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Blue-Tail Fly, No. 6

Blue-Tail Fly, No. 6 Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- 400dpi TIFF G4 page images Lexington, Ky. : Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- Lexington, Kentucky 2010 2008ua008_1_6 These pages may freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. This is the hi-resolution version of this text. Blue-Tail Fly, No. 6 Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- Lexington, Ky. : Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- Lexington, Kentucky. ?? This electronic text file was created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). No corrections have been made to the OCR-ed text and no editing has been done to the content of the original document. Encoding has been done through an automated process using the recommendations for Level 1 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file. UK J 2- Number Six § 9 25 cents fly The struggle at Muldraugh m contents The Conspiracy Trial, page 5 Jeff Shero The struggle at Muldraugh, page 6 Bucky Young and Nick DeMartino photographs by Bill Luster, pages 8 and 9 Sayings and Doings, page 10 Wendell Berry 14 ideas on Charlie Manson, page 12 flicks: Z and Zabriskie Point, page 15 cover: photograph by Nick DeMartino The blue-tail fly is published monthly by blue-tail fly, inc. at 210 W. Third Street, Lexington, Ky. 40507. blue-tail fly Vol. 1, no. 6 W staff: Guy Mendes, Rick Bell, David Holwerk, Jack Lyne, Bucky Young, Nick DeMartino, Sue Anne Salmon, John Simon, Julie Mendes, Gretchen Marcum, Chuck Koehler, Don Pratt, Ralph Brown, Doug Stewart, Kevin Hill, Geoffrey Pope, John Beckman, Bonnie Cherry, Paul Genin, Tony Urie and Becky Martin. G3(o]8®s Repression, Tennessee-style , KNOXVILLE - Since the arrest of 22 people on January 15 at the University of Tennessee, continued and escalating police harassment has radicalized thousands to the reality of 1984 and to the necessity of fighting it now. "It's war", remarked Governor Ellington a week before the bust. "We want every long-hair in jail or out of the state". To realize the goal, the state arrested 22 at a peaceful demonstration in a carefully set up bust. Hours of film were taken and the three thousand people present that day have been told that they are subject to arrest any time within the next three years on the basis of that film. Their crime would be participating in an assemblage of three or more people in which acts of violence occur (the cops beat heads) or the threat of violence was present. It is a felony that reads nearly verbatim to the law the Chicago 5 were convicted on and carries up to ten years in the penitentiary. The state intends to use the law and the film to silence anyone who becomes politically active about any issue. So far, additional indictments include (among others) Robert Schiffer, a member of the Faculty-Student Committee on ROTC and Barry Bozeman whose father is a judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court and the only sympathetic judge in the area. Schiffer* s indictment followed a series of three letters he had written to the school newspaper criticizing the behavior of John Baugh, Secretary to the Board of Trustees and member of the ROTC Com- mittee "A" in charge of legal agreements between the Defense Department and the University. He is also chief legal counsel to the University. On the day of the demonstration, he was frantically threatening students and professors alike and promising bloody confrontation. He revealed the "Brown list" of the University which contains the names of political activists to be arrested at the earliest convenience for whatever reason possible. January 15 netted 22 from the list. Barry Bozeman was indicted six weeks after the incident. His father, C. Howard Bozeman, is a Democrat and an interim Justice on the State Supreme Court. The night before his son was arrested he was phoned by the Nashville Tennessean and told, "It has just come over the wire that the Republicans in Knox County have indicted your son". Bozeman may have been the judge to hear the suit filed against the state to test the constitutionality of the law. Now he is effectively eliminated from the case, at the expense of ten years of his son's life. The University is not limiting itself to this law alone to clean up Knoxville. Drug busting gets heavier by the day. Chief victims are those who come to demonstrations and the bands who provide the community with music. Another form of repression has come down on Bob Madell, a math professor who has been outspoken in the past. On January 15, he was threatened with arrest by John Baugh' and since that time his contract for the coming year is in jeopardy. As the community grows aware of the nature of Facism, the struggle against it accelerates. A mass "Southern March Against Repression" is scheduled for April 12. We will assemble in Nashville to march on the capital to protest the repression from Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. The day before, there will be a conference on southern strategy. Speakers and bands are being arranged. For details contact: Up Country Revival, Box 8590, U.T. Station, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916. A trip to the graveyard By BUCKY YOUNG "And it's one, two, three, what are we marching for?" (apologies to Country Joe and the Fish) or "We're only ii\ it for the symbolism" (same to the Mothers of Invention) FRANKFORT - On Saturday, March 7, we made a trip to the graveyard. In fact, we made the graveyard, too. It was all symbolic. It could only be symbolic. An antiwar demonstration in Frankfort, Ky., cannot be anything other than symbolic. There could be no illusions that our march was going to stop the war, as if any march could. The mourning, too, was only symbolic. There was a silent death contingent carrying somber "Another Kentuckian Killed" signs and there were white cardboard crosses to mark the symbolic graves of the 900 or so Kentuckians killed in Vietnam. But the march through the sedate streets of Frankfort under the eerie haze of a solar eclipse in a cloudless sky was not conducive to mourning. The good people of Frankfort lined the streets and gaped in perplexity at the exotic invaders of their fair town and oh my gosh, Marge, would you look at that one. We were aware of the death and senseless human agony we had come to raise our voices against, but even as we were keeping up the strains of "Give Peace a Chance," we could not keep our minds fixed on war and death, not even when we had formed our graveyard and were lying on the hillside with crosses on our chests. The cloudless blue sky overhead, the green grass beneath us, the warm breeze that made the crosses bend and sway were life, not death. It was a peaceful day and a peaceful march, but there were confrontations. Symbolic confrontations. There were "Jesus Freaks" passing out newspapers proclaiming "the world's greatest revolutionary" and trying to start conversations ('That's a Roy Rogers button you're wearing... You know, he's on our side ..."). And there were the Red Flags with their revolutionary rhetoric who were constantly wary of being co-opted by anyone and everyone. A couple of them held their flags instead of crosses in the graveyard and were asked to lower them for the benediction and started to comply but didn't when one of them shouted back, 'The revolution never laid down for religion before and it isn't going to start now" but at least partially relented when asked again. It was a crisis in principles for them and it was not impossible to sympathize with their dilemma even if some of them had called you a capitalist an hour or so before because you were selling the "fly". The same sort of controntation came Number Six Personalities Dept. Meet Lexington, Kentucky's most distinguished narks. On the left is Frank "That's My Name, Ask Me Again and I'll Tell You the Same" Fryman. Just recently he was named as Lexington's top cop. On the right is Jay "Call Me Hip" Sylvestro. Notice the wire-rims, pastel shirt and groove-burger sideburns. Far out. He's doing his Jimmy Olsen impersonation. Fryman's doing Frank Fryman. This photograph was taken at a panel discussion last month on dope and the law sponsored by the University of Kentucky SDS. About two hundred souls attended, most of them heads. Fryman said he was their to "bridge the communications gap" and to prove it he brought along the Sonny Bono anti-grass film, in which a fella hits up with a puff or two of marijuana, looks in a mirror and sees himself turn into a grusome monster. After the show, at least one local dealer was mumbling about getting "some of the stuff that dude was using." Sylvestro didn't say why he was there. He just grinned real nice and started with, "My friends ..." He was asked right off whether he ever used or sold dope when he was a student at Transylvania College. Most of us knew the answer and knew it would serve as further credibility measurement. He evaded it at first, was asked "yes or no?", looked around a bit and said, "Mmmmmmmmmmmm, no." Not too long ago Sylvestro told one of his bustees that he was for legalization too, but that he was working from inside the system. Fryman was asked about the amount of time between announcing their presence at a body's door and busting down said door. "We take 'em like they come." "Does that mean you can announce yourself while barging in?" "Just about." Question: "Can an undercover agent smoke pot with a person before he arrests him?" Answer: If the undercover agent is in a positon in which the case is in danger, he can fake it. (A guy next to me says: 'This nark I turned on took more than I did. And did he get blasted!") Question: "Have you ever smoked, dropped or shot?" Answer: "A doctor working with poison does not use it to see if it kills." After this question a tray of water glasses was passed among the panelists (a lawyer and a law professor also took part). The audience grinned a collective shit-eating grin and both Fryman and Silvestro passed up the water. At one point, Fryman told the crowd that the police didn't have the time or funds to do as much drug