by Osha Neumann
But where was “out”? And what did they find when they got there? The Motherfuckers set out to fill the empty space of “out” with countercultural institutions. “All power to the People” was the Black Panther’s slogan. Our less than stirring contribution was “All space to the spaced.”
By the beginning of 1968, we had become a formidable presence on the Lower East Side. We ran free stores and crash pads. We organized community feasts in the courtyard of St. Marks Church. We propagandized against the merchandising of hip culture and shook down the psychedelic stores for contributions to our cause. We scammed and shoplifted.
Communists took jobs in factories, to be close to “the people.” Motherfuckers hung out on the streets to be close to our people, the “freaks” as we fondly called them. Communists went to work. We did as little work as possible. We roamed the streets in dirty black leather jackets, carrying in our pockets thin single blade “K-9” folding knives which we practiced whipping out and flipping open with one hand. The knives made a satisfying click when the blade locked into place.
The center of our universe was the sidewalk in front of Gem’s Spa, a narrow little magazine shop with a soda counter on the corner of St. Marks Place and 2nd Avenue. We’d hang out, distribute leaflets, pick up the gossip of the street, then head back to our cluttered store front office on 9th Street opposite Tompkins Square Park, where we churned out a raging flood of flyers on our cranky Gestetner mimeograph machine. The tone of our manifestoes was uncompromising and apocalyptic.
We urged our freak constituency to make love, but prepare for war:IN REVOLT ONE WINS OR DIES—BUT NO SUICIDES
DIG where it’s at: They would like to obliterate us
They think it’s us or them (and they’re right).
Sitting on the stoop to them is a revolutionary act. You are Che Guevara if you stand on the corner. WE ARE INVOLVED IN A WAR OF SURVIVAL THIS IS A CIVIL WAR AND THERE ARE NO CIVIL RIGHTS We must become a guerrilla stoned army of the streets. DIG: amerika will become a sea of violence in which we will have to swim. Unfortunately people who do not swim will drown.
WE WILL USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM-GANG UP
We must get together in groups each member of which we know and trust. We must plan ahead.
We must be cool Time is on our side.
Those who are really into shit will not talk about it on the street
They’ll be too busy.
WE ARE ALIVE AND WE MUST STAY ALIVE
THE PIG IS A DEAD ANIMAL
We celebrated our emerging power. This battle cry was illustrated with a graphic of a gigantic fly:7 When the vast body moves thru battlefield streets
it walks on many legs
hungry cells and angry belly
guts of anger/blood of anger
anger in the one fantastic throat that cries:
“Now! Now this body sees, this body knows and aches,
this body will suffer to be chained no more!”
and when the vast body moves thru battlefield streets
the great buildings tremble . . .
When the police harassed our people we called for militant demonstrations:They’re busting again
IS IT HOT-BECAUSE THE MAN IS UP TIGHT OR IS THE MAN UP TIGHT BECAUSE IT IS HOT? . . . 6 GIRLS PICKED UP ON ST. MARX FOR LOOKING YOUNG—ITS AGAINST THE LAW TO BE YOUNG IN THIS COUNTRY—ITS WITHIN THE LAW TO BE A FAT OLD PIG BUT WE’RE TELLING YOU—DON’T PUSH MOTH-ERFUCKER—HANDS OFF MOTHERFUCKER—DON’T SHOVE MOTHERFUCKER IF YOU SHOVE US WE WILL LEARN TO SHOVE BACK—IF YOU PUSH US WE WILL LEARN TO PUSH BACK IF YOU DON’T TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF US WE WILL PUT OUR HANDS ON—GARBAGE CANS—MATCHES—OTHER THINGS—IF YOU DON’T RESPECT US—WE WON’T RESPECT YOU—or YOU’RE PROPERTY! WHAT DOES A PIG LOOK LIKE RUNNIN SCARED EVER SEE A BOTTLED PIG? WE DEMAND: STOP HASSLING YOUNG GIRLS AND BOYS STOP BUSTING YOUNG PEOPLE WHO WANT TO LIVE TOGETHER AND ARE SICK OF YOUR BOURGEOIS FAMILIES THAT HAVE MADE US SICK—STOP BUSTING OR WE WILL BUST BACK THIS IS A NEW BREED OF FLOWER CHILD VENUS PIG TRAP WE ARE VIOLENT FLOWERS—CACTUS, THORNS BE IN THE STREET TONITE
