Judy Gumbo Albert

Judy and David's Wedding

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:30:11 -0800

September 6, 2009 in Berkeley, California

Brave New Life

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:15:41 -0800

At the time the Oakland 7 were arrested and charged with attempting to shut down the Oakland Induction Center, I still lived in my hometown of Toronto, Ontario Canada. America was at war with the tiny nation of Vietnam. Draft-age men were fleeing the States to come and live in my home country. I believed passionately that the war was wrong, but my experience of demonstrations was limited to marching in peaceful protest with my first husband outside the US embassy in Toronto demanding an end to “Canadian Complicity in the Vietnam War.” The slogan End Canadian Complicity represented everything about Canada that had motivated me to leave: Boring. Too far removed from the action. Not out front. Not direct. Not like STOP THE DRAFT! Not like PEACE NOW!

I moved to Berkeley from Canada in late 1967, hungry to explore my brave new world. Apart from my roommates on Keith Street, I knew only one other person in town. A rally for the Oakland 7 would, I figured, be a lot more exciting place to meet people than outside a US embassy in stuffy old Toronto.

I dressed carefully for the event in black fishnet stockings, high brown leather boots, and my favorite light brown suede miniskirt that matched my hair. My mother gets all the credit for my fashion sense. When my father Leo Clavir met Harriet Kamman at a Communist Party meeting in Toronto in the early 1930s, Harriet was a slim, attractive blonde, blue-eyed beauty – well before 1956, when she quit the Party, escalated her drinking, put on all that weight and froze her mouth in a severe, disapproving, upside down U. Harriet had imbued in me the notion, popular among Toronto anglophiles, that whenever you go out in public you dress your very best. You hold your head high. You are, after all, a proud subject of Her Majesty the Queen.

Now Dorothy from Canada found herself in Oz, or perhaps I’d fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. I stopped at the entrance to a large room which was jam packed with tables; every surface covered with unruly stacks of newsprint and brightly colored leaflets from a cornucopia of political groups. Students and non-students, protestors and faculty all crowded together; the men wearing buttoned down shirts or sexy green army jackets; tall, blonde, tanned and beautiful California girls, breasts bursting out of whatever was (or wasn’t) holding them down, came right out of a Beach Boy’s song. It felt like a pre-Internet, anti-war Match.com.

By now, my memory of what occurred next has transformed itself into pure Hollywood fantasy. I noticed one attractive young man, his face framed by curly blonde hair, wearing a faded yellow and red Indian paisley shirt and tall, fringed brown suede boots, backlit, or so my mind reconstructs, by a multi-colored California version of the Northern Lights. Dylan’s Masters of War plays in the background. This man stands next to another equally attractive man, who has straight blonde hair, and is dressed more conservatively-- which wasn’t difficult -- in a white shirt and tie. A two-fer of blondes! I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. In that moment, California truly lived up to its well-deserved reputation for abundance.

I approached the guys and introduced myself, mumbling something about being a Canadian newly arrived in town. In tandem, the boys looked me up and down.

“Stew” – said the curly haired one.

“Steve” – said the one with straight hair.

Then Stew reached out his long right arm and touched me gently on the tip of my nose with his little finger.

This gesture, so neutral and yet so intimate, sealed the deal. A few days later Stew and I sat together in a secluded campus grove by Strawberry Creek, shielded by towering eucalyptus trees whose leaves gave off a menthol-like sweetness, far more exotic than the acrid pine cones of my youth.

‘So, ahhhh.. what brings you to Berkeley?’ Stew asked.

“Politics. It’s so exciting here. And…uh…well.. I was married to this guy in Canada, David Hemblen. David was Scottish and British. Very formal. Anyway, we broke up. About a year and a half ago..

An image of David Hemblen’s flat face, blonde hair and little piggy blue eyes intruded for a moment into my consciousness. I was 21 when we married. Our wedding could have been written as a script for the TV Show Mad Men. Nothing was too good for my father’s eldest daughter; so much the better if the wedding could also be a business opportunity. In deference to his new in-laws my father rented a bagpiper; he impressed his cronies in the movie industry by hiring a film crew. It pains me to say that I’ve never been able to fully forgive my mother for spending more on her green velvet jewel-bedecked outfit than she allowed me spend on my plain, white organza wedding dress. Or on my bridesmaid’s truly atrocious green sateen gowns. Two things from that marriage remain: 10 full place settings of exquisite, expensive, black, white and gold Wedgewood china, and the lesson, passed on to my daughter Jessica, that it’s better to skip that first marriage completely and go directly to your one true love. Which, I’m delighted to say, Jessica did.

I used to be married too, Stew spoke in a low, intense voice. Her name was Joanne. Joanne Wyler – a California girl if I ever met one.

I came home one afternoon and found my husband in our bed with another woman. It surprised me that I could so easily blurt out my secret shame to a man I barely knew. I still felt victimized by that act: wronged, powerless, angry, betrayed -- all at the same time.

"My wife, Joanne, she just called me. On the phone. I’d asked her to come with me to work on the Pentagon demonstration. She told me she wasn’t coming. She didn’t want to be in New York. She didn’t want to live with me any more. She didn’t want to be married. She didn’t want to leave California and be a revolutionary. And she said I couldn’t make her. She told me our marriage was over. Just like that. Over the phone."

Suddenly my failed first marriage didn’t feel quite so terrible. Stew and I had something more in common beyond our mutual sexual energy and love of radical politics. And for Stew, for the remainder of his life, he never gave bad news over the phone. If he were alive today, he wouldn’t text or tweet bad news either. If you needed to tell someone something terrible, according to Stew, it was your obligation as a moral human being to do so in person.

At the end of our afternoon in the Eucalyptus grove, Stew turned, looked at me with those intense blue eyes of his and said, “You’re pretty cute, you know.” My heart went fulllupp. It felt perfectly reasonable to invite him back to Keith Street. I recall waiting expectantly but with some trepidation as Stew took off his fringed leather boots and unbuttoned his paisley shirt. Then we climbed together up the ladder into my six-foot high bed, me first, him following. And so began our 40 year relationship.

Shortly after Stew and I become an item, and thanks to the brilliant legal maneuverings of the well-known San Francisco attorney Charles R. Garry, the Oakland 7 were acquitted with Steve Hamilton, the other attractive blonde, among them. Some years later, Steve realized he was gay and came out of the closet -- which, given his traditional blue-collar background and the macho maleness of that moment, was very difficult for him. Stew, Steve and I remained lifelong friends. Three years and one day after Stew’s death, Steve was felled by a massive heart attack. In the grand karmic scheme of things, I’ve always been grateful that my quest for true love led me to choose Stew. And I bet Steve was too.

Growing up with Communist Party Parents

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:03:22 -0800

Back then, I couldn’t really grasp the essence of ironic Yippie politics. What blocked me was my tendency to take everything literally; a survival mechanism, I’ve come to believe, left over from growing up in a Communist Party family. The world of my childhood felt highly political and very serious. I have a ten year olds’ memory of picking up the yellow kitchen wall phone to call the White House and tell the operator to ask President Eisenhower not to execute the Rosenbergs. My father, Leo Clavir, was the first person to import Soviet films into the North American continent, so my formative movie experiences consisted of first run, private screenings upstairs in my grandmother’s living room, of what were to me the terrifying Eisenstein classics Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible. At our dining room table I sat directly across from the family bookshelves that contained not just Marx and Lenin, but also my mother’s prized volumes of Walt Whitman and John Dos Passos. Topping my list of permitted reading from these shelves was Anton Semyonovich Makarenko’s leather bound, brick-red, gold and black embossed tome Road to Life, a visionary socialist saga in which young boys learn to work diligently, act responsibly and accept, for the greater good, limits on their individual rights and privileges. Comic books were forbidden because comic books were evil, as spelled out in the fear-mongering screed (also forbidden, third shelf from the top) Seduction of the Innocent. Why then can I still recall its artistic illustration of a dagger being plunged into the eye of a screaming woman? Don’t ask.

The Soviet Union was a dependable but not overwhelming presence in my young life. I learned to speak minimalist Russian: “zdrastvystye,” (hello) dosvedanye,”(goodbye) “tovarisch” (comrade) and the memorable phrase “Sobranye nye vosim ab shest.” (The meeting will be at six instead of eight.) When our dinnertime family mood was light, my parents, sister and I would begin chanting “Sobranye,” and, when we got to the word “Ab” lift the dining room table a few inches off the ground then bring it down with a resounding thud on “shest.” I learned internationalism or ecumenism in today’s terminology, at my Jewish/commie day camp, where I, the little Dutch Girl, together with the other children dressed in native costumes from all over the world, sang together, in our high, sweet, young voices: “Arise ye prisoners of starvation, arise ye wretched of the earth.” I still have faith in the elemental Red Diaper mantra I absorbed as a child: from each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need. You put into society what you can and you take out what you need. Simple. Equal. No distinctions based on wealth or class.

I’ve come to suspect that my parents must have been semi-clandestine Party members. For business purposes, it would benefit the Russians to give their North American film franchise to someone they could completely trust, but who was not publicly identified with the Party. Early on, my parents had let my younger sister and I in on the fact that they were indeed Party members; this information was not exactly secret, but it wasn’t to be broadcast either. The Party was my parent’s community: all their numerous close friends were in the Party; Canadian Party Chairman Tim Buck and other communist notables were frequent visitors to our home. On the occasional deep winter night, the same two short pudgy, Russian-speaking men dressed in long, heavy black wool coats and grey lambs wool hats pulled tightly over their ears, would appear on our front stoop and be long gone by the time I woke up.

My father Leo would take pre-paid trips to Russia, ostensibly for his movie business. Harriet stayed home. “Whaddidyabringme’? were the first words out of my mouth when Leo returned with the latest in Soviet crafts as presents for his wife and daughters: large brown fur hats, bright multi-colored nested wooden figurines. I recall a peasant doll of un-Russian, Barbie-like proportions, clothed in a peasant blouse, green velvet vest skillfully embroidered skirt, and hand-made lace-up leather slippers. There was a delicately carved wooden Baba Yaga witch puppet complete with black cape, babushka and oversize yellow/grey peasant boots that my sister and I fought over for years. Leo found stamps for my collection: four-color Lenin in the snow surrounded by happy peasant children, or standing on a cliff, grey storm clouds above, red flags festooned with gold hammer and cycles below, exactly like Moses parting the waters in the Ten Commandments. I even recall a green 30 kopek Stalin stamp, with a circular drawing of the famed dictator’s head and mustache superimposed on a line of eight white horses, charging forward; each horse carrying a giant socialist-realist flag waving boldly in an invisible wind. Just like my camp song predicted: “United Nations on the march with flags unfurled, together fight for victory, a free new world.”

Five years before Leo died, he, Harriet, Stew, and I attended a recital in Portland where Stew and I lived. The pianist was an older, grey haired man whose name I no longer remember. Anxious and excited, my father insisted, at the end of the concert, on going up on the small stage to introduce himself, but what popped out of his mouth at the crucial moment was not the name Leo Clavir but the name Allan, a name I’d never heard him use before in my entire life.

What was that? I asked.

My mother scowled.

