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Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history, Vietnam

Weather Underground

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Weather Underground

from the movie Don’t Look Back

It was March 6, 1970. While the calendar may have indicated that the 60s were over, they weren’t. Drugs continued. Festival music continued. Civil rights demands continued. The Vietnam War continued.

The issues of the 60s had simply morphed into the 70s’ issues,  just as many of them continue today.

Weather Underground

SDS

Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins were part of the Weathermen, a radical offshoot of the Student for a Democratic Society. The Weathermen’s mission permitted violence and Gold, Oughton, and Robbins were constructing a bomb that day in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The plan was to bomb a non-commissioned officers’ dance at Fort Dix, NJ.

The bomb accidentally exploded, killing all three. At first the explosion was thought to have been the result of a gas leak (NYT article).

Weather Underground

Weathermen

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” was a line from Bob Dylan’s 1965 “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” That line was the genesis of the group’s first name.

By 1969, like other frustrated groups whose mission was thwarted by the Establishment’s power and control, the Weathermen emerged when Bernardine Dohrn and others split with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Weathermen felt that the SDS’s peaceful protests against the continuing Vietnam War were futile.

The ultimate goal of the Weather Underground was to overthrow the US Government. From its June 18, 1969 Manifesto: “…people in this country must ask in considering the question of revolution…where they stand in relation to the masses of people throughout the world whom US imperialism is oppressing.”

Weather Underground
from the movie, The Weather Underground

Chicago

On October 6, 1969, the Weathermen had planted a bomb that blew up a statue in Chicago built to commemorate police casualties incurred in the 1886 Haymarket Riot (NYT article).

Chicago rebuilt the statue and unveiled on May 4, 1970 ironically,  the same day as the Kent State massacre The Weather Underground blew it up again on October 6, 1970 (NYT article)

Chicago repaired the statue again and placed it under round-the-clock surveillance before cost considerations brought about the decision to put the statue in the Police Headquarter lobby (NYT article).

Days of Rage

Weather Underground

Three days after the first bombing, the Days of Rage (October 8 – 11, 1969) in Chicago followed. To the Weathermen, protest meant direct action and direct actions included vandalization and confrontation. A huge Chicago police and State militia presence prevented most demonstrations from achieving their goals. Dozens were injured, and more than 280 protesters were arrested.

Weather Underground
FBI wanted poster

Judge’s home bombed

Early in the morning on February 21, 1970 gas bombs exploded in front of NY Supreme Court Justice John M. Murtagh’s home.  Murtagh was presiding over the pretrial hearings of Black Panther Party members regarding a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. No one was hurt.

Into hiding

Weather Underground
from the movie, The Weather Underground

At that point, the Weathermen went into hiding and re-named the group the Weather Underground.

On June 9, 1970, a bomb exploded in the headquarters of the New York City Police Department. No one was hurt.

Weather Underground
from the documentary, The Weather Underground

On May 19, 1972, North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, the Weather Underground placed a bomb in the women’s bathroom in the Air Force wing of the Pentagon. No one was hurt.

Arrests were often made, but mistrials and dropped charges often followed due to the illegal methods the government had used to gather evidence.

Documentary

poster from The Weather Underground documentary

In 2002, The Weather Underground documentary told the story of the organization’s rise and fall. (Snag films dot com)

A faction of the Weather Underground continues today as the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. Their official site apparently read (though the site no longer is extant): We oppose oppression in all its forms including racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and imperialism. We demand liberation and justice for all peoples. We recognize that we live in a capitalist system that favors a select few and oppresses the majority. This system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice

Weather Underground

Today

Weather Underground

Ironically, today if you Google search “Weather Underground,” the top result is the commercial weather service. The Establishment has co-opted Che again.

Birthdays, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Edward Chip Monck

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Edward Chip Monck

Celebrating his birthday, March 5, 1939
Edward Chip Monck
Chip Monck (from chipmonck.com)

The above audio clip is from an interview with Chip Monck in 2009  on the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. Glenn A Baker interviewed Monck as part of the Ovation Channel show ‘Monday Night Legends’

The chipmonck.com site starts with these questions:

  1. Have you heard of Woodstock?
  2. Monterey Pop?
  3. The Rolling Stones Tour?
  4. Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals?
  5. The Concert for Bangladesh?

And then answers those questions with this simple answer:

He staged them all
Edward Chip Monck

Chip Monck

Edward Herbert Beresford “Chip” Monck was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He became a lighting and staging designer, but as the above references suggest, he did those things for some of the most iconic musical events of the 20th century.

When he was 20, Monck began working at the Greenwich Village nightclub The Village Gate.  While at the gate, his young friend Bobby Dylan worked in Monck’s basement apartment. Reputedly, Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s a’Gonna Fall” and “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” there. 

