AADL Talks to Kathy Kelley

Thu, 01/31/2013 - 1:30pm

Kathy Kelly moved into the Hill Street houses when she was very young, but she recalls her life there as a member of the White Panther Party as a positive, life-changing personal experience and social experiment. Kathy talks about daily life in the commune with her friends and colleagues, some of the events she participated in, including the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, as well as her apprenticeship as a graphic artist under legendary rock poster artist, Gary Grimshaw. Kathy's experience with the White Panther Party and Rainbow People's Party led to a successful career in art direction for publishing with magazines such as Chicago, Outside, CREEM, and most especially in educational publishing with Weekly Reader Corporation and Scholastic.

Transcript

• [00:00:00.00] [MUSIC]
• [00:00:04.96] ANDREW: Hi, this is Andrew.
• [00:00:06.70] AMY: And this is Amy. And in this episode, AADL talks to Kathy Kelley.
• [00:00:10.66] [MUSIC]
• [00:00:13.46] ANDREW: Kathy Kelley started living in the Hill Street houses when she was very young, and recalls life in the commune as a positive, life-changing personal experience, and social experiment. She talks about the people she admired, some of the events she participated in-- including the John Sinclair Freedom Rally-- as well as her apprenticeship as a graphic artist under the legendary rock poster artist Gary Grimshaw.
• [00:00:35.20] ANDREW: When did you start to become familiar with the White Panthers, with the Hill Street community?
• [00:00:41.48] KATHY KELLEY: They went hand in hand. I was already aware of it before I moved here. Because I was close enough, and because it was sometimes in the newspapers. I can't pinpoint the exact time when I became exactly aware of it. It was something that I grew up into. Because at the time I was born, there was mention of it in the newspaper occasionally.
• [00:01:05.66] AMY: Were you part of the White Panthers, or the Rainbow People's Party, or did you just associate with them?
• [00:01:11.30] KATHY KELLEY: Yes, no, I was. I was a member of the White Panther Party, and then the Rainbow People's Party. It happened over a period of time, because I lived close, and because I first lived in a hippie crash pad scenario. I did volunteer work at the Ann Arbor Argus, and I stayed there for some time-- not a long time, but some time. And I eventually decided that the approach the White Panther Party was taking was going to be the most effective. And I wanted to make the best use of my energy, and my time.
• [00:01:52.34] I thought that the idea of combining politics and culture, that you can't think of all of these separately, that life is one integrated whole. So it made the most sense to me, and I just gradually developed relationships with the people there by contributing my time in my effort, while trying to live, and stay alive. I was very young, so--
• [00:02:19.57] AMY: How did your family feel about your association with them?
• [00:02:23.06] KATHY KELLEY: They were very distressed. My mother is still alive. Fortunately my parents were very progressive, socially and politically-- they were both U of M graduates, actually-- so they are very familiar with this area. So they discouraged it, but they did not want to damage our relationship, or sever our relationship. My mother said, if you ever get arrested, we're going to tell them that you ran away.
• [00:02:55.77] So I accepted that, very graciously, and they did everything they could to try to support me, but yet discourage it, and to have me come and lead a more--take a traditional path, which they would have preferred, of course obviously. My father wouldn't come into the house, but my mother would, so she did come a couple of times to visit me.
• [00:03:23.57] AMY: What did she think?
• [00:03:25.43] KATHY KELLEY: I think she was overwhelmed. Because there it was such an active place, and there were so many people, that there was always a lot of activity going on all of the time, or almost all the time. So she came, and got out fairly quickly. I was very, very lucky in that way. I did go to visit them, and they did try to encourage me to come back.
• [00:03:54.24] AMY: What was daily life like at the Hill Street houses. Can you talk about that a little?
• [00:03:59.32] KATHY KELLEY: It changed over time, but it tended to be very coordinated. People were recognizing that everybody needed to be responsible, that everybody needed to do the chores. Every week everybody's chores switched, so all the men and women did different types of chores-- everybody in their house, no matter their position. Certainly, things would flex if they needed to, if people had an event, things they had to do, but in terms of cooking and cleaning, and child care.
