CONFIDENTIAL
Re: Freedom Rally, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, December 10, 1971
Sponsored by Committee to Free John Sinclair
Source six advised December 13, 1971, University of Michigan facilities for captioned rally were obtained by unknown persons on or about November 30, 1971, at a cost of $4,000.00, which was paid for in cash and in advance. Source advised approximately five well known rock bands and/or singers performed at the rally, including John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono. Lennon formerly with group known as the Beatles. Source advised Lennon prior to rally composed the following song entitled, "John Sinclair", which song Lennon sang at the rally. Source advised this song was composed by Lennon especially for this event:
It ain't fair, John Sinclair
In the stir for breathing air
Won't you care, for John Sinclair
In the stir for breathing air.
Let him be, let him free
Let him be like you and me
They gave him 10 for 2
What more can the judges do
Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta
Gotta, gotta, set him free.
If he'd been a soldier man
Shooting gooks in Vietnam
If he was a flying man
Dropping dope in old Siam
He'd be free, they'd let him be,
Breathing air, like you and me.
They gave him 10 for 2
What more can Judge Colombo do
Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta
Gotta, gotta, set him free.
Was he jailed for what he done
Representing everyone
Free John Now if we can
From the clutches of the man
Let him free, lift the lid
Bring him to his wife and kids
They gave him 10 for 2
What more can Colombo, Nixon, Rockefeller, Agnew do
Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta
Gotta, gotta, set him free.
On December 13, 1971, source six advised he learned from Lennie Sinclair, Officer WPP, that the Detroit Committee to Free John Sinclair netted a total of $26,000.00 from the rally.
Following are verbatim speeches of William Kunstler, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin and others as indicated:
BOB RUDNICK - MCPeople have come from various parts of the planet to help get JOHN out. All right, BOBBY SEALE will be here, PHIL OCHS, JERRY RUBIN, SHEILA MURPHY, the UP, ED SANDERS, Commander CODY, RENNIE DAVIS, LENI SINCLAIR, ARCHIE SHEPP (phonetic), Father GROPI, a special guest and then DAVID PEEL with JOHN LENNON and YOKO ONO.
The lost and found and drug help is in the north west, I think that's over there if you need it. Right now we're gonna have a tape. OK, this is gonna be an all night long hassle, we gotta keep the aisles clear, the firemen are running around so if possible we're gonna have to keep announcing, just keep the lanes as clear as you can.
WILLIAM KUNSTLER is a little busy with a new case. He's trying to get someone else out of jail and couldn't be here, so to send a message he put it on tape and we're gonna have that in about ten seconds.
WILLIAM KUNSTLER (taped message)
I have tried everything I could to be in Ann Arbor tonight but it is impossible. But I know that so many of JOHN SINCLAIR's friends will be with you that my absence will be more keenly felt by me than by anyone else. Yet I could not let the night go by without at least making this tape, unsatisfactory as it is, to give some concrete form to my devotion to JOHN and the cause which he symbolizes and represents.
JOHN is in jail for two essential reasons; first of all he is a political person who calls into question the validity of the super state which seeks to control all of us and destroys those it cannot readily dominate. Secondly, his harsh sentence dramatizes the absurdity of our marijuana laws which are irrational, unjust and indefensible. Recently, the National Institute of Mental Health submitted to the Congress its hundred and seventy six page report "Marijuana and Health" which comes to the conclusion that quote For the bulk of smokers, marijuana does not seem to be harmful, end quote. Yet it is made a crime in every state with penalties ranging in severity frmo life to six months in jail. On the other hand, conventional cigarettes can be legally sold as long as they bear a legend on the package that they can cause serious illness or death.
Bobby Seale...We will have 20 in the next 8 months and we might have 30 in the next two years. At the same time we are going to have a quantitative increase in every major oppressed community in the country. Got to happen! It's the only way we are going to attack capitalism. To exappropriate from that capitalistic system the goods, the technology, etc. put it down in the poor oppressed communities all of us the people that are oppressed and us too and everybody processing it and giving it away free. It's the only way I know to start attacking the monster of capitalism. A monster of charging people money for everything they get, we're saying the music is free, the life is free, the world is free and if it ain't free, let's start getting out chains off now. The psychology chains and the chains of oppression. Let's get it off now. Let's have the chains off of us now, 'cause if we don't have the chains off of us they are going to annihilate us. They are going to anniliate us by polluting this earth, the capitalists and the fascists they are going to do this here. We saying the universe belongs to the people. Mars belongs to the people, and the people belong to the people, all power to the people. Thank you very much. Right on, power to the people.
