The Playboy Interview: Men of Letters by Playboy

Author:Playboy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
Published: 2012-11-25T23:00:00+00:00

Playboy: How do you feel your Festival of Life turned out?

Ginsberg: Well, it didn’t come anywhere near its goal, obviously. For one thing, few people realized what a locked-up police state Chicago was, just like Prague—and how much stealing, guns and Mafia and outright illegality there was. Police and City Hall break laws and lie. Chicago has no government; it’s just anarchy maintained by pistol. Inside the convention hall it was rigged like an old Mussolini strong-arm scene—police and party hacks everywhere illegally, delegates shoved around and kidnapped, telephone lines cut. And Daley himself mouthing curses at Ribicoff on TV.

Playboy: What do you think caused the violence in Lincoln Park and in front of the Hilton Hotel?

Ginsberg: None of those assemblies in the park or marches were violently provocative. Provocation was ultimately on the part of the city, whose threats, shows of force, tear gas and physical attacks triggered every specific instance of violence. The city also helped to provoke the violence by insisting on technical interpretations of law that only foment riots—such as refusing to make humane adaptations of rules to let people sleep in the park. And the city’s restrictions prohibited free movement of people in what is, after all, their own territory. “The streets belong to the people,” as Abbie Hoffman kept saying. “The streets belong to whoever we say can have them,” the cops replied. Obviously, that’s a confrontation.

Playboy: Did you see any acts of violence by the demonstrators?

Ginsberg: Sure. There was lots of violent language after people were beat up, but there weren’t many kids who wanted outright revolutionary violence or bloody confrontation. Of course, there was a small group of “terrorists” who believed in stink-bomb sabotage as therapy, and a few youthful drunks who were violently resentful of all symbolic authority. But there were no more of these than in the normal population of any country club.

Actually, the tragicomedy of the Daley-police position was that the city was paranoiacally obsessed with any sign of inflammatory language or behavior by rare revolutionary birds. So they beat up an entire cross-section of typical healthy American youths, avant-grade flowery longhairs, the entire mass media and all those in the “Clean for Gene” suite at the Hilton. They also tear-gassed half of their own force on occasion. As Burroughs remarked, it wasn’t that the police intended to beat up on citizens; it was that they literally did not see whom they were attacking in their hysteria.

It became a question of how to handle such confrontations. What kind of street theater would best make one’s point? One possibility was a theater of resistance—by using your body to try to hold the ground and being ready to have your head clubbed.

Playboy: Isn’t that what the police would call “asking for it”?

Ginsberg: Are Americans reduced to having to regain liberty by violence—like in the American Revolution? Obviously this is the question on everybody’s mind. I’m convinced there’s another way. Blake has some lines appropriate to armed resistance: “Thy brother has

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