Up Agains the Wall Mother Fucker Drink
Morea talks of the 1960s Black Mask and Upwards Against The Wall Motherfucker! groups and their activities - such equally busting into the Pentagon during an anti-war protest, and "assassinating" a famous poet. He besides discusses friendships with various characters, including the late Valerie Solanas - who shot Andy Warhol and wrote the SCUM Manifesto.
Morea has a blog at; http://e-blast.squarespace.com
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Ben Morea: An Interview
Ben Morea was interviewed by lain McIntyre in 2006.
Tell us nigh your background and how you came to detect yourself involved in the radical scenes of New York during the 1960s.
Ben Morea: I was raised mostly around the Virginia/Maryland area and New York. When I was ten years old my female parent remarried and moved to Manhattan. I was basically a ghetto kid and got involved in drug addictions as a teenager spending time in prison. At 1 point when I was in a prison hospital I started reading and developed an interest in art. When I was released I completely changed my persona. In order to break my addiction I made a complete suspension from the kids I grew upwardly with and the life I knew.
In the late 1950s I went looking for the beatniks because they seemed to combine social awareness with fine art. I met the Living Theatre people and was highly influenced by their ideas despite never being theatrically oriented myself. Judith Malina and Julian Beck were anarchists and they were the first people to put a name to the way I was feeling and leaning philosophically.
I also met an Italian-American artist named Aldo Tambellini who was very radical in his thinking and who channelled all of that into his art rather than social activism. He would only hold shows in common areas like churchyards and hallways in order to bring art to the public. He influenced me a lot in seeing that having art in museums was a way of rarefying information technology and making information technology a tool of the ruling grade.
I'm self educated and connected my pursuit of anarchism and art through reading and correspondence. I became enlightened of Dada and Surrealism and the radical fly of twentieth century art and sought out anyone who had information about it or who had been involved. I actually felt comfortable with the wedding ceremony of social thought with artful practice. I corresponded quite a flake with ane of the living Dadaists Richard Huelsenbeck who was living in New York, just whom I never met.
At the same fourth dimension I became friendly with the political wing of the anarchists meeting up with people who had fought in Kingdom of spain, from the Durutti Brigade and other groups. They were all in their 60s and I was in my 20s.
I was too a practising artist working at my own art and aesthetic. I was mainly painting in an abstract, but naturalistic form as well as doing some sculpture. There was some influence from the American expressionists, but Zen was also an influence.
When did Black Mask come up together equally a group? How were you organised and who was involved?
Ben: It's hard to say whether we started in 1965 or 1966, but the magazine definitely started in 1966. Blackness Mask was really very small. It started off with just a few people. As anarchists, and not very doctrinaire ones, we had no leadership although I was the driving force in the group. Both Ron Hahne and I had already been working together with Aldo doing fine art shows in public to promote the idea of fine art as an integral part of everyday life, not an institutionalised thing. Ron and I became close friends and found that we had a more socially polemical view than Aldo in wanting to get closer to the political elements of Dada and Surrealism as well as to the growing unrest in Black America. We wanted to observe a place where art and politics could coexist in a radical mode. In one case nosotros started publishing Black Mask and belongings deportment other artists and people on a similar wavelength were attracted to what we were doing. I've always favoured an organic approach where you lot don't have meetings and people just associate informally rather than having a hierarchy and recruiting members.
Over fourth dimension Ron became less interested in the political sphere and I became more than interested in working with the people who were involved in fighting for ceremonious rights and against the Vietnam war. I can honestly say that in both Blackness Mask and so later The Family we never held a meeting where nosotros consciously sat down to make up one's mind our direction or exactly how we would bargain with a particular action or situation. Information technology all adult equally a very spontaneous, organic outgrowth of whatever nosotros thought was appropriate at the time.
Ane of Blackness Mask's first actions was to shut down the Museum Of Modern Art (MOMA). Tell u.s.a. about what happened and the group's approach to straight action in full general.
Ben: We felt that art itself, the creative attempt, was an plain worthwhile, valuable and even spiritual feel. The Museum and gallery systern separated art from that living interchange and had nothing to exercise with the vital, creative urge. Museums weren't a living business firm, they were simply a repository. We were searching for means to heighten questions about how things were presented and closing down MOMA was just ane of them.