JERRY RUBIN(first part not recorded)
. . . . also, PUN PLAMONDON is in jail, he is also with the Rainbow Peoples Party, he was the first person to become a fugitive and go underground in this country, and then he was caught and now he's in jail and we ought to have this rally to free PUN PLAMONDON and to free the 2,000 people who are now in jail for smoking dope, most of whom are black, and you see what people are going to feel most across the country, when they hear about this rally. Think of all the prisoners behind bars, how they are going to feel, fed shit food, isolated, treated like animals and if they do anything courageous they lose their good time, and they have to stay in jail longer and longer this rally is going to be the first prison rally all across the country demanding that they lay down the bars and let all the prisoners out. And while letting all the prisoners out, they ought to jail the judges, 'cause every judge, every judge should spend six months in a jail to see what it's like. To see what the feeling is of being locked up, and see whether that makes you feel any more human. This is the first event of the Rock Liberation Front and it's really incredible that JOHN LENNON and YOKO ONO are going to be here, here tonight, and should really think of what the meaning of that is. 'Cause it's really a committed act by people who are very involved in music, who are identifying to the culture you and I are part of. The family that you and I are part of and for them to come on this stage, and for JOHN to sing his song it ain't far JOHN SINCLAIR and for JOHN and YOKO to sing a song about the IRA and Attica State. It's really incredible. It shows that right now we can really unite music and revolutionary politics and really build the movement all across the country. (applause). It's like a whole, it's like a whole cultural renaissance, is about to begin and if JOHN and YOKO can come here we really haev to go back to high school and colleges and communities and rebuild the movement to rebuild the revolution because all the people who say the movement and the revolution is over should see what's going on right here, because it doesn't look over to me. But there are, there are a lot of problems, for example the amount of heroin and dope that is smoked in the black and white youth communities is really serious. So many young, 15, 16, 17-year-old kids who are totally wiped out on downers, 'cause they have to find some way to get through the prison of high school and college and some way out of the prison of America, instead of building a revolutionary movement. The amount of heroin that is floating around our communities, we have to drive the heroin pushers out of our communities and build (applause). So heroin is poison and you know it gets its source from Southeast Asia, Laos, and then, it's shipped by the CIA back to the U.S. as a poison to poison us so we don't make a revolution, that's why they are pushing all this heroin into us. (applause). Also, there is like a very strange spirit among young people today, a spirit of tremendous mistrust, a spirit of which anybody who takes an action, calls a demonstration, comes forward with something is attacked by someone else, in the movement for being an ego-tripper or media freak or doing something wrong. It's a total anti-leadership spirit, so the people are afraid to take the initiative or afraid to take actions, not because of what the pig might do, but afraid to take, take action because of what their own brothers and sisters might say to them. It's a very strange thing that people are afraid to speak out and that's why there's such a quiet across the country, 'cause the moment somebody does something, someone else right next to him says, I didn't like what you did. We have to give each other a chance to make mistakes, we have to give each other a chance (inaudible) because if we are our own worst critics, no one is going to do anything, we are going to be paralyzed in fear, and all the violence and hostilities that we felt against [...]
And JOHN SINCLAIR is a key person in the liberation struggle, the struggle to liberate all the people from the overt and the covert prisons, from the prisons behind bars and outside bars, and we need JOHN SINCLAIR out of prison not only for his own sake but to help in that struggle. JOHN SINCLAIR has united rock and revolution. He has united a position to political repression and to economic exploitation. His united opposition from domestic oppression and foreign aggression and we want JOHN SINCLAIR out of prison, we want him out of prison to help us organize the music at San Diego. (applause). And we want him out of prison to organize the music in a lot of events like this one, that will take place up and down the country between now and San Diego to get those other prisoners out of jail, out of the jail of the factories that they are in, out of the jail of the money system, out of the jail of the factories that they are in, out of the jail of the money system, out of the jail of the foreign policy. Now I'm just going to say one sentence about the war and I think RENNIE indicated already that NIXON's program is not for winding down the war but for winding down the anti-war movement. It's the most cynical appeal to us, to say it doesn't matter that more people are being killed today than there were last month, it doesn't matter that there were more people killed last month, it doesn't matter that there were more people killed last month than there were under JOHNSON, as long as they are Asians, as long as they are not Americans. But you want a real clue to that kind of cynicism, I'll quote one of my political advisors, GEORGE WALLACE. GEORGE WALLACE came up with a shadow cabinet yesterday and who do you suppose was his secretary of state: Ambassador WILLIAM PORTER who is NIXON's Ambassador to the Vietnamese peace talks. That tells you what's happening to the Vietnamese peace talks. That tells you what's happening to the war under the Nixon program. Now one last point, I also came here tonight to hear JOHN and YOKO, and so did a lot of other people, but I came here to hear JOHN and YOKO sing a song to the Liberation of JOHN SINCLAIR and the other prisoners. We have the power, we have the strength if like the Vietnamese and the Cambodian and the Laotians, we do not allow the government, visible or invisible, to pacify us, if we do not allow them to convince them that we are weak and impotent and that nothing we do will matter. Ever since 1964, the press, the dove press, mind you, and the government has been saying that the war is ending and the anti-war movement is dead, but it has never been through, and it is not through today.
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