sleuthing as they'd like, that "drug efforts are special efforts." After he was recently named as Lexington's top policeman, he was given his own brand spanking new narcotics division. So Frank Fryman's headline grabbing marijuana busts will probably be stepped up"as will the steady flow of heroin that really fucks people up, some of whom haven't been out of Lexington's narcotics hospital for 20 minutes. The police know about the smack, but it's not the stuff headlines are made of. You can't bust many students that way And it won't ever get you to be chief, or president. up shortly afterwards when the speeches began. The confrontation was drawn most sharply by a young woman active in organizing the GI movement and by a Kentucky poet. Susan Schermerhorn, who has been jailed twice and attacked by a vigilante mob in response to her work with the Muldraugh Coffeehouse, sounded the call to "fight back." She was persuasive, not because of eloquence, but because of the reality of the situation. When the army, the elected officials and the lobotomized townspeople all are out after your ass with no relief in sight, your peaceful options don't seem very convincing. Especially when the same kind of thing is happening all across the country. "It's cool to say 'give peace a chance,'" she said, "but we've got to fight and get something done." She was followed by Wendell Berry, who offered us a vision of an ephemeral, personal kind of peace. A kind of peace only slightly related to foreign policy and political concepts. He condemned the war and all that, of course, and with good words. But he also criticized those who take up "a noble cause" only to be corrupted by self-righteousness. "I will call no one a pig or a redneck," he said. "For I have no doubt that people who think or talk in those terms only further the problem. I would not want to degrade their humanity, for I would be degrading my own." He said he was taken aback by those who act out of panic and other emotions in their search for peace and who adopt the "postures and melodrama of right-I eous warfare." He said "I am troubled by the young people who have worked so hard for peace and have given up or turned on to violence." He said that we should have known that attaining peace would be difficult. He said a mouthful. He was urging us to recover the ideals which had brought us into the Movement in the first place and which seem to be getting lost in the struggle. The issue comes down to this: Would not another revolution based on violence actually be counterrevolutionary? Or, is not a nonviolent revolution in the face of overwhelming violence a delusion? Other speakers, briefly: Joe Cole, one of the Ft. Jackson eight " a group which was thrown into the Ft. Jackson stockade for 61 days for organizing antiwar meetings among GI's at the base " said "Nixon has a plan for withdrawal " if it takes the next hundred years." Bruce Sawyer, a former Marine 1st Lt. ââ€"  who served in Vietnam, gave a first-hand account of day-to day atrocities in Vietnam and how the Marines brutalize and indoctrinate recruits at Paris Island into hating Vietnamese. Sawyer, now a UK student, began his speech by saying, "People, you're looking at a murderer right now." He estimated that his platoon of SO men alone was responsible for the deaths of 200 people during its tour in Vietnam. "You should have seen what we did to them," he said of the treatment U.S. servicemen gave Vietnamese civilians. Kathie Pratt, of Lexington Women's Lib, told how women relate to the war " not just because the war takes their husbands and sons " but also because it requires that women be exploited economically to sustain the war machine. Gene Mason, a UK political science professor, noted that Nixon's election to the presidency reflected the American people's rejection of the Johnson-Humphrey war policy. "How they were tricked, double-tricked and triple-tricked by Tricky Dick," he said, pointing out that the war is producing more casualties now than before. Dr. Mason described the brutal treatment accorded Vietnamese civilians under official U.S. policy and cited information showing that the reaction of most Americans to the My Lai slaughter was similar to that of the Germans to the genocidal killing of Jews during WWII. "One of these days we are going to wake up with a big hang-over from this whole Nazi trip," he said. There was at least one part of the march which wasn't symbolic. Six young men turned in their draft cards to serve notice they would no longer cooperate with the Selective Service System. Those six people are taking on a very real fight against a very massive adversary. All power to them. Back in Louisville, we pulled up behind a lady with a "Back Nixon for Peace" bumber sticker on her car. At least we did come back from the graveyard. No thanks, lady, to Richard Nixon " the Man with the Plan. Hair and the courts The "hair" issue cropped up recently in three widely-seperated parts of the state, with a couple of cases causing hairballs in officialdom's stomachs and more promising to do so in the future. In Northern Kentucky, an unexpected ally emerged. U.S. District Court Judge Mac Swin-ford " a man of 70 " has warned at least one local school board and its administrative employees that it cannot impose conformity on the students " especially as it relates to such things as dress codes. "I'm not sure if those of us who seek to be conventional have a right to demand it of everybody else," the Cynthi-ana judge said. "Those who flaunted convention often brought about desirable results." Covington attorneys Stephen T. McMurtry and Patrick M. Flannery, who together form the closest thing to a local civil liberties law firm, filed the first hair suit in the Covington court late in February. John Alfred Fey Jr., 18, a junior at Newport High School, went to the attorneys after he was suspended from school because of his Jesus-length hair. The school dress code says men's hair cannot extend below a line behind the head connecting the two ear lobes. (All students without shaved heads or a bad case of ringworm would he in violation.) The judge granted the youth a temporary restraining order immediately (although the board chose to ignore it) and a permanent injunction after a hearing. Theoretically, Fey is free to attend classes unmolested. Passing may be the hangup. Two Erlanger Lloyd High School seniors, suspended last fail because they refused to shave their sideburns to the bottom of the ear lobes, moved into the picture next. They had filed suit before liberal judge Robert Lukowsky in Kenton Circuit Court after their suspensions, but the judge ruled hair length was proper subject for "reasonable regulation" by the school officials. The suit was taken to federal court after the Fey ruling. Because the law forbids the federal court to act as a reviewer of the local court, Judge Swinford refused the two any injunctive relief, and is likely to dismiss the case. On the same day, however, he granted attorney McMurtry and client Jon Redell, 17, Alexandria, a restraining order against the Campbell County High School authorities. Redell also was suspended because of long hair, according to the suit. Unless something unforeseen surfaces, the Judge will again rule against suppression when the case is given a hearing. Down state in Central Kentucky, Georgetown's City Police Judge Roy Beatty told a Georgetown College student he could either submit to a haircut or face a 20-day jail sentence for not having a $10 city auto sticker on his Ohio-licensed car. The student, Dave Cope, paid an $ 18.50 fine and took the hair cut rather than go to jail. A few days later about 80 Georgetown students marched to the county courthouse to protest " sort of. Their main tactic was the singing of the song "Hair." The judge, who watched it all, was quoted as saying afterwards that "It wasn't a bad march, I had expected a lot more." He also said he's had several similar cases and "no one has ever gone to jail." In Fulton County, in the extreme western part of the state, the principal of Fulton County High School threatened eight black students and one white student with suspensions because he determined that they were in violation of the school's brand new personal appearance rules. He had previously suspended the eight blacks (along with one other brother) for not shaving, but U.S. District Judge James Gordon of Louisville ordered the students readmitted with excused absences because the school had no official personal appearance code. (The students had been out of schools since February 2 when the judge ordered them back on March 11.) One week later, Fulton High Principal Bobby Childers had his "official" code and was ready to suspend eight of the nine blacks " the ninth's moustach was "not obvious," the principal decided " and one white student who has long hair. Louisville attorney Robert Delahanty, who works with the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union, was ready to take up the case should the students be thrown out again. Foranus Tyrannosaurus CHICAGO (LNS)-U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Foran is contemptuous of the Chicago 10. Speaking before an enthusiastic group of 200 Loyola Academy Boosters Club members in Suburban Wilmette on Feb. 26, the prosecutor vented 90 minutes worth of four and a half months of frustration. "Bobby Seale had more guts and more charisma than any of them," Foran said. "And he was the only one I don't think was a fag." See related story, page 5 The run down on the deviants went as follows: Abbie Hoffman is "scummy but clever;" Dare Dellinger is a "sneak" who "uses people like a ventriloquist;" defense attorneys Bill Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass are "mouthpieces" who "have no sense of professional responsibility. They were incredibly (unprofessional, and they deserved what they got." What they and the other defendants got was an unprecedented total of nearly 15 years in contempt sentences. Bill Kunstler's 4-year, 22-day sentence is the blue-tail fly 3 harshest sentence for contempt in this country's history. Referring to the defendants and Seale, who was severed from the trial