The action was a success. We'd announced our plans in advance and they closed the museum in fear of what nosotros might do. A lot of people stopped and talked with us about what we were doing and this activeness and others attracted radical artists to our fold.
At other times we disrupted exhibitions, galleries and lectures. Most of these actions were only thought up on the spot and a lot of what nosotros did was office of a learning process. Things weren't completely thought out, just were a way for us to develop an understanding of our place in the ongoing struggle. A lot of political groups would accept these big grandiose strategies and plans, but for us the actions were just a way of expressing ourselves and seeing how we could make a dent in society.
In 1966 the group likewise targeted the Loeb Centre at New York University (NYU). What happened with that action?
Ben: Nosotros had a strong sense of humour and of guerrilla theatre. I used to disrupt art lectures at NYU to enhance issues other than those that the lecturers wanted to discuss. As a issue I was challenged to a argue by some of the academics. I call up that item upshot had such a pretentious approach that we had to do something. It was incredibly stratified and merely meant for the elite and it seemed like they'd done everything possible to keep it away from the public at large. We handed out loads of leaflets advertizing this free event with food and booze and they had to cake off the streets all effectually because so many people showed upward. We went down to the Bowery and handed out flyers so that all the drunks and street people would show up.
Black Mask clearly drew inspiration not only from the Dadaists, Surrealists and avant-garde movements of the past, simply also from the gimmicky black insurrections and youth movements of the 1960s. Tell us a trivial more about these influences and about your ideas and approach to politics and fine art in general.
Ben: From my perspective and that of the people I worked with nosotros saw a need to change everything from the fashion we lived to the way nosotros thought to the style nosotros even ate. Total Revolution was our way of proverb that we weren't going to settle for political or cultural change, but that we desire it all, we want everything to change. Western lodge had reached a stalemate and needed a total overhaul. We knew that wasn't going to happen, but that was our demand, what we were virtually.
It besides meant seeing that you need all types of people involved, not just political activists. Poets and artists are just as important. Revolution comes about as a cumulative effect and part of that is a alter in consciousness, a new way of thinking.
How did Blackness Mask fit into the New York political and arts scenes because it seems every bit if you lot went out of your way to ridicule and claiming ideologues of all stripes?
Ben: A lot of political people questioned what nosotros did saying we should but attack social club on the political front and that we shouldn't care almost fine art. Yet we felt it was best to take action in the place where you were and that as artists these issues were of import to us.
Many of the hippies distrusted us and the politicos hated us because they couldn't command u.s.a. or understand what we were doing. Every bit for the people in the art earth I'm certain most of them thought nosotros were crazy.
Blackness Mask seems to have issued diverse challenges to the peace move in criticising the moderates for their lack of militancy whilst also attacking the Left for its unconditional support of the National Liberation Front (NLF). Many radicals from the 1960s are now somewhat regretful or appear reticent to speak well-nigh their support for the Due north Vietnamese regime.
Ben: Nosotros supported the correct of the Vietnamese people to resist American invasion, only were not going to support the North Vietnamese authorities's own oppressive behaviour. It was a subtle signal and most of the left couldn't understand it. We knew the history of Spain where both the Francoists and Stalinists executed anarchists. We refused to support 1 side or the other.
I hated the knee wiggle reaction of much of the Left who delighted in waving the NLF flag around. Nosotros didn't cheer the killing of American troops who were stuck over there as cannon fodder like some others did.
In a sense we didn't fit in anywhere and that meant we became a pole of attraction for all those other people who weren't interested in a dogmatic or pacifistic arroyo. Much of the later evolution of Blackness Mask into The Family came about through more than and more of these people joining with the states and affecting where nosotros were going.
Blackness Mask and later The Family unit were some of the first groups to encourage the concept of analogousness groups as a way of organising. 1 Family member famously defined an analogousness group as a "street gang with analysis." How did this approach develop and the use of term come almost?
Ben: Although we associated in like circles with Murray Bookchin our group was always very dissimilar because we were very visceral and he was very literate. Murray was keen on using the Spanish term addict de vairos to describe these non-hierarchical groupings of people that were happening. We said "Oh my god, tin can you actually imagine Americans calling themselves aficionado de vairos?" (laughter) "Use English, call them affinity groups."
