Looney Toons

Looney Toons

Dave Marsh

Well, I want this to be about John, John Sinclair who will always be very special to a number of us around here because he could drop by your place, same as you could drop by his and you would end up getting so blitzed that you couldn’t walk, maybe.

Or maybe I could try and tell you what it’s like to be sixteen in Detroit and read a rock and roll column in an underground (quote) paper that’s so far out that it just totally changes your aesthetic, that’s so far out that a lot of other writing is revealed for the pud-shit that it is. A Rock and Roll Dope column, you dig, that could write about early Cream and Pink Floyd and Albert Ayler and Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman and make you see those people, inside out and backwards.

Or to be politically confused because everything around you was breaking up into little splinters, people listenin’ to rock and roll and people listenin’ to Chairman Mao and you kinda sensed that there was something wrong. And you wake up one day and by God if somehow someone hasn’t fused the two, rock and roll culture and political consciousness. John Sinclair.

Then there was the February day that the first MC5 album came in to the record stores and we went out and got a couple copies and blew off the movie we were gonna go to and went home and listened to it and got high or vice versa, I don’t remember and it don’t seem to matter. And reading John’s notes about how we needed a free high energy source and knowing it was fuckin’ true.

And a whole lot of other shit, too. But most of all I remember sitting in a hot July courtroom a year ago and watching John Sinclair taken out by a pig,' not five feet away from me as I sat, boy-reporter and didn’t believe it for about a month.

The last time I saw John was the next Monday when they dragged him into pseudo-judge Colombo’s facist courtroom and sentenced him to 9xfi to ten bogus years in jail but first they decided to bring out this withered, black junkie. A lesson to us kids, ole Bob Colombo, constipated asshole sitting powerful on his shithole throne, thought it was gonna be. And it was — we saw right through it, we knew how come hq was a junkie, we know all about drug addiction because we’ve seen the pig perpetrate that farce right here among the people. Yeah, we know about drug addicts and we know how cop consciousness causes it.

Then they brought John out and he stood there panther-proud and laid it right out. Just ran it down and explained how he knew that he was NOT going to jail as a dope smoker that he knew he was going to jail as a political prisoner.

And the last image I have of him is that famous picture of three punk pigs dragging him from the courtroom, three pigs who weren’t as strong as he was and hardly anyone else, pig or not, is either. Is now or ever will be.

Well, I miss John Sinclair, who seems to be reduced to words now, words when we need his actions more than we ever needed anything.

We gotta get him out of jail, kids and it’s time to stop fucking around about it. Oh, every once in a whole long time, someone will write something about him or you will see his picture and remember that massive presence at the Grande Ballroom or somewhere. But mostly we all seem too easily to shun the idea that JOHN SINCLAIR IS IN JAIL FOR TEN YEARS MOTHERFUCKERS.

If I knew how to scream and bleed and kick your collective asses and my own in print, I would right now. Because we’ve really let the dude down and we’ve gotta get him OUT. Out right now, dig it?

If it’s a travesty and a sham that John Sinclair is in jail for ten years then it is a triple travesty and a quapruple sham that the youth of Amerika has not rallied around him and ripped John out of that scummy fucking hole that he has to sit in seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year for ten fuckin’ years. That’s a mindfuck for me.

Anyway, there’s a fast and benefit and celebration for John the week of July 28 through August 2, the same week he went to jail last year. He needs your support and you really fuckin’ owe it to the dude, especially if you live in Detroit or Michigan where he virtually created a counter-culture, but also if you live anywhere in Amerika. Because John Sinclair is, as Abbie Hoffman put it, a mountain of a man and because those of us who knew him really loved him when he was out on the street and love him still. And most of all because John Sinclair is the prime symbol that It Can Happen Here. And does and will until we put a stop to it.

Money and energy will help and you can send that, one way or another to 1520 Hill Street in Ann Arbor. Whatever, there’s nothing more important you can do this summer than to help get the dude out. He really does deserve your support and needs it.

We need him too bad to let him be in jail any longer. Somehow that seems just simple enough.

DEBBIE’S BOX FROM CHICAGO

(ED. NOTE: Creem staffer, Debbie Burr, recently picked up and moved to Chicago where she is working with the White Panther Party in various community concerns as part of a total move towards bringing the scattered alternative factions of Chicago together. Debbie will be writing this column to help keep us informed on developments in the Windy City, Hog-butcherer of the world.)

Finally the people of Chicago are beginning to unite. The street gangs-revolutionary grease-are raising their consciousness and want to start STPing (Serving the People). One organization, Rising Up Angry, has been ambitious enough to give birth to a street newspaper of the same name. The vanguard revolutionary party, the Black Panthers, have gotten their shit together and are providing services for their communities. This column will attempt to keep abreast of these and the many other organizations and actions in Pig City, USA.

