Whadya Got?

Sacco & Vanzetti

Rob Tyner, MC5. Photo by Leni Sinclair.

Million Dollar Vandal

Emory Douglas & buZ blurr connect at my old store/gallery back in 2008. Photo by the homie Shaun Roberts

And, for those who care about such things, here’s an interview that I did with buZ around that same time:

2 Sides To Every Boxcar

I hired out in ‘62 and didn’t start marking the cars until November ‘71. So that nine-year interim I was working various night jobs, and I had given up my idea on any kind of art, and had started reading novels like Vonnegut’s; all his greatest novels featuring his Kilgore Trout character—a writer that didn’t have readers, but he continued writing compulsively. I was also reading ‘Understanding Media’ by McLuhan, RD Laing’s ‘Politics of Experience,’ and those other heavy thinkers like Skinner and the conditioned response of his experiments and all that. So during all this time I had been in an afternoon job—it was one of the first times I’d had a regular daylight job—and most times I was working at night on switch engines and locals. So on this job I was working what they call the long field position, and I was down in the yard—the rail yard was downhill—and I had to keep the tracks from rolling out the north end so I had to keep the head brakes tied down on all the rails. So after I had that done, I was just laying down in amongst the cars to make certain they didn’t roll out. I had some free time so I decided to be a vandal myself, you know?

05/15/69 - Bloody Thursday

Rat Subterranean News (via Berkeley Barb, 1969)

Berkeley Barb (1969)

Brother James Rector died 10:12 Monday night in a Berkeley hospital—murdered by the Alameda County pigs in the name of justice, martyred in the cause of PEOPLE’S PARK.

James Rector was shot in the back on Bloody Thursday, from 30 feet with a .12 gauge magnum shotgun loaded with double ought buckshots. A chunk of police lead the size of a .38 slug lodged in his heart, causing death.

This government has turned its weapons of war upon its own children, its own students, and has gunned them down indiscriminately in a street protest.

The police version of the shooting states that Rector was on a fire escape of Granma Bookstore ready to heave a chunk of concrete at the cops in the street. Police fired upon him they say, and he fell to the pavement below.

At least three witnesses termed this description, “A LIE.”

Click here for the article

Abbey Road Arrives

Streets Is Watching. Photo by Erin Patrice O’Brien.