RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : 'Radio Unnameable' Legend Bob Fass and Filmmaker Paul Lovelace

Late-night radio revolutionary Bob Fass, left, and filmmaker Paul Lovelace.

Rag Radio podcast: 
Free-form radio legend Bob Fass and
'Radio Unnameable' filmmaker Paul Lovelace

“I wanna be a neuron -- I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.” -- Bob Fass to his radio audience in the 1960s.

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / May 9, 2013

Bob Fass is an American broadcast legend who was a pioneer of free-form radio and who has been on the air at New York's WBAI for almost 50 years. Fass's show, Radio Unnameable, provided an early forum for counterculture figures like Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, and Abbie Hoffman, and helped spawn the Yippies.

Paul Lovelace is the producer and co-director of Radio Unnameable, a remarkable documentary about Fass and his singular legacy.

Bob Fass and Paul Lovelace were our guests on Rag Radio, Friday, May 3, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Bob Fass and Paul Lovelace here:


Bob Fass's Radio Unnameable -- he appropriated the moniker from Samuel Beckett -- is credited with revolutionizing late-night radio. The show was first broadcast in 1963 on listener-sponsored Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM in New York City.

Pacifica, founded in 1946, pioneered listener-sponsored radio in this country and WBAI became a Pacifica station in 1960. But they signed off at midnight and, Fass told us, "I knew that there was a world of people who would listen to the radio late at night -- for companionship, for education" -- so he coaxed management into letting him do an all-night shift.

From the beginning the show featured regular appearances by counterculture figures such as Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Kinky Friedman, and Wavy Gravy, and broadcast the first performances of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles."

Fass’s on-air calls-to-action brought thousands into the streets for countercultural happenings including a Human Fly-In at JFK Airport, a Sweep-In to clean up New York streets, and a Yip-In at Grand Central Station that turned into a police riot. Fass was called a "midwife" to the birth of the '60s counterculture and his show helped to incubate the theatrical New Left activist group, the Yippies.

Fass told the Rag Radio audience that there was "a whole cultural revolution in New York City," and "I had the good fortune to be able to put it on the air." "There was no other place doing what I was doing," he told us. "If something was gonna happen, [Radio Unnameable] was where it was gonna happen."

"We were kind of demystifying radio," he said, "making it somehow less austere and didactic."

Fass also experimented with form; he might play a record backwards or play two records at once or play the same song multiple times. And he would put as many as 10 callers on the air simultaneously. Jay Sand wrote that Fass "had the same supplies as any other broadcaster -- two turntables, a microphone, a stack of records, perhaps a guest in the studio, a friend on the phone... [but] the radio program he created... transcended those common wares."

Fass developed a very special relationship with his listeners, even giving his loyal audience a name: "Cabal." He would open the show with the greeting: "Good morning, Cabal." “I wanna be a neuron," he once told his audience. "I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.”

Fass, who was born June 29, 1933, can still be heard every Thursday night from midnight-3 a.m. on WBAI 99.5-FM in New York.

Good morning, Cabal.

Paul Lovelace is a documentary filmmaker who produced and co-directed (with Jessica Wolfson) Radio Unnameable, a feature-length documentary about Fass and his amazing story.

The film, which was screened in December 2012 by the Austin Film Society -- where it was introduced to the audience by songster and former Fass regular Jerry Jeff Walker -- is currently showing around the country and the DVD will be released in September. It will also be available on Netflix, YouTube, and other outlets, Lovelace said. Radio Unnameable has screened to widespread kudos and Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 100 percent positive rating among critics.

As Rag Blog editor and Rag Radio host, I was honored to participate in a panel with the filmmakers after the Austin screening. I spent time in New York in the '60s and worked with Houston's Pacifica station, KPFT, in the '70s -- and I can offer personal witness to Bob Fass's incredible contribution to progressive radio in this country.

The film features new interviews with Paul Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Wavy Gravy, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ed Sanders, David Amram, and others, as well as the insightful and edifying reflections of Fass himself. And, as John Anderson of Variety points out, Fass's "legacy, and his archives, are as epic as the medium gets," adding that the film includes "extraordinary archival material and some sparkling footage of New York."

Lovelace told the Rag Radio audience that more than 60 people worked on cataloging and organizing the archival material which was in a range of media formats including "5,000 or more reel-to-reel audio tapes, just from 1962-1977." "We immersed ourselves in the material," he said. "It was a treasure trove."

Michael Simmons wrote at The Rag Blog that “Fass and ‘Cabal’ changed history and deserve the credit, and Lovelace and Wolfson have provided the first in-depth cinematic look. It resonates like an epic tale with the hero emerging as a long-shot survivor."

In his review at The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that Lovelace and his co-director Jessica Wolfson "pay tribute both to an influential voice in broadcasting and to the times whose ideals and follies he helped articulate," identifying Bob Fass as "a gentle, soulful voice" who "kept [New Yorkers] from loneliness."

Paul Lovelace has previously won film festival acclaim for his short films, Robert Christgau: Rock N’ Roll Animal, about the esteemed Village Voice music journalist, and for the 35mm narrative short, The Sonnets. His first documentary feature was The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose, a portrait of the psychedelic folk duo. Paul also wrote, produced, and edited the PBS documentary, American Roots Music: Chicago.

Michael Simmons sums it all up beautifully:

Radio Unnameable is a roadmap for rebels, those who believe -- as the saying goes -- that another world is possible. Fass and Lovelace and Wolfson show that political and cultural transformation are often generated in the wee small hours of the morning -- that perfect time when the moon shines, the squares sleep, and dreamers share dreams while wide awake.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 10, 2013: Journalism professor and activist Robert Jensen, author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialog.
Friday, May 17, 2013: Political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
Friday, May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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FILM / Michael Simmons : How Bob Fass Revolutionized Late-Night Radio

Bob Fass in the WBAI studios in New York. Photo by, yes, Bob Fass. Photos courtesy Radio Unnameable.

Radio Unnameable:
Bob Fass revolutionized late-night radio

Fass and 'Cabal' changed history and deserve the credit and Lovelace and Wolfson have provided the first in-depth cinematic look. It resonates like an epic tale with the hero emerging as a long-shot survivor.

By Michael Simmons / The Rag Blog / May 2, 2013

Radio legend Bob Fass and filmmaker Paul Lovelace will be Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio this Friday, May 3, from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live to the world. The show will be rebroadcast by WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA, Sunday morning, May 5, at 10 a.m. (EDT), and the podcast of this interview can be listened to or downloaded at the Internet Archive.

[Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson's remarkable film, Radio Unnameable, about free-form radio pioneer Bob Fass, is currently being featured at screenings around the country and the DVD will be released later this year. When the film was screened by the Austin Film Society last December, famed singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker -- who first performed "Mr. Bojangles" on Fass' radio show -- introduced the film to the Austin audience.]

“I wanna be a neuron -- I don’t wanna be the brain,” said all-night radio host Bob Fass in the 1960s to his audience. “We’re all the brain.”

Bob Fass began his show Radio Unnameable at non-commercial, listener-sponsored WBAI-FM in New York City in 1963. By 1966 when I began listening as a fledgling nonconformist, Fass was on the air Monday through Friday from midnight to 5 or 6 a.m. Radio Unnameable was completely free-form and improvisational -- radio jazz, as opposed to jazz radio.

Bob would play two or more records simultaneously of eclectic music and spoken word. Musicians would show up unexpectedly and perform. His friends came and shpritzed free-associative comedy routines or rapped about politics du jour or cultural happenings in the underground that were being created in real time. Friends included Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, and Wavy Gravy. These characters were in cahoots with Fass’ audience whom he called “Cabal” -- a handle that connoted subversion and conspiracy.

Bob Fass. In back, on left, is Abbie Hoffman.
Photo by Robert Altman.

An actor in his youth, Fass knew how to underplay. His voice was like a muted baritone saxophone -- calm and reassuring, but at moments -- always the right ones -- he was capable of removing the mute and that bari would modulate, rising in excited exhortation. He entertained, comforted, educated, organized, raised consciousness, and inspired.

I was 11-years old in 1966 and I too wanted to be a neuron. A child of Top 40 radio (“W-A-Beatle-C!”), I was one of those kids with transistor radio and earplugs under the sheets when I was supposed to be asleep. One day while futzing with the dial at 2 a.m., I landed on WBAI and heard Phil Ochs sing “Draft Dodger Rag,” an absurdist satire about the serious subject of avoiding the military draft and thus the human meat-grinder that was The War In/On Vietnam. The combination of Ochs’ idealism and irony was irresistible and I was hooked on Fass at 99.5 on my FM dial.

Every night with Bob was different. There was no playlist, no formula, no commercials. Fass took phone calls and a techie had rigged a system that enabled 10 callers to yap at once -- a pre-internet chat room. At times the show was indecipherable chaos, but mostly it was compelling for a restless and skeptical nipper like myself who’d been raised on rules and unquestioning respect for the authority of parents and so-called teachers and leaders.

Bob’s willingness to screw up in pursuit of the sublime -- the audacity of failure, to quote filmmaker Jennifer Montgomery -- was a lesson in the creative process -- being unafraid to fall on one’s tuchus so that the practice of obliterating limits could reveal higher levels of artistry and consciousness. Ultimately we Cabalists discovered that the medium of radio alone could not only get one high, but get many high simultaneously.

Being a Fass listener in those days was to witness an emerging counterculture, watching it form on a molecular level in real time through experimentation and connection. One night in early ’67, Bob announced a Fly-In at a JFK Airport terminal and a thousand young people showed up to give flowers to passengers arriving from Hong Kong or Barcelona, giving birth to Flower Power. The Sweep-In followed and young ‘uns armed with brooms and mops helped clean up the untended ghetto of East Village streets.

These events led to the founding of the Youth International Party -- the Yippies -- and were all aired on Radio Unnameable. Even though I was initially too young to participate, the energetic positivity -- the desire to change the human dynamic for the better -- was infectious. I got bit and so did tens of thousands -- eventually millions -- of others. Within a year of my first listen, I was in the streets, at the barricades, on the front lines.

Fass c. 1969. Photo by Jim Demetropoulis.

Plenty more happened to Fass -- both good and bad -- but 40-sumpin’ years later, Bob is still on WBAI, Thursday night/Friday morning from midnight to 3 a.m. For the rest of the Bob Fass story, check out the extraordinary documentary Radio Unnameable by filmmakers Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson. Fass and "Cabal" changed history and deserve the credit and Lovelace and Wolfson have provided the first in-depth cinematic look. It resonates like an epic tale with the hero emerging as a long-shot survivor.

Like so many young people in any era, I had a difficult adolescence. Mainstream adults with their arbitrary expectations and -- worse -- greed and slaughter were all transparently fucked up. At the age of 58 I still view most of conventional society with horror. But Bob Fass has helped keep me sane in an insane world for a half-century.

Radio Unnameable is a roadmap for rebels, those who believe -- as the saying goes -- that another world is possible. Fass and Lovelace and Wolfson show that political and cultural transformation are often generated in the wee small hours of the morning -- that perfect time when the moon shines, the squares sleep, and dreamers share dreams while wide awake.

[As leader of the band Slewfoot, Michael Simmons was dubbed "The Father Of Country Punk" by Creem magazine in the 1970s. He was an editor at the National Lampoon in the '80s where he wrote the popular column "Drinking Tips And Other War Stories." He won a Los Angeles Press Club Award in the '90s for investigative journalism and has written for MOJO, LA Weekly, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, High Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, CounterPunch, and The Progressive. Currently wrapping a solo album, Michael can be reached at guydebord@sbcglobal.net.]

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Judy Gumbo Albert : Writing for the Hell of It

Yippie Girl: Judy Gumbo Albert on the cover of the Berkeley Tribe, 1970. Image from Babylon Falling.

How to bug a Yippie Girl:
Writing for the hell of it

My 1960s and '70s had been a Dostoyevskian drama of love, honor, loyalty, and betrayal embedded in the American revolution of my time.

By Judy Gumbo Albert / The Rag Blog / April 24, 2013

Listen to the podcast of Thorne Dreyer's April 13, 2013, Rag Radio interview with original Yippies Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan at the Internet Archive and read about it on The Rag Blog. Also, see Jonah Raskin's Rag Blog interview with Judy Gumbo Albert.

I recently entered a contest for women writers that focused on personal narrative of life-changing experiences that evoke the '60s and '70s. I submitted an adaptation of a chapter from Yippie Girl, my memoir-in-progress -- and won third prize!

