The “great narcotics hoax” was pretty weird any way you look at it, and I’m happy too that this issue carries a “fact sheet” on the big “raids.” The daily “newspapers” and the idiot TV and radio interests do a good job as police propagandists, as well they should (like, when you consider the Commissioner Ray Girardin was a “newsman” for 30 years on the Times, you get the idea), and as usual the only source for anything even resembling the “facts” is this paper. But they know they haven’t got long now, and they’re doing everything in their power to hold off the revolution—which revolution, however, will not be stopped. Like the cop said to me, “I just hope those kids aren’t listening to you,” and all I could tell him was, well, they’re YOUR kids, baby, and they don’t HAVE to listen to me at all—you’re doing a pretty good job of alienating them all by yourself. They don’t NEED me to tell them anything. Yes.
Since the Big Raid was so obviously a last-ditch attempt to scare all the heads in town out of their beards and hair and beautiful clothes, move back home and get a job and never question “them” again, the only tactic we have is to laugh at them, REFUSE to be scared, and turn some of their maniac propaganda back into their cowering faces. I mean it. They’re supposed to have me up tight, but I’m not scared of those clowns at all, and if I’m not scared I don’t see how you can be. I mean they kept me locked up in the county dungeon for a week on a phony gimmick because they KNEW what I’d have to say to people the minute I hit the streets, and they wanted to make sure their paranoia machine was working properly. It didn’t, though—people are too STRONG anymore to let the Gestapo push them around like they used to—like I used to, in fact. That’s why I’m happy to have this chance to confront them, because I want to help show them that it just won’t work anymore. No it won’t, boys.
The Artist’s Workshop is behind on bills and needs a couple hundred dollars to get its head above ground again—say $200 to $400 would help tremendously. If there is any one beautiful patron of the arts out there who can help, I’d really love to talk with you—you can contact me at the Workshop any day or evening, or call me at 831-6840 to talk about it or anything else. Also, $1 and $2 donations are extremely pertinent and just as welcome. We also need furniture for the Workshop: couches, chairs, tables, desks, and the like, and if you have any you were going to throw away I wish you’d call me and I’ll bring a crew to carry them here, where they will be put to good use. Also, if anyone has a typewriter in good working order that they aren’t using, we need those too—preferably electric, but anything will help. Yes.
And anyone who has experience in fund-raising and would like to work with us would be VERY welcome indeed.
Friday the 24th, in Lower DeRoy at 8:00, the FNCC will present a concert/reading event, with the amazing Roscoe Mitchell Quartet from Chicago (ask the people who got their minds blown by Roscoe’s band last month about THAT music) and a reading by the beautiful New York poetess Diane DiPrima, who will be making her first visit here on a westward reading trip. Diane has been at Millbrook with Tim Leary and the League for Spiritual Discovery for the last few months and is a really lovely poet, editor/publisher of the Poets Press, etc. Her books include “This Kind of Bird Flies Backward,” “Dinners and Nightmares,” and “A New Handbook of Heaven.” She had an exquisite prose piece in GUERRILLA, which you can still see if you’re lucky—the first issue is all sold out except for small amounts left in bookstores. The same piece is also in WORK/4, which you can pick up at the 5th Estate Bookstore or at Mixed Media.
Sunday afternoon the Workshop communal/macrobiotic dinner will be held, 4 p.m., followed by another reading by Diane and music by Roscoe & Co. The joyful return of Billy Reid to Detroit has done wonders for a lot of people, and Billy, Ken Burns and Jim Semark, among others, are doing an exciting job spreading the macrobiotic gospel. If you like regular food, please bring something to share with your brothers and sisters—meat dishes, salads, and casseroles are especially welcome if you can manage that. Come and eat and talk with friends, break bread, partake of the community spirit. Everyone is certainly welcome—even cops. I mean, if you guys want to live that way, that’s your problem finally, not mine. And good luck to you, Vahan Kapegian—I hope you’re sleeping well, and that you make Sergeant after all. If that’s all you want.
Sunday night at Bobbie’s Lounge the Bob McDonald Trio will sponsor a benefit for the Heads of State (24th of January) Defense Fund—music by Bob’s trio and probably Roscoe’s group among others—$1.50 at the door goes into the Defense Fund. Please come out. That’s the 26th, Sunday, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., and beer is only 40 cents, if that’s your shot. And thank you, Bob.