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Title: Ben Morea: An Interview Author: lain McIntyre Date: 2006 Language: en Topics: Black Mask, The Family, Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, UAW/MF, Ben Morea, art, history, New York City, interview Source: Retrieved on 14 September 2015 from http://libcom.org/history/against-wall-motherfucker-interview-ben-morea
Tell us about your background and how you came to find yourself involved
in the radical scenes of New York during the 1960s.
Ben Morea: I was raised mostly around the Virginia/Maryland area and New
York. When I was ten years old my mother remarried and moved to
Manhattan. I was basically a ghetto kid and got involved in drug
addictions as a teenager spending time in prison. At one point when I
was in a prison hospital I started reading and developed an interest in
art. When I was released I completely changed my persona. In order to
break my addiction I made a complete break from the kids I grew up with
and the life I knew.
In the late 1950s I went looking for the beatniks because they seemed to
combine social awareness with art. I met the Living Theatre people and
was highly influenced by their ideas despite never being theatrically
oriented myself. Judith Malina and Julian Beck were anarchists and they
were the first people to put a name to the way I was feeling and leaning
philosophically.
I also met an Italian-American artist named Aldo Tambellini who was very
radical in his thinking and who channelled all of that into his art
rather than social activism. He would only hold shows in common areas
like churchyards and hallways in order to bring art to the public. He
influenced me a lot in seeing that having art in museums was a way of
rarefying it and making it a tool of the ruling class.
I'm self educated and continued my pursuit of anarchism and art through
reading and correspondence. I became aware of Dada and Surrealism and
the radical wing of twentieth century art and sought out anyone who had
information about it or who had been involved. I really felt comfortable
with the wedding of social thought with aesthetic practice. I
corresponded quite a bit with one of the living Dadaists Richard
Huelsenbeck who was living in New York, but whom I never met.
At the same time I became friendly with the political wing of the
anarchists meeting up with people who had fought in Spain, from the
Durutti Brigade and other groups. They were all in their 60s and I was
in my 20s.
I was also a practising artist working at my own art and aesthetic. I
was mainly painting in an abstract, but naturalistic form as well as
doing some sculpture. There was some influence from the American
expressionists, but Zen was also an influence.
When did Black Mask come together as a group? How were you organised and
who was involved?
Ben: It's hard to say whether we started in 1965 or 1966, but the
magazine definitely started in 1966. Black Mask was really very small.
It started off with just a few people. As anarchists, and not very
doctrinaire ones, we had no leadership although I was the driving force
in the group. Both Ron Hahne and I had already been working together
with Aldo doing art shows in public to promote the idea of art as an
integral part of everyday life, not an institutionalised thing. Ron and
I became close friends and found that we had a more socially polemical
view than Aldo in wanting to go closer to the political elements of Dada
and Surrealism as well as to the growing unrest in Black America. We
wanted to find a place where art and politics could coexist in a radical
way. Once we started publishing Black Mask and holding actions other
artists and people on a similar wavelength were attracted to what we
were doing. I've always favoured an organic approach where you don't
have meetings and people just associate informally rather than having a
hierarchy and recruiting members.
Over time Ron became less interested in the political sphere and I
became more interested in working with the people who were involved in
fighting for civil rights and against the Vietnam war. I can honestly
say that in both Black Mask and then later The Family we never held a
meeting where we consciously sat down to decide our direction or exactly
how we would deal with a particular action or situation. It all
developed as a very spontaneous, organic outgrowth of whatever we
thought was appropriate at the time.
One of Black Mask's first actions was to shut down the Museum Of Modern
Art (MOMA). Tell us about what happened and the group's approach to
direct action in general.
Ben: We felt that art itself, the creative effort, was an obviously
worthwhile, valuable and even spiritual experience. The Museum and
gallery systern separated art from that living interchange and had
nothing to do with the vital, creative urge. Museums weren't a living
house, they were just a repository. We were searching for ways to raise
questions about how things were presented and closing down MOMA was just
one of them.