• [00:04:33.95] And this is actually part of what I thought was attractive about this group of people, the tinkering with social order that was inherent in the whole idea, as well as the political activism. So it was pretty organized. Breakfast-- there was people who were responsible for it, they got up, they did it, people ate, then you went off to what was your job, really. I had various jobs, but for a long time I did work at the Ann Arbor Sun. So I would walk across town, and once it moved over to William Street, and I'd walk across, go to work, and work all day. And it was very much like that. And then people made dinner, and debated what was the best way to organize things, and to get things done, and what clean meant. [LAUGHS]
• [00:05:28.15] That was, I think, part of the reason why some people didn't like the word hippie, because hippie implied people who were not motivated, or who were lazy, and we weren't. So I remember people not wanting to be called hippies. And I thought that was a legitimate thing, because people were very motivated.
• [00:05:45.58] But we were not humorless either. There was certainly political activists that were very hard. And there was a feeling that the situation was very dire, and serious-- the Vietnam War, and many other things-- but it didn't mean that we had to not have some joy, and some fun. So we did have fun. And of course music, as I'm sure you know, is a big part of what we were about. So in the evenings, there would be maybe be meetings, but there was also sort of a party. Not a knock-down, drag-out college party, but certainly people listening to music, and working on the house.
• [00:06:27.97] It was really like normal people live, only on a large scale, on a group scale. When you made dinner, it was for 40 people, or 30 people, or however many people were living in the house.
• [00:06:42.77] ANDREW: Was there a certain amount of letting people do what they were good at? So if there were some people who were particularly good at cooking, they cooked more than the other people? Or was everything just spread around so everyone was doing everything at some point?
• [00:06:54.54] KATHY KELLEY: Yeah. That's interesting, because that was certainly something that I remember thinking about, and people talking about it too. And my memory-- of course this was a long time ago-- but I think of it as, people did everything. Whether they were good at it or not-- including cooking. There may have been a little bit of fudging on that. But no, because part of the idea was that people didn't get stuck doing the boring jobs all of the time, or the dirty jobs all of the time. I remember it being pretty fair in that way.
• [00:07:32.56] AMY: Was the balance, male/female roles--
• [00:07:37.60] KATHY KELLEY: I'm sure that memory takes on its own shades, but I remember that we worked on that quite a bit, actually. Although we were not radical in the sense of-- I remember in Ann Arbor at the time, there were people that really, really wanted to throw away gender differences-- not gender roles so much, but gender differences-- and we didn't feel that it was quite as necessary to do that. It was OK for women to wear dresses. I remember some really radical women would say, women shouldn't wear dresses because they shouldn't try to make themselves attractive to men. We didn't do that.
• [00:08:31.07] I remember thinking I had the opportunity to do anything I wanted to, as long as I made my best effort. And if I was good at it, I would be able to do it. And really, that's the way it happened. And I did photography, I did design, I did art direction. I did many different things actually, and I eventually spent my entire career in art direction, and design, and publishing from what I've learned there.
• [00:08:55.47] AMY: On the Sun, particularly?
• [00:08:56.84] KATHY KELLEY: In the Sun, and I also worked with Gary Grimshaw a lot. I sort of glued myself to him, and said, I'll do anything. It was like you were doing an apprenticeship, or an internship. My memory is colored. I'm sure from the outside, we probably looked, possibly a bit sexist. I'm sure because of the rock and roll bands. In its way, it was very egalitarian, as far as the genders. In its way.
• [00:09:28.55] ANDREW: Could you talk about Gary Grimshaw a little bit, at the time, what he was like?
• [00:09:33.71] KATHY KELLEY: Sure. Gary was very intense, very quiet, extremely talented, and very sweet. And that's it. He was very, very quiet. You wouldn't find him pounding his fists, or doing interviews quite so much, and all of that. He wasn't a spokesperson. That's it, that's what he was like.
• [00:09:56.09] ANDREW: The picture I get of him is that he was quietly, and calmly, working a lot, and producing a lot of work during that period of time. That he was producing posters, and programs, and constantly working-- happily working, but constantly working. Is that the way it was?
• [00:10:12.94] KATHY KELLEY: Yes, I think that that's a fair assessment of Gary. He had a studio is in the basement-- the Sun actually started in the basement-- and that's mainly when I think of him, is in his studio area in the basement. If you wanted to find Gary, that's where you went, was where the work was. And he did produce a tremendous volume of work. That's true.
• [00:10:41.73] AMY: What did you learn from him? What kind of things did you do, specifically? You say it felt like an apprenticeship.
• [00:10:50.39] KATHY KELLEY: Sort of, yeah.
• [00:10:52.45] AMY: So what was it like? What day-to-day activities that you would do with him?
