Lords Of The Revolution

This is a 4 part series on VH1.

* Mohammad Ali
* Cheech & Chong
* The Black Panthers
* Timothy Leary

THE BLACK PANTHERS

Their in-your-face form of protest against the establishment had never been seen before. Carrying weapons, marching in formation, and... helping the poor. Helping the disenfranchised.

I was in high school at the time and I was loving it. I was an anti-authority junior rebel and was pretty stoked when someone else bucked the system on such a grand scale in the fight for equality.

After Huey Newton and Bobby Seale went to jail, Eldridge Cleaver moved to the forefront of the Black Panthers. His wife, Kathleen Cleaver was also a force. They all became heroes to hippies. (I've always hated that word.) Anyway, you may enjoy these programs.

link | website

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Living Things Habeas Corpus

Living Things Habeas Corpus

On February 17, St. Louis, MO, garage rock quartet Living Things released their much-anticipated third album, Habeas Corpus, and it's solid as a motherfucker. No fancy riffs or vocal gymnastics, just a solid rock and roll sound.

The album was recorded in Berlin by the band -- St Louis, MO, brothers Lillian, Eve and Bosh Berlin, and guitarist Cory Becker. Lead singer Lillian (still looking like Jagger via Altamont) and band stay true to their lo-fi rock sound with only a modicum of compromise that may come with a new label. Or maturity.

The back story can be more interesting than the party line. Several years ago Lillian battled down a heroin addiction and went to jail several times. The Berlin brothers' Mom, mom, an activist from Chicago was raised Catholic and once tried to join the Black Panthers before moving to the conservative St. Louis suburb where her boys -- two of whom she named after their grandmothers -- were born.

While shooting a video in Prague, Lillian met the outstanding director, Italian filmmaker Floria Sigismondi. They married in 2004 and had a daughter that same year.
YouTube | Website

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RADICAL LIVING PAPERS

RADICAL LIVING PAPERS
A history of the free, alternative, counter-culture and underground press, 1965-75
Gavin Brown's enterprise at PASSERBY
February 2 - March 7, 2007

Covering politics, revolutions, evolutions of the planets, freak-outs, love-ins, support of green politics, gay liberation, power to the people, the peace parties, protests, the Panthers, peyote, LSD, pot, fiction, music, poetry, prose, prayers and more. Publications include: Actuel, Avatar, Berkeley Barb, Berkeley Tribe, Black Panther Papers, Digger Papers, Door, East Village Other [EVO], The Fifth Estate, Freep, Grabuge, Hobo-Québec, International Times [it], Los Angeles Free Press, The Oracle, The Organ, Other Scenes, OZ, Rat, The Realist, Re Nudo, Rolling Stone, The Seed, Ann Arbor Sun....more.

GBE@Passerby

Blogged with Flock
(from the inbox via: arthur)

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Black Panthers - 40 Years

So much going on in the month of October to celebrate the 40th Reunion of the Black Panther Party.

All weekend, former and current members of the Black Panther Party are holding events to commemorate the 40th anniversary of an organization that brought breakfasts to poor school children, and emblazoned the image of black power on the national consciousness.The party attracted people like former UCLA lecturer Angela Davis, whom the late Governor Ronald Reagan vowed would never again teach in the University of California system.

At right is Angela Davis now and the bottom photo is how I'll always remember her; speaking at rallies and motivating a nation. She was one of my role models when I was growing up.

Now a tenured professor in the History of Consciousness program at U.C. Santa Cruz, Davis says the war in Iraq and the socio-economic rift exposed by Hurricane Katrina show that the party’s message 30 years ago is still relevant today.

Related:
» More on Angela Davis
» Today's Washington Post article
» Black Panther Party Legacy and Alumni
» BBQ-ing With Bobby (Seale)

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Web Trail - Tom Robbins, Social Suicide, Acid Reduxe, Sedaris, Unhoused, Black Panthers, Juneteenth

* Not Just Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robbins reflects on his 44-year romance with the Blue Moon bar in Seattle. link

* Social Suicide - Tailored in Savile Row and styled for a civil row, this isn't your average shit. link

* ACID REDUX - The life and high times of Timothy Leary link

* WHAT I LEARNED - And what I said at Princeton by DAVID SEDARIS (his recent commencement speech) link

* Street blogging - Filmmaker Daniel Cross goes online to tell the stories of Canada’s street populace with Homelessnation.org. Here the "unhoused" maintain their blogs and podcasts and more. link

* Newsreel Film DVD on Black Panthers being compiled with appeal for donations. link

* At the annual Juneteenth festival comedian/activist Dick Gregory blasted the major television networks for hiding the truth in reporting a bloody and ugly war in Iraq. link

Carpe Scrotum - Grab life by the balls

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Stew Albert 1939 - 2006

Berkley 1968 - Portland 2002
Stew Albert a prominent anti-Vietnam war activist, an early supporter of the Black Panthers and a founder of the Yippie radical protest group, died Monday at age 66 in Portland, Oregon.

Initially diagnosed with Hepatitis C, he spent a whole year enduring grueling chemotherapy. He spoke openly about it on his website, documenting each day and each weekly shot. He was finally declared free of the disease only to be diagnosed with liver cancer this past December. The ultimate Fuck You. (My sister passed away this past Thanksgiving also from liver cancer from Hep C.) We spoke thru email about Hep C, how it sucked and how the treatment felt worse than the disease. I was always inspired by his spirit. From 1968 in Chicago throughout his life. People with true 60s ideals are a rare breed. Tom Robbins said, Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. Stew certainly believed in magic.

On his website...from Judy
"Stew will be buried tomorrow (Wednesday) in Jones Pioneer Cemetery in Portland. He will be wrapped in a tallis (Jewish prayer shaw), holding a stuffed flower from the Haight and wearing his kick-ass Frye boots and our wedding ring."

There are beautiful sentiments expressed on his website, Bay Area Indymedia, Infoshop News, SFGate, and on Counterpunch.


More On Hepatitis C
Allen Ginsberg died from complications of it. Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, and David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, & Nash, both had liver transplants and still suffer from it. Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, suffered from it and died of liver cancer in 2001. Penny Arcade, the 55-year-old performance artist for the East Village avant-garde art scene since Andy Warhol roamed the city, also suffers from it.

Miles Keaton Andrew, a 52-year-old author who contracted it when he experimented with intravenous drugs as a teenager, has kept a blog, www.mkandrew.com, since 2001 about his experiences battling H.C.V. His blog has received a million hits in the past year. “I understand the whole stigma thing,” he told The Villager. "There are a lot of people like me who might have experimented with drugs. Some of us got sick from it and it isn’t anything to be ashamed about."

Hep C Life After Interferon is another blogger who documents his experience with it.

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