I've been passionate about politics since high school, I keep thinking of that now. As soon as I learned truth about Vietnam War at age 16 (?) I joined up, went to anti war demonstrations and meetings. They invited my older sister and she wasn't interested and I chimed in, I'll Go! Then by age 19 I was even On Paid Staff (doing minutes of meetings) of Peace and Freedom Party. I was at Oakland meeting where Black Panthers took over the party, which was intimidating, as I remember it.
Met Eldridge Cleaver, he was dating my roommate...
CONTINUED 2 hours later:
Riding around smoking weed was a regular activity when I was in high school in the San Gabriel Valley. One night a guy who’d graduated a few years earlier had come home from the war in Vietnam in alarming condition, shaking suicidal, like so many others. As I passed the joint to him in the backseat, he stopped talking for a few minutes about the heroin he’d had to kick upon his return home because there was so much of it in the camps, you almost couldn't avoid it. He toked on the joint, I think we may have been even smoking Thai stick, because during the years USA was in Vietnam, you could get this wowser weed from Thailand
The guy in the backseat continued talking now about his platoon defending Michelin Plantation.
“What? Did you say Michelin?” I interrupted him.
“Yeah, it was Michelin Plantation.” And he continued with his rap. He said Michelin Plantation with that special pride soldiers have for a territory they've been occupying, whether they're right or wrong.
I said, “You mean we're in Vietnam fighting this war to defend corporations?”
He stopped talking, he may have even stopped shaking. Everybody in the car got quiet and thought about that.
He started shaking again and said, “Yeah I guess so that's about right.” Then others in the car nodded agreement, we continued on down whatever L.A. road we were cruising, continued smoking weed, I think my friend from the backseat ended up in several state hospitals over next years and then, as I always do, I moved away and lost touch with everyone.
Not long after that cruising night, my sister was home from UC Santa Barbara and some of her friends from San Marino High showed up where we were living now in much more humble surroundings of Arcadia. “We're going to a meeting of the Peace and Freedom party,” they told her and I was in the hallway listening. My sister shrugged, probably was doing her hair or something, and said she didn't want to go. As they were leaving, I rushed up and said, “I'll go.” They shrugged and said sure when no one in my family objected to me at age fifteen? Sixteen? Going off with these kind of seditious acting anti war activists, but I was already a news junkie so I knew there were brewings of underground protests against this war and I wanted to be part of it.
A few years later, I was released from jail after being arrested at a love-in, 1969 Griffith Park, I spent less than one night in Sybil Brand Institute when it was brand new and shiny but I was once again radicalized by the time I was bailed out by my mom and a suburban lawyer. I tracked down the Peace and Freedom Party now in offices on Western Avenue they shared with the Mike Hannah for District Attorney campaign. I was such an enthusiastic volunteer, and so skilled, and young with great legs and didn't always wear a bra, that I was hired to work in the office. When there were meetings I would go, along with the others who worked in the office, and do shifts taking notes then typing them up as minutes.
Which is funny because now at age 70 I still supplement my Social Security by doing transcription from home, typing what people are saying, but I digress.
So I was there at the Peace and Freedom Party meeting in 1970 (?) in Oakland when as we were being dutiful white liberals operating with Rules of Order, the back door of the gymnasium banged open and a bastion of tough and serious looking black guys with Loooooong afro head and wow, part of me remembers guns but I'm foggy on this whole memory.
The Black Panthers burst in the back door and strode through the auditorium. All us white liberals were shaken and surprised, because we really didn't know this was going to happen, it was a surprise.
They banged through, walked through the crowd up to the front, one of the guys took over the microphone, and that was it, they were in charge. They said, something like, this is ours now, we are in charge. There was much disruption but mostly the good white suburban liberals many of whom like me had come from far flung locales such as Pasadena, we were silent, we sat with mouths open and watched what happened, we listened to this Manifest reading of the Black Panther party points and they were so radical and wild that most of us just rejected them and left the room, left the meeting.
I was maybe 20 years old, I was there to take notes and type them up. I was taking these pills that were legal speed I was getting from a doctor because back then it was easy to get legal speed from a doctor. That helped me keep up with the long hours but it also makes my memory of this fuzzy.
