Tell us about your experience and how did you get involved in the radical scene in New York during the sixties.
I grew up mostly around the area of \u200b\u200bVirginia / Maryland and New York. When I was 10 my mother remarried and moved to Manhattan. I was basically a ghetto kid and during my teens I got involved in drugs at the end going time in prison. There was a time when I was in the prison hospital where I started to read and develop interest in art. When I was released my personality had changed completely. To end my addiction completely broke with the kids with whom he had grown and the life he knew.
At the end of the 50 went in search of the beatniks and that seemed to combine art with social consciousness. I met people from the Living Theatre and ended up heavily influenced by their ideas even though they never saw me facing the theater. Judith Malina and Julian Beck were anarchists and they were the first to put a name to the way in which I stay feeling and philosophically inclined.
I also met an Italian-American artist named Aldo Tambellini who had a radical thought that channeled into his art rather than social activism. He only had exhibitions in places like cemeteries or hallways currents to bring art to the public. Influenced me enough to see that having art in museums was a way to do so rarefied and a tool for the ruling class.
'm self taught so I continued monitoring of anarchism and art through reading and correspondence. I was aware of Dada and Surrealism as well as the radical wing of twentieth century art and tried to find anyone who had information on the subject or someone who was involved. I really felt comfortable with the marriage between social thought and aesthetic practice. I corresponded for a time with one of the living Dadaists Richard Huelsenbeck, who lived in New York, but never come to know.
At the same time I began to develop sympathy for the political wing of the anarchists to meet people who had fought in Spain, Durruti Column and other groups. All of them were about 60 years while I was in my twenties.
was also working on my own art and aesthetics. Mainly was painted in the abstract but also carving out naturally. I had some influences of American Expressionists, but also Zen
formed When Black Mask? How are you organized and who were you involved?
is difficult to explain, started in 1965 or 1966, but the magazine finally began in 1966. Black Mask was really very small. At first we were a few people. As anarchists, and not very doctrinaire, we had no leader but I was the driving force within the group. Ron Hahne and I had worked together with Aldo doing art shows in public to promote the idea of \u200b\u200bart as an integral part of every day of our lives, and not an object institutionalized. Ron and I became close friends and discovered we had a social vision more controversial than that of Aldo about wanting to better determine the political elements of Dada and Surrealism as well as the growing unrest of black America. We wanted to find a place where art and politics could coexist in a radical way. Once we started to publish Black Mask and participate in activities other artists and people who were on our wavelength were attracted to what we were doing. I was always in favor of a holistic approach where there were to be made meetings and people are more informal associations that have a hierarchy and members recruited.
Over time Ron began to lose interest in politics and became interested more in working with people who were involved in the fight for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. I can honestly say that both Black Mask and then at The Family never had a meeting where we sit, consciously, to decide our direction or exactly what we were going to give treatment to a situation or a particular action. Everything went very spontaneously developed by organic consequences or any issue that we believed appropriate the time.
One of the first actions of Black Mask was to close the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Tell us what happened and the group's focus on direct action in general.
We felt that the art itself, the creative effort, it was something worthwhile, valuable and even a spiritual experience. The museum and art galleries separated by a lively exchange and had nothing to do with the vital and creative impulse. Museums were no homes to life, were just a repository. We were looking for ways to ask questions about how things were made and close MOMA was one of them.
The action was a success. Announcing our plans in advance and ended up closing the museum for fear of what we could do. Many people stopped and talked to us about what we were doing and this action together with other, more radical artists attracted to our side. Other times
desbaratábamos exhibitions, galleries and conferences. Most of these actions were designed right in the moment and many of them were part of a learning process. The things we did were not reasonable in full, but they were a way to develop and understand our place in the revolt in progress. Quite a few political groups would eventually develop these grand strategies and plans, but for us were just a way to express ourselves and to see how we could make a dent in society.
In 1996 the group took as a target the Loeb Centre in New York University (NYU). What happened to this action?
We had a strong sense of humor and guerrilla theater. I used to interrupt lectures on art at the University of New York to raise issues different from those who wanted to discuss. As a result I was challenged to a debate with some of the academics. I remember that particular event had an unpretentious approach so we had to do something. It was incredibly layered and only intended for the elite and seemed to have tried everything best to keep away from the public in general. Stacks of pamphlets distributed this announcement as free food and alcohol and had to cut the streets around that many people were introduced. We went down to Bowery and handed out leaflets to all the drunks and street people go up.
