Marston Schultz
Free Speech Movement Interviews


From David Goines, The Free Speech Movement

Bibliography & Sources

As self-appointed FSM historian, throughout 1965 and into 1966 Marston Schultz taped interviews with people who had been active in the Free Speech Movement. He'd originally intended to "write the definitive book on the FSM, and make a film," but what with one thing and another, he never got around to it. So, he salted the recordings and photographs away under his bed, and the temperate climate of San Francisco preserved them against the possibility that they might someday be of interest. Learning that I was working on a history of the FSM, in 1991 he made them available to me. I have transcribed and edited those that I found useful, and added the material to this history of the FSM and subsequent events.

The interviews were made at 1-7/8" per second on quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape. The interviews are with: Dunbar Aitkins, Ron Anastasi, Bettina Aptheker, Gene Bardack, Brad Cleaveland, Joel Geier, David Goines, Jackie Goldberg, Suzanne Goldberg, (Steve?) Heist, Walt Herbert, Mona Hutchin, Patti Iiyama, Bob Kauffman, David Kolodny, Eric Lavine, Brian Mulloney, Larry Marks, University Dean McConnell, Dusty Miller, Tom Miller, Marilyn Noble, Sherwood Parker, Bill Porter, Paul Potter, Arthur Ross, Michael Rossman, Mario Savio, Alan Searcy, Brian Shannon, Joni Slatkin, Mike Smith, Hershel Snodgrass, Bob Starobin, Sue Stein, Jack Weinberg, Steve Weissman, Arleigh Williams and University Dean Williamson. Although I have listened to the recordings, I have not directly quoted all the people he interviewed. Marston often carefully noted the day and time, but sometimes forgot to mention the month and year. Sometimes no date was mentioned. Therefore, some interview dates are approximate.
Ron Anastasi: 1965
David Goines: July 19, 20 & 23, 1965
Jackie Goldberg: July 27, 1965
Mona Hutchin: October 19, 1965
Patti Iiyama: July 19, 20 & 23, 1965
Brian Mulloney: January 20, 1966
Larry Marks: July 23, 1965
Dusty Miller: July 31, 1965
Tom Miller and Gretchen Kittredge: July 31, 1965
Marilyn Noble: September 20, 1965
Sherwood Parker: 1965
Mario Savio and Suzanne Goldberg: Shortly after Mario and Suzanne were married in 1965. The interview was conducted with the assistance of Burton White of KPFA.
Brian Shannon: January 16, 1966
Sam Slatkin: January 19, 1965 and July 23, 1965
Mike Smith: January 17, 1966
Bob Starobin: July 23, 1965
Sue Stein: January 20, 1966
Jack Weinberg: Early 1965
Steve Weissman: 1965
Andy Wells: October 17, 1965 and January 7, 1966
Arleigh Williams: February 24, 1966

...

In 1965 Marston taped Academic Senate meetings, ASUC meetings, Chancellor's meetings, events at the Spider table, rallies, Spider hearings, Executive Committee meetings, FSU meetings and speeches. Most of the 1965 meetings and events have to do with the Free Student Union and the Filthy Speech Movement.

 

The following transcription by David Goines of Marston Schultz's interview of David Goines and Patti Iiyama appears with the permissions of all three parties.

1965 INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GOINES & PATTI IIYAMA

This is the transcript of a taped interview conducted by Marston Schultz on July 19, 20 and 23 of 1965, approximately seven months after the FSM had attained its goals. Patti Iiyama and I lived together at 2006 University Avenue, a Berkeley apartment above the Darling Flower Shop.
Jack Weinberg and I had just returned from a stint of CORE activism in Bogalusa, Louisiana and, together with other FSM veterans were about to serve part of our sentences in Santa Rita county jail.
This interview encompasses in considerable detail aspects of pivotal events that are not covered elsewhere nearly as well, particularly the failed palace coup. Patti Iiyama was present as a spy at the secret meeting of the plotters, and I was the executor of the powers of the legitimate Steering Committee. Between the two of us, we have the event covered. All that is lacking is Jo Freeman’s point of view, and that of Kerr himself.
The interviews were conducted in Patti’s bedroom, which faced the street, so there is a lot of traffic noise in the background. I have eliminated a certain percentage of superfluous “and’s,” “uh’s,” “um’s” and most of the “you know’s” but otherwise this is a verbatim transcript. Ellipses indicate a pause or a meaningless interjection. Some of the names are probably slightly garbled, through mis-hearing or simply not remembering who was who thirty years ago.

            Marston Schultz: When did you first get involved?
            David Goines: The classic question.
            MS: Did you have anything to do with the United Front?
            DG: Well, I became involved sort of accidentally. I’d lived with Jon Petri and Tom Weller during the summer, and he  [Tom] had something to do with the SLATE Supplement to the General Catalogue, and I’d done all the artwork on it. I designed the cover, and things like that, and so I’d become more or less involved with it. I didn't really give a shit about it; I was involved with the artwork, and I wanted to see it sold. And I've seen people running around on campus and heard a little bit of squabbling, and I knew who Art Goldberg was, but that was it. I mean, I didn't know anybody else; that was absolutely it. I knew who he was, y’know, I would recognize him.
            MS: You weren't a member of any organization.
            DG: No. I was a member of no organization. And on October first—no, on September 30—I came on campus, I woke up about eleven o’clock, I walked to campus and I got there about twelve o’clock, and it was about five of twelve, and I’d heard that somebody had been thrown out of school for doing something. You know, selling something, or . . . something that seemed to me very simple and very reasonable that people should be able to do. And I’d been talking that morning with a friend of mine, two friends of mine, Tom Weller and a fellow named Peter [Paskin], who’s not here anymore, and we’d all sort of agreed that we’d had enough shit, from the whole works. Sort of abstract ‘I’ve had enough shit from the whole system.’ And so I became very, very angry and I ran up to Jon Petri’s house, and I grabbed a card table and a box of SLATE Supplements.
            Oh, wait. Previous to that I’d sat at tables.
            MS: Well, were you . . . was this . . . was Turner . . . did you remember who it was that got knocked off?
            DG: I knew it was Turner, but I didn’t know who he was . . I didn’t know that it was Turner at that time.
            MS: Well, did you go up to Sather Gate?
            DG: I went up to Sather Gate; I heard that something had happened. I got very angry. I didn’t even stop to check it out.
            MS: Was this while Mario was giving a speech about Brian?