early on contempt charges for attempting to conduct his own defense, Foran said "They used that kid as though they were masters of the plantation. They used him so grossly and so callously that I can't see how the news media couldn't see it." Foran seemed particularly worked up about press coverage of his cross-examination of Rennie Davis, the apex and glory of his vindictive career: "It was the hardest cross-examination I've ever had.. That kid is as smart as a whip, but after two and a half days, I got him to admit that he had come to Chicago to discredit the government." Meanwhile, the media was eminently unimpressed. "It never got in the papers or on TV," Foran whined. "Instead all they wrote about was Norman Mailer, who took the stand next." "Mailer is a jackass," rasped Foran. Foran told of the "superhuman effort" it had taken him to withstand the taunts and teasing of the defendants, particularly Rennie. "I was his man," Foran said. "He'd sit near me and keep whispering insults to me all day about my sexual prowess." In his. closing statement to the assembled school group, Foran called for action on the part of the parents of the younger generation. "We've lost our kids to the freaking fag revolution and we've got to save them. Our kids don't understand that we IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PEDDLE BTF'S IN THE LOUISVILLE AREA, CALL; PAUL GENIN AT 636-4940 j OR NICK DEMARTINO AT i 451-5853. REMEMBER, YOU KEEP A DIME ON EACH PAPER SOLD. don't mean anything by it when we call people niggers," he concluded. "They look at us then like we're dinosaurs when we talk like that." Test bust in Mississippi JTTA BENA, Miss. (LNS)-On Feb. 10, a handpicked posse of 58 black policemen arrested 894 black student demonstrators at Mississippi Valley State College (MVSC) and herded them into buses bound for the state penitentiary at Parchman. It was the largest mass arrest of students in the nation's history. It was also the first bust ever pulled off with the advice and assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice. Yet the incident went largely unnoticed. It went unnoticed for a lot of reasons, most of them bad. It went unnoticed because the demands of the student body did not appear on the surface to have much radical content, because few people recognized the significance of the federal government intervention, because MVSC is a small black college in the south rather than one of the well-known elite universities. In other words, the government knew what it was doing, knew that MVSC was a good place to try out their new apparatus without a lot of adverse publicity and knew the importance of a student struggle that student activists in other places could shrug off as reformist or liberal. Five days before the mass bust, the entire student body of MVSC had gone out on strike to enforce a list of 30 demands presented to the administration more than a month before. The demands ranged from elimination of dress regulations to improvement of the faculty"as a whole they struck at the very core of the educational system of which MVSC is a prime example"separate and unequal education. , As in all black, state-supported colleges in the South, the main duty of the administration is, to paraphrase Ralph Ellison, "to keep the niggers running." Or The store announces Reverse Discrimination Week, April 1-7. Thirty percent discounts on everything to blacks and freaky-looking people. Just bring along this ad. . . We have just received some nice leather goods and have a nice selection of candles, aviators' sunglasses, Russian Revolution posters and "Peace Flags" (below) in patches, 2x3 cloth flags and window decals. 157 8. lime 1969 S.B.S. at least quiet and out of sight. That, of course, rules out any real education, because everyone know that an educated man is dangerous, particularly if he is black and lives in Mississippi Naturally, MVSC has no programs involving students in efforts for change within the black community. Such programs, if effective, would bring a strong reaction from the local powers-that-be, and then* displeasure would quickly be communicated to the legislature. Moreover, students would have the experience of growing intellectually while simultaneously working for the welfare of their people and maintaining then ties with the community. Every effort is made to isolate the student from his background and his environment. Students are taught to dress "well," to speak "properly," and to appreciate "culture" so that they will be strangers when they return to the shacks and streets from which they came. Courses emphasize theory over practice"the arid and academic over the vital and practical. One learns about the American two-party system rather than political reality in the one-party south. One analyzes the blood relationships of medieval royalty not of the families that control LeFlore County. One learns about taxation without representative in the Thirteen Colonies in 1776, not in Mississippi in 1970. First-class living conditions on a campus not only cost money but they might also give students first-class ideas about themselves. A shoddiness around the edges pervades the MVSC campus. Building maintenance is slipshod. Classroom windows don't close. Laundry faculties are inadequate. Stalls in the restrooms have no doors; showers have no curtains. There are only two telephones in each dorm"one pay phone and one extension. Landscaping in minimal, and inadequate drainage turns lawns into swamps when the rains come. Second-class facilities for second-class citizens. Student demands for improvement of the physical plant, for extension of dormitory visiting and curfew hours for young women and abolition of rules regulating dress may sound frivolous to the initiated but they strike at the heart of the system of indoctrination. And nobody knows this better than the administration of the school. So when the situation started to get out of hand they turned for help to the biggest powers around, the federal government. They turned to the Justice Department's Law Streets Act of 1968 and empowered by President Nixon to give "technical assistance" in local suppression of "campus disorders." LEA A officials in Atlanta and Washington came up with the idea of using black policemen to pull off a quiet bust and scoured the state of Mississippi to come up with the 58 cops who did the job. When it was all over, officials involved with the bust at the local, state and national levels were very pleased with themselves. Smug statements were issued from offices in Mississippi, Atlanta, and Washington, while over one third of MVSC s 2500 students were getting bailed out. And the administration of MVSC announced a policy of "selective admissions" to weed out the more active students from the campus. Santa Barbara's student ghetto By Mark Aulman and Floyd Norris SANTA BARBARA (CPS)-The National Guard has been almost completely withdrawn from Isla Vista and the campus community here, and people are wondering why Santa Barbara, of all places, exploded into violence. For years the University of California campus at Santa Barbara, which has its own beach, has been known as a party school. Politically conscious students did not go there. Hints of change appeared last month as over half of the campus's 15,000 students signed petitions backing Anthropology Professor William Allen, a popular professor who is being denied tenure for unspecified reasons. Students generally believed his radical politics and failure to keep "professional distance" from the students were responsible for the dismissal Massive demonstrations on campus failed to produce any change in the administration's position that the issue was settled, and an open hearing, called for by the student's petition, was held in violation of University rules. Nineteen students were arrested following the demonstrations. There were no demands involved in the recent violence, which included the burning of a Branch of the Bank of America, because the riots were essentially a leaderless socio-political phenomenon. The riots were concentrated in Isla Vista, a one square mile area next to the campus in which 10,000 students are housed. The student newspaper, EI Gaucho, calls Isla Vista a "student ghetto" and many students believe the riots were analogous to ghetto riots in big cities. Isla Vista is controlled by several realty companies, which, with the Bank of America, are seen by students as symbols of excessive profiteering and exploitation of minority groups, including the students themselves. Isla Vista does have many characteristics of a ghetto such as absentee landlords, rents and prices which are disproportionate to living conditions, lack of community services except police, occupation by .a single social class which lives there solely out of economic necessity, economic domination of the area by outside interests, social-cultural-physical isolation and a growing level of dangerous crime. El Gaucho remarked that residents of Isla Vista finally reacted to their ghetto "in the same manner - that Blacks in Newark reacted to theirs." Many politicians have blamed Chicago Seven Defense Attorney William Kunstler for the riot, ignoring the fact violence began the day before he spoke on the UCSB campus. Gov. Ronald Reagan has demanded an investigation which he hopes will lead to Kunstler's arrest for crossing state lines with intent to incite to riot, the same crime five of the Chicago Seven were convicted of. Students generally laugh at that theory, saying politicians want to avoid facing the realities of the situation in Isla Vista. on f CLOTHES Number Six The Conspiracy Trial By JEFF SHERO The U.S. ended the trial of the Conspiracy Eight with all the subtlety of a bludgeoning. Despite the messy close and the muted cries of the professional observers in the press gallery, the defendants' demise came by club rather than through rapier thrusts. But then there is something to be said for the club. It's effective. Judge Hoffman's trial procedure is the judicial equivalent to Mayor Daley's handling of peaceful assemblies: they forsake surgical neatness for slam-bang thoroughness. The strategy of Lincoln