My other name, my father replied. But just forget I said that, understand?

Ahhhh… the thought occurred to me as I wrote this a few days ago, Just like Stew and I were Spring and Victor to the Weather Underground.

Just forget I said that, understand?

One day the Russians arbitrarily transferred their film import franchise to the American impresario Sol Hurok. Leo went on to make and lose all his money promoting bingo games on radio and TV. Until the day he died in the late 1980s, my father defended the Soviet Union. When it collapsed, my sister and I were both very grateful that Leo was already gone.

I grew up a red diaper baby. To me that meant: Work hard. Take things seriously. Be a force for good. I was a Yippie leader in the 1960s. To me that meant: Have fun. Don’t take anything seriously. Be a force for good. How can I possibly integrate these two aspects of my self? In the long view of history, as my father used to say, I’ve learned to live my life based on the following mantra: Stalinist discipline (or SD as we call it around my house) gets the job done, but flamboyant, imaginative, over-the-top Yippie theatrics are a lot more fun.

The FBI Greek Chorus

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:50:39 -0800

Par-a-noia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line the man come and take you away.

Stop, children
What's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down.

(Buffalo Springfield, Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound)

I’m no playwright. The closest I ever came to the stage was when I starred in The Heiress in my final year at Harbord Collegiate Institute in Toronto. Yet it came to me recently that, in the interests of fairness, I wanted to give those FBI agents who burglarized my Catskill mountain cabin where Stew and I lived in the 1970s, an opportunity to tell their side of the story, and that the theatrical form of a Greek Chorus might lend itself to this endeavor. The words in my little play come directly from transcripts of interviews conducted internally by the Bureau in the late 1970s. Every sentence is a verbatim quote, including the agents’ insistence on referring to me by that hideous last name “Hemblen,” the cheating first husband who refuses to go away. I have changed for dramatic purposes the order in which the agents’ words were spoken. No names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Imagine, if you will, a dimly lit stage. At each end is positioned a giant American flag. Center stage is illuminated by a large circle of light in which THE RADICALS sit: Judy (frequently waving a tiny red and blue NLF flag with a yellow star in the middle), Stew, Oobie the dog and two cats, Tarot and Kabbalah. THE RADICALS occasionally get up and exit stage left, taking the dog but leaving the cats. At the perimeter of the circle, where shadow meets light, twelve FBI agents stand at attention, some dressed in hunting gear, the others wearing trench coats, white shirts, thin ties and thick-soled shoes. As each agent speaks, he steps directly into the light.

AGENT 1 (JAMES “JIMMY” VERMEERSCH): The Gumbo-Albert case was mine.

THE INSPECTOR (GLEN ROSENQUIST): Mostly I dealt with New Left type cases. I had the Judy Gumbo case when she was in Boston and support people for the Weather Underground rather than fugitives.

LOCAL AGENT (JACK LUPTON): My first contact with the Gumbo case came as a result of a phone call. The New York office was going to do a “special.” I was told that Kingston agents might be called upon to lend assistance.

AGENT 2 (DEWEY PRINTY): I was upstate twice. The first time I dislocated my shoulder. The second time was when the beeper was put on the car.

LOCAL AGENT: I conducted four surveillances …also two more in connection with the beeper that was installed on the car.

AGENT 3 (ROBERT CASSIDY): I made a fifth trip up to Hurley to install the beeper on Gumbo’s car.

AGENT 1: Hemblen and Albert were suspects in bombings. When we got word from an informant that Hemblen and Albert were away, we decided to go up there and get a typing sample.

AGENT 2: We planned it in the office and took a document camera. .

AGENT 1: At one point we spotted Van Lydegraf in a car. We went back to the place immediately and went in.

AGENT 2: There was no need to pick a lock since the cabin was not locked.

AGENT 3: The place was a pigpen and had plenty of cats in it.

AGENT 1: I argued with Cassidy about who would operate the camera.

AGENT 2: A cat knocked over the copy box of the camera.

AGENT 2: One cat jumped on Jimmy Vermeersch.

LOCAL AGENT: Dewey Printy fell on the ice and dislocated his shoulder.

AGENT 1: The purpose of the trip was to apprehend Abbie Hoffman, however, the decision was made prior to the trip to bag the place in the event that Hoffman was not there. We surveilled the house for several days before making the entry and had determined by that time that Hoffman was not in fact there.

AGENT 3: We photographed everything we could get our hands on while we were in the house.

THE SAC (SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE EDWIN ENRIGHT) I was shocked to learn such activities had been conducted.

AGENT 1: There was a fourth trip in June. Again, we took numerous photos. There was a different electric typewriter, which I didn’t know how to operate, so Cassidy made the typing sample.

AGENT 2: There was a fifth trip in September for the purpose of doing a bag job.

AGENT 1: It was then decided to terminate the bag jobs because they were unproductive.

AGENT 2: There was nothing worth disseminating.

THE SAC: I never heard anyone relate surreptitious entries to the undercover program.

AGENT 1: We went up on November 1, intending to put the mike in and stay for several weeks. It was monitored outside in the woods at night.

AGENT 3: I may have volunteered to go along on the trip to put a microphone in the cabin.

AGENT 2: I heard that a cheap microphone was purchased to be used in the residence of Judy Gumbo in Hurley, New York, and was actually installed.

LOCAL AGENT: I heard about the mike in the light socket. I saw Cassidy monitor a radio by headset.

AGENT 3: I didn’t make the entry to install the mike but I did go into the cabin and transmitted from the doorway to make sure it was working. We were unable to pick up conversations because the occupants always talked with the television on.

AGENT 2: The microphone was installed for a period of approximately ten days.

AGENT 1: We obtained very little of value.

AGENT 2: We took it out a day or two before we left.

THE SAC: I was not aware that agents had equipment necessary to install taps or the capability to use such devices.

AGENT 1: A review was conducted to select certain cases to which additional manpower and time would be committed. I decided to present the Hemblen case to THE SAC as one of the cases to receive this treatment.

THE SAC: I had no knowledge of agents using illegal wiretaps while I was assigned to New York. I did not learn of these taps until recently.

AGENT 2: Another agent had gone drinking with THE SAC …. This agent said something like, “I told him you guys were doing something more than meets the eye. THE SAC said: I don’t want to know the details but I know you guys are doing a great job.

AGENT 3: That agent was new to the squad, didn’t know anything about the case or the subjects and therefore in my opinion, was not to be trusted.

THE SAC: I thought that the Bureau was out of the business of bag jobs.

AGENT 1: The Inspector told me he was familiar with the Hemblen and Albert cases in his supervisory duties at the Bureau. He stated something to the effect, “I think you guys have been doing bag jobs up there.” He said he felt that the Bureau would frown upon an agent opening someone’s mail but would not frown upon agents doing bag jobs.

THE INSPECTOR: I was assigned responsibility for inspection of Squad 47 and informants. Squad 47 was conducting undercover operations in an effort to infiltrate the Weathermen.

AGENT 1: I told the Inspector about the Hurley bag jobs, including details.

THE INSPECTOR: I did not discuss bag jobs with New York agents.

AGENT 2: A skinny inspector with glasses referred to the type of techniques being used and stated that “The Bureau would like to see more of this because it’s the only way we are going to get these people.”

THE INSPECTOR: I talked to THE SAC on almost a daily basis.

THE SAC: I had not heard of Squad 47 conducting surreptitious entries at all until June of this year.

THE INSPECTOR: When I was asked how I knew such a procedure was authorized, and, indeed, existed, I fell back on the fact that bag jobs had been conducted in the early ‘50s in connection with (BLANKED OUT).

AGENT 1: We had to get authorization from the WASHINGTON SAC …...There was nothing secretive about the Hurley bag jobs, except the method of preparing paper afterward.

AGENT 2: After we came back from each job, the WASHINGTON SAC was briefed on what we had gotten by way of photos from the bag job.

WASHINGTON SAC (HORACE BECKWITH): I had been the supervisor of Squad 47 at the relevant time and was now down at the Bureau and available for direct discussion.

THE SAC: I spoke with Beckwith regarding Squad 47’s activities.

WASHINGTON SAC: As to Hurley, Shackelford in Headquarters went into a tirade about all the pressure on the CAPBOM case. Headquarters had a reputation for applying unremitting pressure, and they certainly did so in the CAPBOM (Hemblen) case.

WASHINGTON SAC: Several agents came to me and asked, can we tell Inspector Rosenquist everything? They were concerned about bag jobs, wires, and mail. I said yes. Absolutely, tell him everything. Like inspectors always do, Rosenquist had a post-inspection meeting with Gray.

When I discovered the homing device on my car, I sacrificed my already bitten fingernails to the destructive, almighty gods of raw paranoia. But when I learned, in the course of a lawsuit brought on my and Stew’s behalf by Bill Kunstler and the Center for Constitutional Rights, that twelve FBI agents of various ranks had been involved in burglarizing my tiny cabin, I got truly pissed off. Deeply angry. I hated it that they had violated my privacy, my home, my pristine, woodland isolation. I resented the very idea that FBI stalkers had skulked around in the woods at night right outside our house; listening to everything that went on – including Stew and me making love. I finally understood why Oobie, our large, curly-haired, black, beyond-insane poodle/cocker spaniel mix, who would just as soon sink his teeth into your hand over a dropped bit of food as look at you, gave in to intense, apparently unprovoked, barking fits. Sadly, Oobie never managed to direct his natural paranoia toward the FBI. But he did have the smart-dog sense to run away shortly after Stew and I found out about the burglaries.

Four years after these events, Attorney General Griffin Bell charged Acting FBI Director L Patrick Gray, the FBI’s number two man Mark Felt, and FBI high-up Edward Miller with violating the constitutional protections of Weather Underground relatives and acquaintances against unreasonable search and seizure. Gray was the man with whom THE INSPECTOR -- our Inspector Rosenquist -- had his “post-inspection meeting” to fill in the details. Grey was also a leading candidate to succeed legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Mark Felt was the FBI’s key decision-maker on domestic spying. He was also Deep Throat, the inside source who spilled the beans about the 1972 Watergate burglary to Washington Post reporter Carl Woodward, leading, ultimately, to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Edward Miller, the third person indicted, was an Assistant FBI Director of Intelligence from 1971 to 1974, and made his appearance in my FBI files as the “go-to” person for the New York agents.

In the early 1980’s almost twenty ‘relatives and acquaintances,’ Stew and I included, received $20,000 settlements from the FBI. It was a not inconsiderable sum for those days. We also discovered that LOCAL AGENT Jack Lupton had persuaded our neighborhood bank to hand over our bank records. Had I known this at the time, I would have felt extremely embarrassed; since we were continuously bouncing checks. Instead, we collected an additional $5000 that allowed me to pay those outstanding bills with a certain malevolent glee. For someone who never considered herself important enough to be worthy of such intense FBI scrutiny, the settlement was a Yippie dream -- or what the boys would call a Yippie wet dream -- come true. The FBI paying THE RADICALS so agents could spend hours in the cold and damp, slip on the ice, break a collarbone and get jumped by our cleverly trained attack cats. How Yippie can you get? Seven years after being suspected of the Capitol Bombing -- CAPBOM –-- Stew and I could take a deep breath, relax, and allow ourselves to feel vindicated in our innocence. Today, every act of domestic spying committed against us is legal under the U.S. Patriot Act.

