilization against nuclear weapons, disarmament groups must work
overtime at raising popular consciousness about what governments are
doing to prepare for nuclear war.

Finally, in order to develop that consciousness-raising campaign, as
well as sensible alternatives to preparing for nuclear war,
disarmament groups (and other civil society organizations) need to
adopt a common focus for their efforts. They did this (more or less)
in connection with halting nuclear testing, coordinating the European
Nuclear Disarmament campaign, and organizing the Nuclear Freeze campaign.

There are also more profound lessons. Left to themselves, governments
gravitate toward nuclear weapons and nuclear war as a means of
defending national interests. Nor is this surprising, for the
nation-state system has produced arms races and wars throughout its
history. Fortunately, nations can be compelled to reverse themselves.
When the nuclear disarmament movement has mobilized substantial
popular pressure, it has succeeded in curbing the nuclear arms race
and preventing nuclear war.

What the movement has done before, it can do again.
--

Lawrence S. Wittner, professor of history at the State University of
New York-Albany, is the author of Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History
of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present
(2003). This article appeared in the July-August 2004 issue of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

.

Reminiscin' 'bout my generation

Reminiscin' 'bout my generation

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5944437.ece

Every picture tells a very personal story for Pete Townshend in a new
book by his friend Tom Wright - the man who, he says, put The Who on
the road to fame

Pete Townshend
March 21, 2009

Tom Wright. Good man. I've always been susceptible to a good man.

My first was Graham Beard, my best friend (though I was perhaps not
his best) from the age of 4 until about 11, when we went to watch
Bill Haley play and I picked up a guitar. Then I was befriended by an
assortment of fellows, from among whom John Entwistle rose as the
most constant until I was 17. Then at Ealing Art School in the spring
of 1962 I met Richard Barnes (later an important Who biographer) and
we laughed our way into a longstanding friendship so intense that
it's not surprising it has quieted in recent years. Barney and I soon
met Tom and ended up in a flat in the same house he shared with his
friend Cam.

Almost as soon as I found Tom, or he found me, I felt I lost him. Tom
and Cam were effectively deported from the UK for possession of the
marijuana that had, along with perfectly faded Levi's and the
wonderful collection of R&B records they shared, made them both stars
among the prettiest females and the coolest males at the college,
where Tom studied photography. I read Tom's story and find that he
numbers me among the coolest males in 1962. Indeed, I appear to be
the coolest in some ways, but I was not cool. I was just susceptible.

Within a few days of hearing Lightning Hopkins mawling out his
tortured, primitive version of Trouble in Mind I had worked out how
to play my own version of it. When Tom heard me play it, he adopted
me. Hanging with Tom, as his in-house troubadour, always had a
drop-dead moment hanging portentously in the air: the instant that he
decided to crash into bed to embrace whichever beautiful girl was in
his orbit. It would be a few years on before I was able to turn my
own best assets into an equally intoxicating bird call.

Music is magical. When they were deported, Tom and Cam had to leave
their records behind with Barney and me ... as well as their beds.
The musical kudos exerted by Tom and Cam was suddenly passed to us.
Not necessarily with quite the same romantic association, but we
could unleash memories. Tom says that he also left behind a stash of
grass. That must have increased our pull, but it also confused my
fellows in the Detours, the school band I still played with because
it earned so much money. I think I became a little difficult in the
months I first began to get stoned. I was hearing music in a new way.
The Detours were pretty good, and when I started to introduce some
R&B songs into the set during late 1963 the surprise for us all was
that the audience of Mods who were starting to embed themselves in
the local area where we most often performed were fairly in sync with us.

Indeed, as I taught John Entwistle Green Onions by Booker T and the
MGs, the Rolling Stones were playing their first few shows at the
local Ealing Club, casting the first serious glove down to the
Beatles, who were already beginning to seem like aliens they were so
successful. By the time Tom and Cam's R&B music collection had been
filtered into the Ealing scene, they had been forced to leave the
country and watch from afar as the British music revolution took
place with R&B as its new backbone.

It was not until several years later that Tom and I reconnected. He
worked on the road with The Who in 1967 and took some of the most
flattering photographs of the band ever. I quickly realised that Tom
had a problem. He liked taking pictures and developing the negatives,
but he wasn't crazy about making prints. He wasn't even keen on
opening the various trunks in which they were haphazardly stored. So
the stash of unseen images grew. Some took 30 years to get printed,
some even longer.

But whenever any of his friends saw his pictures, we knew he had an
extraordinary gift to capture the moment: he seemed to sense the
gentle approaching warp in time that predicted that something special
would happen. Tom lived so much in the moment, waiting for the
moment, that some of us felt that he would never properly catalogue
and archive his work, let alone find time to tell his incredible life story.

His recent successful but substantial heart surgery provided the
hiatus, the shock, and finally the focus to write a moving, touching
and funny book that illustrates more about the change in the function
of pop music from the late Fifties to the early Sixties than any
semi-academic treatise written by journalist or critic.

It's clear now that R&B was vital to the shift in function of postwar
pop. From dance music designed as a romantic salve for the walking
wounded of various wars, we moved to the irritant teenaged codes of
Sixties pop. This new music was partly aimed at that same scarred
older generation and suggested that their postwar trauma, horror and
shame - hitherto denied and untreated - had somehow echoed down to
us. R&B, mainly performed by American black musicians and including
some powerfully rhythmic jazz and the most edgy folk music of the
time, was what underpinned British pop music of the Sixties new wave.

The combination of complaint, confrontation and self-healing that was
wrapped up in the average R&B song - usually sung by a disgruntled
but sanguine older black American - was the right model for my white
middle and working-class British generation too. It changed for the
next 40 years the purpose and function of pop music.

Tom has placed himself inside his own story, and that was necessary.
This is also very much my story. There is much of my life that Tom
describes that will not appear in my memoirs simply because I don't
remember it. Some of his tales started me laughing, some made me sad.
The photographs are all wonderful, providing the context and
tangential colour that makes Tom's story seem as particular, real and
romantic as it must have felt to him as he experienced it.