Monck recalls about Dylan,  “He spied the IBM Selectric [typewriter]. He typed while I worked at the Gate. That gave him like six hours, he’d just drift in, I gave him a key and he’d sit down and type and then I’d come back in and he’d go, or we’d go and have a drink or something. We really never spoke much.”

Edward Chip Monck

Festivals

While still working at the Village Gate, Monck also began working with the  Newport Folk Festival, and  the Newport Jazz Festival.

If those credentials aren’t enough, in 1967 he lit the Monterey International Pop Festival where Jimi Hendrix’s American coming out party occurred.

He also worked with Bill Graham in renovating Graham’s Fillmore theaters.

Edward Chip Monck

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Woodstock Ventures hired Monck to do the lighting at their Fair. The last minute change of venue from Wallkill, NY to Bethel, NY forced Monck to eliminate much of his planned lighting. Spotlights became the primary source.

But to those who attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Chip Monck’s voice along with John Morris’s became the reassuring threads that connected each band. Both men took turns not just introducing performers, but giving advice, recommending choices, and explaining what was going on at a time when social media didn’t exist as a term.

Perhaps the most famous quote of that weekend was Monck’s: ““The warning that I’ve received, you might take it with however many grains of salt you wish, that the brown acid that is circulating around is not specifically too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. But it’s your own trip, be my guest. But please be advised that there’s a warning, okay?”

Edward Chip Monck

A LOT more after Woodstock

For years he helped light Rolling Stone tours and he received Tony nominations in lighting for The Rocky Horror Show and Bette Midler’s Divine Madness.

Edward Herbert Beresford Chip Monck
Playbill

He was always busy working many major venues. In 1989 he helped set up Pope John Paul’s papal mass at L.A.’s Dodger Stadium.

In the early 90s, Monck moved to Australia, his wife’s home country, where he continued in the lighting and design business. (Monck’s wife died in 2002)

Edward Chip Monck

Honors

He continues to live Melbourne, his focus mainly on corporate and retail work. In 2003, he received the  Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes pioneering, influential professionals and their contributions, honoring both individuals and companies. It is the Oscar of the live event industry.Here is the video that introduced that presentation.

Edward Chip Monck
Black history, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

Jimmie Lee Jackson Murdered

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Jimmie Lee Jackson Murdered

December 16, 1938 – February 26, 1965
 on February 18, 1965…
Jimmie Lee Jackson Murdered
Jimmie Lee Jackson

Jimmie Lee Jackson was born in Marion, Alabama, a small town near Selma. He fought in the Vietnam war and eventually returned to Marion where he worked as a laborer.

He became a church deacon. He tried to register to vote several times, but Alabama’s legal roadblocks prevented him.

James Orange was a field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In February 1965, authorities arrested and jailed Orange on charges of disorderly conduct and contributing to the delinquency of minors for enlisting students to aid in voting rights drives.

Fearful that Orange would be lynched, a group of civil rights activists gathered marched in support of him the evening of February 18, 1965. Shortly after the peaceful march began, Alabama State Troopers ordered the protesters to disperse and simultaneously attacked them. Authorities had also turned off street lights.

Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother, Viola Jackson, and his eighty-two-year-old grandfather, Cager Lee, were among those who tried to get away. The three escaped into a nearby cafe, but police followed them into the cafe and physically assaulted them. When Jimmie Lee Jackson came to the aid of his mother and grandfather, he was shot twice in the abdomen by trooper James Fowler.

Jackson managed to escape before collapsing. He died eight days later at a local hospital.

Jimmie Lee Jackson Murdered
John Lewis, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and the Rev. Andrew Young marched in the funeral of Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose shooting death inspired the first of the Selma marches in Alabama in 1965. Credit Associated Press

In his eulogy, Martin Luther King, Jr. described Jimmie Lee Jackson as a “martyred hero.” The murder was the seed that began the famous March on Selma because when civil rights organizer, James Bevel, heard of Jackson’s death he called for a march from Selma to Montgomery to talk to Governor George Wallace about the attack in which Jackson was shot.

Jimmie Lee Jackson murdered

Jimmie Lee Jackson Murdered
Jimmie Lee Jackson plaque

James Fowler was the trooper who shot Jackson. That September 29, a grand jury declined to indict Fowler. 

42 years later, on May 10, 2007 an Alabama grand jury indicted Fowler for the Jackson’s murder. Fowler pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter on November 15,  2010. He apologized for the shooting but insisted that he had acted in self-defense, believing that Mr. Jackson was trying to grab his gun. (NYT article)

Fowler was sentenced to six months in prison and was released early after serving 5 months due to health problems. (NYT article)

Fowler died on July 5, 2015. (Washington Post story)

Jimmie Lee Jackson murdered