In Search of Spring at Mid-Space

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:38:22 -0700

Xuan Oanh was a poet and songwriter who I met in 1970 when he was a “people to people” emissary from North Vietnam to the American Peace Movement.

Here is one of his sayings: "Be good to friends who are good to you, even be good to friends who are bad to you, for only friends will come with you on the long road to revolution."

Here's another, addressed to all of us: “My father used to recite to me a very significant verse when I was a child." You must not wait until the score is achieved to know who is the real hero." I repeated this sentence when I buried him, and pledged to look at life with the same eye. I would not wait until change has come to know that you represent the future.”

IN SEARCH OF SPRING AT MID-SPACE

In my mind, Spring symbolizes the holy moment and space where Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, meet to realize the most beautiful thing in life, which is Love. The famous poem by Nguyen Du, “Writing to call up the souls” i.e. “Funeral Oration for Ten kinds of living beings” can be interpreted to mean that Spring resides in every person even it is stolen by Nature and our philistine society, making man live all his life in search of hope.

Xuan Oanh

On many occasions I have asked myself :

Is it true that each lifetime

with its countless changes

passes through just two Springs

one at the moment of conception

feeling space lightly lift your steps

the other when your time

comes close to extinction

and between these two seasons

every passing day extracts a costly price ?

………….

I’ve traveled to various ends of the earth

visited numerous lands

looked for color, fragrance and the taste of Spring

seeing each individual human being

wondering if he or she has met up with Spring

when the heart was still burning with new growth

or is Spring merely hearsay

a tottery concept that always remains

a secret hope or hidden longing ?

…………..

I know that, to possess Spring

you need to barter sweat and blood

if necessary dare to sacrifice everything

and not just for yourself

because the body of Spring is divided up

among thousands, millions

like an immense symphony

embracing inhexaustible melodies

created by cries and laughter

the sounds of infinity echo in the universe.

……………

At a tender age I bid farewell to my homeland

each of my steps confused and worried

but from my limited horizons

Spring’s call seemed so vast, so great

I left behind rivers and waters

not looking back at the hills, mountains,

narrow streets and beloved ones

I came to sip the beautiful gait of Spring

like the ferment of sweet wine.

……………

Very often I also wondered :

how many miles must I travel to find a place

where compassion exists

how many oceans crossed

to reach the shore of happiness

how many pains suffered

to recognize a beating heart

how many days lived in silent and empty space

to come upon the value of a sweet laugh ?

..………….

Spring ! That’s it !

but my busy and divided mind asks

without getting answers

each smile faces untold challenges

whose definition is not found in any book

life being complete in itself.

……………

Since every coin has two different sides

any oath mixes gold with brass

since every joy carries its own sorrow

there are lives that die before birth

since there are people who arrive

without ever having walked

any smile can cover a sharp blade.

..…………..

Hey there, I say to myself, don’t be so greedy

as to hastily swallow Spring and choke

just tell yourself you are not able

to suddenly see tomorrow

if there really is a Spring

then someone may have hugged it

amid waves rolling on high seas

amid white clouds flying away

with never-ending dreams

in the world of abstraction

when confronted by Spring

every human will smile reluctanly and

hide their emotions

since life around you is both real and illusory.

………………

Before Spring prevailed

humans had been aware of her

but did not know her limitations

depth in love was understood as giving all :

soul, body, and faith

nothing left to regret

though in the middle of autumn

no leaf remains green

in the absence of love

life feels worse than seclusion

the moon shines with only half its light

lost on the long road to welcome Spring

nothing is exempt.

……………..

One time

those who never knew Spring

wished the Creator would give them

wings of a swan

to fly at will over sky and land

across mountains and clouds

leaving morose feelings on earth

for those buried in despair

when Spring is first met

life on earth had become a waste

wings turned to rags

filled with wind and dust

with time only to live in a hurry

days and nights remained silent and lonely

praying to themselves in distress.

…………….

How splendid is a fire kindled

in the middle of a long night !

I imagine I hear the fond call of my soul

suddenly awakening

I count each breath

in which my name is uttered

is it the prospect of seeing each other ?

or is it time to depart

never to see each other again ?

I sensed in her breath the fragrance of milk

hair falling on shoulders

and wonder, sitting there,

is it the flame itself or is someone

making me tremble with cold ?

….…………

It rains and rains endlessly

why doesn’t it stop ?

the white color of rain flows all around

so many times it has been said

Spring is a dream

or a difficult mathematics problem

you can’t expect to solve or wait for

the distance from here to there

is but a thin fiber of the heart.

……………

Meeting also means ending

Spring moves quietly into the realm of death

this Spring has more sadness

her high flying song knows how to welcome

and also how to drive away joy

bringing despair instead

reality leads you through mud,

stagnant water, bitterness, duplicity

and vying for place

Spring’s color is superficial

her enamel covers everything

she makes good-natured men cruel

growing canine, claws and a long tail

in the middle of green hair

gold pistil flower is mistaken for Spring

everyone to praise in a song.

……………..

Suddenly I long to return once again

to my old native roads

of fresh wind and blue rivers

endless nights listening to alarm bells

sounding the watch

hearing the sea blow salty winds

sails silently passing

when the sun is about to set

waves lapping shore echoing words of affection

desert tracks by the wharf

groves in the familiar road I use to invoke Spring

the first instant of undecided feeling

sunlight weaving its beam

on the lap of her blue sky dress

and shyly tilting palm hat

a quick glance

holding promise of a tryst

Spring comes only once

gradual, silent, half-opened

a wordless look

bearing the sound and light of bright sun.

…………….

Nothing is left after the storm has passed

just me alone in a restless long night

listening to drops of persistent rain on a sad roof

hands groping vaguely in space

I feel a piece of enormous wretchedness

carrying dust on the road to misery

suppose I never met Spring instead

each flower from its first bloom to withering

has been predestined by the laws of nature ?

a big day in my life is marked by rain

yet somehow I discover things I never dreamed of

the future and forever appear in music, poetry

in quiet feelings of confidence.

…………….

A day may come

from some certain corner of a sunny sky

to carry me once again into the shadow of Spring

lightly awaken my soul

bring me into wind and storm

suggest to me a moment of creation

in my innocence

I lose the courage to confront Spring

I push away dreams of boundless inspiration

of a complete, infinitely large heaven

instead the place I stand is fragile

space compressed into the end of the horizon.

…………….

A small spark makes everything bright

containing endless hope

like an early Spring morning with dew

on the young grass

reflecting, glistening

with sweet taste and fragrance.

……………..

Love, once inside a man

grows wings to fly high

I hold inside my private space

the universe of a million stars

focused in her embrace

a look is the true encounter between soul and nature.

…………..

Everyone says Spring is unique, a beautiful thing

but few can find her charming

when she pursues her own image

living my destiny in limbo for trivial days and months

oh how strange life is

sour and bitter

I tell myself life’s sweet

like lying on a swaying hammock

flying among the starry skies

landing on the floor of the moon’s palace

…………….

Some day

I will return to my old homeland

to see again the dim sunset

sampans leaning on the beach

water lapping the far shore

hugging a guitar, murmuring love songs

sensing its strings gradually break

Spring – you are a transparent crystal

a tiny flow in your body

can make me feel sharp pain

for a whole lunar season

my eyes moisten with tears

no words

half of me a smile

the other half is sadness and humiliation.

…………….

Ha !

if, to get close to Spring

one thousand days of future months and years

must be exchanged

I am ready to do it

seeing how splendid Spring is

makes people covet her so deeply

but if Spring is nothingness or a floating cloud

I must return to simple, cold reality.

……………

Between two Springs

everything is real

including the first day when, at the beginning of life

you speak the word Mother

you never know

when Spring will come in delicate steps

and wrap you in her cloak

without her, every day is doomsday

small ground covered with dead leaves

life, from all directions, keep on

singing, dancing, dozing

calling you away each morning.

…………….

Her hair hangs down on the embroidered pillow

soaked with young tears

soon drowned in bitterness

where are those golden dreams of the past ?

the promised road to pursue ?

no time to clap on a saddle

or for the horse to gallop down a portion of the road

my eyes close and silently return

is this because Spring has hastily swallowed her promise ?

……………..

I had a kin sister once

whose eyes were filled with dark rings

her long hair glossy and velvety

her laugh like the wind whistling in the night sea

worming its way into a pine forest

standing alone looking at a long distance

her eyes as immense as a carpet of cold souls

she knew, once born, she would live her days secluded

away from the scene and people

the distance between her beloved ones was

a thousand horizons

she comes shyly, in and out of silence

imbued with sad colors

preferring not to know Spring

because, to her, Spring is absurd

like the fate of Lady Kieu

wrongly born to live against her will

so as not to taste suffering

like drops of blood on the strings of a lute

listening to songs that tear up her bowels

no one wants to drink the full cup of bitterness

and separation in mid-life.

…………….

No human being really wants to hear monotonous melodies

or live for months and years in the same season

the future is a joke

I close my eyes

burning in the flame of multiform life

the sound of dawn forces my heart wide open.

…………..

What lies between two Springs

are existential questions of how it will be

the raison d’être

what is inserted into emptiness ?

who will answer – is it real or a dream ?

sweet Spring

if you simply bring flowers

young people will find you boring

a good night’s sleep, silently completed

does not surprise us

if only inanimate things are worshipped

truth cannot exist.

….…………

If you ask what is precious in life

you will never get an answer

like a boat in the middle of the ocean

with strong winds all around

never knowing which is larger :

the sky or your heart

when two Springs exist beyond

the sum of past and present

the world opens its arms to welcome an angel

understanding yourself can be extremely wonderful

otherwise, truth is always ineffective.

……………..

My dear Spring

the road we take together is full of blooming flowers

with their infinite fragrance and color

but why are our steps at fault

as we tiptoe in the early mornings

not daring to break the bricks we built

for the nice little house with windows

open to the clouds

like Saint Tan Vien who strolled in the forest

listening to boisterous holy music from the brook ?

having you means having everything

I will barter tomorrow

to get back a shadow of the setting sun

twilight is perhaps the only charming time.

………………

Thinking over my whole life, I fall deeper

into gloomy colors

a long way takes just a little rest

I never promised you love

but also won’t reserve for you

a garment made of blackest dye

each person’s life, though very happy, can’t avoid

bearing the gray color of yesterday

heavy with rain on top of our tiny souls.

………………

Standing between two Springs

my body snatched and torn

I am forced to accept, without a single lament and groan

an unlucky lot

water runs under the bridge

so blue and transparent

stained in smoke like a needle thrust into my heart

a stinging pain

reminds me not to forget that Spring exists

please don’t make haste

each feeling of hope carries with it a sin

that tortures my heart

I doze

the nightmare comes back every night

chasing Spring away

until my body rots

waiting and forever waiting.

…………..

No ! No !

mid-space never existed between two Springs

closely linked they are as one

yesterday’s sufferings are not far away

they join today to make a double image

coming together in harmony

we don’t see the sun yet

candles twinkle and vibrate

everything around you is happy

your face is naturally beautiful

each word a poem

sucked in through your lips as glossy as silk

flying high in an absolute galaxy.