            DG: No.
            MS: That was even before?
            DG: No speeches were being given. There was a small group of people, maybe forty people. I’d never attended any rallies, I’d never gone to any political meetings.
            MS: Yeah, you never went to the picket line before that, or the vigil.
            DG: I hadn't gone to the vigil and I seem to remember that I've walked in the picket line maybe once around, talking to a friend of mine.
            MS: (Question directed to Patti Iiyama) Did you go to the vigil?
            Patti Iiyama: Yeah, I went to the vigil, and I went to the picket line, but I wasn’t really very involved. I thought it was just another thing, you know, where we’d get smashed again, and I thought ‘Well, I mean with all these (unintelligible) activists . . .
            MS: Tell me, I was wondering . . . I’d like to get some account of the vigil, you know, what went on. There was something about marching up to the University House. Did they . . .
            PI: That's about when I left. So I don't know. I didn't stay all night.
            DG: Why don't we start this whole thing over again?
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: I'm remembering now what I did.
            MS: Doesn't matter. Let's keep going.
            DG: No, let's start over.
            MS: No, C'mon.
            PI: Go ahead.
            DG: Fine.
            MS: Don't think of this as like I'm . . . you know, don't play like I'm a radio announcer or . . .
            DG: I mean, it makes me nervous to have that thing there.
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: Don't think about it.
            DG: Well, anyway. I’d sat table, I think, twice. And I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just knew that some friends of mine were doing it, and so I helped them out, more or less. And, I was absolutely a-political. I had nothing to do with politics and no interest in politics. I didn't know what they were about. And, I suppose I had a liberal temperament.
            MS: What were you, a freshman or sophomore?
            DG: Yeah. I was a sophomore. Incoming. Classics. Incoming sophomore, second year. And so, I ran up to Jon Petri’s house, and grabbed a card table, and a box of SLATE Supplements, and a money can, and I ran down again to campus. And I set the table up, working myself up into a greater and greater rage, you know, because—I was very [fired up?] at the fact that somebody could actually be thrown out of school for doing something that seemed so reasonable, and so innocent. And I became more and more angry, and fed my own fuel by getting madder and madder. And I sat there for about an hour, and a friend of mine was going to spell me but he had to go to a class.
            MS: He was going to what?
            DG: He was gonna, you know, take my place, and I was going to go get something to eat. And, I was selling SLATE memberships, and I was advocating persons to . . . advocating that persons join slate, and I was advocating political positions that I knew nothing about, and I was selling SLATE Supplements, and then I saw the Deans come to a table across from me, and I’m not sure what table it was . . . I think it was the YSA table, which Beth Stapleton operated, but I’m really not sure.
            MS: What was Sandor at this time?
            DG: I never . . . I didn't know Sandor. I knew no one except Art Goldberg at sight, and I knew nothing about him.
            MS: Because I think Sandor was selling Supplements also.
            DG: He was doing that on the 28th. He was busted on the 28th for selling Supplements.
            PI: That's right!
            DG: Not, not, not on the 30th. There was a one day lapse.
            MS: I didn't know that. Turner was busted on the thirtieth also.
            DG: Right. Five of us were busted on the thirtieth, two of them were busted on the 28th, and . . . Mario . . .
            MS: No, wait a minute . . .
            PI: No, no, that's not right. It's because Sandor had been selling them before, but that didn't matter, they didn't . . . they didn't care . . . they didn't do anything about it.
            MS: They didn't do anything until the 30th.
            PI: No, not until the 30th. And then, see the reason why they picked on . . .
            DG: I know all that.
            PI: . . . Mario and Art and, and Sandor was because they were leaders . . .
            DG: I know all that.
            PI: . . . and in CORE.
            DG: No. Here's what happened. On the 28th, Sandor Fuchs, specifically, and I don't remember precisely . . . oh . . . here's how it goes: here's exactly it: on the 28th, when Sandor was given it, was informed that he've better stop . . . selling SLATE Supplements . . .
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . he refused. And they went away without doing anything, except that he was informed that he should appear before the Dean on the 30th at three o’clock in the afternoon. Mario and Art Goldberg led a demonstration against the University, at a University meeting in the lower plaza. Another person who led this was Dan Rosenthal, and this proved very incriminating to the University, when evidence was brought up along with photographs from the Daily Cal; one of which was on the front of the Daily Cal of Dean Murphy . . . no, wait. Dean . . . what’s the bigwig (snaps fingers) . . .
            PI: Williams? Arleigh?
            DG: No . . . Arleigh Williams! Talking to Dan Rosenthal; Dan Rosenthal leading the line of march to the picket. And he’s not . . .
            MS: Did this all come out in the . . .
            DG: This all came out in the testimony.
            MS: Yeah, in the Hymen Committee.
            DG: The Heyman Committee. And, then the five of us were the group. We thought we were alone, and then we found out there were three more—at least I found out there were three more—that night at eleven o’clock. OK. So, the five of us, then we were all busted.
            The Deans came up to me, and they said, ‘Are you aware that you are violating University rules and regulations.’ And I said, ‘Are you aware that you are violating my Constitutional rights.’ And they said, ‘Are you going to take your table down?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And, then I said to the Dean, ‘Would you care to engage in debate? If you beat me in debate, I’ll go away. And then I’ll stop.’ And the Dean said, ‘No, not today.’ And I said, y’know, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you know what you’re talking about? Don’t you believe in what you stand for?’ Y’know, and I became very incensed and was absolutely in a fury, and jumped up on top of the . . . of my chair and began to harangue the crowd around me—which had grown rather large, I think there were about sixty people—screaming at the top of my lungs, absolutely in a fury. And, I understand it was a good speech. But, I’d never delivered a speech before in my life, so I really can’t say.
            MS: Where was this, now?
            DG: This was at Sather Gate. And, we began . . . I don’t know who started it . . . I believe it was Mario . . . but I’m absolutely not sure . . . started a list of people who would go in with us saying, ‘We bear equal responsibility. Y’know, We . . . we too, sat . . .
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . at a table. It was very . . .
            MS: Where was your table located?
            DG: My table, as you proceed toward Sather Gate, from Bancroft and Telegraph . . . mine was on the extreme right.
            MS: To the right . . . it was to the left of Turner’s.
            DG: The most extreme right table.
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: Furthest over and very close to the edge of the concrete abutment there. And, we gathered a very large and gathered something like 400 signatures on our various lists. The wording was slightly different on each list. Some of them said that I . . .
