Part Two: Up Against the Wall: New York City's Armed Love Movement

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Mia Wong about Black Mask and Up Against the Wall, the artists who took on the system and looked good doing it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
twice weekly dose of radical history. I'm no, it's not
gonna okay. I'm your host, Margaret Keiljoy. This week, my
guest is Mia Wong, who's host of the award winning
podcast It Could Happen Here. You've you've won awards, right, No,
I don't think anyone who does who does awards knows

(00:20):
we exist. Okay. I think most of the award losing
podcast It Can Happen Here entered? Does that kind of losing?
All right? All right, never mind, we've definitely entered things podcast.
We've never even been nominated. I probably this is probably

(00:43):
an award losing podcast. You're listening to you right now.
I have proudly lost two science fiction awards. Um like,
been nominated, but I like the phrasing award losing. I'm
your producer and I'm award winning. Wow. I'm so tired
that I best. I'm so tired that I myself say
that the internet. Oh you could fire me. I'm that's

(01:04):
okay with it. I hate myself. Now. That's Sophie, who's
the award winning Sophie Lichterman. How are you doing Sophie.
I've slept for like thirty five minutes in the last
like four days. I'm doing great. This is the loopy
episode for everyone this week. I like, I almost took

(01:25):
a nap, but it was like thirty minutes before record time,
and I was like, no, no, just do. I slept
for eleven hours last night, but not in a row
which I was combined. Did you that's worse than Yeah? Well,
our audio engineers ian and our theme music was written
for us by a woman. This week, we're talking about

(01:46):
art street gangs in New York City in the nineteen sixties.
You should go back and listen to part one if
you haven't, because it won't make a ton of sense. Otherwise.
Where we last left our heroes, there was this small
group called Black Mask that ran a magazine called Black Mask,
and they did actions, and there had been an anti
war art thing called Angry Arts Weak that mia made

(02:07):
me feel much better about. But it's all about to
get bigger and more motherfuckery. So all these new artists,
they didn't all join Black Mask because black Mask was
like kind of its own little affinity group or whatever,
you know, it has his own thing going on. They
started something new and larger and more radical still, and

(02:27):
they called themselves up against the Wall Motherfucker's. Their rationale
was this, well, polite media can't even print our name,
see for example, the name of this episode in your
podcast feed. And they figured if mainstream society couldn't even
discuss them, then the motherfucker's, as they called themselves, couldn't
be co opted. It's actually pretty clever. Yeah, the name

(02:48):
comes from It comes from a poem by Amery Baraka.
I have read this poem. Yeah, it's good. It is
a trip. You should read it. It's yeah, it's it's
I'm gonna quote some of it, but only a little piece. Yeah.
The poems called black people just makes it an interesting

(03:09):
name for the people who whatever. The white groupup against
the Wall Motherfucker's, well, the majority actually once again hard
to entirely. No, we'll talk about it more as we
go through the racial makeup of this group. Anyway, Amari
wrote this poem in new work during an uprising against
police violence. The relevant part of it for this is quote,

(03:31):
you can't steal nothing from a white man. He's already
stole it. He owes you anything you want, even his
life all the stores will open if you say the
magic words. The magic words are up against the wall. Motherfucker.
This is a stick up. Yeah, but you should you
should talk more about the rest of it. I just
want to read that quote. Oh God, you should say
it all her memory now, Okay, I read this six

(03:53):
years ago. Seven Now. I wanted to find more about
what Amery Baraka thought about the Motherfucker's because of the
second time they've they've referenced him black Mask used his
picture when they fake assassinated Ken Coke in the last episode. Um,
I haven't succeeded yet to finding out what a merry
thought of them, but I do know that overall the

(04:14):
Motherfucker's were in very solid terms of the Black Panthers.
They coordinated actions together. Like at one point there was
like riots and Harlem, and so the Motherfucker's through a
big thing in the Lower East Side, so that cops
had to leave Harlem and come down and yeah, like
rather than like showing up to the other people's thing
and being like, oh yes too, they were like, all right,
well we'll do a thing. And then the NMPDS fucked

(04:36):
you know, Yeah that that's okay. This is this is
why this is Okay, I I have two things about protested.
Every time I got want to show, I must say
one do not okay that the first one is not
related to this. Stop trying to take over the Brooklyn
Bridge unless you can secure one of the sides. If
you don't secure one of the sides, they will like
they will block up both sides the bridge and restaurant.
This has happened three different times in different uprisings in

(04:58):
my lifetime, and every single time everyone is goes, this
is Pikachu face thing, or like, oh my god, how
do we all get arrested at? Please stop? That's the
first on bridges. That's how I feel. Don't go on bridges.
I walk around them. It's like bridges unless you can,
unless you like really seriously have liked of thousands of
people to hold on side of the bridge. Okay, always
have a way to retreat. Stop doing this, please, there

(05:19):
will be another uprising in my life time if you guys,
I will have failed in my mission as a podcast
if you guys all get arrested again in the Brooklyn Bridge.
Jesus Christ. Okay, So that that's number one. Number two,
it's it's this thing that now like now, I can't
remember which police department said it. It might have been
l A, it might have been Portland's. But yeah, there
was this line that was like, yeah, yeah, we we

(05:41):
we We can stop like one protest of five thousand people,
but we can't stop like a hundred protests of five
hunder people. So like, please stop sending everyone to one place,
because that that allows the cops scotch read the numbers.
There actually aren't that many cops. It's just that when
when their numbers are concentrated, they do really well. And
if you do stuff like what they're doing, which is
you draw, you keep drawing cops all over the place. Right.
Their commanding control system is terrible. They're not very smart.

(06:04):
You can, you know, you can pull apart. But if
if you if you keep just pulling all of your
people in one place, you will keep losing. So don't
don't do that. Do what these people are doing. It's
much smarter. We've gotten worship this tactically apparently since I know,
I mean, they were fairly advanced for their time. Um,
but of course this is purely history. I don't know

(06:25):
what you're doing tying this into the modern world. This
is just a little slice of history. No one should
do any of them anyway, Yeah, no, totally okay. And
then other things about their interactions the Black Panthers, and
we'll get to more of that too as we go on.
But Eldritch Cleaver, who was the leader of the Black
Panther Party at this time, asked Ben Maria from Black
Masking Up against the Wall Motherfucker's to be his running

(06:46):
mate for president. Oh cool. Ben turned him down. Was basically,
like he's quoted a couple different ways over the years.
It wasn't like, well, hell, no I'm not. He was like, no,
I'm an anarchist. Yeah, I can't, like not really my thing.
Like thanks, though, Clever's political art, by the ways, wild
look that up sometime. He oh boy, he takes a

(07:08):
wild turn in the eighties. Yeah okay, yeah, oh time.
So maybe it wasn't weird two people at the time
that they named themselves from a poem called black People, Right.
Trying to like I've been talking about the whole time,
trying to wrap my head around sixty year old leftist
race relations has been an ongoing process. They formed. The

(07:32):
group soon became an identity the motherfucker's exist to throw
themselves into the fray, to walk the walk. And they also,
uh called themselves the family, which don't do. There's very
few things that I want to say that they did
that they that don't do. Now, this is one of them.
Don't call yourself the family. There's no relation that they

(07:53):
claim to Charles Manson's the family that was happening around
the same time in the West Coast where they were. Yeah,
I was gonna say there's definitely some overlap. There there is,
and I actually, um, it didn't quite make it into
the script. The there was a cultural thing that was
happening where but basically everyone's being a little bit of
edge lords the Motherfucker's. I didn't see them do as much.