One thing is certain: had I not met Tom Wright, The Who would never
have become successful. We would have remained the Detours, a solid
little pop band doing what hundreds of others were doing at the same
time: playing local clubs, pubs, weddings and parties purely for
pleasure and fitting the programme in and around our day jobs. After
a few years I would have stopped playing with them and gone off to
work as a sculptor or for an ad agency. I needed the nudge of
marijuana to help me to realise that I had real creative musical
vision. I needed to hear Jimmy Reed to know that powerful music could
be made with extremely basic tools. I needed to be given the
recognition that I got from Tom of my special talent, recognition
that Roger Daltrey, the leader of our band, could not give me at
first because he had known me and nurtured me before I grew into my real skin.

It's wonderful to be able to say that today I am susceptible to Roger
Daltrey. But the memory of meeting Tom in 1962, and being specially
blessed by him when he was at his teenage peak, is the most
significant moment of my musical life. Roger often puts the success
of The Who down to his efforts of getting me out of bed, where I lay
stoned listening to Jimmy Reed, to go and play a local pub with the
Detours. I'm afraid, as is often the case in Who history, Roger and I
must differ. I put our success down to the fellow who left that
particular bed behind when he was deported.
--

Raising Hell on the Rock'n'Roll Highway by Tom Wright and Susan
VanHecke is published by Omnibus Press at £19.95.

.

Police officers told to zip lips on bombing

[2 articles]

Police officers told to zip lips on bombing

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/17/BA3J16ID29.DTL

Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The San Francisco Police Officers Association's leadership has been
told to muzzle it after signing a letter accusing onetime Weather
Underground radical Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, of
being behind the nearly 40-year-old bombing at a San Francisco police
station that killed a sergeant.

We hear that both U.S. Justice Department reps and Police Chief
Heather Fong put in calls to the union to find out just what they
were doing talking out of school about an active investigation that
may be ready to make a move soon in the 1970 bombing at Park Station.

The word was, button your lips.

Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes confirmed that
his union got a call from federal investigators telling them they had
an "active investigation and should not be commenting on the case."

Delagnes said the letter was meant only to show support for the
family of the slain officer, Sgt. Brian McDonnell, and to help them
"bring closure to the case."

No one has ever been charged in the bombing, and Ayers said last week
he had nothing to do with it.

...

--------

Obama's terrorist pals get away with murder? Literally?

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/090323

San Francisco police told to shut up about it

March 23, 2009
By Wes Vernon

You are earnestly urged to believe that President Obama's Justice
Department is seriously investigating a 39-year-old murder case
involving his political friends and communist terrorists Bill Ayers
and his wife Bernadine Dorn. That assurance is given as justification
by Attorney General Eric Holder's agency to tell San Francisco police
officers (present and retired) to shut up because any day now, some
arrests are to be made in this "active" case.

Earlier this month, members of the San Francisco Police Officers
Association appeared at a news conference sponsored by America's
Survival, Inc., here in Washington to demand that FBI Director Robert
Mueller ­ who independently serves in his post until 2011 and does
not need to take orders from the Obama administration ­ pursue the
probe and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Apparently, the publicity hit a sore spot with the alleged
"investigators." The police officers group has been told to pipe
down. The union received calls from both Holder's agency and the San
Francisco police chief that (loosely interpreted by me) said, Oooops!
We know it's been a mere 39 years, but gee ­ you know, Rome wasn't
built in a day, give us time...Like another 40 years after we're all dead?

Some background

The case involves charges that the pro-communist Weather Underground
(through the bomb-making handiwork of Dohrn) placed a bomb at a San
Francisco police station ­ timed to detonate during a shift change so
as to kill or injure as many police officers as possible. The
explosion killed one officer and seriously injured several others.
The scene immediately afterward is described by former San Francisco
policeman James Pera as "like a war with wounded officers, blood,
shattered windows, damaged floors and ceilings." But then Pera adds,
"It was a war, an urban war being conducted by subversive and
murderous groups such as the Weather Underground."

Terrorists elude justice

You may wonder why these despicable animals ­ who hosted a reception
that launched President Obama's political career in the nineties ­
are still walking the streets, even though Ayers has publicly
proclaimed himself "guilty as hell, and free as a bird. America is a
great country."

Good question ­ here's the answer

They and their co-conspirators in the Weather Underground were
eventually hauled into court on charges dealing with their murderous
rampage in the late sixties and early seventies. Former FBI informant
Larry Grathwohl recalls that his role as an infiltrator ended after
blowing the whistle on Ayers and Dohrn in sworn testimony to several
grand juries and to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, as
well as at the trial of W. Mark Felt and Robert S. Miller. Those two
FBI agents were charged with "improper acts" in the Weather Underground case.

If the name of the late Mark Felt rings a bell with you, he is the
man who turned out to be "Deep Throat" in the Watergate
investigation. He spilled the beans to reporters Woodward and
Bernstein about the cover-up not because he was inspired by a Boy
Scout "good government" crusade. He was simply in a snit because
Nixon did not appoint him FBI director when J. Edgar Hoover died.
That's it! That's how we got Jimmy Blunderbuss Carter in the White House.

But whatever one thinks of Nixon, he showed remarkable judgment in
passing over Felt as top cop. Felt and Miller booted the case against
the Weather Underground and thus Ayers and Dohrn got off scot free ­
not because they were innocent ­ but because of technicalities
involving Felt and Miller's antics. In the wolfpack hysteria of the
immediate post-Watergate era, Felt was convicted of violating the
civil rights of the terrorists. When Ronald Reagan became president,
he granted Felt a pardon. What else can you do but pity an FBI
Director-wannabe who missed his calling as Top Dog in the Keystone Cops?

What was the Weather Underground?