            MS: Copies of which we don't have.
            DG: Copies of which we don't have because they were all given to . . .
            PI: . . . they were all given to . . .
            DG: . . . Dean Murphy, and they disappeared. And, I imagine they reside in some file in Murphy’s office or similar . . . y’know someplace . . .
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . waiting to screw whoever it was that signed . . .
            MS: We'll try and get them.
            DG: Some of them . . . some of them are signed by kooks. I mean, some . . . some of them are signed ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ and things like that. But I’d say not more than one percent. Most . . . most people became very, very angry as well.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: One thing I've noticed . . . the previous week . . . I noticed this afterward . . . but that in the previous week, there had been very agitated letters to the Daily Cal about . . . concerning student rights, and it was building up and building up and there was an undertone of . . . of excitement and outrage throughout the entire campus, which was sort of sloshing around seeking for a place to burst out. And so it started . . . as though by a miracle, everyone sort of conglomerated at this spot on campus and signed his name up. And at three o’clock, we lined up by, I believe, twos, and marched into the Sproul Hall, and of course everything was blowing up at that time. Everybody was elated and confused, and nobody knew what was coming off, and this was of course the greatest thing that had ever come off on the campus ever. And . . . go ahead.
            MS: Well, I was there, y’know, and I marched in with the . . . I missed the speeches, more or less. But, I marched in with the group and stayed until we left.
            DG: That was two o'cock.
            MS: Yeah. So I don't . . . you don't need to give me account of y’know, blow by blow . . .
            DG: Well, I can tell you a couple of things . . .
            MS: But you can tell me the things . . . tell me the things that specifically happened to you. Or the time . . . or did take a . . . did you start taking a leadership role . . .
            DG: I began from that time taking a leadership role . . .
            MS: Tell me the kind of . . . the kind of . . . yeah.
            DG: I began at that time taking a leadership role. My fury egged me on throughout the entirety of the FSM, and kept me going for a considerable amount of time afterward, y’know, in CORE. I became . . . I was overwhelmingly angry at the whole works, and as I became more and more aware of what I was angry at, under the tutelage of people who knew much more about politics than I, I became more aware of what I was angry at, and consequently became more angry. Less than this outraged sputtering type of anger that characterized me, I’m sure, then in the first couple of days, and complete bewilderment for what I was doing. Sort of . . . you need to pee so you pee your pants, was just about what I was doing. I didn’t know what toilets were yet. So. I sort of took a monitor role. As I remember I got provisions, and I’d heard of sit-ins, and I sort of got the idea that this was going to be a sit-in. And, I monitored, more or less.
            MS: Had you ever been in a sit-in before?
            DG: Never in my life. I've never been. Well, I've been in the demonstration at the Sheraton-Palace but I was not arrested and did not participate in the sit-in. I started doing that on a lark. More or less. I really didn't know what I was doing. And, then, that night, when I found out that I've been expelled . . . oh, I made speeches out of the windows, and I was taken off by I think . . . I think Tom . . . what the hell was his name . . . Gretchen Kitteridge's boyfriend . . .
            MS: Miller.
            DG: Tom Miller; who told me my speeches were too radical and were alienating people.
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: What were your speeches saying?
            DG: Yeah. Right after I got in I was making speeches out the window. I was in effect saying, ‘If you’re not in here, you’re screwing me, and you're screwing yourself, and you’re screwing everybody, and you’re . . . you’re a nudge and a fink and everything else, y’know. Although not in those words. I don’t know if they were good speeches. I imagine they weren’t. But they were very incensed. I remember a group of six people came in and said, “You’ve convinced me,” and another group of six said that “I’m never gonna go in because of you,” y’know, so I imagine I was alienating people. But, you know, the radical approach and all that. So, that night, after I’d found out that I’d been expelled, I made another speech out of the window, and I referred to the University as a . . . not an education, but a cloister. I was very angry! I was almost in tears. And, then I went . . . hell’s bells, where did I go. I went off with my friend Peter, and his girlfriend, and slept at her house. And, got up the next morning about eight o’clock, because I’d heard that there was going to be another demonstration the next day. I had no (unintelligible).
            MS: You didn't go in to the meetings the night before.
            DG: I don't believe I did. I don't remember that I did. All I remember is that I went home. And, I remember I got my picture taken and . . . and made a statement to the press, and it was probably pretty dumb, I'm glad that it didn't get printed. And I met the other people that had got thrown out, and I didn't know any of them; and they all seemed to know each other, which sort of bewildered me. Y’know, I couldn't understand why. I found out later that they were all political people and knew each other. But, they were sort of bewildered that I’d gotten thrown out, because they didn’t know me.
            MS: You weren't part of the plan.
            PI: (laughs)
            DG: No. I wasn't part of the plan, you're right “The great SLATE plan.” Oh, I’d also had some intercourse with Brad Cleveland. Only enough to where I've figured that he was sort of a nut. And, very bewildered my his theories which . . . which escaped me completely. And I went home and I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and took off for school again, y’know with this fantastically elated feeling that I've been thrown out and I didn't have to give a fuck about anything, y’know, because I’d sort of not liked the idea of going to school that semester anyway, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do. And, then about nine o’clock that morning I was helping in setting up the tables. I didn’t ever sit at a table after that, on that day. And I was helping setting up tables and was quite elated at the whole works. And especially delighted at the great big huge table that CORE had set up. Jack Weinberg-whom I did not know at that time-sitting in the middle of it, and then about fifteen minutes of twelve, there was going to be a rally at noon, and so we were making preparations for a rally, and one of the Deans . . . we saw the Deans coming, and so we all clustered around, one of the Deans came up to a person with a mustache and said to him, “You realize blah, etcetera.” And he says he wasn’t gonna leave. And, so the Deans went away and came back with four cops. And, they grabbed him, and, each one carrying an arm or a leg, and began carrying . . . I remember he had a very bored look on his face, and I was very cheered by it and patted him on the stomach as he went past. And . . . when they grabbed him, someone said “sit down,” and I repeated it, and everybody just sat down, y’know, boom! just like that. And so the cops had to walk over seated people. It couldn’t have taken more than about ten seconds for everybody to sit down, and there were thousands of people around. There must have been two or three thousand people around.
            MS: The way you say it, the people sat-in . . . sat down before the Jack got in the car.