The action was a success. We'd announced our plans in advance and they
closed the museum in fear of what we might do. A lot of people stopped
and talked with us about what we were doing and this action and others
attracted radical artists to our fold.
At other times we disrupted exhibitions, galleries and lectures. Most of
these actions were just thought up on the spot and a lot of what we did
was part of a learning process. Things weren't completely thought out,
but were a way for us to develop an understanding of our place in the
ongoing struggle. A lot of political groups would have these big
grandiose strategies and plans, but for us the actions were just a way
of expressing ourselves and seeing how we could make a dent in society.
In 1966 the group also targeted the Loeb Centre at New York University
(NYU). What happened with that action?
Ben: We had a strong sense of humour and of guerrilla theatre. I used to
disrupt art lectures at NYU to raise issues other than those that the
lecturers wanted to discuss. As a result I was challenged to a debate by
some of the academics. I remember that particular event had such a
pretentious approach that we had to do something. It was incredibly
stratified and only meant for the elite and it seemed like they'd done
everything possible to keep it away from the public at large. We handed
out loads of leaflets advertising this free event with food and alcohol
and they had to block off the streets all around because so many people
showed up. We went down to the Bowery and handed out flyers so that all
the drunks and street people would show up.
Black Mask clearly drew inspiration not only from the Dadaists,
Surrealists and avant-garde movements of the past, but also from the
contemporary black insurrections and youth movements of the 1960s. Tell
us a little more about these influences and about your ideas and
approach to politics and art in general.
Ben: From my perspective and that of the people I worked with we saw a
need to change everything from the way we lived to the way we thought to
the way we even ate. Total Revolution was our way of saying that we
weren't going to settle for political or cultural change, but that we
want it all, we want everything to change. Western society had reached a
stalemate and needed a total overhaul. We knew that wasn't going to
happen, but that was our demand, what we were about.
It also meant seeing that you need all types of people involved, not
just political activists. Poets and artists are just as important.
Revolution comes about as a cumulative effect and part of that is a
change in consciousness, a new way of thinking.
How did Black Mask fit into the New York political and arts scenes
because it seems as if you went out of your way to ridicule and
challenge ideologues of all stripes?
Ben: A lot of political people questioned what we did saying we should
only attack society on the political front and that we shouldn't care
about art. However we felt it was best to take action in the place where
you were and that as artists these issues were important to us.
Many of the hippies distrusted us and the politicos hated us because
they couldn't control us or understand what we were doing. As for the
people in the art world I'm sure most of them thought we were crazy.
Black Mask seems to have issued various challenges to the peace movement
in criticising the moderates for their lack of militancy whilst also
attacking the Left for its unconditional support of the National
Liberation Front (NLF). Many radicals from the 1960s are now somewhat
regretful or appear reticent to speak about their support for the North
Vietnamese regime.
Ben: We supported the right of the Vietnamese people to resist American
invasion, but were not going to support the North Vietnamese
government's own oppressive behaviour. It was a subtle point and most of
the left couldn't understand it. We knew the history of Spain where both
the Francoists and Stalinists executed anarchists. We refused to support
one side or the other.
I hated the knee jerk reaction of much of the Left who delighted in
waving the NLF flag around. We didn't cheer the killing of American
troops who were stuck over there as cannon fodder like some others did.
In a sense we didn't fit in anywhere and that meant we became a pole of
attraction for all those other people who weren't interested in a
dogmatic or pacifistic approach. Much of the later evolution of Black
Mask into The Family came about through more and more of these people
joining with us and affecting where we were going.
Black Mask and later The Family were some of the first groups to
encourage the concept of affinity groups as a way of organising. One
Family member famously defined an affinity group as a "street gang with
analysis." How did this approach develop and the use of term come about?
Ben: Although we associated in similar circles with Murray Bookchin our
group was always very different because we were very visceral and he was
very literate. Murray was keen on using the Spanish term aficionado de
vairos to describe these non-hierarchical groupings of people that were
happening. We said "Oh my god, can you really imagine Americans calling
themselves aficionado de vairos?" (laughter) "Use English, call them
affinity groups."