And in a similar vein:LAST NIGHT THE MAN BUSTED ONE OF OUR CRASHPADS IT WAS CLEAN. (THE MAN LOVES CLEANLINESS) WITH SORROW WE HAD EXCLUDED OUR BROTHERS THE RUNAWAYS AND OUR BEAUTIFUL DRUGS (THE MAN DOES NOT LOVE THEM AND HAS MADE LAWS AGAINST THEM)
BUT-THERE IS NO PLEASING THE MAN—HE BUSTED ANYWAY (MOVED IN THRU THE DOORS AND WINDOWS) TORE THE APARTMENT TO PIECES, RIPPED UP FURNITURE, THREW CLOTHES AROUND, ARRESTED 10 PEOPLE)
X—ITS GETTING HOT—X—X
DRIVEN MAD BY THE DEATH OF HIS POLITICIANS, SEEING IN OUR EYES THE REVELATION OF HIS OWN INSANITY, HE WANTS US OUT OF HIS CITIES BEFORE THE SUMMER STARTS BUT LISTEN MAN—WE CAME OUT OF YOUR FAT ASS SUBURBS WE KNOW WHAT YOU SHORT HAIRS ARE LIKE WE’VE LIVED IN YOUR HOMES WE’VE HAD YOU FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS WERE NOT GOING BACK WE NEED SPACE—YOU PUSH US OUT OF OUR PADS SO YOU CAN BUST US IN THE STREETS—IT WON’T WORK—WE’RE HERE LIKE ROACHES STOP HASSLING US—
We would riot, throw rocks through the windows of the bank opposite Gem’s Spa, and run through the streets chased by beat cops from the 9th precinct reinforced by the Tactical Patrol Force. Those of us they caught got dragged to jail. Those of us who escaped rushed to our storefront to churn out fliers calling for new demonstrations, which would invariably result in more riots and more arrests. And more fliers. We celebrated our battles with hymns to liberation:LIBERATION IN THE STREETS
Happened because a crash pad was busted—but also for its own sake. The breaking into the crash pad was a cause and an opportunity—an opportunity to liberate a form of energy and a form of life that can not be coopted and turned against us. While the rest tremble we look forward to the heat of summer.
We expect the police to be brutal as we expect someone who stubs his toe to cry out—America stubs its toe—looks down—and there we are in the street—which is where we belong. We have many new slogans. Among them are: The streets belong to the people and the people belong in the streets. And: Up against the wa ll Motherfucker . People call us suicidal sidewalk psychopaths. The first young unprotected bud pushing thru the soil in Spring is suicidal—its safer not trying to grow. And it’s Spring. And we’re pushing.
Flush from our confrontations we exulted:NOW WE KNOW FOR SURE:
THE STREETS WILL BE OURS—
THE FROZEN FILTHY STREAM
MELTS AND A LIBERATED FLOOD POURS THRU THE STREET—
UPROOTING/OVERTURNING—
THE STREETS ARE OUR BATTLEFIELD
THEY ARE THE GARDENS WHERE WE WILL LIBERATE
NEW FORMS OF LIFE
WHERE A NEW RACE OF MEN IS LEARNING TO BE HUMAN—
LEARNING TO FIGHT
LEARNING TO LIVE
THE STREETS BELONG TO THE PEOPLE—AND THE
PEOPLE BELONG IN THE STREETS!
I lived for those moments of mingled fear and exhilaration, when we stopped playing by the rules. Running in the streets regardless of lights and traffic, fighting with the police, hearing glass breaking felt like the very essence of freedom. It seemed so enticingly simple: all that was needed to be free was to refuse to obey. Of course, “The System” would respond by trying to crush us and force us back within the lines. The trick was to enlarge the space between our challenge and its response.
The charge of the bull is the moment of truth for the matador. He emerges triumphant, humiliated—or dead. Our moment of truth came when the sirens wailed and the police pulled out their billyclubs.