            DG: M-hmm! Definitely! Then I noticed that a car had been brought on. I did not notice . . . I don't know when the car was brought on . . . but I know it was brought on when my back was turned. And, I turned around, and I saw the car, I ran over to the car, and sat down behind it. The engine was still running at this time, and exhaust fumes were coming into my face. But, I was delighted by . . .
            MS: People . . . now, the people who had sat down were not sitting down around the car, but just . . .
            DG: No! They were sitting down around the car . . .
            MS . . . but were just sitting down in the path of the police . . .
            DG: . . . there were people sitting down everyplace! And, they happened to be sitting down right around the car. I’m sure it was an accident that they sat down around the car. But they just . . . everybody says, ‘Sit down!’ so everybody sat down and the car happened to be there, y’know. And there were thousands of people in front of it, and thousands of people behind it, and I remember that people lined themselves up behind the car in rows, and there were about twelve people to a row, stretching back about ten rows. And I was sitting next to a girl whom I’ve never seen since, and we had a very interesting conversation about ‘wasn’t it all grand.’ I still didn’t know quite what was coming off but it was really great. “These motherfuckers they’re gonna throw me outa school I’ll show them!” And, I remember one of the things that . . . that made . . . made me feel most pleased was that there was a tremendous amount of . . a feeling of solidarity among the people and a tremendous amount of comradeship and friendship . . . real genuine friendship among all these people who didn’t even know each other. Because for example people would go down into the Bear’s Lair and buy, you know, maybe twenty-five glasses of pink lemonade and they’d bring ‘em up and they’d send ‘em out into the crowd, and it would just go off. And, everybody would take just a little sip, just enough for them, and they’d pass it on. And they’d put some money into the tray. And nobody took any of the money, and nobody took more than his share. I remember going down to buy some, and brought it back up, and I’m sure there was absolutely . . . I’m sure there wasn’t a cent stolen . . . and, it seemed that no one took more than his share, and everybody was very concerned that his neighbor be comfortable and all that. And, as the sit-in progressed I became more and more elated, and finally . . . about one-half hour after . . . well, about ten minutes after we stopped the car he turned off his engine, and I got three of my friends to sit around the car by the tires, with pocket knives, and I told ‘em that if the engine started up again—which it did later, but they didn’t stab tires—to stab the tires. Which was kind of dumb, ‘cause they could have slit the valves. But I’m sure they figured that out for themselves. The engine started up again very shortly . . . for a very short time, and then went off again. They never turned it on again, that I saw. If the engine started up again they were gonna slit the valves or cut the tires so that the car would be immobilized by squatting down. Then about 45 minutes or maybe half-an-hour or less—I’m not quite sure of the time span—I remember a person who later turned out to be Mario Savio who also happened to know the person inside of the car, for some obscure reason. All these people seemed to know each other, and I was very befuddled by the whole thing. Got up on top of the car, took off his shoes—and the policeman was saying, ‘Be careful of the antenna, be careful of the antenna,’ and he was saying, ‘Alright, I will,’ and he was wearing white socks. And he stood up on top of the car, and began to make a speech. And then another person got up on the car, and made a speech. This began the thirty-six hour marathon of speeches. Or thirty-two hour marathon of speeches, which went on I’m sure continuously with the exception of a couple of hours from about two o’clock . . .
            MS: People were sleeping, yeah.
            DG: . . . to seven o’clock. About two o’clock to seven o’clock. In the morning. There were no speeches, but that was the only time. These people spoke, and gradually they stopped taking off their shoes, and pretty soon the antenna got busted off, and the roof was getting dented in more and more, and the sides were getting dented in. Somebody pasted on a “No on 14” sticker on the car, and the car was squatting lower and lower because the suspension was gradually getting wrecked to shit. I didn’t leave the scene except for once, when I went off to buy some whole bunch of Coke. That was on the second day. I went out to buy about . . . about ten o’clock in the morning I went out and bought ten cases of Coke I think, with some money that somebody handed me.
            MS: Were you there when the policemen rushed the car?
            DG: Yes. I was there the whole time. I missed absolutely nothing.
            MS: OK, well then, what was the rushing the car about?
            DG: Well, you're getting way ahead of yourself.
            MS: Well, I mean . . .
            PI: Way ahead. Yeah.
            DG: There are a lot of things in between.
            MS: Well, OK. Don't leave out any significant incidents that occurred around the car. ‘Cause I was coming and going at that time.
            DG: I thought . . . for some strange reason, during the entirety of the FSM, I was always where the action was. I mean, I never missed anything. I don’t know why, precisely . . .
            MS: Just tell me everything.
            DG: Alright. It's been a long time since I’ve related any of this stuff. Actually it’d be better if we could have two of these sessions.
            MS: Yeah. Well I’d be willing.
            DG: Go back for another one.
            MS: Sure.
            DG: Do it again. ‘Cause I'll remember things. Well, all during that time, starting about four o'clock that afternoon . . . I became clear enough on the issues from listening to the speeches. I became clear enough on the issues to know what I was doing, and why. I had all the issues down, absolutely pat, to about a one-and-a-half-hour spiel. I mean, I’d talk continuously, uninterruptedly, and spiel off every fact and figure I could think of. I got about ten more people convinced. I remember two of these people that were in the sit-in, one of the persons I talked to when I was haranguing off my chair was at the sit-in, whom I took about an hour to convince of something or other, as I remember. But, mostly it was just sitting around the car. People were singing, and I was wandering around, but always, always by the car. Sitting down sometimes, sometimes up. About five forty-five that night, that’s the first night of October the first, I was up on the upper part of the plaza—you know that there’s the lower part of the upper part of the plaza and the upper part of the upper plaza, that wide place between the two steps—talking to two friends who had come up to see me, and who said that they’d seen me on telly. As I was talking to them, I was pretty much alone on the plaza there, I noticed a large group of policemen was starting to close the doors in Sproul Hall. During all that day we’d held the Hall I never was in there. But we’d held the Hall. We’d made an agreement—I’d gathered more by osmosis—that the doors wouldn’t be shut before seven thirty. The police were starting to close it and it was about quarter to six. So, I began to yell that ‘They’re closing the doors,’ and I ran up to the middle door and slammed myself up against it and at that precise instant Mario reached the other door and slammed himself up against it. That’s when I met Mario. I don’t believe we introduced each other. And then Ron Pickard came up, and then Mike Rossman.
            MS: Who was this person?