(08:13):
But Burnard and Dorn from the Weather Underground at one
point Um ended a speech by holding up three fingers,
but not in a cool, cool Hunger Games way or
a boy scout's way, but like separated out like a
little eating fork. And it's a reference to when they
killed Tate and some other people, they left forks in
their bodies. If you're not up on the Charles Manson thing,

(08:35):
he's never gonna be on this fucking show because he's
not cool. He was a fucking racist trying to start
a race war. In case you were wondering, Charles Manson
as he was a cult leader who was trying to
start a race war so that he could rule over
all the black people in the world. Um fuck him. Anyway,
they called themselves the Family. What a nice little what
a nice little side note we just add, Yeah, I

(08:58):
forgot what show was first, Like, oh funk I should
do a bastards Man anyway? Um you should. I feel
like that would be fun. Yeah, because I've been like,
I'm just like deep and there's gonna be a bunch
of more episodes of about like late sixties ship coming
up for you all. Each of them took on the
last name motherfucker, so like you'd be like me a motherfucker,

(09:18):
be Margaret motherfucker. Surprise, Surprisingly that works for both of us.
I feel like the very strong and I think Sophie
Sophie motherfucker works too. It's actually just a really solid
last name. Um, I think it sounds cooler if it
was motherfucker Sophie. But all right, all right, there's no

(09:38):
membership role. Of course, membership was fluid One person says
there was ten to fifteen core members. Another person says
it was more like fifty. Once again, I have two
very opposing sources on all of this. I actually believe
the larger number because there was multiple affinity groups within
the Motherfucker's and that was kind of I think the
big thing that this other person who is in one
of the affinity groups is referencing in his memoirs. So

(10:02):
the ten to fifteen was probably one of those groups.
They hung out on the streets, they made closest friends
with a group of their like closest people that they
crewed up with was a group of Puerto Rican street
kids who came out to their events hung out at
their crash pads. They also ran with a group of
street winos who, following their leads, started their own organization,
the Wine Group for Freedom a k a. The Wine

(10:24):
Nation that Rules so much. Right, I did not know
was a thing. I mean, as an organized entity, I
was not aware of. But I haven't been the furthest
from that. At some point in my life was more
of a malt liquor street kid, but um literally in

(10:44):
the same streets where all this should happened. Tompkins Square Park. Anyway.
As for who they organized with, Ben Maria put it
like this quote, we took LSD and hung out in
the streets, So like, what were we gonna do? Or
we're gonna organize students. I couldn't stand students. Whether or
not this group was patriarchal is another matter of historical debate.

(11:07):
Once again between these two people who don't like each
other's positions. Osha says and no uncertain terms, that it
was patriarchal, that the women were auxiliary, that they came
and went only based on who they were sleeping with,
and that they did like a majority of the cooking
and cleaning. Ben says in no, in certain terms, that

(11:27):
it was not patriarchal. I think the answer is complicated.
I think that they were as patriarchal as other male
radicals at that time. But the thing is is they
actually weren't anywhere near an all male group. I think
that part is actually true. What it was is that,
as was the style at the time, the women organized
separately um in a but it wasn't an auxiliary It

(11:51):
was a separate affinity group. They all took the name
like Carol motherfucker, and shipped like that, and um, they
did their own actions autonomously. They asked for support from
the men. They'd be like, Hey, we're gonna go funk
up this speaker. Can you either come with and support
us or stay home and cook dinner so that we
have dinner when we get back. And the men did,
because yeah, even Oshow and he's like, it was all men,

(12:13):
and then he goes on for paragraphs talking about all
this amazing ship the women did. I think he in
retrospect isn't totally grasping the separate organizing that again, was
like more the kind of way that people are in
identity organizing at the time. Yeah, I mean I feel
like that. That's definitely like I don't know, well, like
a yeah, definitely true. Like sixties groups their gender politics

(12:36):
is like not good and it's really bleak reading a
lot of issues and stuff. But like that, I don't know,
people people did like the like the way that sort
of liberation struggles gets framed around that time, I think
leads to a lot of that kind of stuff of
like everyone has their own sort of liberation movements and

(12:58):
they do things within like that thing, and that's sometimes working.
You get a lot of these like I don't know,
I'm most familiar with this with how sort of like
Asian American became a term. Was a bunch of the
sort of third world ist people who like formed their
own like we're gonna be the Yellow Power group, like
alongside Black Power, and we're gonna do this whole thing.
And it's like there's advantages to it. There's also I

(13:21):
don't know, like there's real parts where it gets really
bad and like you know, like part of the reason
none of the stuff exists anymore really in the US,
and why Asian American doesn't you know, has nothing to
do with the sort of radicalism anymore in terms of
people think about it. Was like, well, okay, so it
turns out that like if if if you're sort of
group basis is supposed to be like the Third World

(13:43):
TM and you know, you you you have a bunch
of people, have a bunch of people who are sort
of like Chinese nationalists, Combodian nationalists, and Vietnamese nationalists all
trying to work together. And then China, Campodia and Vietnam
go to war with each other. Oh yeah, sure, real
bad shape that this is. This is the whole thing
too with like this. This is like like a lot
of these sort of maoist groups get into real trouble.
For example, because the CCP starts supporting like the wrong

(14:06):
side of the Civil War and Angola, but they're they're
they're they're backing a rebel group. Eventually the US South
Africa backs like that. This is like a real and
I'm sorry, I'm kind of going on attention there. There
there are a lot of real issues with the way
that American movements are sort of are supposed to be shaped.
It's the sort of mirror images of these national liberation movements.
But then when those humans go to war with each other,

(14:28):
it really messes everything up. And that that has a
lot of sort of like and it has a lot
of downstream effects on a lot of these groups. And
also I don't know, like it's why I don't think
it's actually like a great organizing model really because that's
a lot of problems. It's so interesting because yeah, like there,

(14:49):
you know, we we we run into all the time,
we run into the limits of identity based organizing. But
at the same time, when we like subsume our identities
to be part of these like um, these groups, we
can also then some times like lose something valuable as well,
And it's like this fun tension that I guess we've
been struggling with for fucking ever, you know. Yeah, I guess.

(15:09):
My My one thing about that, like like, don't do
it if if you're if you're gonna do a thing
and we're gonna be like, we're gonna foord identity around this.
Don't do it off of like the politics of another country,
because that is going to come back to bite you
in ways that you were not prepared for. Yeah, no,
that makes sense. I didn't write down a ton of
the actions that happened specifically by some of the women,

(15:32):
but it was like all the stuff we're talking about,
It was a bunch of different affinity groups doing all
of this different stuff. But Carol, motherfucker. At one point
she was breastfeeding in public and a cop was yelling
at her for breastfeeding in public, so she whipped out
her tit and squirted him with breast milk in the face.
And that just rules. I'm glad you did that then
and not now, so we don't have to read the

(15:53):
discourse about it, because I feel like it'd be terrible,
but I just think that's funny. And another way in
which they were engaged in militant feminist struggle. Valerie Salanis
was one of their hanger on and close friends with
many in the group. Valerie Salanas is famous for two things.

(16:14):
She's famous because she wrote a book called The Scum Manifesto,
which is the manifesto for a group called the Society
for Cutting Up Men, which is as misinteresting as it gets.
It is a male exterminationist pamphlet or book, and a
very interesting read. Frankly, when it's taken as hyperbole, it's
very interesting. Second, she's famous because she shot Andy Warhol.

(16:36):
She didn't kill him one job, you know, more than
the rest of us, she she she's got further than
anyone else did. But yeah, yeah, you'll like The Motherfucker's. Uh.
The movie about her is called I Shot Andy Warhol.
In the movie, they actually basically claimed that Ben from

(16:57):
The Motherfucker's gave her the gun. He vehemently says that
this is not true. What happened instead was that but
but what happened instead was that she climbed it. We'll
talk about some of this other ship later. They were
occupying Columbia University. She climbs in through the window and
she's like, hey, hey, Ben, what happened if I shot somebody?
And Ben's like, you know, it really depends on who

(17:19):
you shoot and whether or not they die. It's like okay,
and then climbs out the window. So wait, you can't
like them, no, because because they said they they derailed
fully killing Andy Warhol Oh oh no, I don't. I

(17:41):
don't think she shot to not kill. I think she
was just given honest, I don't know reasonable all right,
that's not a Valerie. Valerie grew up really fucking rough.
She was born in ninety six. She suffered physical and
sexual abuse from her family when she was a kid.
This rules she sold insults for a living on the playground.