My piece, “Bugged,” is about the time I discovered an FBI tracking device on my car in 1975. It will be published this fall in an anthology, Times They Were a Changing, edited by Kate Farrell, Linda Joy Myers, and Amber Lee Starfire. Here’s what one of the editors said about "Bugged":

We are all so pleased to include your work in the anthology -- it does embrace so many wonderful elements in one short piece: romance, humor, revolution, urban & country. Brava!

If you're interested in the story of my writing process -- how I came to write Bugged -- read on. Updates on publication will be available here at The Rag Blog or on my website, www.yippiegirl.com, or The Times They Were A-Changing website.


Bringing It All Back Home

My submission to the Times They Were A-Changing contest is titled “Bugged.” It’s adapted from a chapter in Yippie Girl, my memoir-in-progress that I began in 2008. The previous two years could have occupied any psychotherapist’s A-list of major life crises.

Stew Albert, my lover and husband of almost 40 years, died. We had five weeks between diagnosis and death. I quit my job as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, sold my bungalow in Portland where Stew and I had raised our daughter, and with two months remaining of that excruciating first year during which widows are not supposed to make major decisions, I moved to Berkeley.

I bought a new house, got a different high-level job, got fired and was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I wrote my outline between radiation treatments. I’d deflect depression with fantasies of publication. Mine would be a traditional love story with the 1960s and 1970s as backdrop: girl meets boy, girl dumps boy, girl and boy get back together and live happily ever after until boy dies. Grieving is not linear. Writing helped me work through loss. Writing “Bugged” helped me remember the Catskill cabin Stew and I shared, and reminded me to laugh.

But I did get frustrated writing the book. I lacked a memoirist’s technical skills. I wallowed in adverbs and piled on descriptive adjectives like the proverbial kid in a candy store. I had no idea what a sensory detail was, how to set a scene, to go from close in to distant view, to write narrative summary.

Thanks to a terrific memoir teacher, I came to feel more confident in my craft. At the same time, the voice of my mother -- a busty, blonde, Jewish alcoholic, long dead -- reminded me that whatever I wrote would never be good enough.

Bugged: Stew Albert, William
Kunstler (top), and Judy.

Daniel Handler once remarked that there are times you must throw the baby out of the lifeboat. I’d waste weeks rescuing an anecdote with rewrite only to throw it back, like the striped bass I used to catch in Lake Muskoka as a child. I learned to recognize and discard the sentence or paragraph that, no matter how well written, took a reader out of the story.

My 1960s and '70s had been a Dostoyevskian drama of love, honor, loyalty, and betrayal embedded in the American revolution of my time. I agonized over how much information to disclose after 40 years.

“Tell the truth,” one friend, an editor at a major university press, told me.

“Cover your ass,” a former Black Panther said.

I’d been told that an individual loses privacy rights after death. Luckily for me but not for them, most of my characters were gone. I could disclose without being disloyal. Until I discovered that individual rights of privacy for the dead vary by country and state.

To be safe and ethical, I decided to pass a draft by anyone still alive who might be hurt. One friend turned out not to care that I’d revealed her husband’s infidelities. She volunteered the name of his lover, but got incensed when I intimated her husband might have been an FBI informant. I’d wasted my agony on the wrong sin.

I still struggle to keep the charisma of the 1960s and '70s from overwhelming my narrative. In that sense, writing “Bugged” was easy. I could move from Dostoyevsky to Thoreau, and turn my cabin in the Catskills into Walden on a grey-green mountaintop without a pond.

Arriving in the slush of New York City represented a metaphoric transition from rural peace to paranoia. When I mixed in comic FBI agents and a chase scene, I had “Bugged.”

In 2010, I ended “Bugged” with this statement, “Every illegal act the FBI committed against Stew and me in 1975 is entirely legal today.” In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that police could no longer place a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car without a warrant. In the space of f40 years, this act has gone from illegal to legal and back to illegal again.

I am learning not to make statements that appear definitive in the moment that I write them. My chapter “Bugged” and my memoir Yippie Girl need to rise above time.

This article also appears at The Times They Were A-Changing website.

[Judy Gumbo Albert is an original Yippie, along with Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Nancy Kurshan, Paul Krassner, and Judy’s late husband Stew Albert. Judy has remarried, lives in Berkeley, California, and is currently writing her memoir, Yippie Girl. She can be found at www.yippiegirl.com. You can contact her at judygumboalbert@gmail.com or on Facebook at Judy Gumbo Albert or Yippie Girl. Read more articles by and about Judy Gumbo Albert on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Yippie Pioneers Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan 'Tell It Like It Was'

 Judy Gumbo Albert, left, and Nancy Kurshan, photographed in Hanoi, January 2013, were our guests on Rag Radio April 13, 2013.

Rag Radio podcast:
Sixties activists and original Yippies
Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan

Judy and Nancy discuss their recent trip to Vietnam and reminisce about their experiences in the Sixties, the legacy of the Yippies, and their lives and work in the ensuing years.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / April 24, 2013

Writers and activists Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan, who were original members of the historic Youth International Party (Yippies) -- the theatrical New Left activist group that was founded in 1967 -- were Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio, Friday, April 13, 2013.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan here:


Judy and Nancy -- and their respective partners at the time, Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin --  were original Yippies, along with Abbie Hoffman, Anita Hoffman, and Paul Krassner.

The Yippies were an anarchist-leaning Sixties group known for their street theater and symbolic political actions that merged New Left and countercultural values. They gained mass exposure through actions like throwing money onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and running a pig for president.

Early this year, Albert and Kurshan visited North Vietnam as part of a delegation of activists who had originally visited the country during the war and were now celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords. The two of them had also been part of a Yippie trip to North Vietnam in 1970.

In a photo essay about the recent trip -- which was published in The Rag Blog -- Judy wrote: "Everywhere we traveled we were warmly welcomed. The Vietnamese still feel grateful to the U.S. peace movement. I came to understand that while my trip in 1970 was life changing, this trip was life affirming."

Judy and Nancy discussed their trip to Vietnam with the Rag Radio audience, and also reminisced about their experiences in the Sixties and the legacy of the Yippies, and about their lives and work in the ensuing years. They also reflected on sexism in the Yippies and other Sixties groups and addressed continuing issues like women's reproductive rights and prison reform.

Nancy Kurshan, left, and Judy Gumbo Albert in Vietnam, 1970.

Judy Gumbo Albert, Ph.D., who also wrote for underground newspapers the Berkeley Barb and the Berkeley Tribe, helped stage the Women’s March on the Pentagon and the Mayday demonstrations in Washington D.C., in 1971.