Tell us about the Black Mask magazine you produced which ran from 1966
to 1968 and spanned ten issues.
Ben: Ron and I mainly put the magazine together, but there was a. wider
group who helped produce, print and distribute it. We sold it for a
nickel, which wasn't much money, but we figured if people had to pay for
it then they would actually want and read it rather than just take one
look and throw it in the trash.
We tended to sell it on the Lower East Side, which was the most fertile
ground for us as there were many artists and activists. We occasionally
went up town as well although that was more to stir the pot.
Black Mask was one of the first groups to take on countercultural
figures like Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg for their timidity,
orientation towards religion and status seeking, labelling them at one
point "The New Establishment." From 1967 onwards it seems as if Black
Mask moved a lot of its critique away from the arts establishment and
towards the growing hippy movement and New Left.
Ben: Although we were critical of them I was close to Allen Ginsberg and
became close to Timothy Leary years later. What we were trying to say at
that moment was that they were allowing themselves to be used as a
safety valve. We wanted to attack the core of society and believed they
weren't doing that. At the time we thought they were being used by the
likes of Time and Life magazine although in hindsight Time and Life
probably wish they had never covered them, especially Timothy.
We were always trying to shake things up, to push everyone else as well
as ourselves. There was always a lot of interchange with all sorts of
other radicals and sometimes there was fratricide in that we would
strike out at people we otherwise liked just to make a point.
In 1966 Black Mask magazine cited the Situationist International as a
group moving in a similar direction to yourselves calling as they were
for "the revolution of everyday life" and the abolition of art as a
separate, specialized activity. However in late 1967 the SI expelled
three of its British members for having supported "a certain Ben Morea,
publisher of the bulletin Black Mask." What was the source of friction
between the groups and to what extent were you ever linked?
Ben: The Situationists and I never saw eye to eye. I thought that they
were extremely doctrinaire and limited. The Situationists seemed to
excommunicate more people than they kept. Theree was never really any
connection between our groups and theirs.
What happened with the "assassination" of the poet Ken Koch in 1967?
Ben: Koch was a symbol to us of this totally bourgeois, dandy world.
Myself, Dan Georgakas, Alan Van Newkirk and some of the other Black Mask
people went to one of his readings. I think I came up with idea to shoot
him with a blank pistol. Alan looked like the classic image of the bomb
throwing anarchist. He was about six foot three, long and thin with a
gaunt face and always dressed in black - the anarchist incarnate. So we
decided "You're the one, you're going to shoot him." (laughter) We
printed a leaflet and all it had on it was a picture of Leroi Jones with
the words `Poetry is revolution.' On the night when Alan shot the blank
Koch fainted and everyone in the audience assumed he was dead and
started screaming . Some people threw the leaflet from the balcony into
the crowd and then we all left.
Reactions after the event were split between people who thought it was
the greatest thing they'd ever heard and those that thought we were a
bunch of sophomoric assholes. Which was great because so much of what
Black Mask and The Family was about was pushing people to decide "Do I
belong with this group of people or this one?" We were determined to be
outrageous in order to force people to decide where they stood on
things. We wanted to push people, force them to think. "Why shoot Koch?
He's just a nice poet."
What was Black Mask's connection to Students for a Democratic Society?
Ben: We saw that SDS was becoming a real force for change and that all
these traditional left groups and Maoists like Progressive Labor were
trying to take it over and control its direction. We thought it was
important for other kinds of people, like us, to get involved and show
the students that there were many choices, many ways they could go.
I remember being at one of the SDS national conventions and people were
getting into a heated debate about the differences between the Yankees,
the East Coast based establishment, and the Cowboys, the Texan based
establishment. I got up and said "This is all bullshit, I don't know
about you guys, we're not the Yankees or the Cowboys- we're the
Indians!" Another time a member of The Family ran for a position and got
up with a waste paper basket and said "Here's my platform, throw all the
position papers in here."