Tell us virtually the Black Mask mag you produced which ran from 1966 to 1968 and spanned ten bug.
Ben: Ron and I mainly put the mag together, merely at that place was a. wider group who helped produce, impress and distribute it. We sold information technology for a nickel, which wasn't much coin, but we figured if people had to pay for it then they would actually want and read it rather than just accept one look and throw it in the trash.
Nosotros tended to sell information technology on the Lower East Side, which was the most fertile ground for united states of america as there were many artists and activists. We occasionally went up boondocks also although that was more to stir the pot.
Blackness Mask was ane of the starting time groups to accept on countercultural figures like Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg for their timidity, orientation towards religion and status seeking, labelling them at one signal "The New Institution." From 1967 onwards it seems as if Black Mask moved a lot of its critique away from the arts institution and towards the growing hippy movement and New Left.
Ben: Although we were disquisitional of them I was close to Allen Ginsberg and became close to Timothy Leary years later. What nosotros were trying to say at that moment was that they were allowing themselves to exist used as a safe valve. Nosotros wanted to attack the core of society and believed they weren't doing that. At the fourth dimension we thought they were being used by the likes of Time and Life magazine although in retrospect Fourth dimension and Life probably wish they had never covered them, especially Timothy.
Nosotros were always trying to shake things upward, to push button everyone else as well as ourselves. At that place was always a lot of interchange with all sorts of other radicals and sometimes there was fratricide in that we would strike out at people we otherwise liked simply to brand a indicate.
In 1966 Black Mask magazine cited the Situationist International as a group moving in a like direction to yourselves calling every bit they were for "the revolution of everyday life" and the abolition of fine art equally a carve up, specialized activity. Nonetheless in late 1967 the SI expelled three of its British members for having supported "a certain Ben Morea, publisher of the bulletin Blackness Mask." What was the source of friction between the groups and to what extent were you ever linked?
Ben: The Situationists and I never saw eye to middle. I thought that they were extremely doctrinaire and express. The Situationists seemed to anathematize more people than they kept. Theree was never really any connectedness between our groups and theirs.
What happened with the "assassination" of the poet Ken Koch in 1967?
Ben: Koch was a symbol to usa of this totally bourgeois, dandy world. Myself, Dan Georgakas, Alan Van Newkirk and some of the other Black Mask people went to one of his readings. I think I came up with thought to shoot him with a blank pistol. Alan looked like the classic epitome of the bomb throwing anarchist. He was most half-dozen foot iii, long and thin with a gaunt face and always dressed in black - the anarchist incarnate. And so we decided "You're the ane, y'all're going to shoot him." (laughter) Nosotros printed a leaflet and all it had on it was a moving-picture show of Leroi Jones with the words `Poetry is revolution.' On the night when Alan shot the blank Koch fainted and everyone in the audience assumed he was dead and started screaming . Some people threw the leaflet from the balcony into the crowd then we all left.
Reactions afterwards the event were separate between people who thought it was the greatest matter they'd e'er heard and those that thought nosotros were a bunch of sophomoric assholes. Which was slap-up considering so much of what Black Mask and The Family was nearly was pushing people to make up one's mind "Do I belong with this group of people or this one?" We were adamant to be outrageous in social club to strength people to make up one's mind where they stood on things. We wanted to push people, force them to call up. "Why shoot Koch? He's simply a nice poet."
What was Black Mask's connectedness to Students for a Democratic Society?
Ben: We saw that SDS was becoming a real forcefulness for alter and that all these traditional left groups and Maoists similar Progressive Labor were trying to take it over and command its direction. We thought it was important for other kinds of people, similar usa, to get involved and show the students that there were many choices, many ways they could go.
I remember being at i of the SDS national conventions and people were getting into a heated debate about the differences between the Yankees, the East Declension based establishment, and the Cowboys, the Texan based establishment. I got upwardly and said "This is all bullshit, I don't know about you lot guys, we're non the Yankees or the Cowboys- we're the Indians!" Another time a member of The Family ran for a position and got up with a waste paper handbasket and said "Hither's my platform, throw all the position papers in hither."