In 1975, Albert discovered a tracking device on her car and was part of a lawsuit that successfully challenged warrantless wiretapping. She recently won an award for an essay, "Bugged," about the incident; her story will be included in an upcoming anthology of women's writings about the Sixties and seventies.

Albert has taught Sociology and Women’s Studies at East and West Coast colleges and for years was an award-winning fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. She is co-author of The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (1984) and is currently completing her memoir, Yippie Girl. Judy lives in Berkeley Cohousing in Berkeley, California.

Nancy Kurshan was a staff member of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, helped organize the 1968 Democratic Convention protests, and worked on the Chicago 8 trial. She attended the 1970 Stockholm Peace Conference and helped stage anti-war demonstrations outside the U.S. Consulate in Moscow and elsewhere. Nancy was also a founder of the feminist guerrilla theater group, W.I.T.C.H.

Nancy was a social worker for 20 years in the Chicago public schools. A prison reform activist, she was a founding member of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown; her prison work has focused on racist aspects of incarceration, the issue of political prisoners, and the proliferation of long-term solitary confinement. She is the author of Out of Control: A 15 Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons published by the Freedom Archives in January 2013.

See Jonah Raskin's fascinating and revealing Rag Blog interviews with Nancy Kurshan and Judy Gumbo Albert. Also see "Writing for the Hell of it" by Judy Gumbo Albert on The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, April 26, 2013: Activist and radio host Pedro Gatos and Val Liveoak of Friends' Peace Teams' Peacebuilding en las Americas on changes in Cuba, Venezuela & the Global South.
May 3, 2013: Free-form radio pioneer Bob Fass of Pacifica Radio's WBAI-FM in New York, with filmmaker Paul Lovelace (Radio Unnameable).
May 17, 2013: Political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : 'Fearless' Yippie Pioneer Nancy Kurshan Battles Prison Behemoth

Nancy Kurshan speaks to the press during the Chicago Conspiracy trial, 1969. To her left is Anita Hoffman and on her right, Susan Schultz. Back row: Ann Froines, Tasha Dellinger, and Sharon Avery. Photo courtesy Nancy Kurshan.

An interview with Nancy Kurshan:
From Yippie street protest to
fighting the American prison behemoth

“The prisoner usually has no idea how long he or she will be there... The rules for exiting are unclear at best and impossible to comprehend at worst. I believe that control unit prisons are tantamount to torture and an abuse of state power.” -- Nancy Kurshan

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / February 28, 2013

Nancy Kurshan will be joined by fellow Yippie founder, Judy Gumbo Albert, as Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, April 12, 2013, from 2-3 p.m., on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the Internet. Also, please see Judy Gumbo Albert's photo essay, "Visiting Viet Nam, 1970-2013," published this week in The Rag Blog. Nancy and Judy recently returned from a trip to Viet Nam.

If someone asked me to describe Nancy Kurshan in a word, the word I would choose would be “fearless.”

Kurshan, now 69, and a founding member of the Yippies -- was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised by Old Left parents. She has been an activist since high school days. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t like prisons any more than anyone else I know, though she enters prisons almost routinely. You might well say that she’s leery about them. Indeed, she knows how antithetical they are to the very essence of the human condition, and yet how thoroughly they define the human condition. That’s what might be called the prison paradox.

If you’re reading these words in The Rag Blog you probably know that prisons are almost everywhere on the face of the earth. You may remember that zealous Puritan settlers constructed them when they arrived in America in the seventeenth century. “The founders of a new colony,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter,“ have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery and another portion as the site of a prison.”

Graveyards and jails, cemeteries and prisons invariably go together.

Over the past 400 years or so, Americans have never stopped building prisons and American prisons, such as San Quentin, Alcatraz, and Angola in Louisiana, are world famous because of the books and movies about them and because of the harrowing testimonies by prisoners themselves.

Ask Nancy Kurshan. She has the facts and the figures. She’ll tell you all about America and its prisons. No one builds prison better than Americans, she says. No one builds more prisons than Americans, and no one builds the new generation of prisons, often called “control units,” with the same gusto as Americans.

When I asked her recently about her own prison experiences, she told me that she once spent 24-hours behind bars in Chicago and that “it drove me crazy.” Kurshan has been arrested so many times -- at least 15 times by her own count -- that they tend to blur in memory, though she remembers the incarcerations that followed street protests in the 1980s: the occupation of a Marine Corps office on International Women's Day; a sit-in in the street that blocked traffic around the Federal Building in Chicago; yet another protest when she and others chained themselves to an African consulate.

Image grab from the Marion Daily Republican, Marion, IL, April 28, 1989. Image from Freedom Archives.

Kurshan has never allowed her own personal feelings about prisons to prevent her from protesting in the streets. And she has never allowed fear to stop her from aiming to dismantle the American prison behemoth that has grown bigger, meaner, and more vicious over the past several decades. A sense of boundless optimism carries her over immense hurdles.

Kurshan describes her work -- you can’t really call it “prison reform” -- in a new book entitled Out of Control: A Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons that’s published by the Freedom Archives in San Francisco, and that has a trenchant introduction by Sundiata Acoli, who is currently “serving time” at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.

I realize that “serving time” is probably not the most effective phrase for me to use here. As American Indian Movement activist and long time federal prisoner, Leonard Peltier, once said, “a prisoner doesn’t do the time. Time does the prisoner.”

Readers can order Kurshan’s informative, energizing book here, and you can learn more about it online at the Freedom Archives.

In the preface to the book, Kurshan says that, “In the end we lost every large issue we pursued.” But she’s not discouraged. She explains that her book “tells the story of one long determined fight against the core of the greatest military empire that has ever existed on this planet.” She adds, “If activists who stand in opposition to what Malcolm X called the 'American nightmare' can benefit from reading this and can move ahead with greater insight and effectiveness, then it will be worth while.”

Kurshan ends her preface with a quotation from the African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, who insisted, “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.”

In this interview for The Rag Blog, Kurshan describes her political work and her thinking about prisons and prisoners. She also looks at her experience as a Yippie when one might say that she was a sweetheart of the Sixties. Her name and the name Jerry Rubin were nearly synonymous at the time of the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial in 1969 and 1970. Rubin memorialized Kurshan in Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution. Now as then her Yippie heart beats strongly.