Black Mask, obviously, not only was inspired dadaist, surrealist and avant-garde movements of the past, also of the contemporary black insurrections and youth movements of the 60's. Tell us more about these influences and on your ideas and approaches about politics and art in general.
From my perspective and from the people with whom I worked we saw the need to change everything from how we lived up to the way we thought even the way we ate. Total Revolution was our way of saying that we were not going to settle for a political or cultural change, we wanted everything, wanted it all changed. Western society had reached an impasse and needed to be revised and corrected. We knew that was not going to happen, but that was our claim, this is how we were.
That also meant you needed to do all sorts of people get involved, not just political activists. Poets and artists were equally important. The revolution happens as a cumulative effect and partly a change in consciousness, a new way of thinking.
As Black Mask fit within the political and artistic scenes of New York because it seems as if you would have come out of your way to ridicule and challenge the ideologues of any condition.
Many political people questioned what we did say we should attack the society from the political front and we do not we should worry about art. Nevertheless we felt it was better to act from the position of each and ours was as artists. These issues were very important to us.
Many of the hippies did not trust us and we hate politicians because they could not control or understand what we were doing. And I'm sure most people in the art world thought we were crazy.
Black Mask seems to have arisen in the past, several challenges to the peace movement moderates by criticizing its lack of militancy or even attacking the Left for their unconditional support to the National Liberation Front (NLF). Many radicals of the 60's are now somewhat repentant or seem reluctant to talk about his support for the North Korean regime. We
we supported the right of Vietnamese to resist the American invasion, but were not going to support the government of North Vietnam in their own oppressive behavior. It was a subtle point and most of the left could not understand. We knew the history of Franco's Spain, where both the Stalinists executed as anarchists. We we refused to support one side or the other.
I hated the visceral reaction of many people on the left waving the flag of the NLF happy everywhere. We are not celebrating the death of American troops who were sent as cannon fodder as they did some.
In a sense we do not fit anywhere, and that meant we we had just becoming a magnet for all those people who were not interested in a proposal dogmatic or peaceful. Much of the subsequent evolution of Black Mask into The Family came across more and more people joined us and influenced what we were doing.
Black Mask and later The Family were among the first groups to promote the concept of affinity groups as a way to organize. A Family member became famous definition of an affinity group as a "street gang with analysis." How does this approach and hence the use of the term?
Although we consort in similar circles with Murray Bookchin our group has always been quite different because we were very visceral and it was more literary. Murray was interested in using the English term "affinity groups" [1] to describe non-hierarchical groups that were forming. We said "My God, can you really imagine the Americans calling themselves" affinity groups "? (Laughs) "Use English, call them affinity groups."
Tell us about the Black Mask magazine they produced and published from 1966 to 1968 and consists of ten copies. Mainly we
Ron and I who did the magazine together, but there was a large group of people that helped us to produce, print and distribute. Sold it for five cents, which was not much money, but if people understood that she would end up paying for reading instead of take a glance and throw it away.
We worry about selling in southeastern New York, which was our most fertile ground that there were many artists and activists. From time to time we also made the top of the city but this was more a matter of agitation.
Black Mask was one of the first groups to deal with counterculture figures as Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg in their fear, their orientation towards religion and its quest for prestige, labeling them "the new ruling class." Since 1967, Black Mask looks like to move from their established art criticism to criticism of the hippie movement on the rise and the new left.
Although we were very critical of them I was friends with Allen Ginsberg and became friends with Timothy Leary a few years later. What we were trying to say when the time was that they were allowing use as a safety valve. We wanted to attack the root of society and believed that they were not doing. In those days we thought that were being used by Time and Life magazines but in retrospect probably not the magazines would like them out in front, especially Timothy.
always tried to shake things up, to give a boost both to other people like ourselves. There was always plenty of exchanges with all sorts of radical and sometimes fratricidal were something we wanted to lash out but sometimes only an issue we wanted to try.
In 1966, Black Mask magazine quoted the Situationist International as a group that was moving in a direction similar to yours by calling the "revolution of everyday life" and the abolition of art as a separate and specialized activity. But at the end of 1967 the IS expelled three of its British members for supporting "a certain Ben Morea, editor of the newsletter Black Mask." What was the source of the rift between the groups and that extension was your connection?