            DG: Ron Pickard came up. And then Michael Rossman. Then we . . . then more and more people began to come, but this is the order in which I remember people arriving. I didn’t know any of these people at that time. We threw ourselves up against the door in two rows, facing each other against the doors, and people behind us and beside us, and a couple of people inside, but not very many. They’d thrown them all out. Then the police came up, and Mario was arguing with the police and asking on what grounds they were trying to close the doors, and the police said they were given orders, and he said “By whom,’
            ‘By the captain,’
            ‘Who gave the captain orders,’
            ‘I dunno, I just follow orders,’
            ‘Well, at least this is one order you’re not gonna obey,’
            ‘Oh, yeah?’
            And this kinda stuff, ‘Your mother,’ and, ‘So are you,’ this kind of thing is precisely how it went. We were getting angrier and angrier, and this great big cop, about six-five or six-six I’m sure, came walking up from the outside to the inside. And, he walked on some of our feet. And we said, ‘You’re walking on our hands and feet, stop it!’
            And he just looked down on us from his cloudy height and kept on walking. So we grabbed him, and pushed him down, and took off his shoes. And then he walked through . . . he was very chagrined at that . . . he was really pissed off . . . so he walked through, and this did it. At that precise moment, when we had him down, and he was getting up, a policeman grabbed Ron Pickard by the head in a hammer lock, and started hitting him in the face with his fist. I jumped up and dived at the nearest policeman and grabbed his wrists—both his wrists, like that—and was screaming every variety of obscenity I know, and I know a very large selection, right into his face. He was looking absolutely no idea . . . if Jesus Christ had come down to earth at that precise moment, he couldn’t have looked more astonished. And then everybody else began jumping up, and began slugging the cops, and hitting them, and biting them, and scratching them, and chopping on them . . . they didn’t use their guns or their sticks, but I was fully expecting to be shot anytime. It just wasn’t a very reasonable kind of thing. Hitting them and biting them and everything, and kicking, and they withdrew in terror. They were pulling people in, that . . . they soon noticed in about five seconds that the more they pulled in the more came in. There was an enormous crowd, had come up from around the police car. I think the police car could have gotten away at that moment if it had wanted to. Because I think most of the people left. The policemen withdrew. I remember there were twenty-five policemen precisely. They withdrew up the stairs and cowered there, absolutely dumbfounded. We were shaking our fists at them, ‘This is what you’ll get again if you try it,’ same sort of thing. Making remarks. Then we occupied the building with half the people inside and half the people outside. At this time, I believe Jackie Goldberg was sort of the de facto leader of the movement, in so far as it was a movement. She was giving orders, but nobody was paying too much attention to her, ‘cause she was a girl, I think was the main reason. She really wasn’t running the show very well, she wasn’t thinking very clearly.
            MS: Why do you pick her as the leader at that time?
            DG: This . . . this is the impression that I got. She was the person who was standing up, making the speeches, who seemed to know much more about it than anybody else, and who seemed to know what to do. But I soon noticed that, I mean, whatever she advocated seemed a little screwy. Like, she wanted everybody inside. And then she said, ‘No, no, that’s not a good idea.’ Sort of carrying on this soliloquy by herself. Then more people wanted to speak, there was debate, there was a vote, and we decided that we would occupy the building until nine o’clock, to show that we could do it if we wanted to, and then we would get out, because we didn’t want to divide our forces, and have half inside and half outside. Which would give the police an opportunity if they wanted to, to rush the car, and we were assuming that they would probably want to do something like that. Then at nine o’clock we abandoned the building, and they locked it up . . . I think they locked it up, but I’m not sure . . . and we went back around the car.
            Then a large number of people began to come. More and more and more people. A lot of people who were fraternity boys came. And they stood around, and were making remarks, and throwing things. We were using for light the light from the Student Union, and at the point where the tension was at its highest, they turned off the lights inside, and here we were arguing with Forrest Tregay to turn ‘em back on again, and finally convinced him to turn the lights back on again inside the Student Union.
            MS: Who argued with Tregay?
            PI: Oh, I remember that!
            DG: I did and several other people, I don’t remember who. I remember Peter, was one of them, this friend of mine Peter, and I was one, and I don’t remember who else. But we finally got him to turn them on again, and somebody got inside . . .
            MS: What time was this?
            DG: About midnight.
            MS: How did you find Tregay?
            DG: He was standing inside. And somebody was talking to him inside, and finally convinced him to turn the lights back on again. And we also got an extension cord inside for our power for the speakers which had been set up, I don’t know when, by somebody up on top of the car. By that time the car was a wreck.
            Then a group of fraternity boys began jeering more and more violently. They were carrying placards and the tension was growing greater, and greater and greater and I was very much expecting a riot. I also noticed that there were enormous numbers of police around, mostly Alameda County Sheriffs, and Oakland cops. And there were Berkeley cops, sort of divided up on sides: the Berkeley cops were on the side of the demonstrators, the Alameda and Oakland cops were on the side of the freddies. If there were a fight, it seemed to me very reasonable that the Alameda County Sheriffs would be fighting the Berkeley Police. I still had great faith in Berkeley Police at that time; who were quite decent throughout, it must be remarked. The Campus cops were quite decent throughout. I mean, they had no real choice, but there seemed to me no reason they were nasty and truculent. Then about, a little bit after twelve, a fire engine came roaring up, and I was positive that they were going to hose us off. I’d heard about this, too. So I assumed that they were going to hose us all away from the car. I gathered that a lot of other people believed that too. The fire engine was going after something in the . . . not Wheeler, but what the hell is that other hall named . . .
            PI: Dwinelle.
            DG: Dwinelle. Dwinelle Hall, and took care of it and went away. But, I was just absolutely convinced that they were there to wash us all off. Although it seems rather strange to come up there with lights flashing and siren going. Well, maybe to warn us or something. Then about two o’clock, the tension was absolutely so thick you could cut it with a knife. There were fights breaking out, and the freddies were throwing things, and we were throwing things back at them, and it was getting very violent, when Father Fisher, whom I did not know at that time, either, came up, said he . . . stood up on top of the car, said he didn’t know what was going on, but it looked pretty bad and he was sure God didn’t approve, and why don’t we behave like nice people, and pray, and spontaneously, I’m sure, right after his prayer, every single one of the demonstrators fell silent. No noise at all. There was only one remark made, and he was quickly shushed, during that whole time which must have lasted as long as thirty minutes. The only sounds that there were, were ‘shhhh!’-ings from a couple thousand people. Soon it became painfully obvious who was standing up and who was sitting down, and who was being noisy and who was being quiet. And the freddies began to break away and ‘C’mon fellahs, let’s go!’ and ‘Gee, this is a drag, let’s beat it!’ and breaking off in little bunches of twos and threes and twelves, and finally were all gone by about two fifteen or two thirty. Then we set up monitors and I aided, I believe Bettina Aptheker was one of them, and Stephanie Coontz was one of them . . . aided them in setting up a monitor’s patrol to watch both for freddies, for police. We were anticipating a rush in the early hours of the morning from the police, to try and get the car away, when everyone would go away.