This interview was conducted soon after Kurshan returned from a 2013 visit to Vietnam 40 years after the signing of the Paris Peace Accord that ended U.S. military presence there. To say that she was “high” would probably be an understatement.

Nancy Kurshan in 2008. Image from TimeOut Chicago.

Jonah Raskin: Aren’t all prisons “control unit prisons”?

Nancy Kurshan: There are at least two ways to answer your question -- by the way, they go by various names: Secure Housing Unit (SHU), Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX), Supermax, and more. And remember there are variations from prison to prison. Still, a “control unit prison” is one in which all prisoners are locked in individual 9’ by 9’ boxes about 23 hours a day under severe sensory deprivation.

No fresh air. No natural light. The prisoner eats, sleeps, and defecates in a windowless cell. Meals come through a slot in the door. In some cases, the prisoner may be out of the cell for solitary exercise, but in other cases the exercise area is attached to the cell itself. There is restricted, or no, access to education and recreational facilities.

How are they different from “normal” prisons?

In most penal institutions, prisoners are in the “general population.” They live among other prisoners, take their meals in a social setting, have visitors (sometimes even conjugal visits), and participate in recreational activities with others. Some prisons offer education and training for jobs, though that’s becoming increasingly rare. A particular prisoner might be placed in solitary confinement as punishment -- “thrown in the hole” in prison vernacular. The entire wing of a prison might also be “locked down” after an incident.

Is it a question of the degree of harshness and punishment?

All prisons are grim. Nonetheless, a control unit prison is qualitatively different than the rest. Control units limit the prisoner’s connection, not just with other prisoners, but also with family and friends in the outside world. Often only family members can visit and then only if approved.

The number and length of visits are limited, and no physical contact is permitted between prisoner and visitor. Visiting takes place over a Plexiglas wall and through telephones monitored by guards. Prisoners are searched before and after visits. They undergo body cavity searches and are often brought in shackles.

Sounds like psychological warfare and brainwashing.

It’s an endless hell -- a living Kafkaesque limbo. The purpose of the control unit prison is to make the person feel helpless, powerless, and totally dependent on the authorities. A control unit institutionalizes solitary confinement as a way to exert maximum control over as much of the prisoner’s life as possible. This is long-term, severe behavior modification, and it’s the vilest, most mind- and spirit-deforming use of solitary confinement imaginable.

The control unit prisons probably cast a long shadow on everyone in prison, and perhaps on the whole society.

Control units have the affect of controlling prisoners in the general population. They’re meant to terrify prisoners so that they tolerate intolerable conditions. The federal prison at Marion, Illinois -- and the word “Marion” itself -- was meant to strike fear into the hearts of prisoners throughout the whole federal prison system.

Nancy with son, Michael Kurshan-Emmer, wearing a Sundiata Acoli t-shirt, at 1998 Washington, D.C., march to free political prisoners. Image from Freedom Archives.

Can you say more about the Kafkaesque aspect?

Inside a control unit, the prisoner usually has no idea how long he or she will be there. It’s an indeterminate sentence and the rules or guidelines for exiting it are unclear at best and impossible to comprehend at worst. I believe that control unit prisons are tantamount to torture and an abuse of state power.

Amnesty International recently released its 2012 report, “The Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California’s Security Housing Units,” in which the conditions in two California prisons -- Corcoran and Pelican Bay -- are described as “cruel, degrading and inhuman” and a violation of international standards. Readers can check it out at the Amnesty International site.

Are there political prisoners in the American penal system?

Absolutely. Let me name a few: Sundiata Acoli, who was one of the Panther 21 in the 1970s; Oscar Lopez Rivera, a Puerto Rican patriot; and Native American Leonard Peltier. They have all been imprisoned for over 30 years each! By comparison, Nelson Mandela, the world’s iconic political prisoner, spent 27 years in prison.

I recently traveled to Vietnam to participate in the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords and met with people who were political prisoners in the Tiger Cages of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. Their situations were nearly identical to those of political prisoners in this country today. Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, and Oscar Lopez Rivera are probably the longest-held political prisoners in the world.

Albert Woodfox* has been in prison at Angola for more than 40 years. Warden Burl Cain, said he would never transfer Woodfox out of solitary because, as he explained, “He is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kinds of problems.”

What makes for a political prisoner? I ask because I often find it easier to recognize political prisoners in other parts of the world -- Ireland, Russia, and China -- than in the United States. I know individuals in the U.S. who began as conscious reformers and avowed revolutionaries and veered into crime -- theft, robbery, dealing illicit drugs, and more.

People have been arguing about the nuances of this for years, but generally speaking a political prisoner is someone who is imprisoned for his or her participation in political activity.

Why do you think that you chose to work with prisoners, to secure their release, and to protect them from the worse abuses of the prison system?

Once I was in prison -- as a result of my participation in the movements of the 1960s and 1970s -- it was difficult to turn away. At first, there were many amazing political prisoners that grabbed my attention. I felt that if our movement were to succeed, we could not abandon people behind bars. If we did, we couldn’t hope to move forward.

Imprisonment was chilling for everyone -- on the outside as well as the inside. To a large extent, Americans are afraid of prisons and political prisoners. I didn’t want to be one of them.

What did you learn as you became more involved?

That prisons are about racism and the social control of people of color. I felt that the work I was doing was an important way to be a principled anti-racist. It was also a way for me to express moral outrage about the fact that humans are treated worse than animals, though I don’t wish those same conditions on animals either.

When were you arrested and jailed in the 1960s and 1970s?

More times than I can remember. The first time was in 1967 for mass civil disobedience at the Pentagon. In 1971, I was arrested on the campus of Kent State for spray-painting the words “U.S. Out Of Laos.” I was charged with a felony -- malicious destruction of property with damage over $100 -- and told that they would break it down to a misdemeanor if I agreed to leave Kent, Ohio.

By then, I was happy to go. Our house had received bomb threats. Then, in the 1980s, I was part of a women’s group called “No Pasaran” and was arrested protesting U.S. wars in Central America. Most of the charges are not memorable. As I recall, they were for “disturbing the peace.” I got off completely, or had to pay a fine after pleading guilty.

What do you remember about your own jail time?

The Pentagon jail time, my first, was in what I call “white peoples’ jail.” There were about a thousand of us. The authorities created a men’s dormitory and a women’s dormitory. Ours was lined with hundreds of cots; I was there with Anita Hoffman. We stayed overnight, went to court, pled no contest, paid $25, and left. In Chicago in the 1980s, it was rougher. We were held at the lockup at 11th and State, like all other detainees, and single-celled with nothing to read and nothing but a bologna sandwich to eat.