On those rare occasions when the mainstream media allow Americans to
focus on the past of Obama's pals Ayers and Dohrn, they quickly
spread the unvarnished hogwash that the Weather Underground was just
another anti-Vietnam War organization. That is a lie. Not a
distortion or disingenuous verbal acrobatics. It is a flat-out, pure,
prime, grade-A lie. And any supposedly knowledgeable person (and news
media people are supposed to know what they're talking about, no?)
who spreads the garbage that the Weather Underground people were poor
little flower children of the sixties is a liar of the
morning-noon-and-night variety ­ a liar from A to Z.

Herbert Romerstein ­ one of the world's most authoritative
intelligence professionals ­ presented thorough documentation on that
very point at ASI's March 12 news conference. The guts of
Romerstein's 52-page presentation is that the Weather Underground was
"not just a group of young anti-Vietnam activists who pulled some
pranks where no one was hurt or killed."

Romerstein goes on to say the Weather Underground in fact was "a
group of communists who wanted the Vietnamese Communists to defeat
the United States. They also engaged in terrorist acts often
including injury and sometimes murder."

OK, here's a little quiz

All those who believe the Obama administration's Justice Department
truly is ­ as claimed ­ pursuing, as an "active" case and a serious
investigation, the teleprompter president's old pals Ayers and Dohrn,
raise your hands.

All those who believe that those who would silence the police union
members are not making such "requests" so as to give them time to
perpetuate the cover-up, raise your hands.

OK, moving right along here: All those who do not take this "zip your
lips" plea as a hint that failure to shut up about the Weather
Underground case could prompt an invitation to follow the path trod
by the mysteriously dead Vince Foster, raise your hands.

And here's another one: Attorney General Eric Holder ­ rudely
eschewing the old admonition "Speak for yourself" ­ recently said
we're "a nation of cowards." All those who think Holder ­ who was
involved in Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of members of the
Weather Underground and the FALN ­ will now muster the courage to
arrest and prosecute his current boss's political backers, raise your hands.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but all those who think Mr.
"Nation of Cowards" ­ who lacked the courage to resign and publicly
protest President Clinton's pardoning of criminals with whom he had
no known connection ­ is about to take a deep breath, count to ten,
and screw up the courage to collar the folks who gave his current
boss President Obama his political entree, let's see a show of hands.

Nobody raised a hand (outside the George Soros-funded Goebbels-like
propaganda machine, of course)? Gee, what a surprise.

The scene of the crime

Former police officer James Pera ­ 39 years later ­ describes in
vivid detail the scene at San Francisco's Park Police Station the day
of the bombing.

"Officer Jerry Doherty, a good friend of mine, who was a mentor and
later became my Lieutenant when I was a Sergeant, rushed to the aid
of Sergeant [Brian] McDonnell, ripped off his uniform shirt, and
applied pressure to the sergeant's neck wound, in an attempt to stop
the bleeding. Unfortunately, the sergeant died a couple of days
later, without regaining consciousness. He left a wife and two kids.
He was forty-five years old, his life snuffed out by the murderous
cowards of the Weather Underground."

Then this, again from Jim Pera: "Think about the ignorant and
clueless people who believe that just because this incident happened
thirty-nine years ago, we should just all move on and let the past
stay in the past. I've got news for them. The dead don't rise [and
move on]. They stay dead.

"Think about Sergeant McDonnell and all the murdered and maimed
victims of the Weather Underground, when you see the smug,
unrepentant face of the sniveling, gutter-crawling rat who goes by
the name of Professor Bill Ayers.

"Think about his loathsome wife, Bernadine Dohrn, who has been named
by former undercover informant Larry Grathwohl as the wretched human
scumbag who planted the bomb that killed Sergeant McDonnell.

"Think about how these two Marxist-Leninist traitors are allowed to
breathe the air of freedom, when they should be gasping on the
stagnant trenches of a prison cell or better yet, moldering in a
post-execution gravesite."

No justice, no peace

Cliff Kincaid, president of ASI, is distributing the petition to FBI
Director Mueller which you are invited to sign. It urges Mueller
(again, he doesn't need to take cover-up orders from Obama or Holder)
"that you and the FBI immediately open an investigation into the
evidence against Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn for the murder of
police officer Brian McDonnell." When you sign the petition, you can
mail it to:

FBI Director Robert Mueller, Federal Bureau of Investigation, J.
Edgar Hoover Building, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.
20535-0001.

This column ­ even with all the competing demands of events and other
outrages ­ will return to this case periodically until such time as
justice is done. We ­ along with millions of other Americans ­ will
not shut up, and we strongly doubt that the San Francisco Police
Officers Association will either. We absolutely know that Cliff
Kincaid ­ who has put in hours of hard work in pursuit of this
investigation ­ will not shut up.

The (No Justice) Department says it is "actively" investigating.
Yeah, right. Who's doing the gumshoe work? ACORN? Mr. Magoo?

.

Pirkle Jones, Documentary Photographer, Dies at 95

Pirkle Jones, Documentary Photographer, Dies at 95

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/arts/23jones.html

By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: March 23, 2009

Pirkle Jones, whose images of migrant farm workers, threatened
California towns and valleys and the Black Panthers at the peak of
their power made him one of the most admired photographers of his
generation, died on March 15 in San Rafael, Calif. He was 95 and
lived in Mill Valley, Calif.

The death was confirmed by Jennifer McFarland, the director of the
Pirkle Jones Foundation.

Mr. Jones, a disciple of Ansel Adams, brought a sensitivity to visual
texture and a sense of historic urgency to subjects as varied as the
California landscape, the San Francisco skyline and a countercultural
houseboat community in Sausalito. Perhaps his most remarkable
photographs, taken in the tumultuous year 1968, captured the leaders
of the Black Panther Party as they would have liked to be seen: bold
revolutionaries poised to overturn the white power structure.

"He was a man of huge social conscience, and he brought that to the
work," said Karen Sinsheimer, the curator of photography at the Santa
Barbara Museum of Art, which gave Mr. Jones his first retrospective
exhibition in 2001. "But he also made absolutely beautiful prints,
just perfect, with crisp detail and a vast tonal range in black and white."

Adams, his mentor, who died in 1984, once paid him a high compliment.
"His photography is not flamboyant, does not depend upon the
superficial excitements," Adams said. "His pictures will live with
you, and with the world, as long as there are people to observe and
appreciate."

