Stew Albert's premature death last year was a real loss. I had the good fortune to interview him several times. His longer interview done for this book will be posted on the site shortly, but here are some excerpts of the interviews we did for the Bill of Rights Journal in 1989.

Heading to Czechago

I was asleep in Jerry Rubin's apartment when Tom Hayden called and woke us up with the news that Robert Kennedy had been assassinated . We were quite shocked. Jerry turned on the TV and began calling people up. We decided to have a meeting there that morning.

I hadn't had much sleep that night because of the assassination. People were both on edge, frightened and excited. The mood at the meeting was shock but also a certain elation, because now Chicago was going to happen. People were also funny as hell. When you get the Fugs and Abbie and Jerry and Krassner in the same room, you're gonna get some interesting material.

It was a very strange kind of thing. Before the assassination, the Yippies were going to pull out of Chicago because they felt Kennedy was going to get the nomination. Robin Morgan had actually already written a statement saying that the Yippies had pulled out, and we were just holding off on sending it out to the underground press, so it was a strange mood.

It wasn't the Yippies were pro-Kennedy. The Yippies just felt that if Kennedy took it, then the demonstrators would be co-opted by the Democrats. There would be these demonstrations. It would have a happy ending on the floor, and there would be a co-option, and the Yippies were afraid of that.

Hayden, had a working relationship with the Kennedy's and was hoping Robert Kennedy would get the nomination, so that the demonstration would give the left a piece of the Kennedy campaign. But the Yippies didn't want to become part of the Kennedy campaign. We wanted to keep our independence, so when he was assassinated, we were back in.

The idea was to have a Festival of Life in Chicago. The Fugs would perform and Phil Ochs, the MC5 and other groups. Meanwhile, Daley was threatening violence. People thought there could be. Then people thought there might be a massacre. Others had in-between scenarios. There was a very mercurial kind of consciousness, constantly changing. The idea that there was some consistent state of mind was ridiculous. People hoped for the best and hoped for the worst, and then what happened happened.

The organizers over the demonstration had no control over it. They did not lead a riot in Chicago. They didn't lead anything. There was a police riot. There was a responsive riot of demonstrators, but no one led it. There were spontaneous leaders we never heard of. Abbie was in jail. Hayden was in jail. You couldn't have had a leader anyway, it was too combustible.

I was arrested at one point, and I got my head cracked open. I got hit in the back of the head in Lincoln Park. I was probably the first person to draw blood. I was arrested with Jerry and some others with Pigasus. We were running him for president, and we were sort of presenting our candidate and singing the national anthem when the police arrested us. The pig was arrested, too. Then one cop came to our cell and said, "Boys, I have bad news--the pig squealed."

They Weren't All Pigs

The term for police--"pigs"--originated in Berkeley and Oakland. It was coined initially around 1967 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party and was also popularized by Eldridge Cleaver. I, as a writer for the underground press in Berkeley and as a syndicated writer for the underground press around the country, took to using the word and played a part in making the word generally known throughout the country.

However, along the way, I saw and observed and had contact with police who were extremely good. I've never really talked about it. But I have always wanted to do so.

At People's Park in Berkeley, I got in a conversation with some of the National Guard, who were not really policemen, but by then we were calling anybody "pig" who was on the other side. We were arguing with them when one told me that they had all decided if called upon to shoot at us, they would shoot over our heads.

They said, "Look, you guys just want a park here. We're not gonna kill anyone over a park." This was of course differnt from the Guard at Kent State, but still they existed.

A couple of years later, I was at a demonstration at the Alameda County Courthouse on behalf of the Oakland 7, who were indicted for the leadership of Stop the Draft Week. A cop grabbed me and threw me down a flight of steps in the courthouse. I got up, and there was a whole pushing and shoving scene.

Suddenly, one cop said to me, "You better get out of here. They've really got it in for you." I turned around to look at him, and just a second later, another cop hit me across the top of the head and knocked me unconscious. Still, I'll always remember that one cop trying to warn me.

I can remember in Chicago in '68, cops pulling cops off of people. I can also remember in 1970, going to get my passport in New York when one official said "The FBI is here, and they've been asking about you. I just wanted you to know that. It amazed me, and it also checked out years later when I got my FBI file and found out they were there.