With both Black Mask and later The Family we used guerrilla theatre and
actions to show that there was another approach on offer other than
boring politics as usual and the more volatile elements of SDS resonated
with that. Some of the people who went on to form [US armed struggle
organisation] The Weathermen hung out with The Family and, although it
has never really been credited, borrowed a lot from our militant style
and attitude. However once they melded with the more Leninist groups
they took it all in a very different direction.
Tell us about Valerie Solanas, who you were close to and wrote a defence
of following her murdoer attempt on Andy Warhol in 1968. There was a
deafening silence in the underground press around her ideas and actions
following the shooting. This seems a little odd given the fact that by
this point the New Left had begun to increasingly glorify political
violence.
Ben: Valerie used to stay with me quite a bit as she was fairly homeless
and always on the move. There was a lot of parody and irony in her
writing, but she was also, and I don't mean this in a bad sense, a
fairly crazy person. She saw a need to raise a lot of issues around what
happens to women and the SCUM Manifesto was the best way she could
express herself. I always loved people who were loose cannons, who
didn't fit the mould.
Sometime later when Black Mask had wrapped up and The Family had started
we were involved in the occupation of Columbia University [1968].
Valerie came up there and found me and asked "What would happen if I
shot somebody?" I said "It depends on two things - who you shoot and
whether they die or not." A week later she shot Andy Warhol.
After she shot him I wrote a pamphlet supporting her. I may have been
the only person who did that publicly. I went up to MOMA and handed it
out there. Everybody I met was very negative about it, but, hey, I
disliked Andy Warhol immensely and I loved Valerie. I felt she was right
in her anger and that he was way more destructive than she was because
he was helping to destroy the whole idea of creativity in art. Some
people dislike the term, but I feel that creativity is a kind of
spiritual act, a profound thing for people to do. Warhol was the exact
opposite, he tried to deny and purge the core of creativity and put it
on a commercial basis. As a person he was really despicable, as well,
and that's why Valerie hated him. He used and manipulated people.
The attack on Andy was met with silence on the Left and I think that was
because it raised issues that no one could deal with. This wasn't
violence occurring in some far off place. Also Andy had become a star,
almost an honoured image, and here she was striking at it. Even the
people who liked her feminist approach couldn't deal with the fact that
she would harm Andy. Black Mask and The Family drove the political
people nuts because we didn't fit into any of their blueprints, because
we were loose cannons, so you can imagine how they looked upon Valerie.
Black Mask continued as a magazine until mid-1968. What was the process
by which the group began to evolve and change into what became known as
Up Against the Wall Motherfucker?
Ben: The Family/Up Against The Wall Motherfucker and Black Mask were
related in that one grew into the other, but in reality they were very
separate groups in terms of the people involved and what they did. There
was no decision to start a new group, no blueprint, it was just an
evolutionary thing where one died away and the next thing came to be.
It's hard even to say exactly at which point one ended and the next
began.
The Family went over the edge, was extremely volatile and didn't have as
much inclination toward the cultural sphere. It included a lot of
artists, but also people from all persuasions who wanted to live a life
more real, more visceral than what was offered. Something less limiting
than just pursuing politics or art, something freer.
We weren't really hippies or politicos. We were separate from other
groups even though we were part of the wider counterculture. Some people
would have placed us as hippies. Those that knew something about the
counterculture could sense that we were a much more guttural breed. But
outwardly we did have the trappings of the hippies in terms of long hair
and ethnic clothing. We also took a lot of LSD. Even though we were also
radicals no one would have mixed us up with the Young Communist League.
(laughter)
What were some of the differences between Black Mask and The Family?
Ben: The Family was much bigger and more vital than Black Mask which was
more of a esoteric group. We never called ourselves Up Against The Wall
Motherfucker, although we signed our posters and leaflets UAW/MF which
anyone in the group could produce, with that name. Amongst ourselves we
were The Family, which might sound weird now because of the association
of that name with Charles Manson with whom we had no connection and
nothing in common with. Whereas I was the main figure in Black Mask The
Family was quite different because it involved a large group of people
who were all equal in strength and in determining the direction of the
group. It was essentially a loose confederation of affinity groups
living across a series of crash pads who shared a tribal outlook and
lifestyle. Different people from the core group would gravitate to a
particular address where a lot of young hippies and runaways would also
stay.