            MS: Wait a minute. You were talking about seeing Alameda County Police that night. Sure that wasn’t the night they were . . .
            DG: I thought they were Alameda County Police. They were dressed in blue uniforms. They may have been Oakland cops. Just Oakland cops, not Alameda’s. But I thought there were Alameda cops.
            MS: And this was the night before the big show.
            DG: This was the night before the big show; this was the night of the freddies, with all the ruckus. Then, most of the people bedded down; I didn’t go to sleep. I was too keyed up to sleep. I didn’t sleep anytime during that four-day period. I sort of cracked up . . . no, I was awake for five days . . . I sort of cracked up afterwards, for a couple of days. I’d met a girl, too, who I was talking to once in a while, and so we sort of wandered around patrol, and talked to people and bummed cigarettes, and I remember somebody went out and bought two, or three four cartons of cigarettes about five o’clock, and I went around passing them out to people. Handing out cigarettes to somebody who needs cigarettes, handing out Marlboros and Pall Malls, handing them out whether you liked filters or non-filters.
            MS: I remember that.
            DG: The feeling of comradeship was growing much, much stronger. The group had dwindled to about four hundred. Maybe even fewer that four hundred. But, they were behind, and in front, and a few on each side. Some were on the grass. Then also about five o’clock somebody in the administration building turned on the water on the lawn, and got a lot of people wet. I ran up and got the people off one lawn, and ran out and got the other people off the lawn. I remember that one group of people inside a tent, which was gyrating remarkably for that hour of the morning—the quietness of the earth and all that—sort of remarkable that a tent should gyrate like that, told me to go away, not to bother them, if it rains or it freezes, and I guess it was a waterproof tent, because it didn’t bother them a bit. People came down off of there and got on the pavement.
            MS: As I understand it, those are automatic water sprinklers.
            DG: The people in the administration building certainly . . . they looked out their windows, and thought it was pretty funny, so I assumed automatically that they’d turned the water on. Maybe they were automatic.
            MS: I've heard that they were automatic.
            DG: But I think that they were turned on by people in the administration building. And they also let off an alarm clock.
            MS: Ah, you're paranoid.
            PI: (laughs)
            DG: Right! And they also let off an alarm clock at some time in that area, too. Lots of things happened around five o’clock. Then, about six, we started to clean the area up. I noticed that there was a police car sitting out there all night, sort of cruising back and forth, sitting by the corner and cruising back and forth. We started to clean up, and we picked the lock of the maintenance, of the little maintenance building below the ASUC building and hauled out that big slurper, you know that big vacuum cleaner and some brooms and rakes and things and cleaned the whole area up.
            MS: What do you mean you picked the lock?
            DG: We picked the lock. You know, with a hairpin.
            MS: Where's this room?
            DG: I'll show it to you sometime. It's down below, in the lower plaza area, but way on the other side. Anyway, I've seen it once before so I knew where it was. ‘Cause I came on campus early, I liked it early. You know. By about seven o'cock the whole area was cleaned up, and everybody was awake except for maybe one or two people who just did not want to get up. We've gotten the morning papers, and I was infuriated by the morning papers, which made me explode with rage. I cursed . . . roundly cursed every newsman I saw, and they were very hurt. I didn’t understand at the time that they were not responsible for this. That the newsman takes pictures and reports and the desk does what it wants. They completely distort what is said. It said ‘riots,’ and it said, ‘beatniks and Communists,’ and this, and I became absolutely furious.
            We were serving free coffee, to the demonstrators and to the newsmen. Anybody else wanted it they had to pay a dime, but that didn’t go over very well so everybody got free coffee. We had coffee and donuts. More and more the day picked up, and more and more people came by, fewer and fewer people on their way to classes actually went to class. They sort of stayed around the car. They figured, ‘Well, hell’s bells. We can cut a class today. Something like this doesn’t occur every day.’
            MS: The police rush hadn't come on the car yet, huh?
            DG: No. There was no police . . . NO police trouble at all. The police were very pleasant, very sort of tired, they changed shifts once, about . . . I think about two o’clock they changed shifts. Maybe two, two-fifteen. Maybe three. Maybe even before that. But I remember somewhere between twelve and three they changed shifts, ‘cause I saw some new cops. And I made the acquaintance of the man in the car and shook hands, you know, ‘Hi,’ he didn’t pay much attention to me and I didn’t pay much attention to him. I mean, he was a very incidental guy to the whole thing. He may as well not have been there as far as I cared. Paid no attention to him.
            The little maintenance man came out and looked very wounded that the whole place had been cleaned up. So he got out his little vacuum cleaner thing and went over the whole area again. Because after all you know, you got a job to do you gotta do your job whether it’s been done or not. The whole area was immaculately clean. So he cleaned it up all again, anyway. I think this improved my mood.
            Then the day went pretty blah. People coming, more soft drinks being bought, more people. Buying pink lemonade and sending it out. The same sort of comradeship existed just as strongly as the first day. This went on throughout the day. Relatively uneventfully, with speeches. I talked to some people and told ‘em what was going on and proselytized a little bit more, never during this whole time getting more than a hundred yards from the car, I’m sure. I can’t think of a single time I got more than a hundred yards away from the car except for that one time I went to buy Cokes on the second day. Then, about five o’clock, a number of people disappeared, who had been doing a good deal of the speaking, and other speakers took over who weren’t quite so good. By this time I was beginning to get my second wind of being awake. I wasn’t used to staying up all night; I didn’t rest well. I was sort of glazed, you know, in my head. And I was gonna stay up for two more days. Let’s see, I hadn’t gotten any sleep the first night, from the thirtieth to the first, nor the first to the second, nor the second to the third. Nor the third to the fourth, nor the fourth to the fifth. So I stayed awake all that time.