• [00:10:59.11] KATHY KELLEY: Obviously, things like the posters and so forth, he entirely did that sort of thing, entirely on his own, because many of those were hand drawn. That's literally work that was hand drawn. So I worked on newsletters, books, the newspapers. I could certainly do design, I could do layout. Those were the days when it was all done by hand, so I used a rapidiograph, you used triangles, and you drew all the circles, and you cut everything out, and you pasted everything together. That was what I did. I had to learn how to do it. And then I did it. And then I got pretty good at it.
• [00:11:43.41] ANDREW: Was part of working on something that small, that you learned the entire process? So you might be designing, but you also might be printing, you also might be distributing papers?
• [00:11:52.14] KATHY KELLEY: Yes, and actually I did distribute. Along with that, though, it wasn't just because it was small, but it was also because of this idea that people should fairly do the different jobs. Because stuffing newspapers into a box was not necessarily as interesting as other things. So I did learn it, and do everything. In fact, at one point, for a week, we traded jobs, and I had to go sell ads, and I was terrible at it.
• [00:12:24.78] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:12:28.88] KATHY KELLEY: That was a one-week week effort though, of everybody switching up jobs, so they could experience what it was like for others. It was a valuable thing, though.
• [00:12:36.59] ANDREW: At what point did the Ann Arbor Sun move from being in the basement, to having an office separate from the houses?
• [00:12:43.12] KATHY KELLEY: I can't remember the exact reason why we did that, and how that went about, where we came out of the basement, and went over to William Street. We may have simply grown to where we needed that much space, and there was so much going on in the houses that we just needed the additional spaces, is I think more what it came down to. There was also a period where John's office moved down to west of what-- Ashley, is it?-- not too from where the Blind Pig is now. That whole building became the center of where the music business, or concert promotion operations were in there. So we needed the space.
• [00:13:26.68] Needless to say, we had to put up tapestry, so that the dust coming down through the floor-- it's an old house.
• [00:13:35.52] ANDREW: Was there any benefit, or detriment, to separating the various pieces of what happened at the houses into their own offices around town? Did you become more disconnected from what everyone was doing? Or because you were all coming back to the same house at night, were you still knowing what was going with everything?
• [00:13:52.12] KATHY KELLEY: I think there might have been slightly, a little bit, more disconnection. But generally, it wasn't serious. We also ended up with a print shop in the basement of the building that's now the Blind Pig. The Ann Arbor Sun was also upstairs of where the Blind Pig is now. I think of the Blind Pig still as this cafe that Tom and Jerry owned, but I realize it's changed dramatically. It's a whole other thing now.
• [00:14:16.93] So no, I don't think so, because we would have meetings with everybody, and everybody would discuss. There would be an agenda set out, and people would discuss the issues that they felt they needed to be, and people who may have been more involved in the printing business would discuss any issues. And everybody was able to contribute if they could, or complain if they felt the need to.
• [00:14:43.09] But basically-- again, this is my memory of it-- but people tried to do proactive problem-solving, Because we really were well-intended, I think, toward one another, as well as towards the larger issues that we cared about.
• [00:15:03.86] ANDREW: Was there ever any clash between wanting to keep things simple, and just doing things in a simple way, and wanting to move towards a more professional way of doing things? When you look at the Sun, you see it grow as a newspaper. And it becomes a very professional publication. But I imagine that there must have been some people who didn't react well to that, who didn't react well to that amount of advertising being in it, or having to do it in a really professional way, and not being able to just turn something out, and just toss it out there?
• [00:15:36.06] KATHY KELLEY: I don't remember anybody objecting to that. I think part of what you saw is that we learned how to do it. We really didn't know how. Speaking for myself, and I can say for some others, that we really learned by doing. And I'm sure, with the Sun, that that is part of it. And there were just a very tiny group of people that had previous professional experience. Many of the people were very young. So really, what you were seeing is us learn how to do it, and become better at.
• [00:16:15.84] Those blues and jazz tee shirts that I showed you, I was responsible for getting those made, and I worked on making them myself. And previous to that, I had absolutely no idea how to do any sort of screening. We had no silk screening operation. And I figured out how to do it, I had this machine made, I got volunteer people to come and do it with me, and produced-- I can't even remember, hundreds, maybe thousands of those tee shirts.
• [00:16:44.76] The advertising? I don't know. I don't think so, because funding was always an issue, and the whole operation was reliant on private funding. Often, what we did didn't make money, or didn't make much money.