The Situationists and I will never come face to face. I think they were extremely doctrinaire and limited. Excommunicated seemed that more people than kept. I never really was any connection between our groups and theirs.
What happened to the "murder" of the poet Ken Koch in 1967? For
we Koch was a symbol of this world totally gentrified dandy. Myself, Dan Georgakas, Alan Van Newkirk and some other people from Black Mask went to one of his concerts. I think it was me who suggested the idea to shoot a pistol with blanks. Alan saw it as the classic image of the anarchist bomb-thrower. The measured 1.80 meters, tall and thin with a gaunt face and always dressed in black - the embodiment anarchist. So we decided to "You're the one, you're going to shoot (laughs). Published a pamphlet and all I had was a picture of Leroi Jones with the words "Poetry is revolution." In the night he shot Alan Koch fainted this and all the people in the audience assumed he had died and she began to scream. Some people threw the leaflet to the audience from the balcony and then we all left.
reactions after the event are divided between people who thought it was one of the best things they had heard and those who thought they were a group of immature asshole. Which was great because much of what was Black Mask and The Family was to push people to decide "Do I belong to this group or this one?" We were determined to be outrageous to force people to take a position about things. We wanted to push people, forcing her to think. "Why Koch to shoot? It was just a good poet. "
What was the connection of Black Mask with SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)?
We saw that SDS was becoming a force for real change and that all you traditional leftist groups like the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (Progressive Labour Party) were trying to seize control and direction. We felt it was important that other people, like us, get involved and show the students that they had many choices, many roads go.
remember being in one of the SDS national convention where people were entering a heated debate about the differences between the Yankees, the establishment of the East Coast, cowboys, Texas facilities. I got up and said "This is bullshit, do not admit guys, we are neither the Yankees or the Cowboys - We are the Indians!". On another occasion a member of The Family ran for a manifest, you wake up with a paper and said "This is my platform, throw all the manifestos here."
With Black Mask and later with The Family used the guerrilla theater and actions to show that other approaches to offer than the usual boring policies and the more volatile elements of the SDS thrilled with that. Some of the people who later formed The Weathermen hung out with The Family and, although it has never been accredited, ended militant influenced by our style and our attitude. But once they joined the Leninist groups gave everything a direction quite different.
Tell us about Valerie Solanas, with which it maintained a friendship in addition to a written defense of his attempted assassination of Andy Warhol in 1968. There was a silence in the underground press about their ideas and their actions after the shooting. This seems a bit odd since then the new left was a growing glorification political violence. Valerie
used to spend some time with me when I was homeless or moving. There was plenty of parody and irony in his writings, but also was, and I do not mean in a bad sense of the word, a pretty crazy. She saw that I had the need to raise some questions about what was happening to women and the SCUM manifesto was the best way to express yourself. I always loved people who escaped the charges, which did not fit the mold.
Some time later when the stage was over Black Mask and The Family was beginning we engage in the occupation of Columbia University [1968]. Valerie was there, I found and I wonder "What if you shot someone?" I replied "It depends on two things - who shoot and if he dies or not." A week later shot Andy Warhol.
After he wrote a pamphlet supporting her fired. I should be the only person who did it publicly. I went to MOMA and parted in the area. Everyone I knew was quite negative about it, but, hey, I felt a great aversion to Warhol and Valerie loved her. I thought that was right to be angry and that he was more destructive than she already was helping to destroy the general idea creativity in art.
Some people do not like the ending, but I feel that creativity is a kind of spiritual act, something profound for people who do it. Warhol was the exact opposite, trying to deny and purge the essence of creativity and give a commercial basis. Also as a person was someone really negligible, and that is why I hated Valerie. He used and manipulated people.
Andy
The attack was met with silence from the left and I think it was because it raised some issues that nobody could agree. This violence was not happening in a faraway place. In addition Andy had become a star, almost an honorable image, and she was lashing out against all this. Even people who liked her feminist discourse could not be set according to who had hurt Andy. Black Mask and The Family way back to the political people, crazy, because we amoldábamos to their archetypes, because we were getting rid of the fees, so you can imagine how Valerie regarded.
as Black Mask magazine continued until mid-1968. What was the process that was involved in the group to evolve into what became known as Up Against The Wall Motherfucker?