The fact that we rejected the nuclear family model and lived
collectively was never arrived at in a polemical fashion or laid out as
a blueprint. We just had a sense that there were other roots to living
other than what the West had to offer, whether it was from Native
Americans, gypsies or Africa. The hippies had some of that too, but we
really leaned heavily towards this tribal, ethnic outlook. We felt that
there was some strength there that transcended the Western world. We
tried to understand and incorporate some of these elements, both in our
appearance and actual living style. Our whole lives were directed
towards free flow, living organically.
Tell us about the actions The Family were involved in.
Ben: The first real action we did as The Family was to take garbage to
the Lincoln Centre in February 1968. There was a garbage strike in New
York and there was tons of refuse mounting up in the ghettos. The
commercial and wealthier areas were able to hire private contractors to
clean their streets so we decided to take some of the garbage from the
Lower East Side up to the Lincoln Centre. One of our members proposed
this as a cultural exchange - garbage for garbage (laughter). Although
others tended to focus on our aggression and militancy we really had
some beautifully witty people.
We put out a leaflet explaining why were doing this, but those of us
involved realised that we weren't really Black Mask anymore and so we
didn't want that name on it. There was a poem by Leroi Jones with the
line "Up Against The Wall Mother Fucker" in it and I suggested we put
that on there. Somehow it stuck and from then on in everyone referred to
us as that. It wasn't a deliberate thing on our part. It would have been
fairly pretentious to just name ourselves "The Motherfuckers".
(laughter) Black Mask continued as a magazine for a little longer and
then UAW/ MF started creating flyers and posters and doing things for
papers like The Rat.
How were those broadsheets and statements put together?
Ben: They were part of our artistic politics and we enjoyed putting them
together either individually or as a group. We wanted to do something
that was creative and visually exciting, but which also made a
statement. With The Rat two to six members of The Family would go up to
their office each week and do our page. Whoever felt inspired would come
along and we'd all collaborate. People who have reprinted our work, both
at the time and since, often failed to appreciate our sense of humour.
We believed in what we were doing, but we didn't want to be too serious.
We could laugh at ourselves. The best influence we felt we could have
was not just to inject militancy, but also joy and humour into the
struggles of the time.
We had our own mimeograph machine so people were constantly running off
leaflets and posters. A lot of the time I would see one on the street
that I didn't even know had come out. The beauty of our family was that
it was multi-armed and had no central brain so people were often doing
actions and producing things that the rest knew little about.
In the group's writings an affinity group was defined as a "street gang
with analysis." How much of the traditional street gang mentality was a
part of your outlook though?
Ben: Some members were more into the street thing than others. We
weren't territorial or into dead end opposition however. We were "street
tough" rather than street toughs. Osha Neumann who penned that
particular definition (though I had coined the term Affinity Group) saw
it as meaning that we had street smarts and an intense bond not that we
were irrational bullies.
In 1968 students struck and occupied buildings at Columbia in a protest
against the redevelopment of land earmarked for social housing and the
university's links to weapons research. How were you guys involved?
Ben: There were five buildings occupied at Columbia and the one we were
in was the only one the police didn't attack. We didn't put a call out,
but everyone who was a fighter gravitated towards that building. We were
so fortified and aggressive that having evicted all the others they
decided to negotiate rather than force their way in.
We didn't operate from any plan, we just saw situations and took our
chances. We were edge dwellers. During the anti-war protests at the
Pentagon we saw the doors weren't heavily guarded so we went for it and
broke them open. We'd gone along with all the other protesters, but
pretty soon we attracted a core of a few 100 people who were like us. We
saw an opportunity, made a move and they came along.