Mr. Jones was born in Shreveport, La., and bought his first camera, a
Kodak Brownie, when he was 17. He began exhibiting his work at camera
clubs in the 1930s.

In 1941, when he was employed at a shoe factory in Lima, Ohio, he
enlisted in the Army and served in the Pacific theater. He passed
through San Francisco on the way out and returned after the war to
enroll in the new photography department at the California School of
Fine Arts, headed by Adams.

From 1947 to 1953 he worked as an assistant and printmaker to Adams,
who brought him into an artistic circle that included Edward Weston,
Dorothea Lange and Minor White. He also met and married Ruth-Marion
Baruch, a fellow photography student and poet, who became a lifelong
collaborator. She died in 1997.

In 1956 Ms. Lange asked Mr. Jones to help her document the Berryessa
Valley, soon to disappear underwater with the completion of the
Monticello Dam. Their photo essay, "The Death of a Valley," recorded
the last year of life in the valley's towns and farms and, published
as a single issue of Aperture in 1960, became a classic of
photojournalism. Mr. Jones later called the collaboration "one of the
most meaningful photographic experiences of my professional life."

He went on to collaborate with Adams on a photo essay on the building
of the Paul Masson Mountain Winery. In 1961 he and his wife spent
time in Walnut Grove, Calif., to create the portrait of a dying town.

"I've always thought of my career as a bridge between the classic
photography of Ansel Adams and the documentary work of Dorothea
Lange," he told Art & Antiques last year.

In 1968 Ms. Baruch became a friend of Kathleen Cleaver, the wife of
the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, through their work with
the Peace and Freedom Party. From July to October 1968, Mr. Jones and
Ms. Baruch photographed Black Panthers in the Bay Area with the
stated goal of promoting a better understanding of the party.

The moment was fraught. Huey P. Newton, the party's minister of
defense, was on trial on a charge of murder in the death of a police
officer, and relations between the Panthers and the police threatened
to become open warfare. (Newton was convicted of manslaughter.) Mr.
Jones's photographs of three Panthers standing on courthouse steps
holding a "Free Huey" banner and of male and female Panthers posing
with guns became emblematic images of the era.

An exhibition of the Panther photographs at the De Young Museum in
San Francisco drew more than 100,000 visitors. The photographs were
published in book form as "Black Panthers," with an introduction by
Ms. Cleaver.

Mr. Jones turned to more peaceful subject matter. For years,
beginning in the early 1970s, he photographed the drop-outs of Gate
5, an alternative houseboat community in Sausalito that he nearly
joined. In the final decades of his life, he concentrated on the
landscape around his glass-and-redwood house in Mill Valley.

It was not because of failure of nerve. Only once, he told Art &
Antiques, had he ever stepped back from taking a picture.

"In the '70s, I saw a fortuneteller at a flea market," he recalled.
"She said that she'd put a curse on me for the rest of my life if I
took her picture. So I didn't."

.

These Kids Today!

These Kids Today!

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee234

March 18, 2009
By Scott McLemee

At the National Book Critics Circle awards event last Thursday, I had
the pleasure of presenting this year's Balakian citation for
excellence in book reviewing to Ron Charles, the weekly fiction
critic for The Washington Post -- and once, in a previous
incarnation, an assistant professor of English at Principia College.
He has been a finalist for the award several times, displaying great
patience with NBCC as we've climbed the learning curve. His
acceptance speech was, by acclaim, the highlight of the evening.

But to judge by the blog chatter, the high point of Ron's public
impact actually came earlier this month, when his essay on the
extracurricular reading habits of college students appeared. Citing
recent best sellers reported from campus bookstores, he noted that
you found nothing even vaguely akin to The Autobiography of Malcolm X
or the poetry of Sylvia Plath or Allen Ginsberg. Instead, there were
novels about wizardry and adolescent vampire romance.

"The only title that stakes a claim as a real novel for adults was
Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, the choice of a million
splendid book clubs. Here we have a generation of young adults away
from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental
period of their lives, yet they're choosing books like 13-year-old
girls -- or their parents. The only specter haunting the groves of
American academe seems to be suburban contentment. ... In the
conservative 1950s, when Hemingway's plane went down in Uganda,
students wore black armbands till news came that the bad-boy novelist
had survived. Could any author of fiction that has not inspired a set
of Happy Meal toys elicit such collegiate mourning today?"

As much as I like its author, some aspects of this complaint strike
me as problematic. In general, of course, Ron Charles is pointing to
a real phenomenon, a tendency towards juvenilization that seems
all-pervasive at times. His observations call to mind Andrew
Calcutt's Arrested Development: Pop Culture and the Erosion of
Adulthood (Castells), an insightful book from the late 1990s that
still seems quite on-target.

To suppose that things were really that much better in decades past,
though, may be the historical equivalent of an optical illusion. I
don't know whether anyone was tracking campus bookstore sales in the
1950s or '60s. If so, the record would probably show Peyton Place and
Happiness is a Warm Puppy doing pretty well ­ and Diana diPrima's
poetry, or Herbert Marcuse's social criticism, not so much. When I
arrived on campus as a freshman in 1981, my first roommate was quite
devoted to Jonathan Livingston Seagull while the rest of my dorm was
trying to imitate Hunter S. Thompson (in lifestyle, not prose style).
The number of young people reading anything serious at any given time
tends to be pretty small.

Via e-mail, I ran some of these thoughts by Ron -- who answered with
good humor that he'd "just [been] giving a twist to the Old Man rant
about Young People Nowadays," after all.

"The presence of a few numbers and stats gave my essay the gloss of a
piece of sociology that it doesn't really deserve," he says. "I
couldn't find much data about what college kids were reading in the
'50s and '60s, and even the data available today are far more suspect
than we usually acknowledge. For one thing, Follett and Barnes &
Noble control a huge portion of the college bookstore market, so
what's promoted on college campuses is far more homogenized and
commercialized than in earlier decades. Also, many of the reporting
college bookstores serve their communities at large, so there's no
way to tell what's really being bought by college students and what's
being bought by the professors' own young children or just people who
happen to live near the university."