……………..

Spring, O Spring

let me know where you reside

are you in time, or space or the realm of infinity ?

you are not mediocre but you are not miraculous either

humanity dedicates itself to you

with multi harmonious poetry

is happiness always reserved for those

who act in evil ways ?

…………….

How angry you must feel

towards those who possess superabundant Springs

but never comprehend what they contain

the flying melody of adolescence

or the harmonious breath of waiting hearts ?

is it the world we used to sing about

or just a single afternoon

standing, looking at each other

not understanding

how can we assess the depth of each minute

seeing each other in the midst of cold and warmth

fresh outside but stormy inside

safe and sound today but broken yesterday

like approaching sunlight

which, when you reach it

vanishes far away into the realm of space you can never see.

………………

There, there my love

life and Spring may choose opposing paths

even on the same road

no longer marching abreast

like troubled water in transparent dust

a stray sail without a wharf that suddenly kindles hope

the lamp of thousand candles whose light surrounds us

making of us the sun

earth and Spring are too distant

creating suspicions and daydreams

you say it is wonderful we have discovered Spring

but you see, my dear

everything begins again from zero

from a whirligig

a tear without words and toddler steps

don’t hate yourself if life proves to be

indifferent and unjust

not joyful, not made of roses or fragrance

or the color of Spring we used to nurture.

……………..

Listen my love

forget about desolate things in your sleep

take life for granted without waiting

nor expecting anything

if Spring is simply a poem

then I could summon her at any time

tomorrow will be true – or not

live today the life of yesterday

reality is quite close

yet so many blockheads drive it away.

..……………

Why is your tone so entreating ?

as if imploring me to have compassion

generosity, gratitude and understanding

my heart is still attached, still indebted

certainly not just the beauty of yesterday

but today’s adornment is makeshift

I never believed your smile would remain

freshly green forever

although space is boundless

there is always a horizon

even if you grow a thousand wings to fly

the next moment you must return to the old place.

……………

Departing, I hope for Spring to arrive like a flood

but on returning my life turns heavy

with worries, sadness and misery

no smile do I receive, nor find anyone to welcome

every look a cold and biting winter,

covered with gloomy colors

will I find Spring

on the road of a hundred miles

meeting her again at an unexpected stage

she is no longer splendid nor full of hardship

but at least gives me an answer to some part

of my mortality

in each human being

there is a bit of something precious

even if they are busy scrambling, entreating favors

with imploring mouths talking of boundless things

without an inch of trust or love.

……………..

Years pass but color remains

dark human faces radiant

my soul remains gloomy

I will leave again

to go upstream from river to brook

even as your voice in my ear says :

please don’t hurry

there is more than enough time

let’s wait

but my love

to wait would mean to commit a crime

guilty today and for posterity

life promised so much

but I don’t see anything accomplished

except for the small piece of Spring

that flickers in my dreams

many splendid and magnificent palaces

are only drawn on paper

with rooms that lock fairies inside

while sorcerers and ghosts make rain and wind

and morality

telling us to find inside it Spring

along with everything else that is precious.

…………….

My love

don’t say that things around us are callous or calculated

strange outside but close inside

suppose human faces are absent just for a second

would that make you miss them

so much you couldn’t bear it ?

a century has gone and looking back

I am stunned and scared that nothing lasts forever

the idea of Spring dangles within me

no longer concrete or bearing any image

so detestable were those merry-making parties

with delicacies rewarding lives lived with heavy loyalty

spoken words are brazen

I don’t believe that having Spring

for everyone in this world to enjoy

in early morning

is just a utopian hope and wish.

………….

To reconnect with Spring

voluntarily or reluctantly

though she may taste salty, sour, bitter

or her tunes dazzles my ear

and the debt of my previous life weighs

heavily on my shoulders

even if the road ahead is far, long and deserted

no one with whom to share my innermost feelings

where certain people are cowardly and suspicious.

…………..

I won’t feel sorry for myself

When Spring really resides in my heart

an ephemeral destiny will always become great

SINCE THE MERE FACT OF SEARCHING

PROVES THAT BOTH SPRING AND I DO EXIST./.

(Written in the 60s of last century)

My Body, My Story

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:38:22 -0700

IN MEMORY OF DR. GEORGE TILLER

Talk show host Rachel Maddow recently called on the forty-five million American women who’ve had abortions to speak out, in response to the murder of abortion care provider Dr. George Tiller. I’m very grateful to be among that forty-five million, so, Rachel, here is my abortion story. But I wouldn’t criticize any woman for dealing with her unintended pregnancy differently than I did. It is, after all, your choice.

By the spring of 1972, I’d become a leader of the countercultural group known as the Yippies. I’d dedicated my life to ending the war in Vietnam and had just arrived in San Diego, to organize anti-war protests at the upcoming Republican National Convention. By then, more than 50,000 American lives had been sacrificed and more than 3,000,000 Indochinese – including women and children – had been poisoned, burned, maimed or killed. Yet the war raged on. It would take three more years of intense bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, continued resistance on the ground combined with increasingly violent demonstrations at home, for the Nixon Administration to finally admit defeat.

By the time I arrived in San Diego, one member of an anti-war collective had already been wounded by a “stray” bullet of unknown origin. Shortly thereafter, the Republican Convention was moved across the continent to Miami, to escape a corruption scandal involving ITT (later to be absorbed by AT&T) and the Republican National Committee. Naturally, we Yippies claimed the move was prompted by fear of our planned protest activities.

Among the protestors was a 40-something older peace activist, Reverend M.P. Reverend M. was a short, wiry, nice-looking, smart man, with curly gray hair. Born a Jew, he’d rejected Judaism, spent 18 years as a Benedictine monk and had been ordained a priest. By the time I met him, he’d left the Benedictines to become a full-time organizer for one of the anti-war movement’s many pacifist religious peace groups. And, after all those celibate years, he was also pretty horny. The electricity between us felt mutual; it was easy to begin a casual affair.

One morning, I woke up feeling nauseated. My stomach heaved. I could taste bile at the back of my throat. In less than an hour, the nausea passed, I was able to function, but next morning it came back. As it did every morning for a week. This could not be the flu. Finally, it dawned on me that I must be pregnant. My first thought was to blame myself – how could I, a Yippie and a feminist, have failed to take the right precautions? And to have as the father a lapsed Jew who became a monk, was ordained a priest and then left the Church. This was not a joke or Yippie put-on.

Next, my mind jumped to the horror story my former boyfriend, Yippie leader Stew Albert, had told me a few years earlier. In the early 1960s, Stew and his about-to-be first wife Joanne, had travelled to Tijuana for a “back alley” abortion. The procedure room was tiny, cramped and dirty. Instruments lay uncovered on a dingy wooden side table. Stew had to wait outside while Joanne screamed. Back home in Berkeley, a few days later, Joanne developed a high fever; for days they both feared she would die.

By 1972, even in San Diego, that staunchest of Republican cities, abortion wasn’t yet legal, but it was reasonably safe and available. I needed only to ask the women in the local San Diego movement network. The moment I grasped this, my panic ebbed and my heart rate returned to normal. I’m no bionic woman, I’d never had an abortion; so I got a little nervous thinking about the procedure itself, but since I figured I was, at the most, three weeks along, I wasn’t especially worried or scared about what I was about to do. My choice was clear. And, because I felt so personally committed to being in control of the decisions that affected my life, I didn’t feel obligated to consult the father in advance.

I made my appointment at the clinic recommended by my friends, and drove there on my own. The one story, light brown Spanish–style building was located on a wide, not too busy, palm-tree lined San Diego Street. The inside was painted dark olive green, with off-black, cleanly polished tile floors. The only other person in the waiting area was a young female receptionist who sat behind an old, battered, green and gun- metal grey desk. I paid her thirty dollars – a substantial sum for me in those days—and she led me into a small yellow green room, with a few tiny windows close to the ceiling and bare, lights buzzing overhead. There’s enough room for little more than the gurney. I took off my torn jeans and black canvas sandals, climbed up on the gurney, put my feet in the cold steel stirrups, scrunched my butt down because I’m so short, and stretched my knees as far apart as I could. This really won’t hurt too much,” said the young woman. “Yeah, right,” I think to myself. I’m given no painkillers or sedatives. The physician enters. I assume he is a doctor only because he wears a white coat. But he could be anybody. He doesn’t introduce himself. Instead, he just starts up a loud, whirring machine that I can’t see from my prone position, and, with a quick not-especially gentle motion, sticks a long cold suction probe deep into my uterus. The pain is immediate, sharp and deep. He stops. Then he begins again, once, twice, “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.” I scream. After a few more agonizing spasms “it” is gone. The entire process takes no more than ten minutes.

I always thought of “it” as protoplasm, cells accidentally brought together because I likely had neglected to take my pills. I never considered those cells to be a fetus, much less a potential human being. The concept of “fetus as baby” had not yet become part of the public dialogue. Abortion wasn’t talked about publicly as murder. I had never seen a truck covered with pictures of bloody dismembered fetuses -- unlike my 32 year old daughter who surprised me recently by confiding that, when she was a teenager in her Portland, Oregon public high school health class, she was shown videos and hundreds upon hundreds of photos of, as she puts it, “chopped up fetuses and screaming women.”

In that year before Roe, for me and for a very large number of American women, having an abortion wasn’t a sin, it wasn’t a crime -- and it wasn’t a baby.

As soon as I left the clinic, my nausea evaporated. It was that quick. I felt exhilarated. My entire body relaxed, my hormones met up with my endorphins and went on a rampage, filling me with joy, energy and a profound sense of relief. I jumped into Lindequist, my 1968 dark blue VW Beetle, and made an illegal U turn across four lanes of traffic in front of the clinic. A waiting cop gave me a ticket. I didn’t care, the ticket felt meaningless; getting my body and life back was momentous. I was no longer among those women who’d been held back and held down for so long. When Roe was made law the following year, my generation of women gained a new sense of selfhood: no longer would we be controlled by our reproductive systems.

In bed that night, after a brief internal dialogue as to whether I should say anything at all, I tell M. that I’ve had an abortion earlier that day and that he must have been the father. Color immediately drained from his face. I will never forget his look of horror. “Why didn’t you ask me beforehand?” he asked, his voice trembling. I looked him in the eye and said: “This was my decision, not yours.” He didn’t protest, he just got up, silently, turned his back on me, put on his clothes and left. Since Reverend M. believed strongly in minority and women’s rights, I didn’t think he’d have a problem with my determining my future for myself, without consulting him. Clearly he did.

M. was actually a very sweet guy who I hope, by now, has forgiven my cavalier insensitivity to his religious faith. I didn’t know at the time that such a thing as a pro-choice Catholic could exist. My disregard of M’s feelings taught me that, if at all possible, women who choose to have an abortion should, if they can do it safely, consult with their partner, husband, boyfriend, lover, as well as their medical provider and support network.