Park, and lized character don't produce messy emotional reaction. But it's clear the liberal's day is passed. The stench of the Empire's decay begins to waft into the nostrils of its children and the lines are drawn. The Kings and Kennedys are killed. Their replacements, the Nixons, Mitchells, Reagans, and Hayakawas, aren't concerned with style, only results. The government didn't treat it's number one political trial lig'htly. It was with some care and forethought that Julius Hoffman was selected Judge. No slip-ups; they wanted a judge and an executioner. That's what they got. ing for the defense on the grounds that the testimony would be "irrelevant. " But the real gutting of the defense rested in the continued sustaining of the prosecutor's objections to lines of questioning and admittance of evidence. Working in tandem, the government team of prosecutor and judge prevented important testimony from being heard. In many cases defendants took time in jail in the form of contempt in order to get information to the jury. Rennie Davis received six months for contempt because the judge continually admonished him to keep his testimony brief and "to the point. " Without daring and disruptions the defendants would have played their Th£ Pe&umrr Ameses W COURT MS HIM0FHI5, C0NSTITO TlONJrU RIGHTS. eke w verzwmT m co-oetewwTs sioe \ b)m rue vmwmr. mime THff cM&eaHss. -m PREfc IS CRITICAL \ IMFDWOP THt PRESS. \ TtteCOUtOTR^ IS \ \ -M M6teUR6S TN(£ti H5R6 TMY/feOlllX TO A PAIR TRIAL- the Federal Courtroom is the same as Vietnam: Overkill. Bomb them back into the Stone Age. Get those leaders out of the streets and into the jails. By any means necessary. The sides are drawn: The Empire or revolution. All the participants understand. The cops come down hard; the defendants' peers answer back in the streets of twenty-five cities. Only the observers fail to understand. As with Vietnam, they don't question the government's ultimate aims, they protest the messy way the deed is carried out. The critics prefer the clean kill, the rapier thrust, or, better yet, a silent poisoning. Social engineering over guns, channeling instead of punitive law, pacification instead of confrontation - methods whose civi- blue-tail fly This wasn't a trial of pretension; there were a dozen reversible errors. Beginning the first day, the judge never really questioned the jury as to whether they had pre-trial knowledge or prejudice. At the end it was revealed that one of the two male jurors, John Nelson, thought the defendants should have been shot down in the park, and one middle-aged woman stubbornly held out for locking them away on the rationale of "Would you like your children to grow up like them? " But the defense could have won even with this prejudiced middle-aged jury if it had been allowed to present its case. Hoffman never gave them that chance. Critics bemoan the spectacular rulings such a as that which barred ex-Attorney General Ramsey Clark from testify- own grave diggers. Decorum in the face of Fascism is silly. The government would have gotten itself a Conspiracy Conviction in addition to a conviction for crossing state lines with the intent to riot if the defendants had played by the rules. The Benedict Arnold of the Youth Movement, twenty-three-old Kay Richards, cinched the verdict. The old people were stalled after four days; a black woman and a housewife with a hip daughter who regularly attended the trial held out for acquittal. In her copyrighted serialized story in the Chicago Sun-Times. Kay Richards described how she mediated between the deadlocked factions. She says that she wanted to save the government the expense of a retrial. Though she writes that the defendants opened new ways of continued on page 13 5 0 fa ¢9 by BUCKY YOUNG and NICK DEMARTINO As this is written, about 20 people so far have been arrested, rearrested, intimidated or beat in jail, intimidated or beat outside of jail, required to put up exorbitant bonds on exorbitant charges and/or generally harfassed. And for what? At most, for providing facilities for GI's to organize against the blatant repression they are constantly subjected to and against their being used as pawns in the mass murder that is Vietnam. At least, for providing facilities where GI's can talk freely and just relax. The establishment media call this sort of thin^ tyranny if it takes place in Russia. When it takes place in their own back yard, they give it, at most, a reproving shake of the head and weak-kneed coverage. The blue-tail fly decided the best way to tell the story would be to let the GI's and civilians involved tell it themselves. We arranged to record a rap session at the Coffeehouse to do this. About 30 or 40 people were present, some rapping and some just listening. No names are used in the interview; we'd hate to be the cause of these people getting dumped on any more they they already have. The interview begins with the Coffeehouse people (CH) answering a request to elaborate on their previous charges that people jailed for lcafleting March 5 and 6 were beat in jail. CH: Yeah, well, I don't know where to begin. There were seven of us in jail and also a black GI all locked up in what they call a bullpen upstairs -- this is in the Brandenburg Jail. So there are eight of us in the bullpen and some of the GI's figured out that each person had the room in there of two and a half times the size of the average coffin. But, anyway, that's another story. They came -- I guess it was Tuesday - - I forget exactly what day it was -- Tuesday morning and didn't tell us anything. Just called one of the GI's and opened up the bullpen, and we hadn't even got out of bed yet so we had to get dressed and everything. At that point we had no knowledge of what was going on on the outside because we had been completely cut off from the outside. So we assumed they were taking us off to court and that we would probably be released or something. We didn't know. They called one GI at a time, took them downstairs, and at this time we just assumed everyone was getting out. They took down three GI's, one at a time, handcuffed them behind the back and took them outside. Each one yelled as they went by the window, "Power to the people" and we did some yelling to them. The rest of us were still locked up in the bullpen and they'd take another person down until they took three people-down, and we figured out they didn't have the bullpen locked -- just hooked -- and so we opened it up and all just busted out and went out to the rest of the jail, still asssuming that all of us were going to be taken away. It wasn't until they took three away and then told us that was all that was going to be taken. Later that night we find out, or rumors in the jail said, that they had been sent to E'town (Elizabethtown). It wasn't until later when we had gotten out that we found out that they'd been taken down, separated into three different cells that the jailer down there had talked to the prisoners in those cells before they got there and later after they got there to tell them what the people coming in were -- get them all stirred up. ' One of the GI's was beat up. Cut with a peice of glass by one of his cellmates. And another GI that was in another cell finally was able to talk the trusty into taking the GI from the cell where he was beat up and putting him into solitary. Then the next morning the jailer brought in several, I'm not sure how many, several new people that had just been busted and they were really pissed off about these two GI's who were still in separate cells and then they were moved -- before anything happened -- into solitary, too, and were gotten out the next morning. So most of the stuff came down on one guy, but it looked like a- really bad thing. And it was apparently organized by the jailer down there. He had full knowledge of what was going on, and also Muldraugh Police Chief Ridenour, who took them down there from Brandenburg. btf: As to the Friday (March 6) night thing the vigilante mob scence -- you've mentioned several times that you thought the mayor here and Ridenour were very much involved, that they were pointing out the leaders (of the coffeehouse) and that sort of thing. Could you elaborate on that? CH: Well, Thursday night, all I know is that we got there and there wasn't anything organized, but people just kept getting larger -- large groups of people kept coming in. Number Six We weren't there but maybe two minutes and the mayor was there with this great big long club and went around waving it around. He never used it on anyone but just kind of showing his influence. The cops . . . btf: The mayor of Muldraugh? CH: The mayor of Muldraugh, right. The cops, after they arrested us, went all the way back in the corner of the parking lot. We were in the middle. And we had to wait until the warrants came, and we were completely encircled by this crowd. They could have at any time attacked us if they had wanted to. btf: How many people were there? CH: I think there were eight of us there and there was a crowd of about, starting out at about 15 or 20, and ending up at about 45 or 50. There were a lot of high school students and a number of older citizens -- they all appeared to be from the area someplace. They were baiting us the whole time. They tried very hard to get us in a fight with them, I mean to the point that this one guy said, "Goddammit, I wish I could make you mad so you'd try to hit me. I'd like to beat the shit out of you, " you know. I mean the situation said we had to be cool or we would've got our asses killed because the cops -- it was apparent they weren't going to do anything. btf: How many cops were there? CH: Well, there was a car of state troopers and two police cars, so I gusss there were probably four, six --four or five cops there. btf: Did the state troopers make any move to intercede? CH: Well, no, there was just one of them and he just stayed outside of the whole thing and mostly talked to the cops for a while. btf: These are the state troopers called by the KCLU? CH: No, well, yes, they were called the second night, after Friday night, but on Friday night, the state cops, there were four of them, and the two