(18:01):
Like that's awesome. If you want her like a really
sick burn, you'd go to Valerie and give her a
dime and she'd write you a really good insult to
use against another kids about a dollar or so today.
At one point, I know, at one point she beat
up a bully who was like picking on a younger kid.
Another point she beat up a nun. I don't know

(18:22):
what for. I don't know I deserved that. Her life
was hard as fun. She was homeless at fifteen. She
had a kid when she was seventeen that was taken
away from her and given up for adoption. I think
without her consent, she worked her way through college. I
believe through sex work, but I know she did sex
work later. And I'm not a hud certain at what
point she began doing sex work. She got herself a

(18:42):
degree in psychology, ran a radio show at her college
campus where she gave listeners advice about how to beat
up men who are fucking with them. She lived openly
as a gay woman in the fucking nineteen fifties. She
moved to New York City. She kept hustling, or started
hustling um and she wrote a bunch of stuff, and
including a play about a man hating sex worker who
kills a guy called up Your Ass. And she tried

(19:05):
to get Andy Warhol at stage the play. He claimed
he lost the script, but then he hired her to
perform in one of his films, which she did. Then
she decided it was an attempt to steal her work,
so she shot him. There's more to it than that,
but not a lot more than that. It's very complicated
and also um, she's not um. She's not neurotypical in
a lot of different ways. He survived, Andy war All survived.

(19:29):
She turned herself in. She said that she shot Andy
Warhol because he had too much control over her life.
She was diagnosed as schizophrenia. I've got complicated feelings about
the scum manifesto. If you take it as hyperboly, as hyperboly,
it's really interesting. It's basically like patriarchy is really fucking
bad to women, and violent resistance is an understandable thing
to consider. And for the longest time I assumed it

(19:50):
was intended as I probabe perboly, because I was like, no,
I can't clearly, and we look at this, you know,
it seems like she both did and didn't mean it
as hyperbole. Most of the ship it is messy. It
depends on who you ask, and sometimes it depends on
when you ask the people you ask. Ben has given
conflicting answers to this question. How does this tie into
the motherfucker's you might ask, I'm glad you asked. She

(20:14):
wasn't one of them, but she hung out sometimes and
Ben let her crash with him because she was homeless.
They actually met because um Ben was selling black Mask
on the street and she was like, well, I've got
a nickel and he was like, I don't care how
it and then she took it and she was like,
oh wait, hold on, and she walked into the bookstore
that they were hanging out in front of, stole a
copy of her own book, came out and gave it

(20:36):
to Ben and Ben was like, clearly, you're fucking awesome
and we should be in each other's lives. And she
clearly wasn't dating any of them. Count She's clearly the
kind of person who shot with it, shot anyone who
sucked with her. Ben describes this Gun Manifesto this way quote.
There was a lot of parody and irony in her writing,
but she was also, and I don't mean this in

(20:56):
a bad way, a fairly crazy person. She saw need
to raise a lot of issue is around what happens
to women, and it scut Manifesto is the best way
she could express herself. Um And I feel like that's
the best summation about Scott Manifesto and the intentions behind
it that I've been able to find. Yeah, I think
that that makes sense. I don't like it's it's definitely
one of those things that's like very complicated historical document,

(21:19):
and there have been some people who have used it
to have some really really bad politics, which um, yeah, yeah,
but yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's like I don't
want to write it off like completely as a thing,
but yeah, there's I don't know, there's some there's some

(21:44):
real weird turf stuff that people have like used that
for which don't do that. It's bad, no, and like
and and miss injury in general is like actually a
very negative thing and it negatively impacts everybody, and it
is like I as a recovering misinterest. Um, I think
that it's important to I really like the the more

(22:10):
inclusive frameworks where we talk about like, um, the ways
in which patriarchy hurts everybody, and it hurts some people
more than it hurts other people. But um, I think
overall that is the winning both ethically and strategically attitude
to have. But um, I think it's interesting to read.
I think it's an interesting argument to say, look, how

(22:32):
bad things are, even if I don't agree with it.
I also haven't read it about twenty years, so she
gets arrested. Well, you know what also got you arrested,
not taking advantage of these screaming deals of stuff. Here's

(22:55):
some stuff, and we're back from that. Totally natural. Sophia
has this like two thumbs up, you did great, totally
doesn't have her hand on her forehead shaking her head.
Not at all. I would never lie to you, dear listeners.
Oh I can't lie to you. It was all a lie.

(23:16):
Sophie was shaking her head. What are you talking about?
No note? So Ben wrote a pamphlet supporting her after
her arrest, probably the only public support for shooting this artist. Uh.
He went up to the moment and he passed out

(23:37):
a pamphlet supporting the woman who had just shot New
York City's art Darling, with the quote Valerie is ours
on it signed the Motherfucker's um. To quote Ben, Yeah,
to quote Ben. More from an interview he did years later,
he was helping to destroy the whole idea of creativity
and art. Some people dislike the term, but I feel

(23:57):
that creativity is a kind of a spiritual act, a
profound thing for people to do. Warhol was the exact opposite.
He tried to deny and purge the core of creativity
and put it on a commercial basis. As a person,
he was really despicable as well, and that's why Valerie
hated him. He used and manipulated people. Yeah, and I
I really like I have a like, like dear fanatically

(24:20):
hatred of that guy. Oh man, you're then okay. One
of my favorite things about working with Mia is finding
out the people that she hates. And it's so it's
so funny because she's always right, she's always it's so funny.
And then it's really funny when we randomly hate the
same person. It's so beautiful, etcetera. And no idea. Oh

(24:49):
that's so nice. Stay there, Stay there if you like
you true the football player, a writer or a talking head.
Definitely not a writer. There's my three guesses where any
of them? Right? Yes? Okay, all right, anyway back to
the motherfucker's because I don't know anything about what's happening

(25:11):
in the normal world. I know about weird ship that
Proto Punks did with Switchblades in the nineteen sixties on
Lower East Side, much cooler. They were a group, now
a gang, usually staying on the non cult side of
the is this occult Line. Their first action under their
new name was in February sixty eight. The Lower East
Side was in the middle of the sanitation workers strike,

(25:32):
so there's garbage piled up everywhere. Uptown was all sparkling
and clean. So the Motherfucker's grabbed a whole bunch of
garbage and bags, had a parade with kazoos and black flags,
and of course flyers went to the subway, took the
subway up to Lincoln Center for Performing Arts on the
Upper West Side, dumped all the garbage on the steps
while a phalanx of cops were guarding the place. Their

(25:54):
flyers read, we propose a cultural exchange garbage for garbage.
I didn't I I knew about the action. I didn't
know it was these guys. Yeah, awesome. Now they just
want everything. There's some ship. They didn't here, but I
was like, whoa, that was them. Yeah. Most of their
day to day work, like every cool group that we

(26:16):
talk about, is mutual aid. Most of the thing that
they did day in and day out was take care
of people in each other. They set up free stores
where you could go in and everything in the store
is free. They set crashed but wait, Okay, so this
is they didn't invent them, right that that's an older
thing than them, So I am aware of At the
same time, the Diggers on the West Coast, who were

(26:38):
also a narco hippies but in a very different style,
also setting up free stores. So I presume this pre
dates them or is something that was happening counterculturally at
the time, but I don't know. They set up crash pads,
which was another big countercultural thing where basically it was
like a you can show up and sleep here. Um.
Sometimes they're squatted, sometimes they're rented. They had huge community

(27:01):
feasts in the courtyard of St. Mark's Church for three
four hundred people, several nights a week. And I really
like this because it gives me a sense of continuity
because decades later the offenses of St. Mark's Church where
where thousands of us took refuge from police who are
attacking us. During the two thousand four Republican National Convention,
I feel like, Okay, people ask a lot about sort

(27:22):
of like what what parts of like European white culture
should anyone like do, And my my one answer to
that is you need you guys need to bring back
the like the medieval peasant feasting schedule. Oh yeah, that
was the that was like one of the three days
or something like at it's heightened, like like you that
that's the one, that's the one. Bring the feasts back. Yeah,