We could talk to people across the cell, but I remember being cold and uncomfortable, lying on a cement bed. The guards were unresponsive to requests. You could call out to your heart’s content and they wouldn’t come. The longest time I spent there was about 24 hours and it drove me crazy. I can’t imagine what long-term solitary must feel like.

How do you feel about the Yippies now, looking back?

Nancy Kurshan and Jerry Rubin.

I love the Yippies! We were really onto something and reached many more people than we’re given credit for. Most Left history is written by people who were in what we considered the “straight Left.” They were not fond of us then and they still aren’t.

Our use of the media, creation of myths, comedy, and appeal to artists was fabulous. We levitated the Pentagon to allow the evil spirits to flee (clearly not high enough), ran a pig for President, and burned money at the Stock Exchange on Wall Street.

We also represented a segment of American youth that was in militant rebellion. We didn’t lead them. We were a part of them and we were not part of any official Left organization. Much of the Left dismissed the youth population. They criticized us for alienating older, middle class people. I think the youth movement was a vital engine of the anti-war movement, driving everything and everyone to the Left and forcing debate onto dinner tables.

Any criticisms?

My main issue, of course, is the sexism of the Yippies. But honestly, it was no worse than in the rest of the Left. Sexism was an Achilles Heel of the whole movement.

The Yippies seemed to me to be about couples -- you and Jerry Rubin, Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, Anita and Abbie Hoffman. What thoughts do you have now about sex and gender and power in the Yippie universe?

Yippies weren’t any more about couples than the rest of the movement. Male supremacy was "normal." I had been a political activist beginning in high school; then in the 1960s and 1970s my role in the movement was compromised. At times, I went to work every day so that Jerry Rubin and the guys who were living at our tiny apartment could be movement activists!

After work I shopped. Then I came home and cooked. Then the men treated us like gophers and we accepted it. It was hard to find one's own voice and it was easy to "stand by your man" when conflicts arose. Until the women's movement burst on the scene, there were awkward distances between women.

When Robin Morgan quit the Yippies and published "Goodbye To All That" in the underground paper, RAT, I was uncomfortable. I knew she was right about the big picture, if not everything. It was embarrassing and I didn't know what to do. Change can be confusing and uncomfortable. Morgan’s piece and my 1970 trip to Vietnam really pushed me to fight male dominance and find my own voice.

To get back to prisons. In what ways have they changed over the last decades?

Two things strike me. One is the massive incarceration of people of color. In 1994, for instance, there were 85,000 people in federal prisons. Today. there are 218,000. In state and federal prisons there are 2.3 million people behind bars. We are the “Incarceration Nation.”

Albert Hunt stated in The New York Times (November, 20, 2011) that, “With just a little more than four percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for a quarter of the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined.”

Prisons overflow disproportionately with black and Latino prisoners. According to the same New York Times article, “more than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.” One in every nine black children has a parent in jail!

What are the other trends?

The prison system has become much more punitive. When we began our work in the 1980s, Marion Federal Prison was the only control unit prison in the federal and the state system. When we argued they should shut it down, they argued that it would allow the rest of the system to function more effectively. We said no, it would function as an anchor and pull the whole system in the direction of tighter control. We would have liked to have been proven wrong, but unfortunately we’ve been proved right. Now, virtually every state has at least one control unit prison.

Is there hope?

Just recently there has been some motion. Two serious challenges have developed. One, that this form of imprisonment is too expensive. Our whole society is running out of money, thanks in part to our bloated military. Also, in some states, like California, prisoners have stood up by the thousands and said, “We won’t take it no more.”

There have been hunger strikes of 6,000 or more prisoners. Support on the outside has helped give voice to grievances. In response to hunger strikers at Pelican Bay, The New York Times, in an editorial on February 8, 2011, entitled “Cruel Isolation,” said, “For many decades, the civilized world has recognized prolonged isolation of prisoners in cruel conditions to be inhumane, even torture. The Geneva Convention forbids it.”

Is anyone rehabilitated through the effort of prison programs?

As Malcolm X said, “I ain’t never been habilitated, how can I be rehabilitated?” Sure, some people have come out of prison wiser than when they went in, or perhaps with some skills they didn’t have. But by and large, the problems are structural, not individual and have to do with whether or not society has room for ex-prisoners. Generally, when people get out of prison, no matter how good they are, their options are lousy. They face great obstacles.

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, shrewdly observed 150 years or so ago that, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” When you enter a prison what are some of the first things you hear, see, and feel?

Nancy in Hanoi, 2013, with
Agent Orange victims.

That Dostoevsky quote has always been a favorite of mine. When I enter a prison, I usually feel I’m entering a bastion of the military. There are gun towers, barbed wire, metal detectors, arbitrary rules, regulations, and tight surveillance. Then there are the pat-downs.

The first thing that comes to mind is that I’m on a slave ship -- a landlocked slave ship. The racial aspect is undeniable, from the waiting room to the visiting room. After all these years, you would think I would be used to it, but I’m not. For me there is no experience like it.

What degree of civilization would you say exists in the U.S.?

I would answer with a shrewd quote from Gandhi. When he was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, “That would be a good idea.” I’ve just returned from Vietnam, still a primarily agrarian, developing country. They have one of the lowest imprisonment rates in the world. Vietnam is a more civilized place than the U.S.

Since you're just back from Vietnam would you give us your impressions of the country?

Vietnam is beautiful and vibrant with more than half the population under 20. The legacy of the war is still enormous. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than on all of Europe in World War II. We visited the Highway 9 Cemetery of the Fallen Combatants where thousands of Vietnamese are buried. As I looked at the tombstones I noticed how very many were cut down in their youth. Somewhere between 2 and 4 million people were killed in the “American War” -- as the Vietnamese call it.

You met people and talked face-to-face?

Nearly everyone had a story to tell about their family's sacrifice, although they tell it after persistent prodding. We visited schools where children are suffering from severe birth defects as a result of the millions of gallons of herbicides such as Agent Orange that the U.S. used. These children are three generations removed from direct exposure!

We also went to what was the Da Nang Air Base during the war (now a regular airport) where the U.S. is just now beginning cleanup, 40 years later. That's a drop in the bucket because it's only one "hot spot" and to the tune of $43 million which is really nothing.