I’ve been a widow for more than three years now. I’ve experienced the excruciating pain brought on by the death of a loved one. I can’t excuse actions that result in the death of other human beings. I have also looked deep into my soul on those religious occasions where you are obliged to repent your sins: guilt, regret, shame and remorse about the abortion are just not there. Had I allowed those cells to grow, the course of my life would have been permanently altered in a way which was, at the time, completely untenable to me and absolutely unfair to it. Only occasionally, since Stew died, have I even wondered what those discarded cells might potentially have become.

I believed then and believe today that women have the right to make the decisions that affect our bodies and our lives. The decision whether or not to have an abortion is, in my view, ultimately up to the woman, her conscience and, if she so chooses, her spiritual or religious convictions. Five years after my abortion, Stew and I were blessed when I gave birth to Jessica, our wonderful, planned and much loved baby girl.

So now Dr. George Tiller is dead and his clinic permanently closed. In his lifetime, Dr. Tiller was one of a very few physicians who provided legal, medically indicated, late-term abortion care to women in distress. Last November, in a piece I wrote that touched on the meaning of the phrase ‘domestic terrorism,’ I reminded readers that, just over a decade ago, America witnessed a horrific killing spree, carried out by our own home-grown anti-choice terrorist movement, against pro-choice physicians like Dr. Barnett Slepian and now Dr. George Tiller. I received this e-mail in response:

Dear Judy,

Regarding your comments about Barnett Slepian I need to inform you Barnett Slepian reaped what he sowed. Slepian was a babykilling abortionist and killed babies for money. James Kopp stopped him from murdering any more children and I'm glad he did. Your support for baby murderer Slepian is disgraceful.

Rev. Donald Spitz , Army of God (12/25/08)

Reverend Spitz, you’re the one who’s disgraceful. You and your kind have no qualms about celebrating the deaths of physicians who provide abortion care, while you shed crocodile tears about an alleged holocaust of the “unborn.” Forty-five million women in America have had abortions since they became legal; how many others suffered illegal abortions before Roe will never be known. We can’t bring back the murdered physicians and clinic staff, but raising our collective voices in protest by telling our personal abortion stories is, in my opinion, a very appropriate way to honor their memories.

Judy Gumbo Albert was an original member of the 1960s countercultural protest group known as the Yippies -- along with Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Nancy Kurshan, the journalist Paul Krassner, the folk singer Phil Ochs and her late husband Stew Albert who died on Jan. 30, 2006. Judy co-authored The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Greenwood Press, 1984)and The Conspiracy Trial (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Her articles can be found online at CounterPunch, The Rag Blog, and on her websiteYippie Girl.

Albert currently lives in Berkeley and is writing her memoir titled Yippie Girl. She can be reached at yippiegirl@gmail.com.]

People's Park And Our Sixties Legacy

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:35:38 -0700

Berkeley's Peoples' Park Remembered and Zayd Dohrn’s play, Magic Forest Farm

I repeat this phrase, loudly and with more emphasis: 'Our politics have not changed.' Suddenly, with no conscious effort on my part, in an atavistic, Monty Pythonish gesture, my left arm -- and clenched fist -- shoot straight up in the air.

By Judy Gumbo Albert / The Rag Blog / April 29, 2009

[This is the second of two articles written for The Rag Blog by Judy Gumbo Albert, a founder of the Sixties countercultural protest group the Yippies, on recent activities in California commemorating the work of Sixties radicals. See her previous article here.]

Sunday around 3 p.m. I find myself in Berkeley’s People’s Park, in front of a crowd of at least 500 what, back in the day, we called hippies and freaks, letting their freak flags fly. Actually, the crowd was maybe 50% hippies and freaks, and the other 50 % just plain folks: men, women, children, neatly dressed students, Vietnam vets, homeless women and men, belly dancers, bongo drummers, black, white and multi-ethnic, one crowd, together, happy under the warm California sun. Sitting on remarkably well tended and clipped grass, with the unmistakable sweet odor of that other grass thick in the air. Just like I remember.

Building People’s Park led to Berkeley’s largest community uprising of 1969. And gave Ronald Reagan a platform on which to build his greed-driven, free-market, laissez-faire, capitalist-loving presidency -- whose upshot is, at least in part, the global financial crisis we suffer today. The economic “chickens” that Malcolm X first warned us about at the time of the Kennedy assassination have “come home to roost.”

In April 1969 a few thousand of us, including my late husband Stew Albert and I, along with many, many others, created a green, eco-before-it-was-fashionable community out of a muddy parking lot owned by the University of California. We dug the earth, laid sod, planted gardens, cooked food, played music, built stuff, and just enjoyed. There were no official or elected leaders, just strong personalities; most of us felt empowered to be our own leader, some of us ended up more “leadership” than others. Decisions (such as they were) were made by consensus (such as it was in those days). At least that’s what I recall.

Shortly after we seized the Park, the Berkeley police sealed it off with a barbed wire fence. Police and National Guard tear gassed the entire city, battled thousands of us in the streets, and, for the first time that I know of in the 1960s, used deadly force against white demonstrators, wounding 100 protestors and killing a young man named James Rector.

Forty years later, it’s easy to spot Michael Delacour. Mike, one of the Park’s originals, is always recognizable by his craggy face and long formerly black now silver hair falling way past his shoulders. He is, as far as I can tell, one of the unofficial keepers of the park’s flame.

He asks if I want to speak. How can I decline?

I start by quoting the Berkeley Liberation Program which a group of about 40 of us put together in an Oakland hotel because, in the immediate aftermath of the Park uprising, the City of Berkeley banned gatherings of more than a few people. Naturally, we model our program on the 10 point Platform and Program of the Black Panther Party. The people of Berkeley, I begin, passionately desire human solidarity, cultural freedom and peace. No reaction from the crowd. Not interested? Too stoned? Time to move on -- I’ll talk about Stew’s death. I urge anyone with Hepatitis C to get tested. I tell the story of how, two days before he dies, Stew asks me to type on his blog: “My politics have not changed.” I repeat this phrase, loudly and with more emphasis: “Our politics have not changed.” Suddenly, with no conscious effort on my part, in an atavistic, Monty Pythonish gesture, my left arm -- and clenched fist -- shoot straight up in the air.

It’s just like driving or riding a bike. There are some things you never forget.

I feel great. The crowd doesn’t exactly roar but at least I’ve caught their attention. Stewie would have been really happy.

Wavy Gravy is the event MC. By now his trademark clown outfit is a bit worn, yet he’s still the same kindly, funny person who used to unintentionally scare my young daughter if he turned in her direction. Which leads, in some roundabout, two degrees of separation way, to Zayd Dohrn’s play Magic Forest Farm, which I saw recently at the Marin Theatre Company. Zayd was born when his parents, Weather Underground folks Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, were underground. His play directly addresses the question: “How do kids raised in the shadow of the Sixties keep the parts of that experiment that were healthy -- the idealism, the hope, the courage -- while getting rid of the narcissism and silliness that had the potential to undermine it?”

How indeed? It turns out that some of our most cherished, countercultural values—”do your own thing,” dope, nudity, sexual experimentation—had, at least in Zayd’s fictional recreation of Magic Forest Farm, negative, dysfunctional consequences for some -- not all -- of the kids who lived there. I don’t doubt for a moment that the play speaks an inconvenient truth -- especially because, immediately after the play, I meet a total stranger in the woman’s bathroom who feels compelled to spill her story to me. The headline is that, as her mother lay dying, this woman was finally able to forgive her for raising her in such a commune.

As I recall, the women’s movement was just coming into full flower in Berkeley during People’s Park. We were not especially sympathetic to mothers of young children. Nor did it occur to us -- or me at least -- to empathize with the mothers of those teenagers we so warmly welcomed in People’s Park. The Free Speech Movement’s Jack Weinberg coined the phrase: “Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty” which morphed into Yippie leader Jerry Rubin’s “Kill Your Parents” -- a slogan which, Jerry later admitted, didn’t work because people thought he meant it literally. But symbolically Jack and Jerry were right -- to change the system and completely re-invent ourselves, we had to break from the repressive, war-mongering, right wing, dysfunctional values of our parent’s generation.

The kids of 1960’s parents I know today are terrific people. They are teachers, lawyers, parents, playwrights, writers, documentary film makers, professors, health care professionals, entrepreneurs. But there are also some who didn’t make it, kids who tragically ended up in jail or dead by their own hand. Despite all the humane, positive and progressive values we passed on to our children, our 1960’s activism also gave them difficult stuff to work through. And resent. And rebel against. This may be the moment when our 60’s generation’s chickens are coming home to roost in their own right.

I’m glad that Stew and I were able to pass our Yippie values to our daughter. I’m saddened if they caused her grief or harm in any way. Still and all, my politics have not changed.

Celebrate 60's Radicals Week

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:36:29 -0700

In California this week, book signings, an historic poster exhibition, a theatrical event and a 'Champion of Justice' award all shine a light on Sixties activists and their progeny.

By Judy Gumbo Albert / The Rag Blog / April 22, 2009

For some cosmic reason, this is Celebrate 1960s Radicals-And-Our-Children week in California. On Saturday April 18, in Oakland, I and at least 600 others witnessed my friend Steve Bingham get the National Lawyers Guild’s prestigious Champion of Justice Award. On Sunday I attended the opening of the Berkeley Historical Society’s “Up Against the Wall” exhibit of 1960’s posters and artifacts. Last night, in downtown Berkeley, former Weatherman Mark Rudd spoke and signed his long-awaited book Underground.

Friday will be the world premiere in nearby Marin County of Zayd (son of Weather leaders Bernardine Dohrn and Billy Ayers) Dohrn’s play Magic Forest Farm, advertised as a young woman’s journey back to her past to confront the truth. Next Wednesday, Chesa (raised by Bernardine and Billy, the son of former Weather person Kathy Boudin and still imprisoned David Gilbert) Boudin, will be in San Francisco signing Gringo -- his coming-of-age work which recently provoked a disgustingly arrogant and mean-spirited review in the New York Times.

Not too shabby for us Bush-battered 1960s types!

It’s difficult for me to convey how heart-warming and deeply emotional Steve’s recognition event turned out to be. Steve Bingham, you may recall, spent almost 14 years underground in Europe after being charged with five counts of conspiracy murder for allegedly smuggling a gun past metal detectors into San Quentin so that prison leader George Jackson could “escape” -- and be shot to death. In 1984 Steve resurfaced in the Bay Area with his wonderful wife Francoise, and, after a trial lasting six months -- one of the longest, if not the longest trials ever in the State of California -- Steve was completely exonerated.

It felt like a miracle seeing this tall, sweet, gentle man, flying silver hair somewhat trimmed for the occasion, wearing a deep reddish/pinkish crushed velvet shirt and garlanded with a lei, get a long, enthusiastic standing ovation recognizing his lifelong contributions to social justice -- not just the 1960s struggle, or his survival underground, but also for his last 20 years at Bay Area Legal Aid protecting the rights of the imprisoned, the poor and the homeless. For me this was time-travel—back to the day when we proudly used the words radical and revolutionary as self-descriptors. It felt a lot like coming home.