With both Black Mask and later The Family we used guerrilla theatre and actions to show that in that location was another approach on offer other than boring politics as usual and the more than volatile elements of SDS resonated with that. Some of the people who went on to form [The states armed struggle organisation] The Weathermen hung out with The Family and, although it has never really been credited, borrowed a lot from our militant fashion and attitude. Nonetheless one time they melded with the more than Leninist groups they took information technology all in a very different management.
Tell us near Valerie Solanas, who yous were close to and wrote a defence of following her murdoer attempt on Andy Warhol in 1968. There was a deafening silence in the undercover press around her ideas and actions following the shooting. This seems a little odd given the fact that by this betoken the New Left had begun to increasingly glorify political violence.
Ben: Valerie used to stay with me quite a fleck as she was fairly homeless and always on the move. In that location was a lot of parody and irony in her writing, but she was as well, and I don't hateful this in a bad sense, a fairly crazy person. She saw a demand to raise a lot of issues effectually what happens to women and the SCUM Manifesto was the best way she could express herself. I ever loved people who were loose cannons, who didn't fit the mould.
Sometime later when Black Mask had wrapped up and The Family had started we were involved in the occupation of Columbia University [1968]. Valerie came up at that place and found me and asked "What would happen if I shot somebody?" I said "It depends on two things - who you shoot and whether they die or not." A week later on she shot Andy Warhol.
After she shot him I wrote a pamphlet supporting her. I may have been the only person who did that publicly. I went upwardly to MOMA and handed it out there. Everybody I met was very negative well-nigh it, just, hey, I disliked Andy Warhol immensely and I loved Valerie. I felt she was right in her anger and that he was way more subversive than she was because he was helping to destroy the whole idea of creativity in art. Some people dislike the term, merely I feel that creativity is a kind of spiritual human action, a profound thing for people to do. Warhol was the verbal opposite, he tried to deny and purge the cadre of creativity and put it on a commercial footing. Every bit a person he was really despicable, too, and that's why Valerie hated him. He used and manipulated people.
The attack on Andy was met with silence on the Left and I think that was because information technology raised issues that no one could deal with. This wasn't violence occurring in some far off place. Also Andy had become a star, virtually an honoured image, and here she was hitting at it. Even the people who liked her feminist approach couldn't bargain with the fact that she would damage Andy. Blackness Mask and The Family unit drove the political people nuts because we didn't fit into any of their blueprints, considering nosotros were loose cannons, so yous can imagine how they looked upon Valerie.
Blackness Mask continued as a mag until mid-1968. What was the procedure past which the group began to evolve and change into what became known as Up Against the Wall Motherfucker?
Ben: The Family/Upward Against The Wall Motherfucker and Black Mask were related in that i grew into the other, just in reality they were very divide groups in terms of the people involved and what they did. There was no determination to start a new group, no pattern, information technology was just an evolutionary matter where one died away and the next matter came to be. It's hard fifty-fifty to say exactly at which point one ended and the next began.
The Family went over the edge, was extremely volatile and didn't have as much inclination toward the cultural sphere. It included a lot of artists, but also people from all persuasions who wanted to alive a life more existent, more visceral than what was offered. Something less limiting than but pursuing politics or fine art, something freer.
We weren't actually hippies or politicos. We were dissever from other groups even though we were role of the wider counterculture. Some people would accept placed us as hippies. Those that knew something about the counterculture could sense that we were a much more than guttural breed. But outwardly nosotros did have the trappings of the hippies in terms of long hair and ethnic article of clothing. We also took a lot of LSD. Even though nosotros were besides radicals no ane would accept mixed us up with the Young Communist League. (laughter)
What were some of the differences between Black Mask and The Family?
Ben: The Family was much bigger and more vital than Black Mask which was more of a esoteric grouping. We never called ourselves Up Against The Wall Motherfucker, although nosotros signed our posters and leaflets UAW/MF which anyone in the group could produce, with that name. Amidst ourselves we were The Family unit, which might sound weird at present because of the association of that name with Charles Manson with whom nosotros had no connection and nothing in common with. Whereas I was the main figure in Black Mask The Family was quite different considering it involved a large group of people who were all equal in strength and in determining the direction of the group. Information technology was substantially a loose confederation of affinity groups living across a serial of crash pads who shared a tribal outlook and lifestyle. Different people from the core grouping would gravitate to a particular address where a lot of young hippies and runaways would besides stay.