(27:45):
you can do this. I mean the twelve one of
most recent episodes we did on the twelve days at Christmas.
It's just twelve days of parties and all the all
the rules are gone and you can just do whatever
you want. And yeah, look we just just keep putting
more of them one day. Yeah, yeah, once we have
three sixty four days a year of Christmas, then things

(28:06):
are chilling. We can all work for a day, you know,
it would be like a nice break. So they had
movement lawyers and doctors on retainer to provide free services
to two people. Um, they help draft dodgers get new
ideas and help get people across the border and just
basically like if there's like illegal lefty ship that needs
to happen there there right, And they let anyone use

(28:29):
their mimiograph machines and so like a lot of these
like flyers, there's different affinity groups of motherfucker's and they
don't have like a central committee where they're like, oh,
you can't put out that one less it's approved by
everyone or whatever, right, And they would let people just
like come in and use their things to make propaganda.
One thing I found really sweet this is something specifically
that Ben did. Other people might have done it too,
But again, I only have two people's voices about all

(28:51):
of this, you know, And so that's why it focuses
a lot on on these two characters. Kids who are
having bad trips could come to the Motherfucker's and Ben
would sit down with them, take acid, meet them where
they're at, and bring them out of bad trips. And
they scammed and shoplifted everything they needed. Since they were

(29:13):
opposed to the commercialization of the countercultural life. They'd shake
down psychedelic shops to ask for contributions to the cause.
You're making some money off the movement, you should kick
some of it back. And they would hit up groceries
for day olds. And at one point, so this is
a story I don't have a source for. This is um.

(29:33):
I've hung out a lot in New York, and so
I have some stuff like orally that I cannot source of.
Please treat this as a UM. It's not a very
big radical thing. I just want to always point out
when I'm like less certain about something I'm saying. At
one point, they're like getting day olds at some like uptown,
like or midtown or something like some fancy grocery store
and or like something. They're digging to the garbage or whatever,

(29:56):
and they get told to funk off, and they were like,
we see that your store has all of its windows.
Isn't that cool that your store has all of its windows?
I hope your store always has all over this windows.
And then they were like, all right, fine, you can
have our trash it rules. And they wore black biker

(30:17):
jackets and carried switchblades you can see why they didn't
like it, and called hippies yeah, And basically they protected
the homeless youth dropout culture. They wrote Make Love, but
Prepare for War. The cops constantly fucked with them. They
would constantly bust their crash pads looking for drugs. They
would harass street kids and dropouts, and the motherfucker's would

(30:38):
organize demos and riots to fight back against those busts,
all while churning out more and more poetic manifestos about
the pigs and stuff and one motherfucker walked around panhandling
with a toilet he grabbed off from the trash, saying
America ships money, ship here fucking artists, and a cop
made him drop the toilet and then smashed it up

(31:00):
and then arrested him for littering while the crowd screamed
enchanted free the toilet. One of the only sources I
found that actually discusses the racial makeup of some of
their events was actually a police source. They threw a
twenty four hour spring feast at one point, sort of

(31:22):
a big drug and music gathering at a four floor flophouse,
and people are like just like fucking in the hallway
kind of under a blanket, and people were like playing
drums on trash and doing drugs and ship sounds fun. Honestly,
I'm not even into drugs, but whatever. And undercover report
says there was about a hundred people in attendance, about

(31:43):
evenly split between black people and white people. I suspect
that this leaves out Puerto Rican membership, or rather classifies
as Puerto Rican membership not by their ethnicity but by
their perceived race by the police officer, with some of
those people ending up in the white category and some
people ending up in the black category. That's my best
understanding of race and ethnicity around Puerto Rican identity at

(32:06):
the time in eyes of the State. So that's that's
we know some of the racial makeup of some of
their events. They had this long campaign to pressure the
rock promoter Bill Graham, who ran the film More and
they wanted him to let the Motherfucker's or the dropout
community at large have free events at the film war
once a week. Basically it was like, it's the same thing.

(32:28):
It's like, you're making money off of our culture, off
of psychedelic culture, so you're gonna give You're gonna kick
something back to the community. We got one night a
week where it's free. And he was like, no, that's
not fucking happening. I'm not going to do that. And
so there was threats involved on both sides. Um and
actually one of these things where no one remembers exactly
at one of the meetings someone pulled out bullets and

(32:50):
put them on the desk, and no one remembers which
side pulled out the bullets to put them on the desk, amazing,
partly because either side would have done it. Yeah, and
Eventually they win and either Wednesday or Thursday, everyone's memories
fucked becomes free nights and it's last a month. There's

(33:10):
free bands and free drugs at all of the things.
And the cops are like, if this goes on, the
fillmore will never opens its doors again. Uh, And it's stopped.
They stopped getting the free nights. The man. The man
shut them down. They were part of the national movement
to stop the war as well. These are the folks
who were like, the Vietnam War is gonna stop or
we're gonna die, like those the only things that are

(33:32):
going to happen. And the war in Vietnam was happening
in their names as Americans, and it was their duty
to stop it. Some of the motherfucker's went to the
ninety seven Exorcism of the Pentagon, which is when um,
like the Yippies and other people were like, we're gonna
levitate the Pentagon and people put flowers in the barrels
of guns, and the motherfucker's instead cut open the chain

(33:53):
link fence and stormed into the Pentagon. They all got
arrested for it. Um not that many of the crowd
came with them. They joined the SDS at some point,
this to the STS is the students for Democratic Society,
which is way more radical than its name sounds. At
least then I can't actually speak to it now. I'm
not really part of its organizing now. Obviously the motherfucker's

(34:15):
tended not to be students intended to be more radical
than what gets talked about his democracy by most people today.
Although to be fair, most of the STS people were
also like exactly a lot of Maoist in that group. Yeah,
and while they were they were druggie hippie RC revolutionaries,
they were actually very distinct from the yippies who were

(34:35):
kind of the other druggie hippie RC revolutionaries at the time.
Abby Hoffman, et cetera. We talked about last time a
little bit specifically in that they were never media darlings,
and they stayed the funk away from the limelight, and
they had an unrepeatable name in a noncompromising attitude. And
I personally think successful movements are made up of like
a variety of strategies and tactics, including both like the

(34:57):
people who are willing to be left in media darlings.
Maybe I say that because I'm a fucking podcaster. I
don't know, but like it's still there's something more beautiful
in a lot of ways about how the motherfucker's handled it,
and they really pushed in their interactions with black struggle.
It fits very well into the kind of modern idea

(35:19):
of accomplices not allies that comes out of a modern
indigenous Antarctic thought, which is to say that rather than
being united by struggle, um or, we should be united
by struggle, not just passively supporting someone else's struggle. We
should work in solidarity with other struggles, rather than seeing
ourselves as purely as some separate support role. Basically like,

(35:39):
figure out what you need to fight for and fight
for it alongside of and in conjunction with another struggle.
One of their flyers was headlined, we don't support the
black struggle. Support is not struggle. Support is the evasion
of struggle and um And then in this way they
prefigure a lot of the ways that the conversation is
starting to happen now, which I find really interesting. Yeah,

(36:04):
So it's so interesting. It's a cool way of thinking
about it. Yeah, And like, and what matters to me,
of course, is like, if you're going to frame things
that way, How did the Panthers feel about it? And like, overall, um,
it seems like the Panthers I am only aware of
positive interactions between the Motherfucker's and the Panthers. I'm sure
there were negative interactions as well, but overall it seemed

(36:26):
like a very positive coalition from time to time or whatever.
And they were like, look, overall, I think they're cool.
People did cool stuff, but some of them were not
always the most mature people. At an SDS conference, the
motherfucker Osha, the one who wrote the I hate I
hate that I did all this book, which should be
fair some of the ship that he did. I'm like, yeah,
I hate that you did that too. He took the

(36:47):
mic during some debate about Maoism versus the New Left,
and he dropped his pants. I was like, Dick is
hanging in the wind, and he is like, this is
all too much intellectual masturbation. You know, the guy I'm
with you in spirit, buddy, Yeah, I mean it to
be fair. If you've ever read any of the transcripts
of the SCS stuff or like read like like seed,