The Family / Up Against The Wall Motherfucker and Black Mask were related to having gone on to become one in others, but they were very different groups about the people who were involved and what they did. Decision was never about the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a new group, no blueprint, it was only a matter of evolution in which a faded and another group took shape. It is even difficult to explain exactly where one ends and another began.
The Family had exceeded the limit, was extremely volatile and had little inclination towards the cultural sphere. Included many artists, but also people from all faiths who wanted to live a life more real, more visceral that they offered. Somewhat less constrained than pursuing only politics or art, something free.
We really, we were neither hippies nor political. Were different from other groups, although we belonged to the thickness of the counterculture. Some people label us as hippies. Those who have some knowledge about the counterculture might realize that we were made of wood more guttural. But apparently we had some hippie paraphernalia such as wearing long hair and ethnic clothing. He also drank a lot of LSD. Even if we were radicals like them no one would mix with the Communist Youth League (Communist Youth League). (Laughter)
What were
some of the differences between Black Mask and The Family?
The Family was much larger and had much more to life than Black Mask, which was a more esoteric. Never, we referred to ourselves as Up Against The Wall Motherfucker, but we signed our posters and leaflets, which could be produced by any group with that name. Among us were The Family, a term that may sound strange today by the name association with Charles Manson, who had no connection or nothing in common. While I was the leading figure in Black Mask in The Family was quite different because it involved a larger group of people, which were similar in potential and time determine the direction of the group. Was essentially a loose confederation of affinity groups that lived through a series of apartments and shared lifestyle and tribal points of view. Different people belonging to the core group would gravitate around an apartment where they also have a lot of young hippies and runaways.
That will refuse nuclear family model and collectively we lived never came as a fashion issue or something prearranged. We just had the feeling that there were other ways of living of the West offered us, whether they were those of Native Americans, gypsies or Africa. The hippies also had enough of this, but we actually did this approach bowed tribal, ethnic. We thought there was some force that transcended the Western world. Struggled to understand and incorporate some of these elements, both in our appearance and our way of living. Our lives were going in full flow was free, living organically.
Tell us about the activities in which The Family has been involved.
The first action that really made The Family was to take away from the Lincoln Center in February 1968. There was a strike of landfills in New York and had tons of garbage piled up in the ghettos. Commercial areas and wealthy areas were able to hire a private service to clean the streets so we decided to take some of the garbage on the Lower East Side to Lincoln Center. One of our members was proposed as a cultural exchange - trash trash (laughs). Although some people tried to pigeonhole us into our aggressive actions and our membership, we actually had some people wonderfully witty.
We took a pamphlet explaining why we had done, but those who had participated, we realized we were not really Black Mask and did not want to sign with that name. There was a Leroi Jones poem with the phrase "Up Against the wall mother fucker" and I suggested that we put. Somehow hit and from that moment all the world spoke to us in that way. For our part was not deliberate. It would have been quite pretentious to have wanted to call "The Motherfuckers." (Laughter)
Black Mask magazine continued as time and UAW / MF began to create brochures and posters and do things for newspapers such as The Rat. How
merged these releases and high-circulation newspapers?
were part of our political art and enjoyed collecting both either individually or in groups. We wanted to do something that was creative and visually exciting, but also make a statement. With The Rat between six and ten members of The Family were coming to their offices once a week and made our site. People who have reprinted our work, both now and in that time have failed to appreciate our sense of humor. We believed in what we were doing, but did not want to be too serious. We could laugh at ourselves. The best influence that gave us the feeling we had was not only the injection of militancy, but also fun and humor in the riots of the era. We
our own mimeograph machine so people could do constantly runs his pamphlets and posters. Often one would see on the street which would have no idea where he left. The beauty of our family is that it was multi-armed and had no central brain as people usually did actions or produced material that other people knew very little.
group in the writings of an affinity group was defined as "a street gang with analysis." How much of the traditional mentality of street gangs was a part of your views?
Some members were more stuck on the issues the street than others. But we were not territorial and we held a competition ends. We were more "street-hardened" than the street toughs. Osha Neumann, who first subscribed this particular definition (though it was I who coined the term affinity groups), saw it as if it meant we had the street smarts and a strong bond, not as if we were thugs irrational.