local cop cars were there, and neither of them did anything. Coffeehouse Fact Sheet: Timetable For Repression Aug. 30, 1969 -- Coffeehouse opens. Sept. 2 - - Muldraugh City Council passes new law requiring police approval for a business permit. Sept. 5 -- Coffeehouse closed by police, and landlord refuses to accept rent on the advice of county attorney. Sept. 28 -- Coffeehouse reopened with large rally --and has remained open since. Oct. 1 -- Judge rules in favor of landlord in eviction trial; $10, 000 cash posted for appeal. Oct. 9 -- Fire bomb thrown in Coffeehouse; out of sheer luck, no damage. Oct. 30 -- Grand jury indicts six people, including minister and wife, Vietnam veteran and ex-GI for violation of sanitary laws (not enough bathrooms even though Coffeehouse never tried to serve food) and for "maintaining a Common Public Nuisance frequented by evil people" (GI's ? ). Possible sentences range up to one year and one month. Oct. 30 -- Coffeehouse fire bombed again, causing slight damage; nightly guards stationed at Coffeehouse (GI and civilian volunteers). Oct. 31 -- Four people sent to jail for 13 days for refusing to answer Grand Jury's preposterous questions. Nov. 4 -- Federal suit wins temporary restraining order and release of six indictees. Nov. 12 -- People in jail for contempt released on bond by state court of appeals Feb. 4, 1970 -- New Grand Jury in session to investigate the "red menace. " Feb. 24 -- Retrial of eviction case is delayed; new indictments on "public nuisance" charge are delivered on the original six indicted -- two of them are rearrested; blue-tail fly In fact, Ridenour did point one of the members of the Coffeehouse staff out to the mob and said, "You get out of here. " And they came after this guy. About ten men had clubs --a lot of people were just standing around with clubs. A woman was with him and they were able to get to the car but the rest of the eight people weren't able to get to their cars in the parking lot of Burger Queen because they had to get out so fast. They beat this one guy up with their clubs. He's okay, it wasn't a real serious thing. But they did beat him up. btf: What were you doing that provoked the crowd into being there? CH: When the six of us were arrested, the GI's wanted to stop the harrassment and further arrests so they called a boycott of the Muldraugh businesses, and sent a letter to each of the businessmen asking that they sign a petition to stop the charges from coming down on us and also stop Ridenour and the MP's from harrassing the GI's who come to the Coffeehouse. What happened Friday night -- they decided to leaflet Burger Queen with a leaflet that said, "Please do not buy food here --to the townspeople and the GI's. We ask you to boycott this business until the harrassment stops, btf: Well, in view of how it did affect the community, how do you feel now about calling the boycott as strategy? Do you think it worsened the situation or what? CH: It's pretty clear that we hadn't talked enough to the people of the town to let them understand what was going on so that when the boycott was called, the officials around here were able to use all the old rumors that they've they've been -using against us for a long time to mobilize at least some people to threaten us. It seems pretty clear from what happened, but I mean we don't have too many means of power to get things changed and one of those means we can use right now is a boycott and so when it's necessary, you have to use something like that, btf: In Frankfort (at the Student Mobe march against the war), Susan (Schermerhorn) also talked about other harrassment here, like Ridenour taking license plate numbers of GI's who come here and turning them over to continued on page 14 indictees now face possible two-year sentences. Mar. 5 - - GI's call boycott of Muldraugh businesses in order to end the harrassment; four GI's and two civilians are arrested while leafleting the Muldraugh Burger Queen; each is charged with "disorderly conduct" and bonds set at $500. Mar. 6 -- GI's and civilians leaflet Burger Queen Again; three more arrested on disorderly conduct charges. Police Chief David Ridenour organizes vigilante mob to chase GI's and supporters from Burger Queen. Ten men with clubs threaten leafleters; beat one civilian and take his camera and vandalize a car of the Coffeehouse staff. Mar. 8 - - Civilians leaflet again; no arrests --a victory! Mar. 7-9 -- Three GI's transferred to Elizabethtown Jail; jailer tells eight thugs to harrass them. One GI beat up and cut with piece of glass by another prisoner. Mar. 10 -- All GI's released on bond. A civilian released on bond is immediately rearrested for "disorderly conduct" while in jail and "destroying public property" (allegedly, a lock was broken in jail). Mar. 11 -- Five of the GI's rearrested on the same charges arising from the jail confinement. Mar. 12 -- Three-judge federal panel is appointed and set hearing for March 18. Mar. 18 -- Three-judge court decides to take case under advisement to determine if federal court has jurisdiction. Mar. 20 -- GI's and the civilian charged with destroying public property while in jail are convicted in Brandenburg and fined $75 each. They are appealing.  Bill Luster Luster is 25. Brung up all his life in Glasgow. Worked for the Glasgow Daily Times for six years. He's been at the Courier Journal since last September. He notices things. Jon Webb 1 SAYINGS AND DOINGS These pieces have a certain kinship to the "found objects" of the sculptors, and for that reason I have been tempted to call them "found poems. " But the term is only approximate and not satisfactory. These poems weren't happened upon. I have had them in mind for a long time, some of them for most of my life; they were overheard and learned in my native part of the country; many of them had been told and retold, had passed through the memories of numerous other people, before they came to me. And so they are not so much found as inherited. Also, unlike sculptural found objects, these pieces cannot simply be displayed, but must be recorded--first in memory, and then on paper. The record inevitably shapes what it records, and so there is a necessity to say that to a considerable extent these pieces have been made. They have been made memorable by being remembered. And I am aware that writing them down in verse has, in turn, affected them strongly, and in ways of which I am sure I am not fully conscious. The verse is necessary, for it gives the inflection and the weight that the words bore in being spoken, and it makes clear that memorable speech is measured speech. "Billy, why in the name of God would you tie up with a woman as ugly as she is? " "You see this watch? That's a dollar case but it's got a hundred dollars worth of works in it. I was kicked out of Hell for playing in the ashes. "Pap, health officer said you got to get them damn hogs out of the house. It ain't healthy. " "You tell that sdnvabitch I've raised a many a hog in this house, and ain't lost one yet. " Having diagnosed pregnancy in the case 01 a young girl, un-married, the doctor steps out onto the porch, followed by the distraught mother: "Oh doctor, do you suppose a man could have got to that child? " "Well, a good big boy could a done it. " They've worn this country out and sowed it in automobiles. It would have been very provident of Providence if He had made a certain proficiency necessary for procreation. Dance on a dead Indian's grave and ask him what he died for. He'll say nothing. Having been hit in the side of the face with a_ stove-shaker and waked up in the doctor's office, he asks: I thought he finally had a woman he could keep --knock-kneed, cross-eyed, fat. And then along comes a blind man. "Doc, does that hole go clean through? " The doctor, poking his finger through the hole: "Yep. " Don't think of the dollar. Think of the job. If you want people to love their country, let them own a piece of it. 10 Number Six by Wendell Berry Put it in their reach, not in their lap. Two old acquaintances meet again by chance after a long time, one having grown deaf: "It's Stanley Gibbs, ain't it? " "NAW! IT'S GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY!" Boys, here's a team of matched horses, so much alike I don't know which one looks most like the other. They'll work single or double, best on either side. "How much tobacco you got? "Pref near a right smart, but not hardly so much, either " My wife invited me to leave, and I'm on a high, wide and handsome, getting it out of my system. I like to talk to you, it sort of zips me up. I want you to meet my wife. She's one of these intellectual types. She'd tear your weather-boarding off. Anybody can be sane in this world is crazy as hell. (in the windstorm) More power, Lord, you ain't shook her hardly any! I built a bridge and it washed out. I built another one and it washed out. So I gave up and bought a pair of boots. Six months before I married Alice I thought I could just eat her up. Six months afterwards I wished to the lord I had. (lettuce for the in-laws) "Ain't that enough? " "More than enough, but I'd be ashamed to send so little. " WENDELL BERRY blue-tail fly 11 In at least one of the early wire service accounts of the arrestof Charles Manson in connection with the Sharon Tate murders he was identified as a "self-confessed hippie. " The following is a collection of ideas on just how much of a hippie and revolutionary folk hero Charlie Manson really is. The article was distributed by Liberation News Service. I. Up-tight straight Los Angeles is freaking out over the case of Charlie Manson. All those people who shrink in disgust from long-hairs can live their fantasy/fear to the hilt: inside every long-hair lurks a murderer. Some hip people like it when the straights get up-tight and hassled. So Manson becomes a sort of folk hero. II. The hips' feelings are intensified as the media and the straight press get together to project the full image of Manson--disgusting, Demonic, evil incarnate. III. Weatherman made it official. They made Manson a new revolutionary hero. "Manson power. " "The Year of the Fork" (in reference to a report that a fork was found in