FREE THE WEED 09
A Column by John Sinclair
"JOHN SINCLAIR"
It ain't fair, John Sinclair
In the stir for breathing air.
Won't you care for John Sinclair?
In the stir for breathing air.
Let him be, set him free,
Let him be like you & me.
They gave him ten for two—
What else can the judges do?
Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta,
Gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta,
Gotta, gotta, set him free.
—John Lennon
Northern Songs Ltd., 1971
December 1971—The trusties' visiting room at the State Prison of
Southern Michigan at Jackson is a brutal place. Men are brought
in from their cellblocks or farm assignments to spend a carefully
guarded hour or two with wives or other loved ones—their only
contact with the world from which they were forcibly removed upon
incarceration—and the ubiquitous prison guards keep close watch
on all parties present to insure thot contraband is not passed, sexual
liberties are not taken, extended caresses are not shared.
I'm sitting on the edge of my seat on the prisoners' side of one of the
tables reserved for “legal visits,” listening incredulously as Dennis
Hayes delivers the latest of what have become almost daily reports
on new developments in the protracted battle to gain my freedom
from a 9-1/2-to-10-year prison sentence for possessing two joints of
marijuana one December day five years before.
An all-out drive is on to spring me. My brief on appeal, an
unprecedented challenge on several grounds to the constitutionality
of Michigan's oppressive drug laws, has been heard two months
previously in the Michigan Supreme Court, and we're waiting for a
decision.
The Michigan legislature is about to vote on a long-debated measure
that would reclassify marijuana from a "narcotic" to a "controlled
substance," making the "crime" of possessing a few joints subject to
a maximum penalty of one year in jail. We've taken out a full-page ad
in the Detroit Free Press, undersigned by prominent citizens from all
over the country, calling for my immediate release.
Even more urgently, a mammoth rally and concert—the latest and
by far the largest of a long succession of rock & roll benefits staged
by my comrades in the White Panther Party (by now re-named the
Rainbow People's Party) to help pay my legal expenses and keep
up the steady stream of "Free John Sinclair" propaganda—has been
scheduled for Friday, December 10th at the 14,000-seat Crisler
Arena at the University of Michigan.
Every possible contact, no matter how remote, is being exhorted to
join the bill for this ultimate event, which has been designed to put
irresistible pressure on the legislature to pass the new drug bill before
its 1971 session is recessed for the holidays.
Old friends from the musical sector like Commander Cody & His
Lost Planet Airmen, Archie Shepp & Roswell Rudd, Detroit's
Contemporary Jazz Quintet, David Peel & The Lower East Side,
and The Up were committed to appear at Crisler Arena, along with
poets Allen Ginsburg and Ed Sanders, Black Panther Party Chairman
Bobby Seale, anti-war activists Rennie Davis and Dave Dellinger,
radical Milwaukee priest Fr. James Groppi, Sheila Murphy from the
Labor Defense Coalition in Detroit, Johnnie Tillmon of the National
Welfare Rights Association, and Jerry Rubin of the Yippies, who
was planning to bring along his pal Phil Ochs, the great left-wing
folksinger.
We had to fill the arena with far more people than we'd ever turned
out in one place before to demonstrate the size of the popular support
for a drastic reduction in the severity of the state's marijuana laws—
now 10 years for possession and a mandatory 20-year minimum
sentence for selling or otherwise dispensing weed—and for my
immediate release from prison pending the disposition of my appeal.
Anything less than a smash success at Crisler Arena would seriously
undermine our efforts to persuade the media and the Legislature that
public opinion was with us on this issue like never before. But my old
friend Peter Andrews, our inside man at the University of Michigan
and the producer of the event, was particularly concerned about the
attendance issue.
Andrews had put his incipient career as UM's in-house concert
promoter on the line, using his position to help us secure the use of
the university's largest indoor facility for our most insanely ambitious
effort to date, and the reports I had been receiving at Jackson
indicated that he was growing increasingly nervous.
Just a day or two before, Andrews had reviewed the list of projected
participants proposed by my brother David, Chief of Staff for the RPP.
Peter's lengthy experience as a concert promoter brought a frown to
his face as he studied the scribbled line-up. There was no way this
rag-tag assemblage of poets, political radicals, way-out jazz artists
and small-time rockers would attract more than a thousand people,
let alone 14,000.
With only a week to go before the big show, nothing short of a miracle
of some sort would save the day. Lacking any serious headliners,
Peter counseled, the only way we would avoid a serious public-
relations setback would be to drop our plans to use Crisler Arena and
reschedule the event for a smaller venue—or cancel out the whole
thing at once.