Then there was a policeman in Washington who was one of the guards at the camp where we were being held after being arrested during May Day. He was outside the fence and we were inside, and I noticed him giving cigarettes to people who were inside. I thought, "Here is a guy who is trying to be friendly, but he's up to something."

I went over and I got in a conversation with him. At one point, I said to him, to raise the political consciousness of some of the younger people who were there, "Look, you're coming on friendly, but if we tried to escape, you would shoot us."

He said, "No, not necessarily."

"Well, what would you do?"

"To see what I would do, why don't you go over to that fence and you'll see they're some people escaping right now."

I went over there, and sure enough there were people escaping, and he wasn't doing anything.

His Just Dessert

I first heard of Eldridge Cleaver when he was still in jail and his lawyer and then girlfriend, Beverly Axelrod, showed me some letters from him. After he got out, she brought Eldridge over to my apartment in Berkeley. We had Jerry Rubin there and Jack Weinberg. That was Eldridge's first meeting with the Berkeley radicals.

He had been in jail for about 10 years. After dinner, my wife put a big bowl of strawberries and cream on the table. He said, "Are those strawberries?"

She said, "Yes."

He said, "Strawberries, they used to be my favorite food. I haven't had them in 10 years."

He ate them, and it was very moving because it made you appreciate a little bit what it was like to be in prison for such a longtime.

Rise and Fall of People's Park

The idea for the park was put forward in 1969 by Michael Delecour in his little dress shot called the Red Square Dress Shop. He had this idea that the movement was in some sort of a lull, but we could stimulate it by getting non-students involved. It was always hard for non students to operate politically on the campus, so this was a way of drawing the movement off the campus into the community and of mixing non students with students.

The land was owned by the university. There had been housing on it but that had been torn down, but now the land was just there and getting kind of muddy.

We divided up tasks. Michael and some other people arranged to get the sod for grass, and I took care of publicity. Others arranged for landscaping. Maybe the first week a hundred people showed up. Then I wrote a big article about it in the Barb. The next week, maybe a thousand people showed up, and it really took off.

The park was my idea of heaven. People were planting, building swings and seesaws. Artists put sculptures in the park. Somebody put up a sign that said KNOW. On the other said it said LOVE. It was really a spontaneous, creative, wonderfully anarchic event. A few people started it, and then the people really took it over. No one was in charge. People came to the park and kind of did what they wanted, except if they got in other people's way, then there would be some kind of meeting and it would be decided what was what.

There was no name for it, but then a collective called The Committee on Public Safety--the COPS commune--they just came into the park and had painted a sign called People's Park. They climbed up on a pole and hammered it in,and the name took.

The authorities were not happy about the park, but I thought they would work out a compromise. I certainly did not think they would shoot people, and I didn't think they would try tear gas. I couldn't have, because it had never happened before. They upped the ante at People's Park. The Alemeda County Sheriffs perhaps shot a hundred people with birsdhot, and one James Rector with buckshot, whom they killed.

People were so surprised at the brutality that they thought they were being shot with salt, which stings and is used as a form of crowd control. It took a while before they realized it was birdshot, so that even after they were shot, they were unable to grasp what was happening.

The protests continued for several days. That was when they brought inthe helicopter. It flew over the campus, and what intitially appeared to be a rather beautiful cloud that came out of the helicopter, was tear gas. They totally misjudged the wind and wound up gassing the whole city. Using the helicopter was a big mistake. The tear gas went up to Shattuck Avenue, themain drag of conservative Berkeley. It went up to the hills, to the conservative area. Everybody got tear gassed, and there was real fury.

Although there were lots of big demonstrations after that, what came after tended to get very irrational and sectarian. They succeeded in damaging the movement in Berkeley and driving it in directions that would make it less attractive. The movement lost its charm and creativity. Part of that was as a result of the trauma of the park and the violence by the state, so the park was the beginning of the end of 60s Berkeley.

Still, the place was never the same. Berkeley has had a radical city council for many years, and the park is still there. Eventually the fence was ripped down and the park was reclaimed, although none of the old cultural life that was in the park goes on.