I do know that men in clothes that were more ironed and new than the people I usually see came up to me later and asked me lots of questions about that meeting. I went home, my roommate was this woman with beautiful olive skin from somewhere back east who was a national organizer of the Peace and Freedom party, I rented a bedroom in her apartment off Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. One night Eldridge Cleaver was sitting in the living room with another young black guy, intimidating like the ones at the meeting, and soon after I came home, she left with them, I didn't go with them.
I moved somewhere else and did something else as the Black Panther takeover was my last interaction with the Peace and Freedom Party. I still stayed political astute though, to this day fifty years later.
(To be edited after I get done transcribing this AM)
“What? Did you say Michelin?” I interrupted him.
“Yeah, it was Michelin Plantation.” And he continued with his rap. He said Michelin Plantation with that special pride soldiers have for a territory they've been occupying, whether they're right or wrong.
I said, “You mean we're in Vietnam fighting this war to defend corporations?”
He stopped talking, he may have even stopped shaking. Everybody in the car got quiet and thought about that.
He started shaking again and said, “Yeah I guess so that's about right.” Then others in the car nodded agreement, we continued on down whatever L.A. road we were cruising, continued smoking weed, I think my friend from the backseat ended up in several state hospitals over next years and then, as I always do, I moved away and lost touch with everyone.
Not long after that cruising night, my sister was home from UC Santa Barbara and some of her friends from San Marino High showed up where we were living now in much more humble surroundings of Arcadia. “We're going to a meeting of the Peace and Freedom party,” they told her and I was in the hallway listening. My sister shrugged, probably was doing her hair or something, and said she didn't want to go. As they were leaving, I rushed up and said, “I'll go.” They shrugged and said sure when no one in my family objected to me at age fifteen? Sixteen? Going off with these kind of seditious acting anti war activists, but I was already a news junkie so I knew there were brewings of underground protests against this war and I wanted to be part of it.
A few years later, I was released from jail after being arrested at a love-in, 1969 Griffith Park, I spent less than one night in Sybil Brand Institute when it was brand new and shiny but I was once again radicalized by the time I was bailed out by my mom and a suburban lawyer. I tracked down the Peace and Freedom Party now in offices on Western Avenue they shared with the Mike Hannah for District Attorney campaign. I was such an enthusiastic volunteer, and so skilled, and young with great legs and didn't always wear a bra, that I was hired to work in the office. When there were meetings I would go, along with the others who worked in the office, and do shifts taking notes then typing them up as minutes.
Which is funny because now at age 70 I still supplement my Social Security by doing transcription from home, typing what people are saying, but I digress.
So I was there at the Peace and Freedom Party meeting in 1970 (?) in Oakland when as we were being dutiful white liberals operating with Rules of Order, the back door of the gymnasium banged open and a bastion of tough and serious looking black guys with Loooooong afro head and wow, part of me remembers guns but I'm foggy on this whole memory.
The Black Panthers burst in the back door and strode through the auditorium. All us white liberals were shaken and surprised, because we really didn't know this was going to happen, it was a surprise.
They banged through, walked through the crowd up to the front, one of the guys took over the microphone, and that was it, they were in charge. They said, something like, this is ours now, we are in charge. There was much disruption but mostly the good white suburban liberals many of whom like me had come from far flung locales such as Pasadena, we were silent, we sat with mouths open and watched what happened, we listened to this Manifest reading of the Black Panther party points and they were so radical and wild that most of us just rejected them and left the room, left the meeting.
I was maybe 20 years old, I was there to take notes and type them up. I was taking these pills that were legal speed I was getting from a doctor because back then it was easy to get legal speed from a doctor. That helped me keep up with the long hours but it also makes my memory of this fuzzy.
I do know that men in clothes that were more ironed and new than the people I usually see came up to me later and asked me lots of questions about that meeting. I went home, my roommate was this woman with beautiful olive skin from somewhere back east who was a national organizer of the Peace and Freedom party, I rented a bedroom in her apartment off Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. One night Eldridge Cleaver was sitting in the living room with another young black guy, intimidating like the ones at the meeting, and soon after I came home, she left with them, I didn't go with them.
I moved somewhere else and did something else as the Black Panther takeover was my last interaction with the Peace and Freedom Party. I still stayed political astute though, to this day fifty years later.
(To be edited after I get done transcribing this AM)
-ke -
onward
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