Next day, I ran into Gus Newport, the well known African-American former mayor of Berkeley at the poster exhibit. Many posters came from the remarkable collection of the late FSM (Free Speech Movement) activist turned children’s science teacher and author Michael Rossman. One, the Berkeley Liberation Program, is the exact same poster I gave to the Stew and Judy Gumbo Albert Archives at the Labadie Collection at University of Michigan. My late husband Stew Albert, SDS founder Tom Hayden, I, and a large contingent of Berkeley radicals collectively wrote the Berkeley Liberation Program during the 1969 People’s Park uprising. We begin by making a declaration that still resonates:

The people of Berkeley passionately desire human solidarity, cultural freedom and peace.

Gus and I reminisced about how, back in the day, we rarely put the year on political posters -- just the month and day. We lived so much in the intensity of the present; we were so busy “making history” that documenting it by putting the year on a publication was the furthest thing from our minds.

My favorite long-forgotten artifact was a small pamphlet that Tom, Stew, I, and others put together in 1969, titled "Every Soldier a Shitworker, Every Shitworker a Soldier.” 1969 was the year that, at least in Berkeley, Women’s Liberation came into full flower. This tiny handbook was published, as was the Berkeley Liberation Program, by a collective we named, with no lack of youthful grandiosity, the “International Liberation School.” For a mere 25 cents, young radicals learned, among other organizational skills, that women and men must equally share the “shitwork.” Good soldiers in the revolution give women’s work equal importance to everything else. So we believed and so we attempted to act.

At the exhibit I also ran into Mario Savio’s widow Lynne Savio Hollander, and Michael Rossman’s widow Karen McClellan. We widows of well-known 60s guys share a unique bond, but our grieving process is no different from anyone else—up/down, forward/back, eventually you survive and thrive, but your life is never the same. Mario, a gentle soul and truly charismatic speaker was at the center of Berkeley’s 1964-65 Free Speech Movement. Every fall Lynn and her fellow FSM’ers put on the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture at which they award an annual $6000 prize to a young person or persons with a deep commitment to human rights, social justice, and proven ability to transform their commitment into effective action.

Last night was Mark Rudd’s turn. I had not seen Mark for ages up until two years ago, when my fiancé David Dobkin and I had a warm, affectionate reunion with him and his wife Marla Painter at their New Mexico home. At the time, Mark said he figured Bernardine and Billy wouldn’t like his book. It’s not because of the narcissism that my dear friend Jonah Raskin called him on in The Rag Blog -- I mean, he is Mark Rudd, what else do you expect? It’s his memoir, he’s allowed. Last night Mark described his trajectory as going from schlemiel to media darling, to being wanted by the FBI to going underground—but never truly leaving the schlemiel behind.

I really appreciate Mark’s highly personal writing style -- there are even places where, in my opinion, he could have gone deeper and been more authentic. Marla said essentially the same thing last night. But Mark does explore his feelings with way more emotional openness than Cathy Wilkerson did in Flying Too Close to the Sun -- and for this he is to be congratulated.

What Bernardine and Billy aren’t likely to enjoy about Underground is Mark spilling his version of the beans about his former friends. He has his regrets and doesn’t especially hold back about who he blames. I believe that blaming and regretting are part of the grieving process -- for a while I blamed Stew for dying, for the terrible loss he inflicted on me. Perhaps this is just Mark’s way of channeling his anguish at all the losses: loss of life in the Townhouse and the Brinks robbery, the loss of comrades forced underground and those still in jail, to say nothing of factionalized friendships, lost youth, and the demise of an organization he so dearly loved. A North Vietnamese friend once gave me some strategic advice about dealing with friendships which Mark, perhaps, might have benefitted from: “Be good to friends who are good to you, also be good to friends who are bad to you, for only friends will go with you on the long road to revolution.”

Mark never considered himself a Yippie. He said last night he lost his sense of humor pretty early on in SDS. And we Yippies never felt close to SDS -- we experienced the organization as too serious, too focused on ideology and, as Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin never forgot or forgave, SDS initially advocated not coming to Chicago for the 1968 protests -- before having a last minute change of heart.

Those who are making the movies and writing the books, memoirs, blogs and graphic novels will ultimately define our history. As best as I can reconstruct, both Mark and Cathy Wilkerson believe that, after a certain amazing moment in which everyone in SDS felt empowered to change the world, divisive internal conflicts turned the organization into a cult of isolated, fanatic, self-destructive individuals with, at least for a time, an ideological commitment to offensive violence. Both Mark and Cathy say they disagreed in their hearts with this direction as it was happening, but also went along, victimized by their own ambivalence.

I’ve learned in my life that, when more than one person says essentially the same thing about a shared experience, there’s likely some kernel of truth in what they say. It truly saddens me to recognize that Weatherman turned into a cult. Romantic idealist that I am, I prefer to remember historical Weatherman for what it stood for -- inspirational courage, exemplary risk-taking and a passionate commitment to ending racism and an immoral, illegal war in Vietnam.

Each one of us from back in the day has her or his own Sixties. Mark has made a terrific contribution by sharing his. I encourage you to buy Underground and go to here for his speaking schedule.

On Friday I’ll see what Zayd Dohrn’s play reveals about the search for past truths. I’ll keep you posted.

Un-convention-al: 40 years ago: The Battle of Chicago

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 13:41:20 -0800

(by Judy's neighbor Raines, originally published on Daily Kos just at the very moment the Palin pick was being announced, so missed by many)

My new neighbor Judy Gumbo Albert was an original Yippie, directly involved in the anti-war protests around the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Her former husband, Stew Albert (1939-2006), was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Chicago Seven. She helped lead the movement, alongside Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Phil Ochs, Paul Krassner, and other names made famous through history.

This week, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the battles and parallels to today's politics and the just-concluded Democratic Convention, she published on CounterPunch an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, "Yippie Girl."

Join me below the fold for a time trip stretching back 40 years (no pooties, but Pigasus makes an appearance), to a park smothered in tear-gas by police with "shoot to kill" orders, and face your fears, share your comments, memories, and inspirations; Judy will be here, so join the conversation.

(unless otherwise attributed, all quotes are from Judy's CounterPunch piece, with permission of the author; emphasis and links added)

My neighbor Judy coauthored The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Greenwood Press, 1984) and The Conspiracy Trial (Bobbs Merrill, 1970).

While it is not unusual to find community organizers, activists, teachers, nonprofit managers, city council/school board members and others actively working to change the world in cohousing neighborhoods like this one, I find it enormously motivating in my own work here and elsewhere to be able to sit down to dinner a few times a week with someone I admire who inspires me, to get firsthand reminders that these folks we hold up as cultural icons are real people, just like you and me, who, through hard work and living their intentions and happy coincidence, changed the world. If we can learn from their experience, see what they set out to do and the net result, we can be more effective in our own efforts.

Judy's opener:

Forty years ago this week I was in Chicago at the Democratic Convention– not as a delegate but as a member of the theatrical, countercultural, media-savvy protest group known as the Yippies. Then, as now, the Democratic Party was severely internally divided -- about race rather than gender, but especially over the war in Vietnam. We – Yippie leaders Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Nancy Kurshan, my then boyfriend and later husband Stew Albert, the folksinger Phil Ochs and journalist Paul Krassner -- came to the Convention to hold a Festival of Life and nominate a pig for president. Our candidate, Pigasus, would, we believed, be infinitely more attractive to young people than the Democrat’s pro-war candidate Hubert Humphrey. Abbie, Anita, Jerry, Phil and Stew are all gone now, and, although I don’t expect the events described here to occur in Denver, our country is, as in 1968, engaged in an immoral and illegal war overseas that has been used by our current elected officials to put more draconian restrictions on dissent and freedom of speech than I once faced confronting the Democrats in Chicago. What follows is my recollection of those events.

Judy chronicles day-by-day the week of August 22, 1968, documenting both the the actions taken (with police responses) and the internal ideological and logistical fights that threatened to fracture the young movement:

Abbie, Anita and Paul want a tiny cute pig. Jerry gets incensed. It violates his sense of effective Yippie marketing: to adequately represent the candidates and all they stand for, the Yippie pig needs to be big, fat, ugly and mean. Jerry calls a meeting and, disregarding Stew’s advice to let it be, reads a statement out loud to Abbie, Anita and Paul, denouncing Abbie as a media-hungry “ego tripper”. Jerry even threatens to hand his statement out as a leaflet in Lincoln Park, if Abbie doesn’t relent about the size of the Yippie pig.

This is what a serious ideological split in the Yippies comes down to – the girth andpoundage of our presidential candidate.

When all but one of the bands scheduled for the Yippie Festival of Life (contrasting the Dems' "Convention of Death") fail to show up, scared off by media threats of riots (has anything changed?), Judy captures Abbie's feelings of betrayal, alongside the practical challenges, like running a 300-foot extension cord to a nearby hot-dog stand to pwer the amps.

As the gas-wielding cops approach, Judy writes, the threat brings them closer together:

But I’m not afraid. Stew is looking out for me, we’re running, together, side by side, propelled by an urgent imperative to get away. The tear gas unites us in a brand new kind of intimacy and commitment.

I feel protected.

I feel courageous.

I am powerful.

I’m fighting for what I believe.

This is fun!

There's lots more, including a deconstruction of the "baby-killer" shouts at the attacking guardsmen, love, celebrity, and patriotism. Go read the piece to see it all.

For me, the abiding lesson of the piece is Judy's chronicling of the way it emboldened her life, finding the inner courage to take control:

Forty years later, this is what I’ve come to understand about my time in Lincoln Park: In every woman’s life, opportunities will arise to face your fears. I’m not suggesting throwing a can of paint at a police car – only that it is very important to recognize when you’re actually in that unique “face my fear” moment. In such circumstances, take action. Don’t delay. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t over think the consequences. By facing your fear, you will discover inside yourself the courage to put your life– and your freedom -- into your own hands.
I never turn back.

Where have you found the courage to face your fears?

CAPBOM Revisited

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:10:46 -0700

By Judy Gumbo Albert

This piece was first published in the November 1-15, 2008 issue of Counterpunch, and appeared on counterpunch.org on December 25, 2008). Read it there. Add your comments near the top of the left column of this page.

Stew Albert, Judy Gumbo and Jerry Rubin, May, 1971

This is the inside story of how my late husband Stew Albert and I became prime suspects in CAPBOM, which is the FBI codename for the 1971 Weather Underground bombing of the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Sarah Palin and her cohort of extreme right-wing really, really scary people used the Capitol bombing to link President-elect Obama with the not nearly as scary 1960s Weatherman and 1997 Chicago Citizen of the Year Bill Ayers. At the time, my widely quoted take on the Capitol bombing was: “We didn’t do it, but we dug it.”

As a former 60’s protestor, celebrating with everyone else the results of this historic election, I’d like to give my personal point of view about the attacks on the 1960s that were made during the campaign – specifically “guilt by association” and “domestic terrorism.” And also to reflect a bit on how I feel about those issues today.