End of the Road

In 1970, I had run for sheriff of Alemeda County. My campaign posters showed me with a hashpipe and a gun. I got a very large vote but I lost. After that, I decided to go east on an old hippieschool bus. I was dropped off in Chicago where I looked up my friend Abe Peck, who was the editor of the Chicago Seed. I told Abe there might not be a revolution in America. He was very surprised to hear me say that. I felt that way because of all the sectarianism I had seen in Berkeley heating up and dividing the movement. There were divisions between men and women, gays and straights, blacks and whites. Also, bad drugs were coming into the counterculture. Because of the violence, people were saying, "It's getting too heavy," and they were moving off to the country. There was no question the movement was losing its capacity to attract people and to hold them together.

I stayed around political activity, radical journalism and demonstrating for several years after this. As late as 1972, I was organizing demonstrations in Miami Beach at the convention. I tried to hang in there and hope that the fortunes of themovement would revive, but they didn't.

There were two great goals that we set for our selves in the 60s. One was to end the segregation system--American apartheid--and we succeeded. The other was to stop the US from conquering Vietnam,and we certainly played a major part in stopping them, so we accomplished our two great purposes in the 60s.

At the same time, we loosened up the culture, made it more democratic, more open. The women's movement was stimulated out of the 60s rebellion. The ecology movement, the gay movement, the disabled people, the Grey Panthehers--a whole variety of movements came out of the 60s protests, and many of them are still around. There was a lot of foolishness and rebellion for its own sake, but on the whole we accomplished a good deal.

Perhaps, if we were more experienced and more sophisticated we would have accomplished more, but we also might have accomplished less. Fidel Castro was once talking about his rebellion, and he said, "Oh, we were very utopian and very inexperienced in those days, but if we hadn't been we might not have done anything because everyone would have told us it wasn't possible." I have that same feeling about a lot of the 60s.

The Height of the Haight

In its good days, the Haight was like nothing you could imagine. There were just these extraordinarily colorful young people hanging around the streets and coffee shops. There was always incense and the public smoking of marijuana, street musicians, extremely colorful dress, a lot of physical contact, sort of public semi-sex.

The Victorian houses were wonderful for hippies. They painted the rooms different colors and hung flags. People were hanging out of windows. There wasn't a large gap between the streets and the houses and public and private. Inside and outside were sort of plugged into each other.

In those days before they became famous, all these rock and roll groups like the Airplane and the Grateful Dead lived in houses in the neighborhoods. You could hear their music all the time, and they were really part of the community. There wasn't this star-status thing.

The music went with the drugs. They helped make the drugs a positive experience by focusing the energy that the drugs released a certain way, so the music was felt deeply. It helped expand you capacity to feel and ultimately to the way you might think. The music was very intimate to the life. It was something like the role of tribal music in the periods when everyone did live in tribes. It pulled everybody together and enabled them to have profound psychological and spirtiual experiences.

Drugs were very prevalent. Owsley's acid could put you on the moon. I don't know what the hell acid is like these days, but in those days, there was an immense inner life with his stuff. You had a newspaper in the Haight called the Oracle, which was laid out like a psychedelic trip. It was very curvy. It was great to look at when you were tripping. The editor of the paper told me the paper was designed for people who don't read.

Bad for the Jews

I was in Chicago at the conspracy trial as as unindicted co-conspirator. One day, the prosecutor Dick Schultz's wife showed up with their kid. Nancy Kirshan, who was Jerry Rubin's girlfriend, said, "I want to go over and say something to her to get her angry, but I don't know what to say.

I said, "Why don't you tell her that her husband's a shondar for the goyim. She did, and Schultz's wife knew exactly what Nancy meant and got very upset.

Priest vs. Priest

In '67 we had been arrested at the Pentagon and taken to these barracks. Abbie Hoffman was in there. He had given his name as Abbie Digger and was bailed out under that name. I was in there along with one of the Berrigans.

At one point, a priest showed up. He was a right winger who came to argue with people there that they were in the wrong. He was pretty good, and some of the younger people there didn't know how to deal with his arguments.

I said to him, "How would you like to meet another priest?"

He asked me what I meant, and I told him another priest was arrested. That really shook him up. I brought him over to Berrigan's bunk. They kind of looked at each other, exchanged a few words, and the guy turned around and left. It was like Dracula seeing a cross. He just got out of there and didn't want to deal with it. Hippies were one thing, but a priest was something else.