During 1968 and 1969 The Family were also involved in resisting police
harassment and violence on the Lower East Side. How did you go about
dealing with these problems?
Ben: Our response would include everything from peaceful protests to not
peaceful battling depending on the situation. We were extremely volatile
and it often depended on how hard we were pushed.
Eventually they decided that we had to be dealt with. One night we
barricaded the streets to traffic and threw a party. The police came,
but saw we had too many people and were too strong so they left us
alone. However that was the beginning of the end. We'd become too cocky
and uncontrollable and they began busting us for anything they could.
In October 1968 you personally faced trial on charges of attempted
murder in Boston. What led up to this and your eventual acquittal?
Ben: While I was in New York we heard that young freaks, we never called
ourselves hippies, were being harassed by this group of vigilantes in
Boston. It was pretty bad and a few kids had been hospitalised so I
suggested to some Family members that we should go there and look into
it. We went up and stayed with the street kids and freaks and sure
enough they were attacked while we were there. The attackers were
repelled and I was charged by the police.
I was in jail for about two weeks before I raised ball. After I stood
trial we heard that these vigilantes were still hurting people and
decided to go back because we were concerned that we may have made
things worse. The same guys turned up again, but this time they backed
down and disappeared which was lucky for me because it wouldn't have
done my cause any good.
I didn't get a lot of support for my case as the political community
couldn't have cared less about the hippies whilst the hippies were for
the most part non-violent. However various people helped out and the
story got some coverage in the underground press. In the end I was
acquitted, but the foreman told me that it was all down to one juror. On
the first vote it was 11 to 1 in favour of convicting me, but one guy
managed to convince the others that there was enough doubt to let me go.
I don't know who he was, but I owe that one guy my liberty.
Other than supporting people against the police and opening crash pads
The Family also ran a free store and was involved in various other
activities aimed at street level survival. Tell us about these
activities.
Ben: We were always trying to connect the hippy part of the Lower East
Side community with the street and homeless part. With the influx of
thousands of runaways into the area during the late 1960s they were
sometimes one and the same, but the two communities didn't always
comfortably coexist. We set up a store front to give homeless people as
well as ourselves a place to hang out. We had free clothes, doctors and
lawyers on retainers, a mimeograph, information for people who wanted to
dodge the draft and get fake ID, information on crash pads, etc. It was
a general help centre. We did free food a couple of nights a week, but
also held free food events in a hall or a church on the others where we
would feed up to 300-400 people. We got some papers from a church saying
we were a non-profit and that allowed us to get day old or incorrectly
marked stuff from the produce markets and food outlets for free. Some
people worked, others made donations and the same papers also helped us
to hustle up grants from liberal churches to rent places, etc.
As with a lot of other countercultural groups at the time The Family
drew a line between `life drugs' and `death drugs.' Tell us about that
and the group's approach to illicit drugs in general.
Ben: We differentiated between hard drugs like cocaine and heroin and
those like grass, hashish and psychedelics. We saw that LSD and grass
were helping to break down the structures between suburban youth and
helping them to rethink their place in the universe. Some of us had had
problems with hard drugs and saw that they were destructive. Unlike
Leary and others we didn't see psychedelics as a cure all, but they
could and did make a positive contribution.
People would sometimes bring kids to me who were on bad trips. I would
take LSD and try to go with them to the place where they were in trouble
and help them come back. If you want to talk about putting yourself out
there, that was it. You wouldn't see many Maoists doing that. (laughter)
In late 1968 The Family went head to head with rock promoter Bill Graham
over the issue of community involvement in the Fillmore East venue. What
were the origins of the dispute and how did it all pan out?
Ben: At root this was a clash between the grassroots and those who
exploit them. We didn't want control of the Fillmore East or anything
like that, but we wanted to have one free, non commercial night for the
street people. Given the money they were making out of the community we
figured that they could give something back.
At first Graham refused and during one meeting in his office he pulled
out three silver bullets and lined them up saying "The Hells Angels made
similar demands on me and sent me these three bullets and I didn't give
in." I got up and said "There's one difference between us and the
Angels, we're not giving you anything to put on your desk." That wasn't
a literal threat, but a statement that one way or another we were going
to get what we were demanding.