The fact that we rejected the nuclear family model and lived collectively was never arrived at in a polemical fashion or laid out as a pattern. We just had a sense that there were other roots to living other than what the Westward had to offer, whether it was from Native Americans, gypsies or Africa. The hippies had some of that too, simply we really leaned heavily towards this tribal, indigenous outlook. We felt that there was some forcefulness at that place that transcended the Western world. We tried to sympathize and incorporate some of these elements, both in our appearance and bodily living style. Our whole lives were directed towards free menstruation, living organically.
Tell us almost the actions The Family were involved in.
Ben: The showtime real action we did as The Family was to accept garbage to the Lincoln Centre in February 1968. There was a garbage strike in New York and at that place was tons of refuse mounting up in the ghettos. The commercial and wealthier areas were able to rent private contractors to clean their streets so we decided to take some of the garbage from the Lower East Side up to the Lincoln Middle. One of our members proposed this as a cultural exchange - garbage for garbage (laughter). Although others tended to focus on our assailment and militancy we really had some beautifully witty people.
We put out a leaflet explaining why were doing this, but those of us involved realised that we weren't actually Black Mask anymore and and then we didn't want that proper name on it. There was a verse form by Leroi Jones with the line "Upward Confronting The Wall Female parent Fucker" in it and I suggested we put that on in that location. Somehow it stuck and from then on in anybody referred to us as that. It wasn't a deliberate thing on our role. It would accept been fairly pretentious to just proper name ourselves "The Motherfuckers". (laughter) Blackness Mask connected as a magazine for a little longer and and then UAW/ MF started creating flyers and posters and doing things for papers like The Rat.
How were those broadsheets and statements put together?
Ben: They were part of our artistic politics and nosotros enjoyed putting them together either individually or as a group. We wanted to practice something that was creative and visually exciting, merely which as well made a statement. With The Rat 2 to half-dozen members of The Family would get up to their office each calendar week and practice our page. Whoever felt inspired would come forth and nosotros'd all collaborate. People who have reprinted our work, both at the time and since, often failed to capeesh our sense of humor. We believed in what we were doing, simply we didn't want to be as well serious. We could express joy at ourselves. The all-time influence we felt nosotros could have was not simply to inject militancy, merely also joy and humor into the struggles of the time.
We had our own mimeograph automobile so people were constantly running off leaflets and posters. A lot of the time I would see one on the street that I didn't even know had come out. The beauty of our family was that it was multi-armed and had no fundamental brain and so people were often doing actions and producing things that the rest knew piddling about.
In the group'south writings an affinity group was defined equally a "street gang with analysis." How much of the traditional street gang mentality was a part of your outlook though?
Ben: Some members were more than into the street thing than others. We weren't territorial or into dead end opposition nonetheless. We were "street tough" rather than street toughs. Osha Neumann who penned that particular definition (though I had coined the term Affinity Group) saw it every bit meaning that we had street smarts and an intense bond not that nosotros were irrational bullies.
In 1968 students struck and occupied buildings at Columbia in a protestation against the redevelopment of land earmarked for social housing and the university's links to weapons research. How were yous guys involved?
Ben: At that place were five buildings occupied at Columbia and the ane nosotros were in was the only ane the police didn't attack. Nosotros didn't put a call out, only anybody who was a fighter gravitated towards that building. We were and so fortified and aggressive that having evicted all the others they decided to negotiate rather than force their manner in.
We didn't operate from whatsoever plan, we just saw situations and took our chances. We were edge dwellers. During the anti-war protests at the Pentagon we saw the doors weren't heavily guarded so nosotros went for it and bankrupt them open. We'd gone along with all the other protesters, but pretty soon we attracted a cadre of a few 100 people who were like us. We saw an opportunity, fabricated a movement and they came along.
During 1968 and 1969 The Family unit were also involved in resisting police harassment and violence on the Lower E Side. How did yous go near dealing with these problems?