(37:09):
like the counts of like half the crowd is chanting
ho ho ho, chi men, and half the chat the
crowd is chanting Chairman, MAO. Like these guys, I oh god,
there's somehow like and I say this like having been
in the DA I was in the d s A
for like a long time, Like these guys are like
a lot of that stuff is more and sufferable than
then the stuff was happening the d s A, which
is like really impressive. Yeah, it's yeah, okay, fair no, no,

(37:34):
it's like yeah, I'm like, I'm I'm with you in spirit.
I bet there was too much an electrical masturbation happening
just just yeah, I don't know if your pants are yeah,
uh yeah. And and after the conference they wrote a
report and I'm going to quote it because it's the
first thing I ever saw from the motherfucker's when I

(37:55):
was a baby. Radical Chapter Report on the SDS Regional
Council of Arched Tent. A Molotov cocktail. It's a bottle
filled with three parts. One part it is captain wrapped
with to use light throw a bottle, fire and explosion
occur on impact with target. A white radical is three

(38:16):
parts bullshit and one part hesitation. It is not revolutionary
and should not be stockpiled at this time, respectfully submitted
up against the wall. Motherfucker. It's probably the best thing
to come out of an STS conference. Yeah, totally, okay,
So what okay some of the other ship they did.

(38:36):
When the Secretary of State came to New York, he
was met by motherfucker's who had plastic bags filled with
cows blood with which he and his entourage were covered. Amazing.
And then this is the one that I was like, damn,
this was them in NT there's this concert you might
have heard of gold wood Stock. They didn't organize wood stocks. Okay.

(38:58):
What Stock famously got rowdy because someone cut the fence
and people stormed in and the event was suddenly free.
You will be shocked, absolutely that was That was some motherfucker's.
Oh and when it rained and it got real cold,
and everyone's like kind of fucked because everyone's like covered

(39:18):
in mud and everything sucked. They cut open the back
of a supply tent and passed out three sleeping bags
that they stole. Amazing. And another thing they did This
goes back a year, but I just wanted to point
out the woodstock thing. In nineteen, after the assassination of
Martin Luther King Columbia University students led by the s
a S, the Student Afro American Society, and supported by

(39:41):
the STS the Students for Democratic Society, they took over
six buildings on campus and briefly held the Dean hostage
and the motherfucker's were all over it. They led the
takeover of the Math building, which was like, uh, the
most of the different buildings and like different cultures during
the takeover, and the Math building was like, I don't know,

(40:01):
the motherfucker's just sketchy. I'm not sure, you know. Um.
And at one point some jocks besieged the library because
people have taken over the library and there's like jocks
people use these It's like what we would probably called
chud's now, you know, like, um, right wing people who
want to fight left wing people. Um, so we come
up with disparaging terms for them. Uh. Some jocks besieged

(40:23):
the library and they formed a ring around it to
keep the occupiers from entering or exiting and to keep
them from getting supplies like groceries, because they figured the
hippies wouldn't how to fight. They might have been right,
but the motherfucker's knew how to fight, so they climbed
out of the math building with groceries in their arms,

(40:43):
broke the siege and brought groceries into the library. Amazing
and um. And then this is another one that I
read this but years ago, and I could not I
cannot find the source again, so consider this apocryphal. But
this was the other thing that I read about. The
motherfucker's was always like, I like these people during the occupation,

(41:04):
while they were building barricades, the motherfucker's wanted to use
all the ancient pottery in the barricades because they figured
the police won't break through ancient Grecian earns to funk
us up. Amazing, and if they do, the photos will
be terrible. But they were outvoted by everyone else, who

(41:24):
was like, that's so sad. This this whole thing reminds
me so much of like the dynamics of like the
Japanese version of this, Like, yeah, it's almost exactly right
down to literally you have you have a you have
a bunch of like nerds who are trying to hold
a building, and then like the campus administration will try

(41:44):
to use a bunch of jocks with sticks to try
to break the occupation. But they can't do it because
it's nine Japan and every single person in the age
of thirty five notes is like a master street fighter.
It's japan rules. Yeah, I And actually if people want
to know more about that, they can find your episode.
Do you remember what it's called how to search? How

(42:08):
someone can search for it and find it if they
want to hear about these, uh some of those Japanese
student movements. Oh, I think it was. I think it's
in part th th three of my series about Nobusuki Kishi.
So that's what people should go listen to, the whole,
the whole many parts. Well, by the way, just wording

(42:28):
on that part, it's well part one also what part
two of that is absolutely brutal. Um, It's one of
the worst things I've ever done and I've ever read.
Uh yeah, so wren on that. But part three has
a lot of people just whacking each other with sticks
and yeah, can you it's awful, but can you spell

(42:49):
the names of people? Can search it? I actually really
want people to hear. Oh, yeah, this is behind the
Bastards and it's n O b U, s U k
E and then Kishi k I s h I. I
think I think that the episode was titled like, yeah,
that the slavery loving fasci Boop built Modern Japan. Okay, yeah,

(43:10):
well that's not one of our sponsors. But although I
don't know, I wonder if Behind the Bastards ever ends
up advertised on this show. I'm not sure there's like
an event. Maybe in general, not really, but we are
sponsored by the concept of if you are not currently

(43:31):
carrying your firearm, it needs to be locked the funk
up if you want to be someone who carries owns
a firearm, which not everyone should be, but some people
choose to for very good reasons. In this very dark
and troubled world we live in, they need to be
locked the funk up when you're not carrying them directly
on your person. That is the new I'll go back

(43:51):
to fun stuff at some point. Here's some other stuff,
and we are back. And so the Motherfucker's They are
a star that shone brightly and not for incredibly long.
Much like late sixties radicalism in general, some groups managed

(44:16):
to hold on into the mid seventies, although usually by
going underground and having very different tactical ideas. The slow
end of The Motherfucker's was a little bit hard to trace.
Much like everything abouse about these motherfucking motherfucker's, everyone has
faulty memories. All the books are biased. Repression was a
big part of it, no matter what, no matter who
you ask, they were starting to become well uncontrollable. They

(44:39):
were blocking off entire blocks from the police, so police
had us started hitting harder everywhere they could. Like basically,
the Lower East Side was starting to become more and
more of a autonomous zone in a lot of ways.
UM and arrested folks were getting brutalized in jail, and
I believe that the Puerto Rican street kids when they arrested,
got the uh the worst of that. The some of

(45:04):
the motherfucker's were indicted, and actually it's worth pointing out
that at this point, by this point, it seems like
and I'm not certain about this, but by the names
of the motherfucker's who are listed in the different things
that I've read, it seems like the majority of the
motherfucker's are now actually um Puerto Rican folks. And some
of the motherfucker's were indicted in the Chicago nineteen Democratic

(45:26):
National Convention protests. And these are like these like felony,
bad ship charges. Ben didn't even make it all the
way to Chicago because the Feds were stopping every blue
VW bus they saw with like a picture of him
trying to trying to grab him before he got there.
And in New York, the mean streets were getting meaner.
Hard drugs started to replace lsd U. Instead of happy,

(45:48):
drunken fun times, it became mean, drunken, mean times. There
was more like broken bottle fights and less utopian visioning.
At one point, a car a dudes rolled up on
Ben and he and they were like, hey, we've been
hired to kill you. We're going to kill you now.
And then like fifteen people showed up to Ben to
support Ben. And Ben was like okay, let's see what

(46:10):
you got. And the guys were like, no, never mind
me change their mind. We're actually gonna be And there
was a tension. This one fascinated me. There's a tension
between the East Coast LSD movement and the West Coast
LSD movement. And you would think, based on like aesthetics
and ship and like reputation, the West Coast LSD movement

(46:31):
with its tight eye and its peace and love and
stuff versus the East Coast movement, which is like black
biker jackets and handguns. You know, you're like, all right,
clearly the West Coast LSD folks are nicer. No, No,
the West Coast LSD movement, exemplified by ken KIZI thought