            Then about seven o’clock, Mario came back and began to make a speech, and the newsmen shined lights right in his eyes, and he became very angry at them and pushed them away. Lots of people grabbed them and they finally stopped them and got them out of his eyes. And this is I guess when he became the official leader of the Free Speech Movement. Before this it was sort of loosely called the United Front, and the only . . . I know nothing about this United Front, except that’s what it was called. I didn’t know who was in it or what.
            MS: You didn't sense that Mario was the leader . . .
            DG: No.
            MS: . . . during the sit-in?
            PI: But I had.
            DG: I never sensed that Mario was the leader at all. Ever. At any time. Even now.
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: This is a fabrication of the press, and of people who don’t know what’s going on. He was a good speaker. A fine orator. And a good thinker. And a terrible strategist. A blockheaded strategist. He had no organizing ability, he had no stick-to-it-iveness when it came to shit work, he blew his cool far too easily, he could not make a tactical decision if his life depended on it. And, he couldn’t organize or anything like that. Couldn’t do the bureaucratic work, couldn’t organize. All he could do was speak well, and state clearly, succinctly, and in very beautiful terms, what everybody else was thinking. So he did the majority of the speaking.
            MS: How do you feel?
            PI: Yeah, I agree. I think Jack was the brains of the whole movement.
            DG: I don't agree with that, either.
            PI: Well, I mean that he . . . I, I don’t know . . . I feel personally . . .
            DG: Jack was the strategist.
            PI: Well, I always looked to him for counseling.
            DG: But strategy is not everything, you know. Then a speech was made, and I didn’t quite understand what was going on. This whole thing confused me very much. I was tired, and I was keyed up, and so I didn’t understand what was going on, precisely. But somebody here was making a plea for us to stay, somebody else was making a plea for us to go, and right about this time we began forming concentric rings about the car and locking arms; and getting set for a big rush from what we had heard was fantastic numbers of police that were there. Fantastic numbers were anywhere from estimates of a thousand to millions and millions of police. I was fully equipped to believe this, ‘cause I hadn’t seen any of ‘em, I never saw a single policeman the whole time except for the Berkeley and Campus police, but I heard that there were just seas of Oakland cops swarming all over the campus. So we were . . . I was fully prepared to fight to the death this time, again, for what I understood be a gross insult to my dignity at that time.
            My . . . me, DG, had been insulted by the University, therefore I was very pissed off. This was about the extent of it. Also, we had to get a conception of something: rights. More than . . . more than the idea of individual rights—collective rights. Which took me a terribly long time to . . . it took me two or three months before I got this idea completely through my head. The idea of working together, and organization, and collective rights. Collective duties and responsibilities and the like. Which was totally alien to my nature.
            Then the Berkeley cops rushed the group, and there’s a photograph in . . . I’m not sure where . . . somebody has it, and I’m in it . . .
            PI: The front page of the Chronicle.
            DG: Was it the front page of the Chronicle? Of the cops rushing and several of us yelling . . . we were yelling ‘lock arms’
            PI: I thought that came before Mario . .
            DG . . . cops were rushing us . . .
            PI: . . . made the thing about how we should . . .
            DG: I think it was . . .
            PI: . . . because as I remember it was, it was around . . .
            MS: Yeah, it had to be before Mario resolved the dispute . . . actually announced . . .
            PI: Yeah! . . . about whether or not to break up, people were muttering and everything . . . yeah.
            MS: Nobody had any second thoughts about . . .
            DG: By this time I was very fuzzy in the head, and things were not at all clear to me and my time sequences were very badly fouled up.
            MS: You were sitting in the audience?
            DG: No! I was around the car . . .
            PI: No, I was standing around . . .
            DG: . . . with arms locked with two people next to me . . .
            PI: . . . I was sitting in the audience, because I’d tried to lock arms . . .
            MS: Could you tell the response of the audience. What was the feeling of the people at that time. As your sense, anyway. What’s the response to the agreement.
            PI: The response to the agreement . . .
            MS: . . . the situation and everything, were they pretty much satisfied or did they . . I mean, did they understand . . . or they didn’t know what to do . . .
            PI: Well, I remember that our . . . the two of us sitting there, our first reaction was “My God! He had no right to make that agreement without coming back and taking a vote of everybody sitting around the car, because here we were willing to get our heads bashed in, and he’d . . . you know . . . and, and Mario and several other people had signed this agreement that, you know, you could see this terrible stress they were under but they should of come back, and I know I was very mad and several people I . . . you know, around me, they all were muttering, nobody wanted to leave, you know, and . . . and you could see it on peopleユs faces that nobody wanted to leave, and they said “Why should we go,” and then, you know, and then they started muttering to themselves a little bit, and then they left, but they were . . . people were very unhappy. You could see it on everybody’s faces. I saw unhappy faces. Everybody was very disappointed at the outcome.
            DG: Well, I was . . . I had my arms locked with about the, uh, fifth circle out, and we put . . . we kicked most of the girls out . . .
            PI: I know.
            DG: . . . because we figured that they couldn’t form anything strong enough to hold. I mean, I had two real bulls beside me. You know, I mean really enormous guys, and they’d taken off their shirts. We were taking . . . we were taking off like, our glasses, and we were taking pens out of our pockets and buttons off and undoing belt buckles, and really . . . really setting up for a knock-down, drag-out blood-and-guts fight. Which we were fully prepared to undertake. You know, a fight to the death. And I’m sure there would be somebody get killed if the Oakland cops had been let loose on us.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: Because we weren't giving any more or budging anywhere from that car. And, I didn't know that the car could get away under it's own power.
            MS: I had it figured out how they were gonna do it: they had two columns of cycles, and the way I figured it they was gonna pull in, and go straight to the, y’know . . . two rows of cycles into the demonstrators. And then the cops would come in right between them. And they would just pull he demonstrators out. You know, through . . . the cycles being blocking off everybody from getting in. Just so nobody could block off. I think that that’s what they were gonna do. I couldn’t imagine why those cycles were there for any purposes.
            DG: I remember the cycles. I’d heard motorcycles and they all started up all at once. And, I remember I was standing next to two people and we all three simultaneously thought together that it was tanks . . .
            PI: Tanks! Yeah, we thought that too . . .
            DG: For some strange reason it seemed to run through the whole crowd. Everyone I talked to later was very convinced that, that was a tank, or two . . . or several tanks. For real, that they’d brought up. We were real convinced that they were tanks. Is that the first thing you thought?