Wrong Place, Right Time

In the spring of 1971, on the day the Capitol bombing takes place, I’m living in our nation’s capital organizing an anti-war demonstration. Along with Stew, Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, his girlfriend Nancy Kurshan and satiric journalist Paul Krassner, I’m an original Yippie. Yippies believe in the politics of theatre. We call ourselves Groucho Marxists and use comedy to turn serious issues on their head. We’re cultural revolutionaries who raise political awareness by having as much fun and getting as much media attention as we can. We’re a youth movement who doesn’t believe in hierarchy: every Yippie is her or his own leader. Our favorite Bob Dylan mantra is: Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are not the first to throw money at Wall Street. In the spring of 1968, Abbie, Jerry and the rest of us stopped trading on the New York Stock exchange when we threw $1 and $5 bills at greedy stockbrokers who grabbed at the money floating down from a balcony. Yippies brought the New York Stock Exchange to a halt for a mere $250.

By the summer of 1968, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, we’re running a pig named Pigasus for president as a send-up to protest the election and an unjust and illegal Vietnam War. In what is to become an iconic American moment, 15,000 of us -- Yippies, mainstream anti-war demonstrators, the media and even a member of the British Parliament -- are severely gassed and beaten by the Chicago police.

But three years later, by the time of the Capitol bombing, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find the fun in protest. All of us in the anti-war movement are frustrated by the seemingly endless parade of atrocities being committed in Vietnam, which we see in living color at home on TV every night, and a recent campaign of deadly, intense carpet-bombing in Laos.

The Mayday Tribe

I’m staying temporarily in Washington DC, in a collective house at 2226 M Street.

Chicago Conspiracy 8 defendant and anti-war activist Rennie Davis, and at least 30 others live in the surrounding neighborhood. The M Street house is situated directly across the street from a red-brick fire station that, in addition to fire-trucks, is outfitted with surveillance cameras so overtly visible in the front window that I occasionally lead a group of us out front just to dance and wave at the cameras.

We call ourselves the Mayday Tribe. Our name - Mayday -- is intended to convey an urgent distress call about the war to the American people and motivate protestors to come to a demonstration scheduled for three months later. We’re putting together a People’s Peace Treaty on behalf of the American public to draw attention to the Nixon administration’s obdurate refusal to make peace. Our admittedly utopian demonstration slogan states: “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

We predict thousands of people will take to the streets and block traffic to protest the war and this recent escalation in bombing.

At my initiation, Stew and I have officially broken off our two-year-old romance. As I recall, I feel fine. Liberated in fact. I have no qualms about publicly labeling Stew an arrogant, patronizing, sexist, male chauvinist pig, which, looking back on it, was about 35% true, and 65% women’s movement PC rhetoric. Besides, we’re still on speaking terms. I realize he’s lonely without me and know I can still get him to do almost anything I want, so I ask him to come and visit from New York and bring with him, on the plane, a large satchel of high quality marijuana donated to the cause by a sympathetic New York City lawyer. I’m trying to lighten things up by introducing some traditional Yippie medicinals into our ultra-serious organizing effort.

The Day of the Bombing

Early in the morning of Monday March 1, the M Street phone rings. We’re told that members of the Weather Underground, originally known as Weatherman, (from Bob Dylan’s prophetic mantra “You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows”) are taking credit for placing a bomb in an out-of-the-way men’s bathroom. The Weathermen say:

We have attacked the Capitol because it is, along with the White House and the Pentagon, the worldwide symbol of the government which is now attacking Indochina.

When I first hear this news, I feel exhilarated. Irrationally exuberant in fact. My reaction is documented by an unknown person, possibly an informant who, in a later legal affidavit, describes me and the others in M Street as “exultant” – which is not so far removed from my own recollection. But why, you quite rightly ask -- and I ask myself the same question -- did I feel so positive about this act -- especially when placing a bomb is something I could never do – or did – myself?

As an anti-war activist, I considered dissent to be patriotic. Still do. At the time of the bombing, I felt like I was rooting for David in the face of Goliath. I saw the Weathermen as courageous enough to take the lead in our very own, 60’s style Boston Tea Party. In my view, they blew up a U.S. Capitol bathroom on my behalf and on behalf of the entire anti-war movement. And I appreciated that they did so for the most compelling of reasons -- to stop the endless, brutal killing war in Vietnam and Laos. Which is why I could, in good conscience, make the statement: “We didn’t do it, but we dug it.”

Hands Up!

Immediately after the bombing, M-street house surveillance intensifies. Firemen swarm. Burly new guys start hanging around outside the firehouse. They don’t look and weren’t even dressed like firemen. Stew and Leslie Bacon, a young, anti-war activist friend, decide to take a walk to Lafayette Park, directly in front of the White House. Beyond the macho of it, I can’t speculate about Stew’s motives. Most likely I disapproved because, at that particular moment in our on-again, off-again relationship, almost anything he said or did was enough to provoke my disapproval.

As the tension-filled, day-after-bombing dragged on, it became increasingly clear to me that there was no time like the present to get the hell out of Dodge.

Leslie chooses to remain in DC. I grab Stew, Colin and Michael, two other M Street residents, plus a couple of bags of clothing and we hop into my 1969 dark blue VW Beetle named “Lindequist.” (When I bought the car I found the previous owner’s name “Lindequist”, inscribed on the dashboard; I currently drive Lindequist 3.) A few blocks into our getaway I realize I’ve forgotten my all-time favorite hat – a fisherman’s cap made out of fluffy brown Canadian beaver pelts with a brown leather front brim. Stew and I immediately get into a huge fight. Stew, the pragmatist, now recognizes the wisdom of leaving town as quickly as possible. I, the Yippie fashionista, will not leave my favorite hat to the mercy of the pigs. It’s my car, I’m the driver: we circle back. I run in, save my hat and, Keystone Cops like, we once again beat a retreat. There’s no PETA yet to make my hat a political issue.

But in the early evening, just we’ve reached the outskirts of Baltimore, I suddenly notice flashing lights behind me. I pull Lindequist over and hear a loud, gruff male voice coming over a loudspeaker “get out of the car with your hands up.” Shotguns at our heads, the four of us are quickly spread eagled against the VW. Colin is shaking so hard I think he might pee himself – but he doesn’t. The boys are put in one police car; I’m alone in another for what feels like hours. I’m buzzy with adrenaline and really bored sitting alone in my personal Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome cage. I can’t see much except cops and the boys’ heads in front of me in the other car, so all I can do is bite my nails and obsess. Lindequist and the satchels are thoroughly searched. Eventually we are released and, in true Yippie absurdist fashion, are given a ticket for a bald tire by a local highway patrolman who signs his name James Bond

We’re not Weathermen. It literally didn’t occur to me we were being stopped because of the Capitol Bombing. I am really grateful we left the marijuana back in DC.

What Happens to Leslie

Five days before Mayday, on April 28, Leslie, who at the time is 19 years old, is arrested in Washington D.C. by the FBI and appears a few days later before Judge John Sirica, later of Watergate fame. Leslie is taken to a Seattle hotel where she is held captive in a room for weeks, with no access to family or friends, only to lawyers. She is questioned harshly about the Capitol bombing but there’s nothing she can tell them because there’s nothing she knows. On May 1, the Weathermen make public a communiqué addressed to Leslie’s mother:

Your confidence in Leslie is justified because she is completely innocent of any involvement in the bombing of the US Capitol. We know this for a fact because, as the FBI and Justice Department well know, our organization did the bombing.

Leslie said to me recently that her mother, an upscale, conservative, California homemaker, told the national and international press staking out their Atherton home:

I don’t see why everyone is so upset about someone blowing up a building when the government is blowing up people.

Standard operating procedure for FBI agents and prosecutors, then and now, is to target young women who they consider potential “weak links” in an evidentiary chain and most likely to give up information. These young women become their special victims. I’ve come to believe that Leslie’s kidnapping, imprisonment and resulting unwanted national media attention, was the moral equivalent of a rape. The federal prosecutor and the FBI violated a 19 year old woman’s trust and privacy, and, even though today Leslie is teacher and grandmother, this incident still poisons her sense of security and well- being.

Facing My Fear

I learned at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 that, when you’re in a true “face your fear” moment, you need to take action. Don’t delay. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t over think the consequences. By facing your fear, you can discover inside yourself the courage to take your life – and your freedom -- into your own hands.

This is one such moment. My mantra serves me well. By the time I drop Stew off in New York City, check in with the marijuana-donating lawyer for free legal advice, and drive back home to Boston, I’ve talked myself into believing I’ve emerged from this incident shaken but unbowed.

In Boston, as my FBI files later reveal, agents have evicted my next door neighbor and ensconced themselves in an adjoining apartment. A group of Boston women, me included, take over a building at 888 Mass. Ave and turn it into a women’s center. The takeover becomes a springboard for the women’s demonstration that preceded Mayday -- the April 10 Women’s March on the Pentagon.

The march attracts no more than 500 women -- but the contingent I lead marches under a beautiful purple Janis Joplin banner.

Judy and a Vietnamese anti-war activist at the Women’s April 10 March on the Pentagon

Monday May 3, 1971 -- Mayday

Our Mayday demonstration doesn’t stop the war – or the government.

The day before the demonstration, rock concert permits are cancelled. Police, reprising Chicago 1968, and presaging the 2008 Republican Convention, teargas as many demonstrators as they can; they destroy tents and use other coercive tactics to force protestors to leave a day early. Many do.

The remaining demonstrators begin assembling at 6 a.m. When it’s time to get up, I make a strategic decision, based purely on personal sloth, to let myself and my Boston affinity group sleep in -- we’d been smoking too much of that dope and partying the night before. By the time we arrive downtown, streets are empty. Traffic is flowing smoothly. Stew and Abbie are among 7,000 demonstrators already arrested and locked up in an emergency detention center next to RFK stadium. Some claim Mayday is the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.

For me, Mayday is a bust. No pun intended. And it’s my own fault.

My failure of leadership is what my new fiancé David calls an AFOG – another f----g opportunity for growth. It’s a harsh lesson that stays with me: don’t wimp out just before the end is in sight. Follow through on your commitment. No excuses. And never, ever smoke really strong dope the night before a big demo. Duh.

Guilt By Association

Three weeks after Mayday, Stew receives his subpoena to a Grand Jury investigating the Capitol bombing. He burns it publicly in New Haven to support Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale, who is on trial there at the time.

I receive my Grand Jury subpoena in Boston a few days after Stew. Why me? Perhaps no-one got the memo that Stew and I had broken up. Or perhaps the FBI was pissed about my arrogant, fuck you dance in front of the cameras on M-Street’s front porch. Or maybe the Feds just wanted to “round up the usual suspects.”

The eminence gris federal prosecutor responsible for all grand juries investigating Weather Underground bombings is a smartly dressed, slick-haired man named Guy Goodwin. Goodwin also convened a grand jury to investigate another equally false allegation -- that Rev. Phil Berrigan and Elizabeth McAllister, a nun, are plotting to kidnap President Nixon’s evil national security advisor Henry Kissinger. He harassed Vietnam Veterans Against the War so much that, in 1972, they filed a $1.8 million civil suit against him.

My first response to my Grand Jury subpoena is to go numb. I’m facing a possible 20 year sentence. My “face your fear” mantra just doesn’t cut it. Denial works a whole lot better. Stew writes that I:

buried the great fear deep in her soul and beamed smiles that would bounce off the moon…but underneath the smiles, Judy was truly terrified. Even though we had officially parted, I knew that I still loved her, which meant that I had to look out for her so that, as a strange Canadian in a stranger America she would not come to harm.