(46:52):
dosing people without their consent was cool and good. The
East Coast movement, who weren't pure fucking evil, And let's
be clear, dosing people without their consent is pure fucking evil.
CI A ship, Yeah, I fucking hate you forever if
you do. This is exemplified by Timothy Leary and supported
by the motherfucker's who all knew each other. And this

(47:12):
is actually apparently part of why Timothy Leary and Kenkisi
fell out. Good fuck anyway, whatever I read about that,
and I was like, holy shit, that rules that the
fucking proto punks and the jackets were the ones who
are like, no, what is wrong with um? We believe
in this ship, We believe in acid, we believe in
opening the doors of perception, but we believe in a
very different way than you, yeah, would, which is interesting

(47:33):
because it's like, you know, if if you look at
what happened to these guys, at ideological successors. It's the
punks who are like still cool to this day, and
that the ideological successors of the West Coast people are
like Peter Thiel and like a bunch of people who
vote Republican. There are cool hippies, and I actually think
that some of the like um, especially some of the
like rural and lower class like hippie and burner and

(47:54):
side trance and like, there are there are actually these
like really interesting people who are kind of like still
really on the psychedelic page in a kind of interesting way.
But I don't know, I don't know why I just
suddenly gotten really defensive of hippies. Um, some of my
friends are poor hippies and they rule you actually might
my aunt, well, okay, so my my aunt and my

(48:16):
uncle who am buried to each other. My aunt was
a flower child and my uncle was an sts is
like a high schooler. They have some they did, they
got up to some stuff. Yeah, But I don't know.
I feel like I got both of the sort of
like both supposed to both the cool hippies and also
the like what are you guys doing hippies? So I

(48:39):
have like a bad hippie taste. In my mouth. No
fair enough. I mean, who doesn't have a bad hippie taste?
Now I'm like, okay, anyway, the jokes they write themselves
and you the listener's mind. So, uh, ships getting rougher
and rougher. On the Lower east Side, violence is getting
more regular from the police and from anti hippie CRUs um.

(49:01):
And actually, the motherfucker's started going to Boston to defend
the freaks there because the freaks there were hanging out
in these parks and we're getting jumped by chud's basically, uh,
nine sixties shuds, Marines and crews of right wing dudes
who are while they're just trying to hang out in
the park or whatever. So the motherfucker's show up and
they're like, all right, well, we'll defend you, and they fight.

(49:23):
It's like there's like weird fucking sharks versus jets. It's
like knives versus baseball bats. They like motherfucker's of knives
and the Marines of baseball bats. And Ben gets arrested
for stabbing one of these people. He spends two weeks
in jail, and he gets found not guilty by way
of self defense. A single juror held out and convinced
the other eleven jurors who originally were like, yeah, suck him. Um.

(49:46):
The single juror held out was like, no, that's self defense,
which I guess we should. We should put it up
plug here for two things. One if if you, if
you ever are doing jury duty and you get you
actually have to do it, you could be that juror.
And the second thing is google a nullification. I'm so
annoyed that I can't just write a letter back and
be like I am an anarchist. This won't work. I

(50:08):
have to, like I would have to like show up
before they would be like, oh wait, no, never mind,
we don't want you. Yeah yeah, well yeah you have
to show up and say journalification like twelve times and
then you go home. Yeah, I mean, or do jury
duty if if you can whatever, mind remind me to
tell you my really fun jury duty story. Ha ha.

(50:30):
You all don't get to listen to it, only Ben.
Then Ben's the character that me and me I get
to hear it. So they go and they're they're defending
hippies and other places, but they get more and more
street gang and kind of a bad way, um, which
is pretty much always a problem when organizing along these lines.
I think that's actually one of the things that's really

(50:52):
interesting about nineteen sixties fifties movements as you get a
lot of really rad ship coming out of gangs and
then also appearing back into bad ship. Um, and there's
like this interesting tension that has always been the case
within US gang culture of people being like, oh, we
can have power, but in what context? In what ways? Yeah?

(51:15):
I mean I I think I talked about this before
in other shows, but there's there's a huge example that's
in Brazil, which is there's a group called Red Command,
which used to be this like marcis Lenningist like internal
prison movement that just sort of like stopped being a
markhis Lenningist group and is just a gang now yeah,
and is very it's very very pleak. Yeah, yeah, this happens.

(51:37):
I don't know, it's just it's just sort of like
a dynamic that happens when you have a bunch of
people who are armed and also there's now drug money
that that can that that that can lead very bad places.
Yet don't don't fund your movement via drug money. Bad idea.
And you know, it's interesting I actually haven't found any
information that the motherfucker's are actually involved in uh dealing.

(52:00):
I have no idea. Clearly drugs were happening in large scale,
and they were distributing drugs, and large scale, I please,
largely for free. And I think they were funding I think,
But people haven't talked about the specifics of this in
a way that's accessible to me. It seems like they
were using petty theft in order to buy the drugs
to give to people rather than selling drugs. And but

(52:20):
I don't know. But yeah, no in general, But yeah,
I don't know, because it didn't In the end, it
was not sustainable for where they were in New York. Um,
it started getting more and more gang violence stuff. At
one point they're their main crash pad, one of the
affinity groups, their main crash pad burned down and they
like started crashing in a rented apartment. Some of the

(52:41):
like kids in the group or graffitiing the hallway. So
the landlord through acid into the kid's face, uh and
permanently disfigured him. So they so they killed the landlord.
And that's just some bad escalation of bad ship. And
from my point of view, six years later, I wasn't

(53:01):
working there too. Soon two new gangs moved into the area,
biker gangs, and all three went to war, and the
motherfucker's were like, it's time to get out, So so
they relied on their countercultural connections, the living Theater, the
Anarco Pacifists, who kind of got some of them into anarchism.
They got they got them a school bus. Uh. The

(53:21):
guy who named the Yippies, his name's Paul Krasner, got
them three thousand dollars for gas and expenses, which is
actually a fun ton of money. Um. Yeah, And they
filled up the bus with motherfucker's, especially the street kids,
apparently because part of their whole thing was that they
were like trying to take care of these homeless youth, right,

(53:41):
And they headed out to New Mexico. And what's really
funny and actually, in a year earlier, he had actually
taken a bunch of kids out to California, like drop
out kids. And one version of the story he stole
credit cards and bought a bunch of cars. And another
version of the story, he just stole a bunch of cars.
I don't know, he crimed himself some cars drove the
kids somewhere safe, let them be, and then drove back

(54:01):
to where he wanted to keep being in a weird
fucking street art street gang. Um, when they go to
New Mexico, all these hippies are moving to New Mexico
to join the peace and love hippie communes are starting
to crop up there. This is not where the motherfucker's go. No,
they went to go join the Chicano movement, a militant

(54:22):
movement called Alianza Federal de Mercedes UM or Alianza Alliance
for short, and Alonzo was trying to restore land rights
to indigenous people have been displaced by Spanish conquest and
like restore some ship as related to um. When the
U S stole New Mexico from Mexico, which they had
stolen from the indigenous people two years earlier, Alianza had

(54:46):
rated a courthouse, freed prisoners, killed a jailer in a
cop and gotten away. Hell yeah, the lead guy was
in jail for this. He got caught eventually. Um, but
Alianza was like, yeah, we'll take armed hippies. Yeah, because
like I forgot to mention it earlier that it slipped
out of my script somewhere. They had like a bunch

(55:07):
of like sawed off shotguns under their floorboards and like
that the whole time. Um and they but it got
more and more stressful for them every time they have
to like move crash pads and they'd have to like
un hide their stash of firearms and move it to
the next place, and and uh. Which is funny because
like the current gun culture acts like America has always
been crazy armed. We are way more crazy armed now

(55:29):
than we were in the late sixties, way more. Anyway,
Alianza is like, yeah, we'll take you fucking hippies. We're
waiting and kind of waiting for our chance to do
our thing again. We're happy to have you around. The
motherfucker's like, yeah, we want to like throw down for
the rev and live off grid. And they were really
shitty at being back to the Landers, but they gave
it their all and then they kind of start drifting

(55:51):
apart at this point. I mean, a lot of them
I don't even think came with them, right, But some
of the motherfucker's formed their own like bandit gangs just
kind of unrelated to everything else. They were like look
at the end of the day, because some of them
were like kind of like more like I'm an art guy,
and some of them were like, I'm a crime girl,
and some of them were like, I'm just a fucking
like I'm into gang ship. And you know, it's like

(56:12):
they're all very different backgrounds, and as each person felt,
some of them drifted off to become bandits, many of
whom died pretty immediately and like shootouts with the cops
and stuff. One died because he his leg got hurt
and he refused to go to a doctor, uh, and
he got got infected and then he died as steps us.