One night the Living Theatre people were performing at the Fillmore East
and we arranged to come up on stage after them. I made a statement
saying that they were finished, but we were going to stay on stage for
as long as it would take to get what we wanted. It might take one night,
two nights or two weeks, but we were going to stay. We occupied the
stage and fights broke out through the night with Graham and his goons,
but they lost and at about one or two in the morning he gave in and we
got the Thursday night for free.
What sort of events happened on the free Thursdays?
Ben: A lot of rock bands including Canned Heat, the MC5 and Country Joe
McDonald came and played for free and we gave out free dope and food.
I've been told that the MC5 clashed with some sections of the crowd, but
I remember staying at their place in Michigan some time later so I'm not
sure what happened there. After three weeks Graham came to me with a
letter from the police informing him that they were going to shut the
whole venue down if these nights continued due to the free drugs policy.
We accepted that that was it, but in the end it didn't matter that it
had only lasted three weeks because we got to challenge the whole
commercial world of rock n roll.
Woodstock provided us with another opportunity to challenge the music
industry. These young kids said "You always say the music's free, well
we're going to make it free." Like most of the things we did nothing was
planned. We just went along and some of us thought it would be a good
idea to cut the fences and let everyone in. When it began raining we
found where the organisers were storing camping equipment for sale and
liberated all the tents and sleeping bags. We cut a hole in the storage
tent and just gave them out.
Did The Family interact much with groups from other parts of the country
and world?
Ben: A tremendous number of people came through New York and spent time
with us around the time that The Family began. They included some UK
Situationists who became the King Mob group, members of the Zenga-Kuren
from Japan, Jean Jacques Leibel who was one of the leaders in the `68
uprising in Paris and also some Provos from Holland. All of these groups
overlapped with our approach in one way or another.
We were also doing a lot of travelling ourselves. I spent time with The
Diggers in San Francisco. They were coming from a very similar place in
terms of radicalism and the rejection of the entrepreneurs who were
profiting from the counterculture, but our approaches were very
different. There was a lot of support from the West Coast groups, even
[LSD manufacturer] Owsley gave us some money. There were also small
groups of people all over the country who identified with us and stayed
with us.
What prompted the decision to leave the Lower East Side?
Ben: The police felt threatened by us. They began following us closely
and engaging in constant harassment. Some of our people were also
charged in the second wave of indictments that came out of the Chicago
protests.
These things in themselves didn't drive us out, but we were evolving and
exploring new directions. The tribal element became more strident and
many of us began to wonder why we were stuck in the ghetto anyway. A lot
of the young runaways were being preyed upon and we felt it would be
safer to move them out. We took about twenty of them to California at
one point and helped others find homes elsewhere.
The group didn't end all of a sudden, but dispersed with most of us
getting involved in various land oriented projects and communes. I
personally stopped writing and went into the mountains and didn't come
out for five years. I became inspired by Wilhelm Reich's The Murder of
Christ and its idea that you don't ignore the wider issues, but move on
to tackle them one person at a time.
With the US government on a permanent war footing overseas whilst
simultaneously cracking down on civil liberties and dissent at home it
sometimes seems as if the left wing movements of the 1960s never
existed. What do you see as the legacy of groups like Black Mask and the
New Left in general?
Ben: Part of the reason I re-emerged [after more than 30 years of
anonymity] to talk about what we did back in the 1960s is the fact that
things have gotten so bad in the US. It's at a point where you can't
ignore it, it's worse than ever.
I figured that I'd start letting people know about our history and then
go from there. All I can tell people is that when it looked pretty
dismal in the past we took action and it did have an effect. A lot was
achieved and yet a few years beforehand no one would have expected that
we could take on the behemoth of American capitalism. It's
counter-productive to sit back and say "You can't do anything." It's not
my place to tell people exactly what they should do, but there is always
some way to respond and take action, just look around.