• [00:17:00.97] Some of the people-- and think David Sinclair was key in this-- it was due to his efforts that money was raised to have all these things happen. So as far as that sort of thing goes, no, there was never an extreme purist thing that said, for example, there could be no advertising. It was really, we needed to survive, and pay the mortgage.
• [00:17:26.27] AMY: Did you work with David Fenton?
• [00:17:28.06] KATHY KELLEY: I did. I worked with David Fenton a lot.
• [00:17:29.89] AMY: Can you talk about him, and his role?
• [00:17:36.41] KATHY KELLEY: Yeah. It's interesting, because I don't think of him specifically, in that he did certainly work on the Sun. And then, as the years went on, when the Sun moved to Detroit, and Barbara Weinberg became very involved with things later on. But I thought of him more as marketing and communications even then. And he was great at stirring up publicity. And so that's really the way I think of him.
• [00:18:07.43] ANDREW: Was there ever an attempt to keep the various operations that were barely making it financially separated? Like, to keep Rainbow Multimedia separated from the Sun in terms of the money coming in, and the money going out? Or was there just a general fund, and all of the various things were funded from this general fund-- all the money that came in went into it, and all the money that went out, came out of.
• [00:18:31.85] KATHY KELLEY: I'm not the best person to ask about that, because I wasn't personally involved in the finances. My impression was that everything was a general fund. And, again, David Sinclair was the person that was primarily responsible for that. On paper, what legal documents, and what corporate documents, if there were any, and what kind there were, I don't know what the arrangement was. But I am pretty sure, especially earlier, that everything went into one pot, and was used to finance things as the group felt was best.
• [00:19:14.08] ANDREW: Could you talk about David, what kind of person he was?
• [00:19:16.52] KATHY KELLEY: Yeah. I'm really sorry that he's not going to be here. He was a very responsible person, who was willing to take on finding the money to make it happen. And that was certainly difficult, and certainly not fun, and certainly not as glamorous. He was very solid in that way, and supplied that role, and he allowed others, I think, to take more of the limelight also. He was a rock, and it all wouldn't have happened without him.
• [00:19:54.49] AMY: We've heard many people say that very thing.
• [00:19:56.53] KATHY KELLEY: Yes. It wouldn't have happened without him.
• [00:19:58.26] AMY: Can you give us a character sketch, or some thoughts of Leni?
• [00:20:05.88] KATHY KELLEY: I admire her very much. As you know, she came here when she was 18, I think, as an au pair from East Germany. And she's also very, very, very talented. I admire her very much for having the courage to do what she did. I also like the fact that years later, when the Berlin Wall was being torn down, she got on a plane, went over, spent one or two days there, and took down some of the wall, and got back on a plane, and came back again.
• [00:20:32.76] ANDREW: Pun Plamondon?
• [00:20:35.13] KATHY KELLEY: Yeah, colorful. Passionate, colorful. He, I think, was not as dangerous as his reputation was at the time. Maybe, again, it's my own personal shading of history.
• [00:20:59.28] ANDREW: He says the same thing.
• [00:21:03.45] KATHY KELLEY: OK, and I'm not surprised to hear you say that when you talk to him, that he has said the same thing as well. Sometimes, though, you do it to yourself. And I think that we sort of did it to ourselves, obviously with some of the photography. When you have yourself photographed with weapons, certainly you're sort of asking-- [LAUGHS]
• [00:21:25.14] And that's actually one of the things that I thought it was very smart. It was smart to move away from that sort of an image. And then the name change was part of that. I think that's one of the mistakes that was made, was coming off so radically that it offended many people who probably would have been helpful, had they not been afraid that we were crazy, essentially.
• [00:21:57.41] For some reason, I didn't buy that. I didn't buy it, so it didn't deter me. And I never thought that violent solutions-- violence meaning bombing buildings, and that sort of thing-- was ever a good idea. But I did think that things were seriously wrong in the United States, and so that serious radical action was necessary. But I am sorry, and I think that some of the other people might say that they were sorry as well, that some of what we did turned more people off, than on. To coin a phrase of the time, I suppose.
• [00:22:44.19] AMY: What are about John Sinclair?
• [00:22:47.95] KATHY KELLEY: He's great. I have bumped into him a couple of times over time. I didn't stay in touch with him regularly, but he was every bit the force that moved everybody to action. He was generally very clear with his ideas and his positions, was not afraid to shake things up, to get people to take action. But he was not mean, or-- again, I think of some serious radicals as very dark, and you must live a harsh life, and pay penance for the downtrodden, and all this sort of thing.