Ben: Our response would include everything from peaceful protests to not peaceful contesting depending on the situation. We were extremely volatile and it often depended on how hard we were pushed.
Eventually they decided that we had to be dealt with. One nighttime we barricaded the streets to traffic and threw a party. The police came, but saw we had as well many people and were likewise strong so they left united states alone. However that was the beginning of the end. Nosotros'd become too cocky and uncontrollable and they began busting us for anything they could.
In October 1968 you personally faced trial on charges of attempted murder in Boston. What led up to this and your eventual acquittal?
Ben: While I was in New York nosotros heard that young freaks, we never called ourselves hippies, were being harassed by this grouping of vigilantes in Boston. It was pretty bad and a few kids had been hospitalised so I suggested to some Family members that we should become there and await into it. Nosotros went upwards and stayed with the street kids and freaks and sure enough they were attacked while nosotros were there. The attackers were repelled and I was charged by the police force.
I was in jail for most ii weeks before I raised ball. After I stood trial we heard that these vigilantes were still hurting people and decided to go back because we were concerned that we may have made things worse. The same guys turned upwardly again, but this time they backed down and disappeared which was lucky for me because it wouldn't accept done my crusade any good.
I didn't get a lot of support for my instance as the political community couldn't accept cared less about the hippies whilst the hippies were for the about part not-vehement. Still various people helped out and the story got some coverage in the underground press. In the finish I was acquitted, just the foreman told me that it was all down to one juror. On the first vote information technology was 11 to one in favour of convicting me, but one guy managed to convince the others that in that location was enough dubiety to let me go. I don't know who he was, but I owe that one guy my liberty.
Other than supporting people against the police and opening crash pads The Family also ran a free store and was involved in diverse other activities aimed at street level survival. Tell usa most these activities.
Ben: We were e'er trying to connect the hippy part of the Lower Due east Side customs with the street and homeless office. With the influx of thousands of runaways into the area during the late 1960s they were sometimes 1 and the aforementioned, merely the two communities didn't always comfortably coexist. We set up a store front end to give homeless people too as ourselves a identify to hang out. Nosotros had free dress, doctors and lawyers on retainers, a mimeograph, information for people who wanted to dodge the draft and get false ID, information on crash pads, etc. It was a general help centre. Nosotros did free food a couple of nights a week, but also held gratuitous food events in a hall or a church on the others where we would feed up to 300-400 people. Nosotros got some papers from a church building saying we were a non-profit and that allowed us to get day old or incorrectly marked stuff from the produce markets and food outlets for complimentary. Some people worked, others made donations and the same papers also helped us to hustle up grants from liberal churches to rent places, etc.
As with a lot of other countercultural groups at the time The Family unit drew a line between `life drugs' and `death drugs.' Tell u.s.a. near that and the grouping'south arroyo to illicit drugs in general.
Ben: We differentiated between difficult drugs similar cocaine and heroin and those like grass, hashish and psychedelics. Nosotros saw that LSD and grass were helping to intermission downwards the structures between suburban youth and helping them to rethink their place in the universe. Some of us had had bug with difficult drugs and saw that they were subversive. Unlike Leary and others we didn't see psychedelics equally a cure all, just they could and did make a positive contribution.
People would sometimes bring kids to me who were on bad trips. I would take LSD and try to go with them to the place where they were in trouble and help them come back. If you want to talk about putting yourself out in that location, that was it. You wouldn't encounter many Maoists doing that. (laughter)
In late 1968 The Family went head to head with stone promoter Bill Graham over the issue of community involvement in the Fillmore East venue. What were the origins of the dispute and how did it all pan out?
Ben: At root this was a clash between the grassroots and those who exploit them. We didn't want command of the Fillmore East or anything like that, but we wanted to accept one gratuitous, not commercial night for the street people. Given the money they were making out of the community nosotros figured that they could requite something dorsum.
At first Graham refused and during one coming together in his office he pulled out 3 silver bullets and lined them upward saying "The Hells Angels made similar demands on me and sent me these iii bullets and I didn't give in." I got up and said "There's one departure betwixt us and the Angels, we're not giving y'all anything to put on your desk." That wasn't a literal threat, simply a statement that one fashion or another we were going to go what nosotros were demanding.