In 1968, students attacked and occupied buildings at Columbia protesting against the redevelopment of land for social housing and the connection between universities and research arms. How were you involved?
had occupied five buildings at Columbia and ours was the only one who was attacked by police. We do not pass any calls, but all the struggling people came to our building. We were aggressive and were strengthened by what they had to leave to those who chose to negotiate rather than resist. There we relied on no plan, only saw the situation and we took our decisions. We were Tusken. During the protests against the war in the Pentagon looked at the doors were not secured enough so we went and beat until they opened. We went along with the other protesters, but soon we attracted a core of about 100 people who were like us. We saw an opportunity, we gesture and merged.
During 1968 and 1969 The Family also was involved in fighting and resisting the police violence on the Lower East Side. How do you drive past these problems?
Our response would include everything from peaceful protests to non-peaceful struggle, depending on the situation. We were extremely erratic and often depended on how hard we were pushed.
Finally it was they who decided whether we had to face. One night we barricaded the streets to closed to traffic and a party. The police came, but as many people saw that we were very strong and decided to leave us alone. Anyway that was the beginning of the end. We were very cool, uncontrollable and began to stop for anything.
In October 1968 you, personally, will face trial on charges of attempted murder in Boston. What did you take them up there and your final acquittal?
While in New York had heard that young freaks, we never referred to us as hippies, they were being harassed by a group of vigilantes in Boston. It was quite ugly, some kids had been hospitalized so I suggested to some members of the Family that we should go there and take a look. We approached and stayed with the street kids and freaks, we make enough that they were being attacked while we were there. The attackers were repulsed, and I was arrested by the police.
I was in jail for two weeks before I was released. After trying to listen to the watchmen stand still hurting people and decided to go back because we were concerned we would have done that things were getting worse. The same kids came back again, but this time they backed off and disappeared so I had some luck and would not have made any well to my account.
I did not have much support to my cause as the political community could not worry about the hippies until they were mostly non-violent. Yet several people helped and the story had some coverage in the underground press. At the end I was acquitted, but the foreman told me it was all thanks to someone from the jury. In the first vote went 11 to 1 in favor of condemnation, but a guy trying to convince the rest that sufficient doubt existed as to let me go. I know of who it was, but I owe my freedom to that guy.
addition to supporting the people against the police and open apartments, The Family also opened a free shop and was involved in several activities directed towards survival in the streets. Tell us about these activities.
We always tried to connect to the hippie community of the Lower East Side with the street and the homeless. With the arrival of thousands of fugitives to the area in the late sixties were sometimes made in heaven, but the two communities were never coexist comfortably. We opened a store to give homeless people and ourselves a place to spend time. We had free clothes, doctors and lawyers under contract, a mimeograph machine, information for people who wanted to avoid being drafted and get a fake ID, information about the apartments, etc. It was a general support center. Free food did two nights a week, but also free food event celebrated at homes or churches where we serve about 300-400 people. Possessed some documents of a church saying we had no profit and that allowed us to get food for the previous or improperly marked products markets and retail food free. Some people worked, another did the same documents donations and helped us quickly get grants from liberal churches to rent sites, etc.
While many other countercultural groups The Family also stroke a line between "soft drugs" and "hard drugs". Tell us about it and speaking of the group had illegal drugs in general. We
diferenciábamos between hard drugs like cocaine and heroin and other like grass, hashish and psychedelics. We watched as LSD and grass were helping to break down the barriers between the youth of the suburbs and helping to redefine their place in the universe. Some of us had problems with hard drugs and watched as they were destructive. Unlike Leary and others, did not see psychedelics as a cure-all, but if they could, and did, make a positive contribution.
Sometimes people bring me to kids who had a bad trip. I took LSD and tried to go with them to where they had problems and helped them return. If you want to talk to venture, that was. Maoists will not see many doing that. (Laughter)
In late 1968 The Family had a confrontation with Bill Graham, rock promoter, on community involvement at the Fillmore East Venue. What were the origins of the dispute and how it ended up being a success?