We believed we were inventing a new way to be white revolutionaries in America. We were willing to take risks, to abandon all privilege. Even the New Left, as it was formulating itself in the SDS chapters of college campuses across the country, seemed too tame and tentative for us. No more dithering and prevarication. It was time to put up or shut up.
BREAKING THE MORAL CALLUS
For a few brief years we were incandescent. We would burn the armor off the body politic. Naked ourselves, we would grasp the naked truth and live in her embrace.<
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The world was gripped by a vast instability. Geysers were bursting through hard rock. Wounds that never healed were opening. Cleansing waves were washing through the halls of history, jumbling the furniture, tumbling closets full of secrets, freeing those trapped beneath the floorboards. Terrible crimes were being exposed. We would ride the waves. No, we would be the wave, and not just the wave, but the spume at its leading edge.
The Lower East Side was our home turf, but we aspired to act on a world stage. We were small in numbers. We had a narrow base of support. We were contemptuous of the timidity of the organizers of the large mobilizations we attended, but incapable of organizing anything on a comparable scale. We would lead by example.
In October 1967, a major demonstration against the war in Vietnam culminated in an encirclement of the Pentagon. The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (“the Mobe”) planned for protestors to engage in decorous non-violent civil disobedience. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin let it be known that a pentagon was the sign of the devil and that they intended to conduct an exorcism at the conclusion of which the Pentagon would levitate off the ground. The Motherfuckers had not yet fully coalesced as a group but Ben and those of us from the Lower East Side who went with him were in no mood for such frivolity. On the day of the demonstration, Ben joined a self-proclaimed Revolutionary Contingent of militants that tore down a chain link fence and charged toward the building, only to be beaten by a phalanx of federal marshals. Undeterred, a small group, waiving the flag of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, with Ben in the forefront, ran towards a temporarily unguarded side entrance and dashed inside, where they were met by a solid wall of soldiers who beat them back out the door. But they had done it! They had penetrated into the actual belly of the beast.8
The following month the Foreign Policy Association held a banquet for Secretary of State Dean Rusk at the New York Hilton. We bought cows blood at a butcher shop, filled plastic bags with the stuff, concealed the bags in our pockets, and traveled uptown to meet the invitees. We had helped circulate a flier that read:The Forces of liberation (feeling that there is enough pollution in our city already without adding a Secretary of State): Hereby Announce that DEAN RUSK has been denied permission to enter New York City for any purpose whatsoever. ———— Despite this he intends to accept an award at a Foreign Policy Assoc. dinner . . . The forces of liberation are therefore compelled to urge all their supporters to assemble in front of the hotel . . . to welcome him appropriately.
As guests pulled up to the entrance and liveried bellhops rushed to hold open the doors of their limousines, we hurled our bags of blood, splattering evening dresses and tuxedos. I have a photograph taken at the riot that followed. It shows a policeman standing in a threatening pose over a demonstrator who is down on the pavement. I am looking on, hands at my side. I make no gesture to intervene.
Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Major riots took place in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, DC, and Harlem. Forty-six people died.
Unrest in the streets was spilled over onto campuses across the nation. On April 23, a group of Columbia University students including members of the Student Afro-American Society (SAS), attempted to stop construction of a gymnasium the University was building in Morningside Park. Morningside Park lies on the border between the campus and Harlem. The huge building would swallow precious open space used by the community. Members of the community (predominantly Black) would have some use of the facility, but they would have to enter through a back door. Columbia University students (predominantly White) would enter through the main entrance on the other side. The plan for separate but unequal entrances stank of southern style racism and the community was up in arms. There had been numerous community protests joined by SAS, but construction continued.
Now the issue of the gymnasium would become the spark that ignited the largest protest Columbia had ever seen. Discontent with the university went far beyond its voracious land grabbing. The SAS students were joined by members of SDS, who had been protesting the University’s links to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a weapons research program with connections to the Pentagon. Columbia was acting like an arrogant racist slumlord. It was also complicit in the war effort. It provided intellectual cover for war criminals and trained their proxies and facilitators. It expected students to be passive sponges, soaking up the wisdom of their professors. Now all the separate streams of protest against Columbia’s policies at home and abroad were about to come together in a mighty river.