Much of the discussion generated by his article has ignored such
questions and gone directly to the argument that Ron Charles is a
conservative dinosaur who must have been a teenager circa World War Two.

Either that, or he lives on a commune in Vermont where he went into
hiding during the Nixon years and wrote his essay out of
disappointment that he can't recruit kids to the Weather Underground.
(Possibly both.) Actually he is in his 40s, lives in a suburb, and
has the demeanor of someone who sat out the Culture Wars as a
conscientious objector.

"I was surprised and disappointed," he told me, "by the number of
respondents who felt I wanted college students to start reading the
works of Abbie Hoffman and other '60s and '70s writers. Or that I was
complaining that they weren't reading more Serious Literature. That
wasn't really my point: I was actually disappointed that they weren't
reading more age-appropriate material: not stuff for middle schoolers
and not stuff for adults, but all the kinds of crazy, wild, naïve,
in-your-face, big-think literature that young people should be
reading during that magical moment between high school and the first
soul-crushing job."

Usually, he says, adults complain that "college students are too wild
and irresponsible; I wanted to claim that their reading habits imply
that they aren't nearly wild or irresponsible enough: mostly books
borrowed from the Young Adult shelf and their parents' book clubs.
Where's the real college lit?"

A fair question -- but one that I suspect cannot be answered with
marketing survey data. As the late John Leonard put it, the work of a
writer is "experienced by the reader as a competing solitude. It's
not communal. It's intimacy to intimacy, one on one, down there with
the demons." (Or seagulls, as the case may be.)

Last year, as a Christmas present, I gave a copy of Roberto Bolaño's
novel 2666 to an old friend. But his daughter got to the book first,
reading its nine hundred pages in a weekend marathon and promptly
drawing connections to the work of Ernst Jünger. She is fourteen.

I am not prepared to make any generalizations about the Younger
Generation on the basis of this small data set. But there are moments
when gloom doesn't seem completely appropriate.

.

Crazed Hippy Killer caused horror with 1970 murder of California doctor

Crazed Hippy Killer caused horror with 1970 murder of California doctor

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/22/2009-03-22_crazed_hippy_killer_caused_horror_with_1.html?page=2

BY Mara Bovsun
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
Sunday, March 22nd 2009

By any yardstick, Dr. Victor Ohta was a stunning success.

Born in 1925, the son of a Japanese immigrant farmer in Montana, Ohta
studied medicine at Northwestern University and, in 1954, joined the
Air Force, achieving the rank of major.

By 1970, he had established a booming practice in bucolic Santa Cruz,
Calif. Along with a sterling reputation as an eye surgeon, citizen
and friend, Ohta also had earned a considerable amount of money, and
he spent much of it on the trappings of wealth. He owned a maroon
Rolls-Royce, bought his wife expensive jewelry and favored colorful
silk scarves instead of ties. His children attended pricey private schools.

Perhaps his most extravagant belonging was his home, in the
oceanfront resort area of Soquel, 5 miles south of Santa Cruz.
Perched atop a hilltop overlooking Monterey Bay, the mansion had been
designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright.

On Oct. 19, 1970, it all went up in flames.

Firefighters rushed to the blaze, only to find the two dirt roads
leading to the house blocked by the doctor's Rolls and a Lincoln Continental.

What they found when they cleared the obstacles and reached the house
was more than a fire. It was a scene of horror, a mass murder
reminiscent of the grisly Charles Manson cult slayings just 15 months earlier.

Horrific discovery

The house at first appeared to be unoccupied. Then one of the
firefighters aimed his flashlight at the lagoonlike pool and spotted
a floating corpse. Four more bodies had sunk to the bottom of the
pool. They were Dr. Ohta; his wife, Virginia, 43; their sons Derrick,
12, and Taggart, 11, and Ohta's secretary, Dorothy Cadwallader, 38, a
married mother of two little girls.

All had been bound with the doctor's bright silk scarves, and all,
along with the family cat, had been shot in the neck with a .38.

"Like an execution," one officer observed.

A burglary seemed unlikely, because jewelry, expensive cameras and
electronics had not been touched.

But one of the family cars was missing. The green station wagon
turned up the next day, burned and abandoned in a Southern Pacific
railroad tunnel about 20 miles to the northwest.

There were no weapon, no suspects and no motive. All detectives had
was a typewritten note left on the windshield of the Rolls. Dated
"Halloween, 1970," it read: "today world war 3 will begin as brought
to you by the people of free universe. From this day forward, anyone
or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or destroys
same will suffer the penalty of death by the people of the free
universe. I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until
death or freedom against any single anyone who does not support
natural life on this planet, materialism must die or mankind will."

The note was signed by "Knight of Wands, Knight of Cups, Night [sic]
of Pentacles and Knight of Swords."

The ritualistic nature of the slayings, the cultish tone of the note
and the signature of tarot card characters sparked terror that
another Manson family was about to begin a bloody rampage.

Detectives began probing the many hippie communes that dotted the region.

The idea that the massacre had been the work of hippies gained
momentum when one of Ohta's neighbors recalled that the eye doctor
had recently shooed a handful of them off his porch and out of the
pool in which he was later found dead.

But detectives soon learned that the hippies around Santa Cruz were
as terrified as the wealthy establishment of the phantom killer. Some
expressed true remorse over the doctor's death because Ohta
frequently extended charity to his earthy neighbors in the form of
free medical care.

Ultimately, a tip from the hippies led investigators to the suspect.

His name was John Linley Frazier, 24. Born in Ohio, Frazier had a
history of petty crimes as a youngster but had calmed down after he
dropped out of high school, married and found steady work as an auto
mechanic. Then, six months before the killing, he "flipped out," no
doubt a reaction to the LSD and mescaline he was taking, a neighbor
told United Press International. Frazier left his wife, let his hair
and beard grow and became an eco-freak.

Frazier declared he had stopped driving, for example, on orders from
the Almighty.