• [00:23:40.82] So certainly, his force of personality kept things together. And at the same time, I don't think that he was ever someone that had unthinking people around him who just sort of-- we weren't a cult. And I don't think he would have wanted people around who didn't think for themselves, and weren't capable of standing up for themselves.
• [00:24:13.24] ANDREW: Genie Plamondon?
• [00:24:15.77] KATHY KELLEY: She was a very calm presence, as well, generally. She was also a more mature-- and again, I'm thinking of it from my point of view, and I was, for a time, the youngest person there, and was always one of the very youngest persons there. So my relationship to people, obviously the dynamics are going to be different than had I been 10 or 15 years older. So she was very much just a stable hand, I think. And a calm presence to keep things together.
• [00:24:58.19] ANDREW: It seems like a difficult balancing act that was performed by Genie, and Leni, and John, and David, and those folks, to keep this hive of activity moving in certain directions, and make sure that everything was running smoothly when you had so many people. And I don't know the rate at which people we're moving into, and out of, the houses as well. I know there were a lot of young people, there were a lot of teenagers there. And I imagine that some didn't stay very long, and left again, and some probably came back. But it seems like a very difficult thing to do, it seems like it must have taken their specific kind of personalities to make that work, for as long as it worked.
• [00:25:36.25] KATHY KELLEY: I suppose so. I think that that's true. But I also think that was also the character, and the personalities, of many of the people, particularly in the one house. Because we were all serious about what we were doing, and passionate about what we were doing. I felt very serious about how I spent my life. And I wanted to have there be what I saw as value to the results of my actions.
• [00:26:07.50] And so I think that many people were thoughtful about being there. And so, not that it made some of the core leadership-- I almost hate to say it that way-- but when it came to John and Leni, and Genie and Pun, they must have, mostly, picked people fairly well. Because people really wanted to get results. And so they were serious about being there. There wasn't unruly children, or unruly teenagers, although many of us were. Or in their 20s, or their young 20s. And very few people were pushing 30, I'd guess, especially at first. No, they had pretty much a serious, committed group of people there.
• [00:27:06.78] One thing I'm thinking of was, we decided at one point-- and you can edit this out if you like-- but we decided at one point that the women should be able to go around, when it was hot, with their shirts off, as well as the men, because that would be equality. And that lasted not long at all. It was just entirely too distracting. [LAUGHS] That one went by the wayside pretty quickly, and everyone laughed that one off. So there was that kind of silly social experimentation, as well as some fairly serious attempts at redefining personal relationships.
• [00:27:49.87] And I think the fact that a lot of people managed to live together, and not just explode, and implode, because of feeling like barriers have been crossed. And it's a remarkable thing. It's a remarkable thing, in some ways, that some people are still interested in seeing one another. It is, in a way-- was-- like having a very big family. It's not the same thing as, maybe you and I might think of as our parents-- maybe for some people it was-- it wasn't like that. And I certainly didn't think of other people like that. But you certainly feel like a lot of people have got your back. And that means a lot. That's very meaningful.
• [00:28:39.60] And that's an interesting point, because I have taken that away with me, throughout my entire life, and having a very broad view of what a family can be, and how one can be made. And that was part of, I think, what was there. And I've taken that with me throughout my entire life. And some people have a very difficult time with that idea, that families can be chosen. You can choose your family. And that that's just as meaningful as a biological family. And in some ways, often works better. Because I've noticed that just because you're biologically related to somebody, doesn't necessarily mean that you really like each other, even.
• [00:29:21.84] That was an aspect of it I think. Really, you had a lot of brothers and sisters. And you really did.
• [00:29:29.40] AMY: I wanted to ask you a little bit about your memories of certain events. How about the John Sinclair Freedom Rally? Can you talk about that? Were you there?
• [00:29:36.66] KATHY KELLEY: Yes. I think that for a time, I don't know if this is true anymore, but I was listed as one of the producers on the Ten for Two movie, I think. I could be wrong. It may not be there anymore, I don't know.
• [00:29:52.19] That was one of those moments when thousands of people come together to speak out against something that was wrong. So it was a very uplifting point. It's almost like turning a corner, in a way, because there had been so much negative press. And it was so hard, and so much work, and obviously not harder for anyone than for John, who is the one who was actually sitting in prison over two joints of marijuana, which was absurd.