When the protestors started to tear down a fence at the gymnasium site, the police moved in, and one person was arrested. The protesters then returned to campus, joined by member of the community, and began an occupation of Hamilton Hall. Dean Coleman was temporarily held hostage in his office. The occupation would soon spread to five other buildings and last a week.
Ten days earlier, Grayson Kirk, President of Columbia, had given a speech in Charlottesville, Virginia. He warned his audience that “young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority, from whatever source derived, and . . . have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destruction. I know of no time in our history,” he said, “when the gap between the generations has been wider or more potentially dangerous.”
Mark Rudd, chairman of Columbia SDS and one of the leaders of the strike, had replied the day before the gymnasium demonstration with an open letter.
Your charge of nihilism is indeed ominous; for if it were true, our nihilism would bring the whole civilized world, from Columbia to Rockefeller Center, crashing down upon all our heads. . . . You are quite right in feeling that the situation is “potentially dangerous” for if we win, we will take control of your world, your corporation, your University and attempt to mold a world in which we and other people can live as human beings. . . . We will have to destroy at times, even violently, in order to end your power and your system—but that is a far cry from nihilism. . . .
You call for order in respect for authority; we call for justice, freedom, and socialism.”
He concluded:There is only one thing left to say. It may sound nihilistic to you, since it is the opening shot in the war of liberation. I’ll use the words of LeRoi Jones, whom I’m sure you don’t like a whole lot: “Up against the wall, motherfucker this is a stick up.”9
Reminiscing later, Mark wrote:Perhaps nothing upset our enemies more than this slogan. To them it seemed to show the extent to which we had broken with their norms, how far we had sunk to brutality, hatred and obscenity. Great! The New York Times put forward three interpretations of the slogan, the only one of which I remember is the one which had to do with putting the administration up against the wall before a firing squad—apparently our fascistic ‘final solution.’ The truth is almost as bad: the slogan defined Grayson Kirk, David Truman, the Trustees, many of the faculty, and the cops as our enemies. Liberal solutions, ‘restructuring’, partial understandings, compromise are not allowed anymore. The essence of the matter is that we are out for social and political revolution.”10
That Mark picked up on the rhetoric of the Motherfuckers was not fortuitous. Mark had seen Ben and a cohort of Motherfuckers disrupt an SDS convention by shouting at speakers with whom we disagreed, “That’s bullshit and you know it.” He liked the phrase. After the convention he had hung out with us a bit on the Lower East Side. He was impressed by our impatience with theory and influenced by our reliance on the vivifying effect of action in the streets to draw converts to our cause. In Columbia SDS he formed an “action faction,” in opposition to the “praxis axis” whose members talked Marxist theory and believed in the need to educate people before they could act. Mark had gone to Cuba, and willingly admitted to being an adherent of the cult of Che. He read Regis Debray’s “Revolution in the Revolution,” which argued that the revolution begins with the armed struggle of small bands of guerrillas. In Mark’s
head Che, Debray, and the Motherfuckers were all singing the same song: Action itself is educational.
When we heard about the strike, we traveled uptown to participate. We arrived at Hamilton Hall where round the clock meetings were taking place. Differences in the styles of organizing between the Blacks and White students soon emerged. Rumors spread that some members of the Black community had brought in guns. The rumors were true.11 The white student leadership was not ready for armed struggle. The leadership of the Blacks in Hamilton asked the white students to leave. They could take over other buildings if they wished. Most of them complied. But Charlie Motherfucker at first refused. As a true Motherfucker he was unwilling to be categorized as less militant than anyone. Mark Motherfucker, who stayed with Charlie, remembers him responding to the demand that he leave with, “Go fuck yourself. You punk bourgeois Blacks, you don’t know anything. I’ve got some friends here and I’m staying.”
I left and joined a group of white students heading for Low Library, which housed Grayson Kirk’s office. A bench was rammed through a pane of glass on a side door, demonstrators poured in, and after a brief hesitation forced the door to the president’s office. One of the most famous photographs of the Columbia occupation shows the poet, David Shapiro, sitting at the president’s desk wearing dark glasses and smoking one of his Cuban cigars. Meanwhile other students rifled through his files for evidence of the University’s connections to the Pentagon. Mark Motherfucker recalls David handed him the first cigar he ever smoked.