"He said God had told him that by driving his car he was polluting
the environment and he would be killed if he drove anymore," said one
acquaintance.

Always a bit of a loner, Frazier had gone into seclusion in a rundown
shanty near Soquel, about a half mile from the Ohta mansion.

One of his hairy hiking companions reported that Frazier had ranted
about the doctor's materialism, saying that people like that "should
be snuffed."

Ohta's mansion was particularly irksome to the born-again nature
lover because trees had been cut to make room for it.

On the day of the murders, Frazier appeared at the San Lorenzo home
he had shared with his wife and told her he was going to New York. He
carried a loaded pistol and a backpack filled with food. As he left,
Frazier handed his estranged wife his wallet and driver's license. "I
won't be needing these anymore," he said.

Four days after the murders, police found their suspect asleep in his
shack. They also found a pair of binoculars that had been stolen from
the doctor's house some months earlier, a wristwatch that had
belonged to one of Ohta's sons and a .45-caliber pistol. The murder
weapon was never found.

'It blew my mind'

Frazier pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and appeared to be
barely in touch with reality during his three trials, one to
establish guilt, a second to determine sanity and a third to decide
upon a sentence.

Although he never offered a confession to police, he gave details of
the killings to psychiatrist David Marlowe. Frazier said he had
broken into Ohta's house when no one was home, spotted what looked
like an animal-skin bedspread, and went berserk.

"It blew my mind," the defendant recalled. He never noticed that it was fake.

Ohta's wife, Virginia, was first to arrive. The intruder tied her up
and berated her for destroying the planet. Next to arrive was Dorothy
Cadwallader. She had offered a lift to one of Ohta's boys after
school. She and the boy were tied up, as were Ohta and his other son,
who arrived a few minutes later. Frazier said he had asked Ohta to
burn the house. Instead, Ohta offered him whatever he wanted. The
offer set Frazier into a rage, and he started shooting.

It took five hours for the jury to find Frazier guilty. During the
second trial, the defendant did his best to look crazy. He shaved
half his head and eyebrows, was heard muttering "far out" and "right
on" to himself, hurled crumpled newspaper clippings at reporters and
was seen reading George Orwell's "1984." Despite his actions, he
looked sane to the jury, which later sentenced him to death.

The sentence would never be carried out. Frazier, along with Charles
Manson and Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan were among the 107
Death Row inmates to be spared when California ended capital
punishment in 1972. The sentence was automatically commuted to life
in about as unnatural an environment as can be imagined - a prison cell.

Every five years, the longest interval allowed, he comes up for
parole. After his last hearing, in November 2008, Santa Cruz county
assistant district attorney issued a statement: "Some people deserve
to be punished for the rest of their lives. Frazier is such a man."

.

Ayers, King are Brandeis ideals

Ayers, King are Brandeis ideals

http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2009/03/17/OpEd/Ayers.King.Are.Brandeis.Ideals-3673428.shtml

by Zachary Matusheski
3/17/09

The University Senate Judiciary committee ruled last week that the
$900 to bring Bill Ayers of Weather Underground and Robert H. King of
the Black Panther Party was unconstitutional. By the letter of the
law, this may be true. But in a case like this, we must look beyond
the law to the spirit and history of Brandeis in order to fully
understand what Ayers and King have to teach students.

Two radical conceptions were sustained in the founding of Brandeis
University. Sometimes, students forget just how radical they were.
The first principle that Brandeis was founded on was fairness in
admissions; the second, justice across the board for all people.
Brandeis was a beacon of hope and fairness in 1948 when lynching was
still a way for whites to terrorize blacks and many residents of
suburbs were discriminating against blacks, Catholics and Jews.

Some of the great agitators against segregation and ending a shameful
war came from Brandeis. The hilarious Abbie Hoffman used to walk our
campus grounds. He practiced guerilla theater and actually tried to
nominate a pig for president in 1968. Though he has since passed
away, his unique legacy as an activist lives on.

Angela Davis graduated from Brandeis in 1965. Once placed on FBI's
top 10 most wanted list because a gun registered in her name was used
in a murder, her trial and acquittal were among the most influential
in the last 50 years. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California,
he waged a war against her academic career. In 1970 he circulated a
memo firing Davis for her political sympathies. He swore she would
never teach in the University of California system. She boldly ran
against Reagan as vice president on the Communist Party ticket and
now teaches at UC-Santa Cruz.

Davis and Hoffman were both harsh in their criticisms of the
government and society. Likewise, Brandeis' existence itself in the
late 1940s was a criticism of the problems with the government and
society in American way of life. Bill Ayers and Robert H. King
represent contemporaries of Hoffman and Davis. In the spirit of
Brandeis' foundation, we should embrace these two personalities and
welcome them to Brandeis wholeheartedly.

Distinguished alumni like Davis and Hoffman fought for social
justice. This tradition of social justice survives in the Student
Union's Social Justice Committee. While the image of the Black
Panthers, King's group, has been skewed in the public eye as a
radical leftist group, this group was primarily dedicated to the
virtue of social justice that we still value today. The Black
Panthers advocated community solidarity. They pioneered social
programs, some of which are a great deal like the federal programs.
They exercised their Constitutional right to carry guns in order to
point out California police officers' biased tendency to follow a
shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy.

Both the Panthers and the Weather Underground Organization, Ayers'
group, did unseemly things. Later on in the group's history, the
Panthers tried to extort money from the producers of The Mack. Some
paranoid Panthers shot people they thought were FBI undercover
agents. The Weather Underground participated in open violence to end
a war that was more violent than many can really imagine.

Because of these errors, members of these groups can teach students.
Both the Panthers and the WUO were filled with young, idealistic,
passionate people searching in sometimes extreme ways to fix clear
wrongs. Regardless of whether you agree with their politics, these
people have a special perspective. They can teach students at a
University founded on radical ideas how far to take those ideas. They
paid for their activism and they know the errors of youth better than
most. Their messages and thoughts on their experience provide
excellent learning opportunities for students in how to properly and
intelligently enact the ideals of justice that Brandeis was founded
on and that inspired alumni like Hoffman and Davis. For such a
valuable lesson, $900 is a small price for the University to pay.