On a PBS interview all I can say about being subpoenaed is: “It’s annoying. Uncool. But our lawyers will take care of it. Nothing to worry about.” Perhaps it’s a positive thing I grew up in a dysfunctional, alcoholic family – repression and denial are terrific short-term survival techniques for really tough times.

We Didn’t Do It But….

Pretty soon my inner Yippie re-emerges and my “face your fear” mantra kicks in. Stew and I decide the appropriate Yippie response is to hold a press conference in front of the Capitol Building.

Stew invites Jerry Rubin along for both his expertise and moral support. Abbie and Jerry believed passionately in the 1960s communications guru Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that the medium is the message -- which led them to measure their success by how much media coverage they got and how frequently they got it. For all the time I knew them, and up until their deaths, a defining aspect of the Abbie/Jerry relationship was their constant competition with each other for the media spotlight. Manipulating the media to expose establishment hypocrisy was a primary Yippie value.

I paint my forehead with a Weather Underground Rainbow, cover one cheek with a woman’s symbol, the other with an NLF (otherwise known as Viet Cong) flag and I put a green marijuana leaf on my chin. And yes, that is a cigarette I’m smoking in the photo – I quit for good a few years later. In my press statement I quote a Weatherman communiqué that says:

The Weather Underground bombed the Capitol to bring a smile and a wink to all the kids in America who hate their government.

Then I pull off my 15 minutes of fame by adding: We didn’t do it but we dug it.

It’s obvious to me, almost 40 years later, that Sarah Palin did a remarkable job getting global media attention for Bill Ayers and his associational link to the Capitol bombing – way better than Billy, the Weather Underground, Stew, Jerry or I ever accomplished at the time. If Palin wasn’t a neo-fascist, I might consider giving her a Yippie Excellence in Media Manipulation award.

In the time immediately preceding our Grand Jury appearances, Stew and I are so overtly hostile to each other that we become famously difficult to be around. Observers who witnessed what Stew and I came to call our “pussycat fights” – meow, hissssss, scratch, pose – are horrified. In the photograph with Colin, I can’t tell if I’m gazing at Stew adoringly, or whether I’m just about to yell at him for some real or imagined sexist act. It’s clear to me now that Stew and I needed to break up, intensely and publicly, to allow us to get back together with each other as full and equal partners. Which we did two years later -- and remained together until Stew’s death on January 30, 2006.

Me and the W.I.T.C.H.E.S (l to r) : Jennifer, don’t recall, Linda, me, Laura, Mirk and Abby

Colin, Judy and Stew at the Grand Jury investigating the Capitol Bombing. Stew’s shirt has the name Bernardine and a fake bomb embroidered on it.

In the summer of 1971, I arrive to make my one time appearance before the Grand Jury dressed like a witch and surrounded by a contingent of women. In fact I am a member of W.I.T.C.H. -- an early New York City based women’s liberation group appropriately named the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Back then, you could use the word terrorist in a joke and not be labeled unpatriotic.

I walk into an old, dimly lit New York City in my long witchy dress, alone but unintimidated. Two rows of older men and women, black and white, arms crossed, stare stonily at me. On our lawyers’ advice I refuse to testify. Instead I cite Constitutional Amendments 1, 4, 5, 6 and 9. These numbers are indelibly imprinted in my memory – although, as a Canadian, I was at the time a little fuzzy about what each Amendment actually stood for. But now I get it why America’s founders gave us freedom of speech and due process. It’s another reason I consider myself a patriot – just like Abbie and Anita who named their son America.

A few months after my Grand Jury appearance, our subpoenas are quashed -- I assume because they can find no evidence of wrongdoing. That guard who claimed to Guy Goodwin he saw Stew at the Capitol building was either set-up, a liar or befuddled – or perhaps he conflated the historic Capitol building with Lafayette Park. It’s a huge relief. Guilt by association loses out to the real world. In the 1980s, in an act of true Yippie bravado, I buy a car with the proceeds of our successful lawsuit against the FBI and get for it a “CAPBOM’ license plate.

Reframing “Domestic Terrorism”

The recent media hysteria about the Capitol bombing has prompted me to revisit, if not re-consider, how I feel today about my long ago “didn’t do it, but dug it” statement. It’s one of those situations where I really miss Stew’s advice and counsel. What would Stewie say?

In the 1980s, shortly after Stew and I moved to Portland, Oregon, I was driving down a street and saw some picketers. My initial gut response is to identify with the protestors, to honk my horn in support, but as I get closer I realize they are anti-choice fanatics picketing what turns out to be the Planned Parenthood affiliate where I will later be employed. The anti-abortion fundamentalists and right-wing extremists – that same breed of bottom feeder who sent hundreds of e-mail death threats to Bill Ayres -- have it all over the Weather Underground when it comes to domestic terrorism.

Lest we forget, just over a decade ago this country witnessed a horrific killing spree carried out by our very own, home grown American terrorists: in 1993, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was assassinated; Dr. John Britton, another abortion provider, was shot in 1994; in that same year 25 year old Planned Parenthood receptionist Shannon Lowney and women’s clinic worker Leanne Nichols were murdered within hours of each other. In 1995, in the worst case of domestic terrorism this country has ever seen, right wing racist gun nut Timothy McVeigh and two of his “pals” killed 168 people including 19 children by setting a bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In 1998, an anti-choice fanatic killed abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian.

The Weathermen bombed bathrooms. They destroyed property. Which is why calling them “domestic terrorists” doesn’t resonate with me. In every case of a Weather Underground bombing there was an advance call warning people to get out of the building. The Weathermen who died were three of their own. Conflating Bill Ayres and the Capitol bombing with Osama Bin Laden’s terroristic destruction of the Twin Towers feels like an enormous truth stretch. It disrespects those who died.

I’m a widow. I’ve experienced the excruciating pain brought on by death of your loved one. I can’t condone action that results in the death of human beings.

In my humble opinion, members of the Weather Underground turned into purists who came to so completely idealize and romanticize the liberation struggles of anyone who was African-American, Vietnamese, or what we used to call “third world” that they fell into an uncritical objectification of violence for its own sake. Their stated doctrine of “lead by example,” resulted in groups attempting to imitate Weather tactics with devastating results. In 1970, an unaffiliated collective bombed the University of Wisconsin’s Army Math building, tragically killing a researcher. In the 1980s, a rogue splinter group that included former Weathermen killed a guard and two policemen in a disastrous, bungled robbery of a Brinks truck. Most of them are still in jail.

Personally, I feel this may be an appropriate moment for truth and reconciliation. Even if Henry Kissinger and surviving members of the Nixon war machine aren’t going to repent and atone for the enormous death and destruction they wreaked on Southeast Asia, I believe it’s time for former Weather Underground leaders to publicly acknowledge the collateral deaths, in addition to the deaths of their own comrades. And then they should be forgiven – and forgive themselves.

Judy Gumbo Albert is an original member of the 1960s countercultural anti-war group known as the Yippies. Judy is co- author of The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Greenwood Press, 1984) and The Conspiracy Trial (Bobbs Merrill, 1970). For many years Judy was an award winning fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. She is currently living in Berkeley, California writing a memoir titled "Yippie Girl". Her chapter about the Battle of Chicago, 1968 can be found at http://www.counterpunch.org/albert08282008.html.

Judy can be reached at yippiegirl@gmail.com.

Steve Hamilton of the Oakland 7

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:54:27 -0800

Celebrate the life of

Our dear friend and comrade

Steve Hamilton

2 p.m., Saturday, May 16

Finnish Brotherhood Hall

1970 Chestnut Street

At University Avenue, Berkeley

Welcome

Mike Smith – Oakland 7

Opening

We Shall Not Be Moved:

Barbara Dane & Johnny Harper

Remembrances from Steve’s sister Shirley Hamilton Metcalf

read by Judy Gumbo Albert

Personal Memories

F.J. Bardacke, Terry Cannon, Karen Jo Koonan, Mike Smith

The Internationale

Barbara Dane & Johnny Harper

Steve Hiatt -- BASOC

Tomiko Aya

Aids Activist

Roman Esser

Closing

Joe Hill

Barbara Dane & Johnny Harper

Refreshments & Open Mike

Steve Hamilton died on February 1, 2009, age 64. Steve was a radical political activist who remained committed to core progressive ideals for his entire life. Born into a working class family, Steve initially considered becoming a Christian minister, but soon got caught up in the political ferment that was Berkeley in the 1960s. He joined SLATE, the Free Speech Movement (FSM) the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the Revolutionary Union (RU). In 1966 he was dismissed from the University of California for protesting the University’s attempt to take away the gains and protections of the Free Speech Movement. In 1968 he was indicted as one of the Oakland 7 for blocking access to the Oakland Induction Center. By the mid 70’s Steve was a member of BASOC (Bay Area Socialists of California).

In the early 1980s, Steve decided to reject the homophobic attitudes of his movement comrades and came out. He became highly regarded in the Bay Area gay community as an HIV/AIDS activist, counselor and therapist. His last job was with MHN, a mental and behavior health network, where he focused on occupational stress issues. In his final year, suffering from congestive heart failure, Steve moved to Louisville KY with his friends Tank and Roman, where he died in his sleep. He leaves behind a sister, Shirley Metcalf and hundreds of close friends and comrades who will always remember his warmth, affection, gentleness, compassion and amazing capacity to talk your ear off.

Who The Hell Is Stew Albert? Signed Copies

Wed, 23 May 2007 10:06:43 -0700

Contact Judy to order.

Stew Albert is an almost-nice Jewish boy who grew up in Brooklyn between World War II and the Cold War. Many of us remember hiding under desks during practice nuclear attacks, but Stew remembers the brass pail in his vestibule filled with white sand in case the Japanese bombed his house and there was a fire. Yes, Stew grew up very bored in Brooklyn-and got out in a hurry. His was the unspectacular childhood of a not-especially-promising kid. He wasn t good at punch ball, spelling, math, geography, or kick-the-can; although he did have some surprising skill swinging a stick at a spaldeen. He wasn t particularly popular nor was he disliked he was invisibly normal. He did, however, have one very distinguishing characteristic: he was, and still is, a very blond Jew. Stew frequently daydreamed about outlaws and tough guys, as did his father, who worked as a city clerk for fifty years. By all rights, Stew should have followed in his old man s footsteps. But instead, we find a young man stoned and hanging-out, in bed with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, shvitzing in the Luxor Turkish Baths with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, drunk in Santiago, Chile with Phil Ochs and blasted with Allan Ginsberg on a manic drive through San Francisco s hills. An alert CIA agent would have easily recognized our former loser on an Algerian beach acid-tripping with Timothy Leary. Can this childhood mediocrity-outstanding only for his hair color-be the same guy showing off his Chicago riot head wounds to William S. Burroughs? Can it be him amidst the chaotic siege on the Pentagon in 1967, giving a speech to the 82nd Airborne about the Lone Ranger? How did this putz kid reinvent himself? Instead of taking a civil service test, he started taking his daydreams seriously. But why? It must have been the sixties-that brief period of time when everything seemed possible and the future was up for grabs…