• [00:30:31.28] It did feel like this turning point. And in fact, of course, it turned out to be so. But it also felt to be a gratifying moment, because very influential people publicly put themselves on the line. And so, it was just an incredibly uplifting, and exhausting, experience. But it's sort of like climbing a mountain, and you've reached the summit. So it was joyful.
• [00:31:01.35] AMY: What did you do during the concert?
• [00:31:03.15] KATHY KELLEY: During the concert itself, I was actually in the photographers' pit. So I was lucky, in that I didn't have responsibilities at the concert itself that drew me away from being able to watch the performances. And it was great fun.
• [00:31:18.76] ANDREW: Did you stick around for the whole thing? It was a long show.
• [00:31:21.65] KATHY KELLEY: Yep, you bet. I was part of it. I wouldn't miss it.
• [00:31:30.72] ANDREW: Were you there for the crater dig in the front yard?
• [00:31:34.94] KATHY KELLEY: Yeah, when I knew I was coming to talk to you, I was trying to remember if I did any of the actual digging, but I remember that happening. And I remember thinking, what a great idea that was. And I think that some other people followed suit, as well. It's a very poignant way to, in a weak way, try to illustrate what life must be like for people there, and what was happening to them.
• [00:32:06.79] ANDREW: We have some pictures that will go up from the Ann Arbor News of the day that they were filling the crater in, because it was the day after the war had ended. And it's such a unique, celebratory action to be able to fill in this crater. Because at that point, it had been there for three years or something. It had been in that front yard for a long time. And everyone seemed so happy to be doing this manual labor, because it's in celebration of this thing. And it's a fascinating set of pictures.
• [00:32:36.59] KATHY KELLEY: Yeah. And that's sort of the same feeling of satisfaction that came from the John Sinclair Freedom rally, too, or ultimately, from John being released a couple days later. It makes you feel that, in fact, what you do has value and meaning, and it really does make a difference. And in fact, it does, and I still believe that to this day-- that people's actions do make a difference, and how you spend your time makes a difference.
• [00:33:07.27] ANDREW: At what point did you leave Ann Arbor? Did you go back to Detroit when John and Leni went to Detroit?
• [00:33:12.61] KATHY KELLEY: No, I didn't. I stayed in Ann Arbor, I stayed in the houses until shortly before they were sold. I did work at the Detroit Sun, and I drove into Ann Arbor every day. Continued living in Ann Arbor, but working on the Sun in Detroit. And then I eventually I worked at Creem magazine for five years, which was a music magazine. At that point, I moved into Birmingham, actually, when I did that.
• [00:33:46.84] I was able to get the position because Gary was working there, as well, and through him I got a job there. But as people gradually started to go off on their own ways.
• [00:34:01.07] AMY: What happened? Things sort of fell apart there at the end? What is your take on what happened?
• [00:34:08.15] KATHY KELLEY: I think that-- and I think rightfully so-- that John and Leni may have wanted to scale back the type of activity that they were doing, or at least redirect it maybe. They had been doing it for so long, much longer than I, but from my own point of view, from the years, it was exhausting. It's a 24/7 effort that is exhausting.
• [00:34:43.98] He really should speak for himself on this point, but my impression was that he wanted to pass the baton on, in a way. And still direct his efforts towards creative, or positive things, but maybe not be carrying such a heavy burden.
• [00:35:10.05] ANDREW: You talked about feeling that your actions should have meaning, and should have purpose. What do you feel, 40 years later, was the legacy of the work that you did here? That the people living in those houses did?
• [00:35:25.06] KATHY KELLEY: Broadly speaking, I think that-- along with people all over the country-- that what we did, did have a lasting effect in terms of pushing the society forward. And despite the roller coaster version of social change, where it seems like things are going backwards, I think that generally speaking, things have actually been pushed far forward. Earlier I mentioned that I never, ever thought there would be a president like Obama in my lifetime, truly. And I think that's a point of that.
• [00:35:58.76] Other things we did-- our lasting legacy-- there's a people's food co-op here still. And that's the same one that I used to get older friends of mine to drive my father's pickup truck to the farmer's market in Detroit, to go pick up vegetables to take to the farmers, in the middle of the night on Friday or Saturday night. There are things like that, that are very specific things. But also in a very broad way, I think that that's the type of change that we helped happen.
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• [00:36:34.27] ANDREW: For more information on Kathy Kelley, visit freeingjohnsinclair.org.
• [00:36:44.26] AMY: AADL talks to Kathy Kelley is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.