The country seems to have taken your breath away.

The experience was fabulous: the natural beauty and the energy and warmth of the people; the privilege to share in the celebrations of the Paris Peace Accords; the meeting with Madame Binh and many people who survived the Tiger Cages. I went inside the underground “Cu Chi tunnels” that testify to the ingenuity and determination of the Vietnamese to be free from of colonialism. Seeing the legacy of the war made me angry. I'm still processing my time in Vietnam.

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University and the editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

*UPDATE: As we went to press a federal judge ordered the release of former Black Panther and member of the Angola 3, Albert Woodfox. This is the third time Woodfox's conviction has been overturned in a federal court, but prosecutors successfully reversed the two previous court decisions and are expected to try once more to keep Woodfox behind bars.

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PHOTO ESSAY / Judy Gumbo Albert : Visiting Viet Nam, 1970-2013

From left: Genie Plamondon, Nancy Kurshan, and Judy Gumbo Albert in Viet Nam, 1970.

A photo essay:
Visiting Viet Nam, 1970-2013

Everywhere we traveled we were warmly welcomed. The Vietnamese still feel grateful to the U.S. peace movement. I came to understand that while my trip in 1970 was life changing, this trip was life affirming.

By Judy Gumbo Albert / The Rag Blog / February 28, 2013

Rag Blog contributor Judy Gumbo Albert was an original member of the Youth International Party (YIPPIES), founded in 1967. See Jonah Raskin's April 17, 2012, interview with Judy Gumbo Albert in The Rag Blog -- and see Raskin's current Rag Blog interview with Nancy Kurshan, a prison activist and fellow Yippie founder who recently traveled with Judy to Viet Nam. Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan will be Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio, Friday, April 12, 2013, from 2-3 p.m., on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the Internet -- so mark your calendars!

In 1970, during the American War, I visited what was then North Viet Nam. It was a Yippie trip. I’m the one on the right above. Next to me is Nancy Kurshan, next to her is Genie Plamondon of the White Panther Party. This year I returned to Viet Nam. What follows are some of my impressions.

In Ha Noi and the surrounding countryside, I photographed the devastation wrought by the war:

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

And felt inspired by Viet Nam’s resistance fighters:

Forty years later, in January 2013, Nancy and I were invited back as part of a delegation of activists who had visited Viet Nam during the war. We were there to help celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords:

I met former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and filmmaker Jay Craven:

And my favorite hero of all time, Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh, a member of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Viet Nam, a leader of the Viet Nam Women’s movement, and a negotiator and signer of the Paris Peace Accords. I told her, "Thank you for what you have done." She replied, “We will continue to do it," and squeezed my hand:

Everywhere we traveled we were warmly welcomed. The Vietnamese still feel grateful to the U.S. peace movement. I came to understand that while my trip in 1970 was life changing, this trip was life affirming.

At the same time, it was apparent that the outcomes of the American war continue to devastate the country.

With unexploded ordnance

that to this day kills and maims:

Agent Orange/dioxin, has remained in the soil and water of Viet Nam for 40 years, poisoning a third and fourth generation of children:

I was heartbroken when I met these kids. All I could think was, “We are responsible.”

Nor could I ignore the remnants of Diem and Thieu’s tiger cages:

Survivors of the tiger cages have managed to make a new life for themselves. “In order to close the past, we must be open to the future,” is what I heard them say. (The older woman in the center was imprisoned in a tiger cage for 15 years.)

Today Viet Nam integrates the new with the old. They are on the road to prosperity by means of what they call a “socialist-oriented market economy.”

I came home from Viet Nam understanding that every one of us can -- and should -- feel proud of what we did and continue to do to end all wars.

© Judy Gumbo Albert. See more of Judy's photos here.

Thanks to The Rag Blog's James Retherford for assistance with graphics on this article.

[Judy Gumbo Albert is an original Yippie, along with Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Nancy Kurshan, Paul Krassner, and Judy’s late husband Stew Albert. Judy has remarried, lives in Berkeley, California, and is currently writing her memoir, Yippie Girl. She can be found at www.yippiegirl.com. You can contact her at judygumboalbert@gmail.com or on Facebook at Judy Gumbo Albert or Yippie Girl. Read more articles by Judy Gumbo Albert on The Rag Blog.]

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David Macaray : Twelve Questions for Satirical Icon Paul Krassner

Paul Krassner in the day. Photo by Robert Altman.

Twelve Questions for
satirical icon Paul Krassner

"I think [audiences are] more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy." -- Paul Krassner

By David Macaray / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2013

To say Paul Krassner has lived an eventful life is an understatement. He invented The Realist, America’s premiere counterculture journal. He co-founded the Youth International Party (Yippies). He was a child violin prodigy who, at age six, was the youngest person ever to perform at Carnegie Hall.

He was a member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. He edited Lenny Bruce’s classic, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. He’s written more than a dozen books, recorded several comedy albums, and, at age 80, is still writing, lecturing, and stirring the pot.

Krassner is unique in that he’s one of those veteran radicals who never came in from the cold, never cashed in his chips, and was never co-opted by the mainstream media. This was partly because he didn’t seek their approval, and partly because he wasn’t considered "domesticated" enough to be embraced. As testimony to his wit and sensibilities, he’s the only person to have won both a Playboy magazine satire prize, and a Feminist Party Media Workshop award for journalism.

1. What’s it like being 80 years old?

Well, I’m more aware that it’s one more decade closer to my death, and my priorities keep falling into place. And in order to keep myself, literally, from falling into place -- stemming from a police beating in 1979, when I got caught in a post-verdict riot after covering the trial of Dan White, who was sentenced to seven years for the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk -- I now walk around with a cane, and when I go anywhere I use a walker.

Otherwise, I seem to be in good health. I owe my longevity to never taking any legal drugs. Although, I did take an aspirin last month. I didn’t have a headache or anything, it was just at a party, and the host was passing around a plate full of aspirins. It was just a kind of social ingestion. You know, peer pressure.


2. What do you think the result would be if all 50 states legalized marijuana?

Allow me to quote Ken Kesey’s response when I asked, “Do you see the legalization of grass as any sort of panacea?” “The legalization of grass,” he said, “would do absolutely nothing for our standard of living, or our military supremacy, or even our problem of high school dropouts. It could do nothing for this country except mellow it, and that’s not a panacea, that’s downright subversive.