This is where attorney Hayes had left me at the end of our last
visit, and I had lost a couple nights' sleep trying to figure out how
this potential masterstroke would be salvaged before Andrews lost
all patience and—reasonably enough, I was forced to conclude—
decided to shut the project down rather than take the chance of
having it cave in on top of him.
Hayes held out hope that our contacts across the country would
soon be successful in enlisting the participation of sympathetic
rock stars who were familiar with my case, but I was in a blue funk
contemplating the consequences of a collapse and wouldn't stomach
the slightest shred of phony optimism.
All was quickly being lost—without a powerful prod from the
great unwashed public demanding my release, the Legislature
would let their session lapse once again without bringing the drug
reclassification bill to a decisive vote, and I'd languish helplessly in
prison for another year before we'd get a chance like this again.
Throughout my long struggle against the marijuana laws, the
narcotics police, the courts, the prison administration and the federal
government, I had steadfastly refused to back down in any way and
instead continued to confront the enemy at every turn.
Now the struggle was at a crucial point: We were on the offensive in
a big way, public opinion was beginning to shift toward our position at
last, and all we had to do was make the rally at Crisler Arena into a
smashing success—14,000 people gathered in one place to demand
freedom for John Sinclair!
The victory that had seemed so near was starting to drift out of our
grasp, and I was in an irascible mood while I waited for Hayes to join
me at the visiting room table and tell me that the whole thing had
been called off.
Yet the young attorney was wearing an almost maniacal grin on his
face as he bounded toward our table, bubbling with an enthusiasm
I couldn't bear to countenance in my depressed state. “What's the
deal, Hayes?” I greeted him with a sneer, “and what the fuck are you
grinning about, for chrissakes?”
I should be able to recall every word of what Hayes said, because it
rocked me down to my feet, but all I can recall is the sense of utter
incredulity which filled my being when I heard him say that John
Lennon & Yoko Ono would be coming out with their pal Jerry Rubin
for the rally December 10th.
John Lennon? I couldn't believe my ears, and I turned on Hayes with
barely suppressed rage. Hayes seemed to back up a few paces, his
hands held palms out before his face as if to ward off an anticipated
blow from his frantic pro bono client.
“No shit, man,” he pleaded, “Jerry Rubin called to confirm it, and get
this: Lennon's writing a song about you that he's gonna play at the
rally! Rubin's already heard some of it at Lennon's place, and he was
raving about how great it was.
“This is going to blow the whole thing wide open—there's no way
they're gonna be able to keep you in here after Lennon comes out to
Ann Arbor for the concert, man!”
This struck me as even more preposterous. I'd heard that Rubin had
been hanging out with John and Yoko in New York City, showing
them around the scene and introducing them, at their request, to
movement people of every stripe. Word was that Lennon was about
to make a move himself, and everyone was waiting breathlessly to
see which way the popular ex-Beatle would go.
But come to Ann Arbor? To free John Sinclair? And write a song
about my case to boot? An announcement was authorized by
the Lennon camp, and the Rainbow People's Party called a press
conference to drop the bomb on an unsuspecting public.
On December 9th the other shoe fell when the Michigan state
legislature brought the drug reclassification bill to a vote—and passed
it! Under the new legislation, possession of marijuana would be
reduced to a misdemeanor with a maximum one-year sentence;
convictions for sales of marijuana would bring a 4-year max; and the
new law would take effect on April 1, 1972.
Lennon had put the key in the lock, and the legislators were turning
it. My attorneys renewed my petition for bond on appeal, a necessary
technicality, and soon I'd be a free man at last!
The rally was held December 10th, a Friday night, and on Monday
morning I was called out to the visiting room to meet a triumphant
Dennis Hayes, who told me my brother was on his way up to the
state capitol at Lansing to post a $2,500 appeal bond and I'd be out
by nightfall.
Peter Andrews and my brother David were waiting outside the prison
compound to whisk me away in the same Bentley limousine that had
been used to transport the Lennons from the airport to Ann Arbor and
back over the weekend.
I worked my way slowly to the Bentley with my wife Leni and two
small daughters at my side, staggering through a small army of
friends and comrades, all of us laughing and crying hysterically in the
throes of my new-found freedom.
A television news reporter thrust a microphone in my face to ask
me that most inane of all questions: “How do you feel now, Mr.
Sinclair? And what's your position on marijuana now that you've been
released?”
”I wanna go home and smoke some joints, man!” I roared—and that's
exactly what I did:
Lots of 'em!
—Detroit
May 1, 1991 >
Amsterdam
November 23, 2011
© 1991, 20089, 2011 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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