(56:34):
Many of them drifted away to go be hippies at
the Piece and love hippie communes. After like a year
of hanging out, we're like neighbors who didn't like the
radicals would shoot at them and ship Ocean Newman at
this point, the the other person who I have a
lot of his writing about UM. He went and lived
at a hippie commune UM, and later he became the
movement lawyer Ben Maria. He lived anonymously for thirty eight

(56:58):
years out west. He just was like, I'm good. He
spent a while like him and his wife, who's like
left out of all the writing. I think on purpose
because she's like also into this anonymous thing, you know. Um,
they like just ride around on horses for you like
fucking years, and then they're like, funk it, let's become
homesteaders and their homesteads for a long time and and

(57:21):
the motherfucker's are done. But their legacy lives on in
so many ways. Basically, I promised you this is how
the aesthetics of punk rock come to be. Black Mask
influenced a sister project in the UK called King Mob.
I didn't include King Mob as much because honestly, a
lot of their rhetoric is more sexist and I'll probably

(57:42):
talk at some point they'll probably end up in something
at some point they weren't like, I don't know whatever.
King Mob directly influenced Malcolm McLaren, who's the guy who
produced the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls, like
the guy who basically like kind of did a lot
of the punk ship and all traces back to Black Mask.
The aesthetics of their publications and ship give us punk rock.

(58:03):
And I think it's cool because then we can trade
trace Black Mask back to its roots to the anarchists
of the Spanish Civil War. At one point Ben met
with some old vets from the Youth Brigade and the
Spanish Civil War and they're like, motherfucker's were motherfucker's too,
where we're the sons of horse rooms. Yeah, and like,
because this spirit has been part of these movements, even

(58:27):
like like the anarchic spirit within anarchy, within larger anarchist movements,
you know, the like the slightly more fuck you crowd,
but they're the fuck you crowd who doesn't want to
dose people and like it just looks out and protects people. Whatever.
I'm really excited that I can't keep thinking about that
line that was like hip what was it was? Yeah,

(58:51):
hippies are being people pretending to be nice, and punks
are nice people. These people are like the hippie bogs. Yeah,
totally totally And they were like they are mean. They
are nice people pretending to be mean, and they fucking
did it up. And and I'm gonna end with something
that Ben Murray has said in an interview more recently.
Part of the reason I re emerged after more than

(59:14):
thirty years of anonymity to talk about what we did
back in the nineteen sixties is the fact that things
have gotten so bad in the US. It's at the
point where you can't ignore it. It's worse than ever.
I figured that I'd start letting people know about our
history and then go from there. All I can tell
people is that when I looked, when it looked pretty
dismal in the past, we took action and it did
have an effect. A lot was achieved. And yet a

(59:36):
few years beforehand, no one would have expected that we
could take on the behemoth of American capitalism. It's counterproductive
to sit back and say you can't do anything. It's
not my place to tell people exactly what they should do.
But there has always been some way to respond and
take to take action. Just look around and like that.

(59:56):
That that is a great line. And the stuff that
I talks about that they accomplished, you know, because he
came he came out of anonymity, because because the history
was not there or was there in ways that did
not match his understanding of what had happened. Um, that's
my most diplomatic way of saying this. And he talks

(01:00:16):
about how like, look, there's a cultural difference. Um, you
know they were they started off with of the US.
As for the Vietnam War, right, but compared to the
percent of the US that was against the Iraq War, like,
they they did make cultural change. Um, not these fifty people,

(01:00:38):
although yes them too, but this movement that they threw
their fucking all into. Um. And I think it's worth
noting something about a rock right if you look, if
you go back to like I remembered part of but
if you go back to the plans for the Iraq War,
a huge part of like and like why the Iraqua

(01:01:00):
went the course it did. Also the reason they didn't
just sort of like like the US killed an enormous
number of people in the rock, right, the US also
didn't do sort of like Vietnam style saturation bombing and
part of the real and this is everything right that
the you know, part part of us how to do
with neoliberal ideology, but like we actually didn't send physically

(01:01:21):
that many troops there. And and you know this, this
whole thing was always packages like we're going to set
in like a surgical team. It's it's gonna be like
a smaller invasion force. And you know, if you if
you can listen back to like like if you go
back and read the arguments about it like the generals
think this is a bad idea, but the Bush administration
specifically pushes for this. And the reason they do that
is because that they think if they if they actually
try to send like five million people into a rock,

(01:01:43):
there's going to be there's going to be an uprising.
And that that is like, you know, that that is
in sometimes an enduring legacy of Vietnam of like like
the U. S. Military is scared to unleach its actual
full capacity because they're still sort of they're still haunted
by the memory of like half of there are being
in revolt, and that that that's a real gain that's invisible. Right,

(01:02:05):
It's almost impossible unless you're sort of like you know,
because because like because the Rock world was like it
was a horror right, and same with the war in Afghanistan,
Like these things were horror shows. But you know, if
if you if you look at their sort of war
planning doctors, like this could have actually been way worse. Yeah,
And that's the thing I think it is really really

(01:02:25):
not understood very well. And there was a branch of
like you know, this is actually really this is this
is a group of people who Trump comes from. But
there was a branch of people who were like harder
core than the neo kons, who were like like Midge Dector,
people who are talking about like this thing called they
called like the Nicaragua option, which is like we're gonna
kill like one and every ten people like where you
know this is where yeah, and and then and the

(01:02:47):
US doesn't do it right, like it doesn't kill like
every person in the Rock And the reason they don't
do that has a lot to do with this kind
of stuff in ways that are just sort of invisible now.
But did happen? No, that's so interesting to me, Like
I I I I hadn't considered from that point of view.
I think about because like I threw a lot of

(01:03:07):
work into UM trying to stop the Rock War as
part of a movement that you know, used direct action
to interrupt the flows of capital and and you know,
we were very proud of our like tactical winds, right,
but in the end we were like we threw the
largest day of demonstrations the world has ever seen and

(01:03:28):
it didn't change anything. We you know, UM Portland kind
of came in second, like the Bay shut down for
like three days. We only shut down Portland for like
twelve hours or something, you know, but we shut down
like every highway in Portland and like UM and massive
numbers of the city just came out and you know,

(01:03:48):
use diversity of tactics and and we're all proud. But
then we were like, well, we didn't do ship. It's
it was very demoralizing. And one of the things that
I've been UM learning as I get older is the
impacts that we did have UM that I didn't see.
There's an essay called The Shock of Victory by Graber

(01:04:09):
that talks about this UM that did me a lot
of good because it talks about the things that the
altar globalization movement that I was also part of UM
succeeded at and ending sort of parts of the neoliberal consensus.
And I was like, oh, thank god, all my trauma
isn't literally for nothing. Yeah, And I think it's it's
really it's really, really, really difficult to see how things

(01:04:36):
could have been worse, because it's because it's really bad
if you look at how bad everything is, right, yeah,
but it's like you know, like the there there you know,
for example, like that there is a world where the
US sends like ten millions. I don't know what that
dot that time, but the US sends like an enormous
army into a rock. They roll over a rock and
you know, bush bush pushed into a rock, right, like

(01:04:56):
there are there are worlds that are in enormously worse
than this. There's there's the world. I mean like for
a while, like there there were there were real calls
so like to start dropping nukes in a rock vour
like and that that like you know, it the fact
that it could have been worse doesn't midicate how bad
it was. But it's really really hard to see, you know,

(01:05:18):
and stuff like the fact that like ever like no,
like the US hasn't been able to do like bilateral
trade agreements anymore really like we have well not bilateral, sorry,
they haven't been able to do like the sort of
massive NAFTA style trading con front that they tried one
in the East Asia and it didn't wait, it fell
through which it didn't collapse, it didn't work, and it's
it's really difficult to see that that that probably saved

(01:05:39):
an enormous number of lives, but will never you know,
we'll never know how many because you know, because we
didn't because that reality didn't happen. Yeah, no, totally. And
and then even you know, like thinking back through all
this stuff they did right, Like every kid who came
in and was like I'm having a bad trip and
got pulled out of it by a motherfucker who was like, great,

(01:06:02):
I'm inexperienced trips that are you know, um or like,
and every draft dodger who got a new I D
is one less soldier in Vietnam, one less at least
one less dead person on one side or the other,
you know, like, and every meal that you feed for
three people is three hundred people didn't go hungry that night.