one of the victim's stomach). The police reported that Manson ordered his victims killed "to punish them for their affluent life style. " So Weatherman concludes that Manson, having offed some "rich, honky pigs, " was an appropriate hero for revolutionaries. IV. Even the political angle was not new. It was merely a revised statement of an old idea: whatever is disgusting and revolting to the average man in the decaying Amerikan society, whatever is evil in the eyes of Richard and Pat Nixon, that's what-we dig, that's what we are. Rape? Heroin addiction? The basic impulse is healthy--we are breaking out of the molds built by plastic America. But the point is to help others gain similar freedom, to fight for freedom, not to project ourselves as a superior gang of free people. V. An old idea even for our movement. The New York Times reports that "crazies" interupted Nixon's inaugural. A group forms calling itself "The Crazies. " The Motherfuckers name themselves for the nastiest word in the Anglo-Saxon lexicon, look mean, wear black, call themselves dirty and filthy and ugly--with revolutionary, insurrectionary pride and honor. VI. A question to the Weathermen, the Crazies, the uglies. What if Man-son is innocent? Why such faith in the cops and the straight press? More important, why so willing to adopt as your hero this creature defined not by your movement, or any people's movement, but by the cops and Los Angeles' sensational journalists? VII. A factual interlude. Members of the Manson commune are charged with three sets of murders: a) Five people at Sharon Tate's house, August 9th. Manson (left) a few months prior to his arrest. b) Gary Hinman in Topanga Canyon in July. c) Grocery executive Leo LaBiaca and his wife, Rosemary, August 10th. Susan Atkins, one of the four who allegedly participated in the Tate murders, has provided the only detailed account of what happened. The interview was conducted under highly suspicious circumstances, with the collaboration of defense counsel and an assistant district attorney. One motive for the interview: money. Susan and her lawyer got lots of it--tens of thousands of dollars. She may also have been trying to save her life by claiming to be under Manson's "hypnotic control. " There is no reason that Susan had to be telling the truth in the interview. VIII. But since it's the media image that people are relating to, let's take a look at it. It incorporates some of the worst aberrations of the society we're trying to overthrow: there are the male chauvinist fantasies of total "hypnotic" power over a harem of women. ("Manson developed a prodigious reputation as a lover. The women around the place were always his property, " Paul Watkins, a former member of the commune, told the press. "You were always welcome to share them, " added Brooks Poston, another former member, "but then you became his property too. ") Then there is the grotesque racism of writing "pig" in the victims' blood in order, according to Susan Atkins, to throw suspicion on black people. After the LaBianca murders, she explains, they left one of the victim's wallets in the women's restroom of a gas station, "hoping that a black woman wo uld find it and pick it up and use the credit cards,which would direct the police back to black people. " IX. Consider also the victims of the violence. The five people who died in Sharon Tate's home died, not because their death served some revolutionary purpose, but because they happened to be in the house that once belonged to someone who, according to Susan Atkins, "had given Charlie his word on a few things [recording contracts] and never came through with them. " X. From a friend in California: Making Manson a hero is reminiscent of some people's brief--or not so brief--romance with John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. A left which reduces itself to violence for violence's sake is more acted upon that acting and it emerges as a parody of America. XI. On one level, of course, we should see Manson, and all people defined by this society as "criminal, " as a brother. Whatever crimes he may have committed, we should recognize that people are driven to commit crimes in this society because of need or greed, frustration or competition --the inequities and fucked-up values of capitalism. The cops in this case cooperate with the media to fuck Man-son over. While the authorities usually gleefully apply their shears to long-hairs, Manson remains with his shoulder-length locks. Instead of giving him prison garb, the cops let Manson wear his own bell bottoms and fringed leather shirt. He is presented to the press for photographs surprisingly often. Thus, the police and the media team up to present straight America with their image of a "typical hippie:" fantastic sex life, heavily 12 Number Six involved with drugs, a depraved killer underneath. XII. Some people in the hip community--and even more so, some liberal writers in the straight press--have attempted to distinguish Manson from the typical hippie. Manson, they point out, has a working-class background, a past of petty crime. He isn't the typical middle class drop-out hippie. This is snobbery. Is Manson to be comfortably dismissed by us for his working class past, made into a "them, " not us? Are fucked-up hippies from the suburbs "better" than fucked-up hippies from poor neighborhoods? the trial AN thinking about life for her, she wanted to vote them guilty of everything. More than any other juror, Kay Richards was threatened by the lives' of the defendants. If they weren't judged criminals, her life as a com-' puter operator would be called into question. Like an Uncle Tom threatened by black militancy, Kay Richards ards sold out her best instincts for a lackey's security. Already in Chicago "Kay Richards" is a name being used for a kind of goody-goody young person who wants to stay on the right and respectable side of the authorities, the kind of person who would turn her college roommates in for smoking pot and then say "it was for their own good. " Before the jury ever returned with a verdict, Judge Hoffman began the unprecedented measure of sentencing the defendants for contempt. Though the trial itself represented a systematic policy of intimidation by the government in hopes of stifling dissent, the contempt citations represent the peculiarity of the Judge's ego. Hoffman's feelings had been hurt, and the citations were his revenge. He took particular glee in the fact that the defendants were unprepared; they expected to be sentenced for contempt after the jury returned with a verdict. Because of the politics of the case, the defendants were dubious about their chances of getting bailed out of jail on appeal bonds. They wanted to mentally prepare for the isolation of five or more years in jail. Unfinished political work had to be taken care of, there were friends to tell good-bye, wives and friends to make love with a last time, and maybe eccentric wishes to fulfill, things like drinking your last egg cream. This was the time to be seized while the jury worked toward a verdict. Instead, with no notice and just a half-hour lunch break, contempt sentences were meted out and defendants were whisked to jail. Judge Hoffman seemed to take spe- XIII. Che, Huey, Ho, Mao--they've all talked about the fact that you don't do revolutionary violence because you dig it, you don't do it to build your own ego trip. Being violent alone, being anti-social alone, doesn't make you a revolutionary. Revolutionaries serve the people; sometimes this using violence against the enemies of the people. They are trying to build a new world while bringing down the old. Revolutionary violence comes from the needs of the people for a better life, against those forces that oppress them--because those forces won't give up without a fight. cial delight in his unsuspected surprise. - ¢ j? Of course, when William Kunstler cited the legal prededents which called the Judge's action into serious question and asked for bail pending appeal, he was denied. Later, after the verdict was returned, the bail appeal met with the same result. If this wasn't a political case, and if the government didn't want to squelch dissent, the legal justifications for appeal and mistrial would be overwhelming. But of course, if this wasn't a political case, the defendants wouldn't have been indicted in the first place. To believe that the disruption of the Democratic convention took place because of the cunning of the defendants rather than outrage stemming from the Vietnamese war, racism, and the provocation of the club-swinging Chicago pigs is absurd. The government case: Pacifist Dave Dellinger spoke at Grant Park - one speech. Jerry Rubin gave three speeches and threw a sweater at a cop, etc. The defendants were guilty of being media-recognized leaders of a generalized rebellion. The Democratic party under Lyndon Johnson - and with the boost of boss Daley - destroyed itself. Under the prededent of this trial, half the demonstrators in Chicago could be convicted. The defendants were clearly chosen to be examples. Establishment observers still persist in discussing bail as a legal rather than political question. One states "the legal system hasn't faced such a challenge in two hundred years. " Another writes, "The legal questions posed are complex and distrubing. " Respectable judgment tells us it's all a matter of adjustment, tinker with the system and it's good for another two hundred years. Senator Stennis thinks the problems more basic. Getting down to the political nitty gritty he suggests that disruptive ideological criminals be imprisoned without trial. It's the modern - if they don't play by the rules, fuck 'em - attitude. Mayor XIV. So Manson is no revolutionary; he's just fucked up. Let's face it--some people get into the hip scene, the commune scene, because they're fucked up. Not every long-hair is a brother; lots of assistant district attorneys smoke pot. Most important, young women with teased hair and make-up, guys with duck-tails and crew cuts who work at shitty jobs are our sisters and brothers. And when we get it together, it won't be because we think sticking forks in people's