.

Angela Davis speaks

Angela Davis speaks at Nassau college

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-lidavi1912560431mar19,0,6460520.story

BY KEITH HERBERT | keith.herbert@newsday.com
March 19, 2009

Angela Davis, 1960s civil rights activist, Communist, feminist and
prison-reform advocate, moved one Nassau Community College student to
tears Wednesday during her Women's History Month speech.

Catherine La, 32, a student from Queens, cried after hugging Davis.
La, who said she spent time in prison for a drug conviction, said she
found Davis inspirational.

"As a woman coming back to society, they want you to be a law-abiding
citizen, yet it's very hard for you to find a job," La said.

Davis' speech was titled "Transformative Strategies for Women."

Born in Birmingham, Ala., Davis, 65, attended Brandeis University and
studied overseas. She became active in the civil rights movement
while teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles and
later became a member of the Black Panthers and the Communist Party.

Davis spent a year in prison awaiting trial after guns registered to
her were used in a courtroom rescue attempt that left a judge dead in
1970. She was acquitted at trial.

Her speech Wednesday was part of the college's celebration of Women's
History Month.

During the question-and-answer portion of Davis' talk, one female
student disclosed that she had been raped. The student asked Davis,
who identifies herself as a prison abolitionist, what should happen
to a rapist if there are no prisons.

When the female student told her story of rape, Davis thanked her for
bravely telling her personal story. The activist said her own ideas
about prison reform don't mean that people would not be held responsible.

"It's not about extricating people from their accountability," Davis
said. "It's about imagining and building new forms of justice."

Davis suggested organizations that develop alternatives to the
criminal justice system, such as "restorative justice" in which the
justice system focuses on repairing the damage done to crime victims
and offender accountability is measured in terms of repairing harm.

Davis said that the nation's current criminal justice system, with 2
million people behind bars, needs to change.

A report released earlier this month by the Pew Center for the States
put the population in jails and prisons across the United States at
2.3 million. According to figures from the U.S. Department of
Justice, the United States has the highest incarceration rate and the
largest prison population of any country in the world.

Davis said that prison as punishment, particularly in cases of
domestic violence against women and children, doesn't solve the root
causes that spark violence.

"The underlying problems are never dealt with," said Davis, who also
has written a book, "Are Prisons Obsolete?"

After her speech, Davis said it isn't often that students admit to
being rape victims during one of her talks, but it was not without precedent.

Women's fight for equal rights began with women sharing deeply
personal stories, she said, adding, "I thought it is a good example of that."

.

'Classic Protest Songs From Smithsonian Folkways'

'Classic Protest Songs From Smithsonian Folkways' Out March 24th

http://www.cybergrass.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6080

On March 24th Smithsonian Folkways Recordings will release 'Classic
Protests Songs from Smithsonian Folkways,' a bold collection of songs
from the 1940s, '50s and '60s that pays homage to movements of
conscience and voices of dissent. 'Classic Protest Songs' features
music from Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Janis Ian, Big Bill Broonzy,
Pete Seeger, Barbara Dane, Guy Carawan, Phil Ochs, and an unreleased
track by Champion Jack Dupree titled "I'm Going to Write the Governor
of Georgia."

Smithsonian Folkways' Mark Gustafson and Jeff Place mined the
archives to compile this album, the first in the "Classic" CD series
to draw songs from other labels in the Smithsonian Folkways
collection (Paredon, Fast Folk, Monitor Records). Accompanied by a
32-page booklet with an introduction by archivist Place and
insightful song notes and bios, 'Classic Protest Songs' is a
testament to the power of song to fuel change. When Harry Smith,
creator of the 'Anthology of American Folk Music,' received a GRAMMY
Award just a few months before his death in 1991, he said, "I'm glad
to say that my dreams came true--that I saw America changed through
music." On these 22 tracks, marquee artists let their voices ring out
with calls for peace and justice in iconic songs that not only
inspired many people's dreams decades ago but continue to do so
today. For example, Billy Bragg turned Lead Belly's "Bourgeois Blues"
into his own antiwar anthem, "Bush War Blues." The enduring relevance
of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," about an America for all
its people, was in clear evidence at President Obama's nationally
televised inaugural concert, where Bruce Springsteen performed it
live with Pete Seeger.

Songs range from blues to corridos to gospel-inspired anthems of the
Civil Rights Movement. Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," named "Song
of the Century" by Time magazine in 1999, was a condemnation of
American racism and lynchings. Brother John Sellers, whose version of
"Strange Fruit" appears in this collection, was a major influence on
the young Bob Dylan, who penned two of the songs covered here,
"Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind." Each of the 17 albums now
comprising the best-selling "Classic" series, traces formative styles
and performers of American music. These engaging collections of rare
recordings illustrate the key role Moses Asch and his Folkways label
played in preserving a vital piece of American history. Other
releases from the "Classic" series include 'Piano Blues' (2008);
'African American Gospel' (2008); 'Old-Time Fiddle' (2007); 'African
American Ballads' (2006); 'Canadian Songs' (2006); 'Labor Songs'
(2006); 'Railroad Songs' (2006); 'Bluegrass Vol. 2' (2005); 'Southern
Gospel' (2005); 'Folk Music' (2004); and 'Maritime Music' (2004).

NOTE: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings retail distribution is through
RYKO Distribution at 800.808.RYKO. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
releases are available through record and book outlets. Smithsonian
Folkways Recordings, as well as the original Folkways, Cook,
Dyer-Bennet, Monitor, Paredon, Collector and Fast Folk collections,
are available via mail order at 1.888.FOLKWAYS or 800.410.9815 and
via the Internet.

Visit the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings website at
www.folkways.si.edu and www.SmithsonianGlobalSound.org.

.