I nighttime the Living Theatre people were performing at the Fillmore Due east and nosotros arranged to come up on stage after them. I made a argument saying that they were finished, but we were going to stay on phase for as long as information technology would have to get what we wanted. Information technology might have one nighttime, two nights or two weeks, just we were going to stay. We occupied the stage and fights broke out through the nighttime with Graham and his goons, merely they lost and at about one or ii in the morning time he gave in and we got the Thursday night for gratis.
What sort of events happened on the gratis Thursdays?
Ben: A lot of rock bands including Canned Heat, the MC5 and Land Joe McDonald came and played for free and we gave out free dope and food. I've been told that the MC5 clashed with some sections of the crowd, but I remember staying at their place in Michigan some time later on so I'one thousand not sure what happened at that place. Later on three weeks Graham came to me with a letter from the police informing him that they were going to shut the whole venue downwardly if these nights continued due to the costless drugs policy. Nosotros accustomed that that was it, but in the stop it didn't matter that it had only lasted three weeks because we got to challenge the whole commercial world of rock northward roll.
Woodstock provided u.s.a. with some other opportunity to challenge the music industry. These young kids said "You ever say the music's free, well we're going to make information technology free." Like most of the things we did nil was planned. We only went along and some of us thought it would exist a skillful idea to cut the fences and let everyone in. When information technology began raining we institute where the organisers were storing camping equipment for sale and liberated all the tents and sleeping bags. We cut a pigsty in the storage tent and just gave them out.
Did The Family unit interact much with groups from other parts of the state and world?
Ben: A tremendous number of people came through New York and spent time with u.s.a. around the time that The Family began. They included some UK Situationists who became the King Mob group, members of the Zenga-Kuren from Nihon, Jean Jacques Leibel who was ane of the leaders in the `68 uprising in Paris and likewise some Provos from The netherlands. All of these groups overlapped with our arroyo in 1 style or another.
Nosotros were also doing a lot of travelling ourselves. I spent time with The Diggers in San Francisco. They were coming from a very similar place in terms of radicalism and the rejection of the entrepreneurs who were profiting from the counterculture, but our approaches were very unlike. In that location was a lot of support from the Westward Coast groups, even [LSD manufacturer] Owsley gave united states of america some money. There were as well minor groups of people all over the state who identified with us and stayed with us.
What prompted the decision to leave the Lower East Side?
Ben: The police felt threatened by usa. They began following us closely and engaging in constant harassment. Some of our people were besides charged in the second wave of indictments that came out of the Chicago protests.
These things in themselves didn't drive us out, but we were evolving and exploring new directions. The tribal chemical element became more than strident and many of us began to wonder why we were stuck in the ghetto anyhow. A lot of the young runaways were being preyed upon and we felt it would be safer to move them out. We took about twenty of them to California at one point and helped others detect homes elsewhere.
The grouping didn't end suddenly, simply dispersed with most of u.s. getting involved in various land oriented projects and communes. I personally stopped writing and went into the mountains and didn't come up out for five years. I became inspired by Wilhelm Reich'south The Murder of Christ and its idea that y'all don't ignore the wider issues, but motility on to tackle them ane person at a time.
With the US regime on a permanent war basis overseas whilst simultaneously bully down on ceremonious liberties and dissent at abode information technology sometimes seems every bit if the left fly movements of the 1960s never existed. What practise you come across as the legacy of groups like Black Mask and the New Left in full general?
Ben: Part of the reason I re-emerged [after more than 30 years of anonymity] to talk virtually what we did back in the 1960s is the fact that things have gotten so bad in the US. Information technology'south at a indicate where you tin can't ignore information technology, it's worse than ever.
I figured that I'd commencement letting people know about our history so go from there. All I can tell people is that when it looked pretty dismal in the past nosotros took action and information technology did accept an effect. A lot was achieved and yet a few years beforehand no 1 would have expected that we could take on the behemoth of American capitalism. It'south counter-productive to sit back and say "You can't practise anything." It'due south not my identify to tell people exactly what they should do, but there is always some manner to respond and take action, just look around.
Source: https://libcom.org/history/against-wall-motherfucker-interview-ben-morea
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