stomachs is groovy, but because we all feel a common need for a common goal--to fight to bring down an old world and build a new one. Daley's "shoot to kill" order to Chicago cops dealing with black rioters was the first expression of this sentiment. Sheriff Madigan arming his men with buckshot and ordering them to shoot the People's Park defenders in Berkeley was another. While the liberal observers wring their hands about the mechanics of trial procedures, events in the streets prove the defendants' actions in Chicago tame. Soon troublesome trials will be avoided by shooting into crowds of riotous demonstrators. If the Chicago Conspiracy Trial were an aberration, one of a king, the critics would be right in saying it posed legal dilemmas. But the conspiracy trials and felony charges against people who protest are taking place in every major city in the country. Freedom of speech and assembly are guaranteed as long as you don't take the idea too seriously and try to change something. Chicago is merely the most striking example, the center ring in a twenty-seven ring circus. The Chicago defendants will get bail if enough Americans don't want to see their basic freedoms ripped away, and do something about it. . . The question of bail for the defendants, like the question of the preservation of freedom, depends on how much political pressure is applied on the government. The test posed by this trial is especially significant. This trial tests whether the government has enough power to punish for thought crimes, for crimes of supposed intent without specified action. Under conspiracy laws or laws against crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot, no riot has to take place. It's profoundly significant that in this trial the judge approved of wiretapping of any individuals or organizations deemed by the Attorney General to be threatening to the national security. Under this ruling, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies are now officially dangerous to national security. The liberals' madcaps are the reactionaries madmen. blue-tail fly 13 Muldraugh Ft. Knox officials who hassle them, and she also mentioned something about the Coffeehouse being frequented by undercover agents. Would you like to elaborate? CH: Well, I don't want to exaggerate, but we do know that Ridenour has taken license plate numbers and sometimes has turned them over to the army and that they do attempt to send agents in to find out what we're doing. Whether it's by choice those agents come in or by intimidation -- I think it's both because a GI can be offered (to have a charge against him dropped) to do something, and that happens, too. CH: There have been a fair number of cases where Ridenour was sitting outside and when the GI's were leaving the place, you's see him get on his microphone and five minutes later the GI's would get picked up by the MP's on base. That's happened a number of times, btf: What are they charged with when they're picked up? CH: They're usually not charged with anything. They're usually shaken down to see if they have anything with them. If they have a lot of literature, then it can be confiscated. btf: Can they do that legally? CH: They can if you have more than one copy of a paper . . . btf: But they can't stop you from reading it . . . CH: No, they can't stop you from reading it, but if you have more than one copy then they can assume you're distributing it and you can be busted for that --if they" want to push it . . . sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. btf: Would you like to talk about the threat that the Coffeehouse poses to the army and why the army sees fit to concern itself with the Coffeehouse? CH: Well, as you know, dissent is really growing in this country about the war, about racism, just about the conditions in the army that this GI was laying out. And the army is the ultimate weapon that the government has to control everything. In other words, they send the army in to Vietnam, Laos, Korea to control those countries and to establish large corporations in those countries. And if GI's refuse to go to Nam, then some businessmen in the United States would stand to lose all the profit that they're now making. The second thing they're used for is to control riots in the ghetto. As you know, in Detroit in 1967 there were army tanks rolling down the streets. And about two years ago at Ft. Hood, Texas, 43 black GI's refused to go to a Chicago demonstration. And if GI's continue to do that, they won't have a sufficient way of controllong the riots that are taking place because of the conditions in the cities. That's really what it's all about. The army is the ultimate weapon they have and we're fighting against that weapon and we're a threat to that. And it's not just places like the Coffeehouse -- GI's not related to the Coffeehouse at all or to any established organization stand up to their base commanders all the time. CH: The only reason we're here is because there are things going on on base. There wouldn't be any point in us being here if GI's weren't already resisting. The only reason we're here is to help out as much as we can. This place serves as a place where GI's can come --or at least could come -- and talk fairly freely. And the organization has a legal aid program to help GI's with civilian lawyers and legal counseling because one of the things the army does is try to keep you from having the knowledge of what the regulations are. Like there's a lot of GI's who don't know they can turn down an Article 15 and go to the next court-martial and have a better chance at defense. A lot of people don't know that. So we're here to try to meet the needs that the GI's have. But it's important to understand that we wouldn't be here at all if there weren't resistance 14 going on on base -- already there are GI's standing up and fighting, by themselves and in groups, btf: Well, what about the future of the Coffeehouse here, in light of all the repression? CH:They ship a guy out of Knox, you know, because he's involved with FTA and where are they going to ship him to? There are 45 base papers, and where are they going to ship him to that there isn't a GI organization? We get guys that were shipped to Ft. Knox because they were active at Ft. Dix. There comes a point at which repression doesn't pay off. All it does is produce more resistance. CH: There's really an important case on base right now involving SPD, which is where you're held either awaiting court martial or after court martial. It's not jail; it's mostly that you're restricted to the area. Just recently after bed-check was over a group of about 40 or 50 GI's got together -- about 90 per cent of them were black -- and were writing a list of grievances. Somebody there went and called the MP's. The MP's came down and broke into the meeting --it was a very orderly meeting with a chairman and everything -- and started yelling something about these people were inciting a riot, took the whole group of them down to the pound or cage in the SPD and put them in the cage. While they were in the cage they resisted a good bit, just in terms of demonstrating. The next day the MP's came down and just took four people -- three black people and one white person --just pointed them out and said okay, you four people. And they're in the stockade right now. An investigation has begun for a general court martial on them. Up to this point, these 40 or 50 guys, they aren't quitting because of this. That resistance grows. And that's what's happening on every base in the country. It's getting stronger and stronger. And every time they squash a group, another group rises up. And so in terms of the Coffeehouse. You ask what we're going to be doing with the Coffeehouse. Well, we're going to be bucking over, that's what we're going to be doing with the Coffeehouse -- until they come and burn the fucker down. btf: Well, in terms of what people can do -- very few people are aware of what is going on -- the establishment media are running distorted stories -- only reporting part of the facts and all that -- what kind of things would you recommend that civilians do? CH: Well, one thing is that we're circulating a petition which calls for the firing of the police chief in Muldraugh and which calls for the charges which about 18 people are facing now, or something like that, that are coming up through May --it would really be great if people could send those in. The other thing is that people are leafleting downtown in Louisville and in the suburbs to tell people what is going on, and any support we can get from people in Louisville doing that is good also. btf: Could you give us a Louisville number where people can contact you? CH: 778-3348. If they want to send contributions, it's FTA, box 336, Louisville. CH: And otherwise, the most important support that the GI movement can have is a civilian movement on the outside. In the end, our only protection is that people are organized and together and are willing to defend themselves against the officials that are trying to put us down and against the brass on base. So the most important thing the civilians can do is to build a movement that meets their needs and the GI movement will take care of itself. After the recorded rap session at the Coffeehouse, the discussion continued for an hour or so longer with numerous people coming and going. At one point, the talk turned to the New Left and the difficulty it encounters in building community respect. This drew some remarks from a continued on page 15 Number Six Z and Zabriskie Point By NICK DEMARTINO No matter how hard you might try, it is impossible to see a film like "Z" or "Zabriskie Point" without making some political connections to your life. In quite different ways, and in different cinematic languages, the two films deal with repression and revolution. As a young American living here in 1970, you will not be able to ignore either film's obvious analogies and applications. I saw "Zabriskie Point," Michaelangelo Antonioni's MGM-produced interpretation of the American student-radical world, while attending a convention for college editors. An after-film panel discussion led