3. How do you feel about Medicare?

It’s worked for me until now. All I know is that my doctor and the doctors of two friends, each with a different doctor, were told that Medicare alone would not be accepted any more. The unstated reason is that an HMO supplement plan will pay the doctor a monthly sum per patient whether or not they come in for medical help. So the doctors and the insurance companies benefit from this plan. And the patient becomes a pawn in the game.


4. Why did you title your memoir Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut?

After Life magazine published a profile of me in 1968, an FBI agent sent a poison-pen letter stating, “To classify Krassner as some sort of social rebel is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.” Even if that were true, it’s not what taxpayers provide funding for the FBI to do. So when I wrote my autobiography, I decided that the agent’s words would serve as a more appropriate title than Yay for Me.


5. The FBI’s tactics during this period are so frightening, they almost defy belief. What was the Bureau’s main beef with you?

I guess they perceived me as a threat to the status quo. But I perceived them as a threat to my life. In 1969, they produced a Wanted poster featuring a large swastika and the headline "LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES!" Inside the four square spaces of the swastika were photos of Yippie co-founders Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and me, and Mark Rudd of SDS. The text warned that “the only solution to Negro problems in America would be the elimination of the Jews. May we suggest the following order of elimination? (After all, we’ve been this way before.) All Jews connected with the Establishment. All Jews connected with Jews connected with the Establishment. All Jews connected with those immediately above. All Jews except those in the Movement. All Jews in the Movement except those who dye their skin black. All Jews (look out, Jerry, Abbie, Mark and Paul)!”

My FBI files indicate that the leaflet was approved by J. Edgar Hoover’s top two aides in Washington D.C.: “Authority was granted to prepare and distribute on an anonymous basis to selected individuals and organizations in the New Left the leaflet submitted. Assure that all necessary precautions are taken to protect the Bureau as the source of these leaflets. NY suggested a leaflet containing pictures of several New Left leaders who are Jewish. This leaflet suggests facetiously the elimination of these leaders. NY’s proposal would create further ill feeling between the New Left and the black nationalist movement.”

And, of course, if some overly militant black nationalist had obtained that flyer and eliminated one of those New Left leaders who was Jewish, the FBI’s bureaucratic ass would be covered. “We said it was a facetious suggestion, didn’t we?”


6. Given that you were at the forefront of the tumultuous Sixties, what comparisons between then and now can you make? How were the Yippies and Occupy movement similar/different?

Image from Hollywood Progressive.

We had to perform stunts to get media coverage. A group of us went to the New York Stock Exchange and threw $200 worth of singles onto the floor below, where shouts of “Pork Bellies! Pork Bellies!” suddenly morphed into Diving for Dollars. This was followed by a press conference about the connection between capitalism and war. And now, an Occupy placard, “Wall Street Is War Street,” gave me a strong sense of continuity.

The evolution of technology has changed the way protests are organized. The Yippies had to use messy mimeograph machines to print out flyers that had to be folded and stuffed into envelopes, licked, addressed, stamped and mailed. The Internet -- and social media such as Facebook and Twitter -- have enabled Occupiers to inexpensively reach countless people immediately.


7. Despite the obvious limitations of our traditional two-party system, who are some of your all-time favorite and least favorite politicians?

Favorites: Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich. Least favorites: Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush.


8. Obviously, it’s way too early, but if you had to bet $100, who do you see as the Democratic and Republican candidates in 2016? 

Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie.


9. What inspired your infamous FUCK COMMUNISM! poster?

Mad magazine art director and Realist columnist John Francis Putnam wanted to give me a housewarming gift in 1963. He had designed the word FUCK in red-white-and-blue lettering emblazoned with stars and stripes. Now he needed a second word, a noun that would serve as an appropriate object for that verb. He suggested AMERICA, but that didn't seem right to me. It certainly wasn't an accurate representation of my feelings. I was well aware that I probably couldn't publish The Realist in any other country. Besides, a poster saying FUCK AMERICA! lacked a certain sense of irony.

There was at that time a severe anti-Communist hysteria burgeoning throughout the land. The attorney general of Arizona rejected the Communist Party's request for a place on the ballot because state law “prohibits official representation” for Communists and, in addition, “The subversive nature of your organization is even more clearly designated by the fact that you do not even include your Zip Code.”

Alvin Dark, manager of the Giants, announced that “Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a Communist.” And singer Pat Boone declared at the Greater New York Anti-Communism Rally in Madison Square Garden, “I would rather see my four daughters shot before my eyes than have them grow up in a Communist United States. I would rather see those kids blown into Heaven than taught into Hell by the Communists.”

So I suggested COMMUNISM for the second word, since the usual correlation between conservatism and prudishness would provide the incongruity that was missing. Putnam designed the word COMMUNISM in red lettering emblazoned with hammers and sickles. Then he presented me with a patriotic poster which now proudly proclaimed FUCK COMMUNISM! -- suitable for framing.


10. Also, I have to ask about your controversial Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster. How did that come about?

When Walt Disney died in December 1966, it occurred to me that he had served as the Creator of this whole stable of imaginary characters who were now mourning in a state of suspended animation. Disney had been their Intelligent Designer, and had repressed all their baser instincts. But now that he had departed, they could finally shed their cumulative inhibitions and participate together in an unspeakable sexual binge to signify the crumbling of an empire.

So, I contacted Wally Wood, who had illustrated the first script I wrote for Mad, and I told him my notion of a memorial orgy at Disneyland. He fulfilled that assignment with a magnificently degenerate montage, unleashing those characters’ collective libido and demystified an entire genre in the process. I published it as a black-and-white two-page centerspread, which was so popular that I re-published it as a poster. In 2005, a new, digitally colored edition of the original artwork in authentic Disney colors (you can see it at paulkrassner.com) was done by a former Disney employee who prefers to remain anonymous.


11. Having done stand-up comedy for more than 50 years, how have your audiences changed?

I think they’re more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy. And I’ve evolved right along with them. Performing, for me, has always been a two-way street. English is my second language. Laughter is my first.


12. And finally, what are you working on currently?

I'm writing my long-awaited (by me) first novel, about a contemporary Lenny Bruce-type performer. I'm also compiling a collection, The Best of Paul Krassner: 50 Years of Investigative Satire. And I'm gathering up my archives -- translation: all the crap in my garage -- for some lucky university.

[David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), is a former labor union rep.] 

Find articles by and about Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog and listen to Thorne Dreyer's three Rag Radio interviews with Paul Krassner.

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