We Dissent – 2 – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We focused in, yesterday, on a long-lost and recently-discovered film (and film transcript). Kenneth Tynan‘s controversial 1960 tv documentary on American dissent and dissenters – “We Dissent”. As we mentioned, included in the film, along with a host of other participants, were Allen and Peter – and Lawrence Ferlinghetti  (and Philip Lamantia and  Bob Kaufman) 

Here’s Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s contribution – (he reads a section from his “Tentative Description of A Dinner To Promote The Impeachment of President Eisenhower”, originally written a few years previously, and focusing on the ever-timely, ever-pertinent, nuclear threat):

William Clark, the narrator, sets the scene:

“There is one point at which the Beats have found themselves unable or unwilling to disengage, to disaffiliate, not to care. The nuclear problem has involved their conscience. We see one direct result of this poetic awareness in this poetic statement written two years ago and spoken now by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose San Francisco Beat bookshop is a landmark the movement.”

LF: “After it became obvious the the strange rain would never stop. And after it became obvious that the President was doing everything in his power to make the world safe for nationalism, his brilliant military mind never having realized that nationalism itself was the idiotic superstition which would blow up the world, and after it became obvious that the president nevertheless still carried (no matter where) – he went in the strange rain – a little (telegraph key which like a) can opener could be used instantly to open but not to close the hot box of final war. If not to waylay any stray asinine action by any stray asinine second  lieutenant pressing any stray button anywhere, violet rays over an arctic ocean, thus illuminating the world once and for all, God Bless America. And after it became obvious that the law of gravity was still in effect, and that what blows up must come down on everyone including white citizens./ And after it became obvious the Voice of America was really the Deaf Ear of America and that the President was unable to hear the under-privileged natives of the world shouting  “No Contamination Without Representation”.
Then it was that the natives of the Republic began assembling in a driving rain from which there was no escape – except Peace./ And finally after everyone who was anyone and everyone who was no one had arrived, and after every soul was seated and waiting for the symbolic mushroom soup to be served and for the keynote speeches to begin, the President himself came in, took one look around and said “We resign”.