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Rockin' On To

Rockin' On To image Rockin' On To image
Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
December
Year
1971
OCR Text

RALLY that we're gonna farm this summer, we're calling on people to come down and farm with us, go down and harvest the food and drive it to the people who need it. So we can relieve people of the agony and worry that they're suffering from, like I saw my mother suffer, from trying to feed me. Bobby explained how the people have to organize and take care of their own needs, produce things that they really need and distribute them equally. "Can you imagine the trip that the capitalist are going to go through when they can't sell nothing?" Other speakers followed, and between them came the jams. Bob Seger with Teegarden and Van Winkle replaced Joy of Cooking on the hill, as Joy's equipment never arrived. Phil Ochs played, and Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen kicked them out. As did Stevie Wonder and his group in a surprise appearance that we didn't even know about till the day before-Stevie just wanted to show his support for John. The mighty UP knocked everyone out with "Just like an Aborigine", "Jail House Rock", "Do the Sundance", and finally exploded with "Free John Now!" And magic saxophonist Archie Shepp, along with Roswell Rudd on trombone, and Charles Moore on coronet with the Contemporary Jazz Quintet blew minds with an all too short 20 minute set of cosmic space energy music. Ronnie Davis spoke: "We know how important it is that John be set free. It's important anytime there's a precious human being who has committed their very breath to building a new nation and a new people in this death-culture country of ours. We need John out so that we can begin ourselves to build the strength that is required to tear apart the boulders and steel bars of the jails that suffocate thousands and thousands of our sisters and brothers who should be set free. We need John to help us begin to find new ways to free ourselves from this sexist, racist, ego-money chasing, imperialist culture, so that we might be allowed to discover ourselves and get about the purposes of life." Definitely the most emotional moment of the wholc night came as John Sinclair placed a phone call to the rally from Jackson Prison. John had recently been transfered out of segregation into a minimum security farm wherc he was allowed two phone calls a month. So one of them went lo I 5,000 people, with Leni Sinclair representing the people on the phone: Can you say something to all these people here?" Leni asked John.  I'm just wiped out. I don't know what to say." John was overwhelmed by the energy that intensely radiated from the arena: "It's gonna happen, ya know. It's got to. . .People are just too deep into it. I'm so excited. .1. .1. . .1 heard Chairman Bobby on (he radio, an . . . and it was just too much. I .. I .. I'm shakin' and don't know what to say-I just want to come home. I want to be out there with all those people and everybody getting down, carrying on and going crazy. All the people who are whacked out behind these marijuana charges and get out they know that the people are the ones that are doin' it, they know that people have just been pushin' so hard. Everybody's killer excited, ya know. What they try to do is isolate us and make us think that we are all alone and it just isn't that .... say something to me." Immediately 15,000 brothers and sisters roared their outrage at John's incarceration that has represented the ridiculousness of this state's marijuana laws for the last two and a half years. When the applause died down long enough to get a few words in John explained why the city would not allow us to have voter's registration at the rally: "They don't want people to vote. It started out in East Lansing last week with the East Lansing City Council, which was elected by our people. They came out and said that all people with sentences for getting high should be granted amnesty and I think that is the thing we have to push for now that we have passed the bill we have been struggling for six years to pass -and it passed because people wouldn't let up." John emotionally rushed out by the power of the event couldn't think of what to say-so the people filled in where he left off-with a 15,000 voice chant that shook the arena, thundering"FREE JOHN NOW! FREE JOHN NOW! FREE JOHN NOW!" Elsie Sinclair took the microphone a short time later. Elsie is John 's 59-year old, grey-haired, beautiful righteous mother. She got the heaviest cheers of the evening when she said; "You can teach more to your parents than your parents have ever taught you. (and the crowd thundered) l'm speaking, of course, from personal experience. And I want to say this for John I read his book Politics and Music and I didn't dig the music, but I dug the book. Now, I'm beginning to dig the music. Thank you." David Peel took the stage at around 2:30, after an hour's wait, along with his group the Lower East Side, accompanied by Jerry Rubin on congas and Leslie Bacon on guitar. The stage was a be-in as David sang and then introduced John and Yoko, who took the stage and spent a while getting the sound equipment and microphones working. The place was flooded with joints as John Lennon said: "We came here not only to help John and spotlight what's going on, but also to show and to say to all of you that apathy isn't it, and that we can do something. Oh, so flower power didn't work, so what, we start again." John and Yoko and David Peel and everybody else then sang "Attica State". "The Luck of the Irish", and a song by Yoko called "Sisters", which-Yoko said was "dedicated to the sisters of Ann Arbor, Michigan." The night then culminated with John singing the John Sinclair song, exposing the hypocritical policies of the government. Suddenly the stage was empty-at 3:30 am-with everyone involved totally exhausted after the strenuous. John's Crew now and I was the people that did it, and we of the Rainbow People's Party warmly embrace the support and friendship given to John on the . Without all that combined energy John would still be in prison. The pictures on these pages tell the story better than anything we could say for those of you who missed the ABX broadcast, there will be an excerpted version aired as a special sometime next month on ABX. Channel 56 in Detroit is putting together a 2.5 hour special, in color, on the event and there's a possibility of a film being released as well. Stay tuned to the SUN for details on how much money was collected from the rally and where we will go. What else can be said. John's home now because the people cut him free, and now all the energy that went into freeing him can go toward making Ann Arbor the kind of community conducive to our development as people. RAINBOW POWER TO THE PEOPLE!