Our transcription from yesterday’s 1971 Meditation Lesson/Poetry Reading/Discussion in Detroit continues with a focus on John Sinclair and the John Sinclair “Ten For Two” case, then on-going and at that time unresolved
AG: …..A thread through my skull that was supporting me.
Interviewer: Holding you up?
AG: Yeah. To try to do that.
Interviewer: Allen, I know you have another poem, one by John Sinclair and I know it’s your interest in John’s case that has brought you to Detroit at this particular time.
AG: Yes and the last time.
Interviewer: The last time too.
AG: The last time and the time before that.
Interviewer: The last time too. Probably the time next.
AG: John’s a great poet There’s a poem that I got in the mail lately put out here in Detroit by the Alternative Press. (Ann & Ken Mikolowski) print them up in their own basement printing machine – [Allen reads “From Marquette Prison” by John Sinclair, May 17 1970 (“Each day I get further behind in my work…”)]
Interviewer: Nine-and-a-half years was what he was sentenced, as you.. for giving two joints of marijuana cigarettes to a police plant.
AG: No, for possession, this was merely for possession.
Interviewer: Not for lovingly giving them to the policeman.
AG: Yeah, incidentally. this month, the beginning month of the year, 1971, the associate district attorney for New York submitted a plea to the New York legislature to reduce the penalties of possession of grass from a misdemeanor to a violation (which is like a traffic ticket) with a maximum of fifteen days. So that when you compare the actual movement in this country towards the liberalization and relaxation of these laws and getting rid of the police state in this area (I mean, even the district attorneys are tired of their own little tiny police-state in New York, with that scene) . When you compare that fifteen-day traffic violation with (even when, you know, (it’s) not even on your record) to what John Sinclair got in Michigan – nine-and-a-half to ten years for two joints, you realize the total insanity of the government in this case, that marijuana apparently does more harm to people who don’t smoke it than those who do! Recently there’s been a letter from the International PEN Club to the Governor of Michigan on behalf of John.. (The PEN Club is like a big upper-middle-class respectable literary organization, international, that takes exception and writes letters to governments whenever a writer is in trouble with the government and it’s the government’s fault. Like, they’re always writing letters to Russia, you know, to protect (Joseph) Brodsky or (Alexander Solzhenitsyn). They’ve written finally to the Governor of Michigan pointing out that John Sinclair got the longest sentence for possession ever in the history of Michigan. And so obviously it is a political ploy by the police to shut him up – just as the recent conspiracy CIA bombing trial is also, to a great extent, a set-up, a political set-up by the police, to involve John in the work of other people, particularly the “madman” who’s been babbling out of prison with another seven-year jail sentence on top of him, trying to get out of jail – David Valler – by turning States evidence and trying to implicate other people. So, I came here with (William) Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, the lawyers, earlier this month, January ’71 to testify in court (where I was all day yesterday and the day before) on a few points of constitutional law (which may be settled by the time this is sent out)
Interviewer: Oh, the law doesn’t move that fast, does it Allen?
AG: Oh they may have to make a decision, you know. One is – Kunstler was arguing that the whole thing was wire-tapping and that’s illegal, unconstitutional in the form that was done, so sorting it out that way. I was arguing or witnessing the fact that there was a definite youth culture, a definite social class, which was not represented on the juries, that the jurors are mostly over twenty-nine years old in age (tho’ the vote is now to eighteen-year-olds – there are no eighteen-to-twenty-one year-olds on the jury at all, that Sinclair has the right to be judged by his peers in the youth group and the exclusion of those kids (peers, citizens, voters) from the jury is prejudicial to John, because the older people who sit on the juries won’t know the language – i.e. “granny glasses” (like he wears), won’t know, you know, “tie-dyed shirts”, won’t know what the word “revolution” means in the mouths of young upper-class middle-class lower-class hippie revolutionaries, won’t know the exact gradations of that and will take their definition from the mafia-controlled yellow press, rather than from common speech. So I came to testify, like, a language-expert and a youth culture quote – “expert witness” – unquote, to protect his rights to a fair trial constitutionally.
Interviewer: It’s an interesting legal point because it seems to me that prior to you raising this issue his peers would automatically be excluded from a jury. I would think that a judge would automatically see someone with long hair and say – er, that’s not…
AG: Yeah, well we were… that was the point we were making, I didn’t raise it, that.. that was Weinglass.. that was just the whole strategy of the trial, first of all, to secure, like, a real jury in a real court, if that were.. if that’s possible under our system, as it may not be, as we found with many of the conspiracy trials, the whole concept of conspiracy trial being like a con by the government, I would say, a con to, like, lay the blame of the conspiracy on private citizens instead of on the CIA, or inner councils of war government where the actual conspiracies are taking place, such as the CIA conspiracy with various Indo-Chinese groups to traffic in opium…
to be continued tomorrow