Lighting up the shroom

Lighting up the shroom

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/031909/film1.html

Ron Mann discusses spacey theories, DIY distribution and his
illuminating new documentary, Know Your Mushrooms

3/19/09
by MALCOLM FRASER

Ron Mann, the Toronto-based documentarian who's chronicled the
counterculture and its characters for over 20 years in films like
Poetry in Motion, Comic Book Confidential, Grass and Tales of the Rat
Fink, is a bit of a character himself. His trademark mane of hair is
now entirely white, but his enthusiasm and positivity would shame
many a man half his age.

Sitting down with the Mirror to discuss his latest doc, Know Your
Mushrooms­a peculiar kind of educational film on the wide varieties
of edible fungi and the good they do for the world­Mann spends a
third of our allotted time singing the praises of his friend and
mentor, Montreal-based Hollywood screenwriter-turned-yoga instructor
Len Blum before getting on topic. Like his other films, and like Mann
himself, Know Your Mushrooms is full of information delivered in a
fun manner, outwardly goofy but with a deeper message to deliver.

Centred on the Telluride Mushroom Festival, the film follows two of
the festival's keynote speakers: Larry Evans, a nomadic
mushroom-picking expert known as "the Indiana Jones of mushrooms,"
and botanical authority Gary Lincoff. Woven through their
testimonials are corny animated sequences illustrating mushroom
factoids, copious footage of the festival's frolicking fungophiles,
and archival clips of late left-field mushroom enthusiasts Terence
McKenna (who believed that magic mushrooms played a key role in human
evolution) and John Allegro (who's shown speculating to an
astonished, comically stuffy British interviewer that Jesus Christ
may have actually been a mushroom).

FOREST FORAY

The film originated from a seemingly unlikely source. "Jim Jarmusch,
a filmmaker, a friend and a fungophile, told me about the Telluride
Mushroom Festival," recounts Mann. "I went down there and got turned
on to these mushroom freaks like Larry Evans and Gary Lincoff. I went
on a mushroom foray, which is a 'Where's Waldo' hide and seek in the
forest with mushrooms. And I came out of the forest a completely
different person.

"Jim would say things to me like 'Do you know that the DNA of
mushrooms are closer to humans than they are to plants?' And I'd go
'Really?' It's kind of like you start to see mushrooms in the forest
in a different context, as having a
powerful attraction, very magical."

Mann initially intended to make a fictional film­"an Alice in
Wonderland story" starring Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Finnish filmmaker Aki
Kaurismäki and the Band keyboardist Garth Hudson.

But with funding tight and Jarmusch's schedule tighter, he found
himself reconsidering. "It was a week before the next Telluride
Mushroom Festival. I said to myself, 'You know what, I'm gonna go
down to just film what I can. If I have a film there, great. If not,
then I'll do the drama.' And it turned out I went down, and that's
this movie. But I wrote a drama with Jim being lost in the woods and
hallucinating, which maybe I'll do one day as a parallel, the fiction
version of Know Your Mushrooms."

Although mushrooms of the magic variety are far from the only kind
discussed in the film­there's as much time devoted to oyster
mushrooms' ability to clean up oil spills­psilocybin does play a key
role. Lincoff tells a hilarious, epic anecdote about his first trip,
and many of the Telluride festival's participants seem permanently
addled. The far-out theories espoused by McKenna and Allegro are
taken at face value, and in person, Mann doesn't seem at all
skeptical. "It's all speculative, but it makes you think about what
is possible," he says. "I love those kinds of theories… it even goes
further out than you think, and I know a lot of people who've
communicated with mushrooms.

"At first, you go 'Okay…' But the truth is, why not? I just read
about a toy that Mattel is producing using bio-waves, [with which]
you can move objects using your brain! It's like Carrie! It's
telekinesis­I mean, how is that possible? It's what Allen Ginsberg
said to me once: 'Everything the freaks were saying at the fringe
actually came true.' So that's what it is about this film and these
people. They're really onto something with mushrooms."

Among his fellow converts is Flaming Lips singer (and recent Arcade
Fire antagonist) Wayne Coyne, who composed a couple of original Lips
songs for the Mushrooms soundtrack. "Wayne I met at South By
Southwest, when we were on a panel together. He was an admirer of my
film Grass­surprise, surprise. And I thought it was appropriate to
ask him to write a song for the film. I actually didn't think he was
gonna do it, but three months later in my inbox was this perfect song."

HIPPIE HEROES

From Dream Tower, his film on Toronto's Rochdale College (a downtown
communal experiment gone wrong) to docs like Grass and the Woody
Harrelson organic-living manifesto Go Further, Mann's films have
often documented the faded but still lingering echoes of '60s social
movements. Though Know Your Mushrooms risks preaching to the
converted with its unabashedly hippie stance, Mann is unapologetic
about staking a claim for the old-school counterculture.

"When I started making movies in the '80s, Reagan was really
hell-bent on rewriting the '60s, in that everything was reduced to
failure," he explains. "It was all sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Anything that was positive out of that, from education to music, had
to deal with a conservative backlash. We didn't have back then a
pervasive documentary movement because film was expensive. Television
reflected that conservative culture.

"My thing, my project, was to take the artists and musicians and
creative people that I'd read and experienced in the '60s and '70s,
and have a record of their work… a record of art history that
wouldn't exist otherwise. I see myself as a cultural historian rather
than a documentary filmmaker­someone who has a responsibility to go
out and give credit to a lot of artists who are heroes of mine.

"There's a record by Eric Dolphy, and at the end of the record he
says 'Music's in the air, and then it's gone.' That was the reason
for making the films, to capture that moment before it's gone, so we
have a legacy. Art history in the 20th century is audio-visual. If it
wasn't recorded, it didn't happen! People are remembered by the
stories they leave. And that's documentary. It's our oral histories
that defy death, that make us almost immortal."

BOX OFFICE DOCS

As much as he may flirt with the flaky, Mann is a canny enough
businessman to survive in a difficult environment for filmmaking­he
runs his own distribution company, Filmswelike. "It was started
because a friend of mine, Sam Green, who made The Weather
Underground, couldn't find a distributor in Canada. By default, I
s