In essence, this was a conflict between local political organizations and those who took advantage of them. We did not intend to control the Fillmore East or anything like that, but we wanted to have a night free, non-commercial, for the people of the street. With all the money they were taking from the community figurábamos we could give something in return. Initially
Graham refused and during a meeting in his office extracted three silver bullets lined up and saying "Hell's Angels I made the same demands and sent me these three bullets and he never gave." I got up and said "There is a difference between us and the Angels, we will never going to give anything to save to your desktop." That was not literally a threat, but a statement that in one way or another we would get what we demanded.
One night the people of the Living Theatre was performing at the Fillmore East and we agreed to get on the stage after them. I made a statement saying they had finished, but we were going to stay on stage as long as necessary to get what he wanted. It could take a night, two nights or two weeks, but we were going to stay. We took the stage and fight at night with Graham and his thugs, but they lost and the one or two in the morning he gave up and got it on Wednesday night was free.
What kind of events took place in the "free Wednesday?
Many rock bands including Canned Heat, Country Joe McDonald MC5 and played for free and in return we gave them food and drugs. MC5 told me that had problems with any section of the audience, but I remember being in Michigan with them some time later, so I'm not sure what happened there. Three weeks after Graham came with a letter informing him that police were closing the avenue if those nights continued with its policy of free drugs. We accept that that was all, but deep down we do not care that it lasted only three weeks to complete because we had questioned the commercial world of rock and roll. Woodstock
us provides another opportunity to challenge the music industry. Those young men said "I always say that music is free, well then let's make it free." Like many of the things we did nothing was planned. We just went there was when some of us thought it would be a good idea to cut the fences and let everyone pass. When rain began to find the place where the organizers had accounted for camping gear to sell and release all the shops and sleeping bags. We made a hole in the tent that served as a warehouse and we took off.
relate much Is The Family with groups from other parts of the country or world?
A large number of people came to New York and spend time with us around the time that The Family had begun. These included different situations in the United Kingdom, which ended up becoming the King Mob group, members of Zenga-Kuren of Japan, Jean Jaques Leibel, who was one of the leaders of the revolt of '68 in Paris and also some Dutch Provos. All groups agreed you one way or another with our speech.
We also did some traveling. I spent some time with the Diggers in San Francisco. They came from a very similar in terms of radicalism and also shared the rejection businessmen who were profiting by the counterculture, but our speeches were quite different. There was much support from the West Coast groups, including Owsley (manufacturer of LSD) gave us some money. There were also small groups of people all over the country were identified and were with us.
What was it that prompted the decision to abandon tomarais Lower East Side?
police felt threatened by us. We began to follow thorough and dedicated themselves to constant harassment. Some of our people were involved in the second wave of accusations that they came for the protests in Chicago. These
things by themselves were not that we did leave, but were involved and exploring new directions. The tribal element became more strident and many of us began to question why aguantábamos in the ghetto anyway. Many of the young runaways were being arrested and believed it would be safer to get them out. We took about twenty of them to a point in California and help others find homes in different places.
The group did not end all at once, but spread to many of us getting involved in various fields, directing projects and communities. I personally stop writing, I went to the mountain and I did not five years later. I was influenced by "The Murder of Christ" by Wilhelm Reich and his idea that you do not ignore the bulk of the issues, but you go on confronting them one by one.
With the government of the United States on an ongoing war abroad while simultaneously takes strong measures on civil liberties and dissent at home, it sometimes seems as if the leftist movements of the sixties had never existed. What do you see as the legacy of bands like Black Mask and the New Left in general?
Part of the reason it has resurfaced (after thirty years in anonymity) to talk about what we did in the sixties is the fact that things have gone very wrong in America. Has reached a point where you can not ignore it, is worse than ever.
I figured it would start by giving people know our story and then go from there. All I can tell people is that when, in the past, we all seemed pretty bleak to action and had an effect. It got much, yet five years before anyone would have hoped that we could face the Behemoth of American capitalism. It is counterproductive to sit back and say "you can not do anything." It is not my role to tell people what they should do exactly, but there is always some way to respond and take action, just look around.
Ben Morea was interviewed by Iain McInntyre in 2006
Notes:
[1] The English language version of the interview Ben Morea refers to the term "amateur Vairo" when referring to the name that gives "affinity groups" in the English language. Believing that is a mistake, whether of himself or interviewers Morea, we prefer to translate the word real. (Ndt)