by the associate producer, Paul Krasner of Realist fame, and others, dealt almost exclusively with Antonioni's politics. "Revolutionary! Counter-revolutionary.'" went the rhetoric. The flick is "a prophecy" pronounced Krasner, after summarily canning it for its acting,script, character development, plot structure, and lack of reality. The "prophetic" message of "Zabriskie Point" is the political radicalization of a vaguely Left, dope-smoking bour-geoise girl, who comes to realize that the System is corrupt and must be destroyed violently. We see this graphically, lyrically, powerfully realized in the fantasy of destruction and liberation that ends the film. Heroine Daria (played by real-life Daria Halpern), who works for (and maybe sleeps with) a land-development magnate (Rod Taylor), had reached the destination toward which she had been traveling across the desert during the film's action: the opulent desert estate where her boss is holding an important business meeting. En route she meets and makes love with a young UCLA radical who is fleeing the cops for allegedly shooting one during a student demonstration. She hears over the radio that the student (named Mark, and played by Mark Frenchette), has been killed while returning a stolen airplane which he had taken to escape from LA. Daria enters the plush desert retreat, sees and hears the capitalists at their work. She encounters an Indian woman, a maid, then splits the scene. The last sequence of the film is a five minute, slow-motion bomb explosion of that house, and, in turn, the symbols of the American capitalist plastic culture of the 50's which she and Mark are a product of, and in rebellion against. Her earlier fantasy, when she and Mark made love, was the proliferation of uninhibited bodies making dust-covered love in the desert sands. She has been radicalized from the peace-and-love thing to a political revolution. We can hypothesize why she can now no longer "work whenever she needs bread" for a boss and a system that crushes someone she loves and the ideas he represents, but Antonioni never spells it out. He just gives us image after image in her fantasy of revolution. ¢ ââ€"  ' Serving as a backdrop at''the editors' debate over "Zabriskie Point" were the recent events that pretty clearly represent the repressive system and the need to destroy it: the Chicago Conspiracy trial had just ended. The rallying cry at the conference of somewhat radical editors was "Remember Santa Barbara" "partially because this was an ecology conference, but mostly because Bank of America had just been ripped off by radicals. Just as "Zabriskie Point" confronts some pretty vital issues, so "Z" brings home the very real spectre of fascism in a "democratic" state. Costa-Gavra's film is a fictionalization of the events that lead up to the military coup in Greece that brought a fascist government to power, and with it the elimination of almost all civil rights. Before the coup that finalized a police state, the police and other right-wing powers in the government did everything within their considerable power to discredit and suppress leftist dissenters, including an involvement in the assassination of a popular left-wing university professor-turned political leader. The police role in the riot and the effort to distort and discredit anything favorable to the Left was dramatically illustrated in the central assassination scene. The day after I saw "Z" I attended the Frankfort demonstration against the war. couple of young guys who were born and raised in Muldraugh and who had just come in: "You know why they (the New Left) ain't selling it (their ideology)? Because whenever they come into a town, the local fuzz ain't gonna go with it, right? . . . " "This is Kangaroo Country, man. " "Right here is Kangaroo Court. That's all they have is a Kangaroo Court. . . " "Hey, we're supposed to be buggin' you all, but we're not. The cop sent us to bug you all. " "The last time I come here, Dave Ridenour himself asked me to come down here and spy on people to find out when this next rally gonna be,, how many people was gonna be in it . . . " "What's a rally? I mean it ain't nothing as long as you don't bug the cops, see. It's a rally. That between us all, not them. " "Look, just because we were born in this town, they gonna use us, you know. "To bug you. Hey, we been thrown in jail ten times at least, man, by them two. They want us to bug YOU all, see ..." (The rest is drowned out by loud, conspiratorial laughter. ) A middle-aged man present interrupts to say he believes "there are police officers and there are pigs. . " At this point, Muldraugh1 s own take over again: "Well, you only got pigs in this town ..." "And you got Martin's pig farm. You got that, that's right. And police? Where at? Kangaroos, yes. They're jumping all over you, like little ants jumping over the fence, man. That's all. There I heard representatives from the Muldraugh coffeehouse tell about how local cops directed a band of Muldraugh rednecks armed with clubs to "get" members of the coffeehouse staff who were leaf letting in favor of a boycott of a local hamburger joint The cops stood by, just like in "Z," and let the right-wingers assault the dissenters. And the headlines about Chicago's "police riot" were nothing compared to the record sentences of the Chicago Seven who were being tried on the weakest of laws, primarily because they led dissent against the government and police. Indeed, it's pretty easy to make the connections between life's reality and the film's reality. Antonioni makes the connection even easier. He uses non-professional actors for the two leads, who not only seek to portray characters in a movie about America, but are actually very similar in reality to what those characters are. Such a concern about the politics of the films is essential. After all, that's what they're about. If you don't get the revolutionary point (even if, like the people at the conference, you don't agree about its validity) then you've missed much of the movie. For the directors are pretty explicit about their intentions to confront the viewer with a political statement. Since content is what affects most moviegoers, anyway, hopefully these two potent films will stir some political feeling among even more people than those who were strongly impressed by a trite movie like Easy Rider because of its moral message. The only problem is that such a wide-open acceptance of the politics alone has the net result of defeating the art of cinema. A mere sociological application can be made from even the crap-piest production, if it starts out in the right place. (Hence, lots of intelligent people tolerate the shitty quality of most underground papers because they agree with the ideology.) But art is not reality. Art must be understood in its own terms, the artistic language it aims for. As films, both "Z" and "Zabriskie" are very strong, though hardly perfect works of art. "Z' was the better, more totally satisfying work for me, after only one viewing of each. Costa-Gavras maintains a taut rhythm, tension broken by sequences of relief that are pure lyric. The strong plot-line, broken with associ-ational and referential flash backs, is supported by uniformly fine acting. Etc. Etc. I have only seen the film once, but I had the feeling of gnawing hollowness mixed with flashing emotions that I get when I see a really fine film. It happens infrequently. It happened when I saw Antonioni's "La Notte." It didn't happen when I saw his "Zabriskie Point." Maybe when I see it again there will be more than just Antonioni's masterful camera eye, his brilliant images to sustain me. That's nothing to take for granted, even from Antonioni. But I demand more from a film than pretty pictures and political power. For "Zabriskie Point" to rise above the level of a fine, instructional film to a great work of art, I am going to have to see much more during my next viewing. First of all I am going to have to believe the film on more than just a symbolic and allegorical leveL I don't think these people really function as people in the film. The plot is so contrived that it's irrelevant. One of the lingering aftertastes of "Zabriskie" is its Holly woodishness, though it's plot would be lousy even by those standards. The whole thing is just too obvious. Like propaganda, not art, it cops off the little vaguaraies, the ambiguous sensitivities to people and events. Antonioni caricatures America, I'm afraid, which is great for the revolution, but it's not art. Trade Wind Super^Hero T-shirts Skinny-ribbed T-shirts Posters --three for $5 Earrings Leather Sunglasses Mobiles Open 11-7 Corner of Lime and High blue-tail fly IS TftUCKW ON DOWN T«e LING" We'd certainly like to keep on truckin' the news to you all, but such truckin' takes bread. So why not help us out and buy a subscription--just send $3. 00 to 210 West Third Street, Lexington, Ky. 40507 and you'll be covered for one year (eight issues). Or, if you'd like copies of our five back issues, send us $1. 25 and we'll speed them on to you. Or send any money you can spare. Just to keep us truckin1, you see, just to keep us truckin'. Crumb NORMAN MAILER, in Armies of the Night, calls Jerry Rubin "the most militant, unpredictable, creative " therefore dangerous " hippie-oriented leader available on the New Left." ftiP*^ In DO IT!# Jerry Rubin has written the most important political statement made by a white revolutionary in America today. It is The Communist Manifesto of our era and as a handbook for American revolutionaries must be compared to Che Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare. DO IT! is a Declaration of War between the generations " calling on kids to raise a new society upon the ashes of the old. DO IT! is a prose poem singing the inside saga of the movement; it is a frenzied emotional symphony for a new social disorder; a comic book for seven-year-olds; a tribute to insanity. Eldridge Cleaver has written an introduction to it and I Quentin Fiore has 1 designed the book with more than 100 pictures, cartoons and mind-zaps. Cloth: $5.95, Paper: $2.45 Simon and Schuster

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