(01:06:25):
And so it's like it's cool to like recognize both
of the immediate direct winds and the long term effects,
even if, um, even if it seems like, Okay, they
were around for three years and then they were gone
and then they all lived in the desert, and you know,
um so I also I think that they had a

(01:06:47):
very anarchistic end, Like I feel like that's how most
anarchist projects sort of like I don't know, people just
sort of walk away, which which is both I think
good and bad. Like that they're they're they're parts of
it that are like, I mean, obviously it's yeah, we
don't hold on like two long. We're not like we
must keep alive this institution that isn't doing anything anymore,
you know, Like yeah, but it is. I don't know,

(01:07:12):
everyone going their separate ways is like it's it's, it's,
it's I don't know. It is very anarchist, good and badly.
Well that's black masking up against the wall. Motherfucker's And
if you just start us straight and out, uh nothing, um,

(01:07:32):
you know, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do my one.
This used to be a proper country. And remind everyone that, yeah,
remind everyone that that Samuel L. Jackson once held mlk's
dad hostage at a university, demanding a historic with black
universities like suck less and people used to like people
used to just hold like the deans of colleges hostage

(01:07:55):
literally all the time, and that that was just a
thing that accepted and like, like you can go back
and read New York Times reports of some someone will
take a dean hostage and it will be called non
violent because nobody gonna be shot anyone, right, Like, I
don't know that there are there are things that used
to like there are things that used to happen that
probably like are not impossible even now. And there I

(01:08:18):
don't know, Like I think like up until right like
every if you'd ask any radical in the US whether
a group people could burn down to police station, it
would be fine. Every single person would tell you. Of
people would have been like, this is impossible. And then
you know, and then suddenly it wasn't right, and suddenly
like it's and like it's you know, and and suddenly

(01:08:39):
and over the course of like like twenty four hours,
the police are like pulling out ore like like preparing
to burn all of their files and every surrounding police
station because they're scared, like you're gonna bring another one.
So I don't know, I think things that things that
were once impossible suddenly stop being impossible very quickly. No,
it's interesting because like one of the things that I
was thinking about ending with us the opposite that's maybe
me just being old, is that one of the quotes

(01:09:00):
from Ben in one of his more recent interviews is like, yeah,
he's like, look, I'm not telling people to do what
we did. If you did exactly what we did now,
you would die. And I think that there are both
of these things are true. Both that like burning down
a police station and having it be more popular than
the president. You know, like I don't remember it was
like the approval rating of burning down the third prison. Yeah,

(01:09:23):
so like that would have seemed impossible until it becomes
possible by doing it. But at the same time, I
do think that like directly copying what people did in
a different context is uh, foolish and dangerous. And so
I think it's like it's hard to figure out to
what degree we temper our actions and to what degree

(01:09:44):
we demand the impossible or whatever, you know, I think,
I don't, I know, we're sort of kind of I'm
doing the Midwestern think of saying we're going to end
here that we do like two more hours of step
will all die. But there's a thing that you see
a lot if you read back in the history of
sort of recomments of like the people who do the

(01:10:06):
coolest ship a lot of the times are just people
who have never been in a movement before and something
happens and then they just do stuff. And you know
that like a lot a lot of the people the
people who were doing stuff, A lot of people who
doing people who had like never like you know, like
the people who are letting cop cross on fire, people
who have never done this before. And I think there's
this kind of like, I don't know, there's just kind

(01:10:28):
of calculus that happens when you've seen the costs and
you understand them that makes you do stuff in a
way this work, and you know, there's just good reason
for this, right, Like there is a lot of good
reasons to be very very careful at what you do.
But I think there's this way in which not understanding
what can happen to you is how a lot of
the most radical stuff that happens in sort of like

(01:10:49):
the spur of the moment of a riot happens. I
think that that makes a lot of sense. But I
think that like when I think about my own position
as someone who um, you know, spent decades recovering from
the rama that I accumulated by um throwing myself into
some some rather direct action, you know, it's like I'm
basically at a loss and that I cannot, in good conscience,

(01:11:12):
uh not tell people about um that danger even though
I see what you're talking about, UM, And so in
most ways is simply that my hands are tied because
I also actually one of the things I really appreciate
about Ben's statement at the end of being like, look,
it's not my place to tell people exactly what they
should do. You know, there's them. I think there's a

(01:11:33):
very specific danger in podcasting and in any kind of
talk radio and and and anything that's sort of propagandistic
in which you're trying to like wink wink, nudge nudge
about what can be done. And I really don't want
to do that, but I do think that people should
look at their contexts, look at the risks that they

(01:11:54):
feel comfortable with, and and think about them. Uh. But
so that's that's where I'm is my hands are tied.
As a I'm really playing up. This is the episode
where I just described myself as old as many times
as possible. Um, but okay, think like I think it's

(01:12:14):
like I I think like, I think there's a such
which like it's not going to be us that does
a lot of this stuff, Like, it's not going to
be the people who are like who are plugging into
the left or do who do a lot of the
stuff that will happen. It's going to be people who
just have never encounter any of it, and I don't know,
like I think that's a it's a bad thing in

(01:12:35):
a lot of ways because it's I don't know, like
you this is something like like at the beginning of
every movie, you get a lot of people like taking
pictures of themselves doing stuff and it's like you, Okay,
this is gonna go really badly for you, But I
don't know, Yeah, I I hate these are These are
kinds of conversations that I think matter. But in a

(01:12:58):
lot of ways, I feel that my position is to
not use this platform as a movement strategist. And so
that's where I'm at, um is that I I have
thoughts about all of this stuff, and uh, and I'm
not going to use this platform to describe them because
of um, because of my position. But that's not to

(01:13:18):
say that you shouldn't. I'm not glad that you're talking
about it on my my show. Just that's that's why
my responses are a little bit like, yeah, it's interesting,
you know, Yeah, I know that that makes sense. Um,
But if people do want to hear more of what
you have to say about all this stuff, where can
they hear it? Yeah, it could happen here the podcast

(01:13:41):
where we talk about stuff. It's a really good podcast.
Anyone who doesn't listen to that should listen to it. Um. Yeah,
there's there is a lot of that's true. And Margaret,
you have a new book I do. If you want
to hear my opinions about Escape from install Island, this

(01:14:01):
the adventure story, then you can purchase my new book
called Escape from Insul Island, which comes out February one
from Strangers in the Tingled Wilderness, and you can pre
order it. And if you pre order it, you get
a super cool poster of the super cool cover. The
covers by Jonas coon Face. It's amazing. Um. And that's
the thing you can do. And pre orders are like, uh,

(01:14:24):
disproportionately impactful on small presses. This is a small press book,
and small presses don't have as much capital, therefore can't
get the same discounts at printers and therefore everything it's
just like spirals into bad if you don't start off
with a bunch of capital. So pre orders are are
disproportionately impactful. That's just that's my pitch. We'll be back

(01:14:46):
next week. Stay, I see everyone. Yeah, I don't like it. No,
I don't. I don't like it either. This is the
only week you'll get to do that. Ye Cool People
Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website

(01:15:07):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
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