The energy level in Chicago has reached mammoth proportions, but much of it is yet unharnessed and lacks constructive direction. At five dollars a head, thousands flock to the monster rock shows at the Aragon Ballroom each weekend and to free concerts in Lincoln and Grant Parks each Sunday. They go because they want to be with their brothers and sisters, smoke dope and they need rock and roll as an outlet for their energies. Five dollars is a lot of bread, but it’s worth it to thousands because they have to release their energies and absorb their culture. The tragedy is that they have to spend money to do it. A symbolic example of the fulfillment of these needs was the 5500 that danced for an hour at the Aragon after Joe Cocker left the stage. The young people are groping and they scream and jive around for even the bad music that is played. The potentiality of these energies is in-fucking-credible and one of the reasons why Chicago is fast becoming the vanguard city of the cultural/political revolution.

The White Panther Party is one of the community orientated outlaw organizations that are trying to harness this energy and use it to serve the people. The Illinois Chapter of the WPP was formed less than two months ago, but they have already had an immeasurable impact on organization in Chicago through the institution of various programs and through working closely with previously established Chicago movements. The White Panther cadre operate a successful bookstore and information center at the Aragon to help educate the people. They have instituted a series of free feeds in the park on Sundays and work with Euphoria Blimp Works (the sound system collective) to make the free concerts in Lincoln Park happen. Free City News, the White Panther community news service, is a free street sheet written and distributed by the White Panthers to keep the people informed of community happenings on a weekly basis. The promotion of the idea of Free City is a priority of the Panthers — Free City Music, Free City News and Free City Exchange. Other Free City services including food co-ops, defense funds, free store, medical clinics, drug abuse clinics and legal aid are in the planning stages.

The brief existence of the Illinois Chapter has stirred great interest among the people. Open weekly meetings have attracted interested people from all over the city and surrounding suburbs. The meetings are general information and political education classes and have resulted in the possibility of several White Panther communes being formed in different areas of the city. The existence of the WPP collective has also, of course, attracted the pigs. The 18th district of Daley’s pigs has been getting down on the house and its members in ways ranging from individual harassment to a house raid when it was literally up-against-the-wall for the Panthers for three hours while twelve shotgun armed pigs ransacked the home. They didn’t find any illegal drugs or arms so they had the house condemned instead. The pig harassment is just another part of the total struggle and the White Panthers continue to work and serve the people of Chicago.

Seventeen year old ex-Detroiter Joel Landy, who operated a movement print shop in Detroit a little over a year ago, is at it again in Chicago. The youthful Landy’s Red Star Press is operating out of the Chicago Loop area and is available to organizations or anyone who needs printing done. The shop is presently set up to handle offset printing of material up to 17” by 22”. Joel can be reached at (312) 641-1576. As Che Guevara said, the first weapon of a revolution is the printing press.

Speaking of information getting to the people, the Righteous Bob Rudnick is finally on the air again. Rudnick was recently fired from WGLD-FM in Chicago for commenting on contemporary issues. His new Kokaine Karma krew Includes the Suzy £rfcamdheese? Collective of Women’s Liberation, the Freedom Frog, and Venutian John Murvos. Radio Free Chicago is the name of the show and it is featured from midnight to 5 a.m. seven days a week on WEAW-FM in Evanston, Illinois just outside of Chicago.

After a tremendous amount of negotiation the five hours of time a night were bought by the sponsors. Running no more than four commercials per hour the show is sponsored by several local community-oriented persons including the people at Four Heads and Sights and Sounds who don’t even care if the ads are run as long as the show is on. The news is also being done by local people from the Chicago Seed and Rising Up Angry. The Suzy Creamcheese Collective is an innovative effort on Radio Free Chicago to help combat the problem of male chauvinism that is amplified in radio and the entire music industry. The women will present ideas and issues relevant to the liberation of women along with programming good music for the Tuesday night show. Radio Free Chicago operates on a totally non-profit basis, but within the structure of the entire station. None of the personnel are even being paid as yet. The important thing now is getting to the people and we must use established means until we can free the airwaves, which are as polluted as the Chicago River. Anyway it’s a good thing to hear Rudnick and crew over the air again.

Finally, in an effort to create false trust while actually competing with the people’s free music in Lincoln Park, Mayor Daley has begun a free concert in Grant Park. Well, one night several community people were sitting around and decided that Daley’s June 28 concert should be a memorial to Fred Hampton. Far out! Plans were made and the Seed came out with the back cover advertising the “Fred Hampton Memorial Concert”. Flyers were distributed and banners made. This shook up Daley’s office not a little bit and they spent time making frantic denials on local radio as to the dedication of the concert to the Black Panther brother murdered in Chicago by the pigs last year. June 28, 30,000 people gathered in Grant Park to hear Brian Auger, Mason Profit, White Lightning and several other local bands (PG&E and Lee Michaels were scheduled but failed to show up). Whether they came to enjoy a day in the ultimate ruse, a park with trees and green grass in the middle of a pig city, or with a consciousness of respect for their dead brother, Fred, is questionable. But, when emcee Bob Rudnick asked the crowd what they thought of our pig mayor, there was muddled dissent. When he asked them how they felt about our dead brother, Fred Hampton thousands of fists were immediately raised into the sky. Power to the People.

Debbie Burr