            PI: Yeah! ‘Cause everybody I talked to . . .
            DG: Everybody! Everybody I talked to was convinced that those were tanks.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: And later, we were convinced that it was motorcycles, but during that time . . . when we first heard that, the first thing that sprang to our minds was tanks. And, I don’t know why, there’d been a rumor that the army and navy would participate, and there were army and navy paddy wagons, ‘cause I noticed ‘em later running around. They’d blocked off Bancroft and Telegraph for several blocks down each way, and they were just chuck full of cops, from what I hear. We were convinced, then, that they were going to take the motorcycles and just run the motorcycles into the crowd. That’s what we thought they were going to do. And then when the crowd was all broken up, in the confusion the cops would charge. And, I thought it was an awfully big fuss over one police car. But, see, it was also you know their pride and honor against our pride and honor, theirs would probably win out. So, then the announcement was made that we should leave and, at that point . . . that particular moment, I was so tired, and so fuzzy in the head, that I would have . . . if Mario had said at that moment, ‘Stand on your head and click your heels together,’ I would have done it. I was absolutely an automaton. So, I just left. I just got up and walked away, with several of my friends and a couple of the people there . . . I mean, we walked down the street. I ran into a group of people on the corner and made a big, rousing speech, and got dragged off again. I was out of my head at that particular moment.
            MS: Were you . . .
            DG: Yeah . . .
            MS: . . . to go back to the sit-in. Were you in on the decision when they said . . . when they made a decision to go out?
            DG: Only insofar as I was a member of the audience.
            MS: You know they had a meeting in the north end . . .
            DG: I had nothing to do with that. Oh! I'm sorry! I was there . . .
            MS: . . . the second . . . the first floor . . .
            DG: . . . the first floor in the north end that little cubicle where we all . . . and it became very hot and stuffy.
            MS: Yeah, what was . . . what happened in that?
            DG: I didn't participate; I was only there.
            MS: Well, I mean, can you remember who or more . . . if there was a team . . .
            DG: There was an argument; there was Tom, Tom, what the hell his name . . .
            MS: Miller.
            PI: Miller?
            DG: Tom Miller was there, Mario Savio was there, all of the eight people were there, and several other people. And I really don't remember who they were.
            MS: Do you remember what they were arguing about . . . what the issues were?
            DG: Arguing about whether we should leave or not leave.
            MS: And, can you remember the arguments for and against?
            DG: The arguments for were: if we leave, it will seem that we’re chickening out; we fought for this, and kept it for so long, we . . . we . . . we really shouldn’t leave now; we’ve got this far we really shouldn’t split. The arguments against—which I really thought were much stronger—were that, staying is kind of absurd, we can’t gain anything, we’re not disrupting anybody’s anything, we . . . if we want to do something come back in tomorrow morning about seven o’clock. If we want to disrupt things . . . we should disrupt things then. But, we’re not doing anything now, it's purely symbolic, we're wearing everybody out, everybody's tired, we want to go home and go to bed. That argument won out. I didn't participate and didn't understand it.
            Who's here?
            PI: Mike Tyson.
            DG: Oh.
            MS: Hi, Mike.
            Mike Tyson: Hi.
            MS: Taping DG.
            Mike Tyson: What's he taping you for?
            DG: So, anyway, then I went home, and drank a whole bunch of beer, then walked this girl home, and then ran into a freddy—this is about five o’clock in the morning—ran into this freddy and had a discussion with him that lasted until about nine o’clock the next morning. He was very, very amenable to the whole idea. He was quite confused by it, and at that time I had such a stock of facts and figures under my belt that I could stun an ox, you know, by their weight alone. And, pretty much convinced him that what we had done was very kosher. And then went home again . . . no, I didn’t go home, I went to a friend’s house . . .
            Mike Tyson: Patti, is the door unlocked? I gotta get some stuff out.
            DG: . . . stayed there, got up, not having slept, I don’t think . . . maybe an hour of sleep . . . got up and went to Art Goldberg’s house. Where I . . . somebody’d told me to go to Art Goldberg’s house tomorrow morning. So, I went to Art Goldberg’s house, and then we had the first meeting of the FSM.
            MS: OK, now wait a minute.
            DG: And this was the point at which it was actually named the FSM. I did not participate in the naming of it, which had occurred before that.
            MS: I happened to be at that meeting, too.
            DG: I was not at that meeting.
            MS: OK. Uh, just before . . . the police . . . the rush on the car.
            DG: Mmm-hmm.
            MS: Was there actually . . . they did, actually at one point,
            PI: I remember that they broke through . . .
            DG: . . . broke through the lines . . .
            PI: Yeah. . .
            DG: . . . it was Berkeley Police, they broke through the lines . . .
            MS: This was after everybody’d been locking arms . . .
            PI: Right
            DG: Right
            PI: After . . . we were all . . .
            DG: We weren't prepared for it, and we were very surprised.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . and we did not expect that . . .
            MS: What did it appear that they were about to do . . .
            DG: It occurred to me, for a few moments, that they were gonna rush the car and try to take it . . .
            PI: Right.
            DG: . . . and then it became clear that they weren’t trying to rush the car at all, they were just trying to get around it.
            Mike Tyson: Why didn't we tip it over?
            MS: Hmm?
            Mike Tyson: Why didn't we tip the car over?
            DG: I don't know. Might of not thought of it.
            Mike Tyson: (laughs).
            MS: So . . . I mean . . . they just sort of posted the guard around the car.
            DG: Yeah.
            MS: And that was all.
            DG: That's right. Couple of details.
            MS: OK.
            DG: And they didn't do anything. I've expected when they started that they were gonna try to break the ranks and promote confusion, and the like.
            MS: OK. Let's go . . . let's go then to the meeting at Art Goldberg's.
            DG: OK. Now. The meeting . . . the first couple of meetings at Goldberg’s I absolutely was in a fog. I didn’t understand anything that was going . . . I was in a fog. I didn’t understand anything that was going on, it made no sense to me; there was politicking going on, and I just did not know what was going . . . I mean it didn’t . . . there wasn’t . . . I didn’t understand. It was a completely alien world to me. It involved matters of strategy . . . just . . . I was utterly befuddled. So, I don’t remember much of it, because I never participated.
            PI: But, you were there so you . . .
            DG: Up until about . . .
            MS: Well, I know some of it. I was in on the Saturday meeting . . .
            DG: Up until about . . .
            MS: . . . and the Sunday meeting . . .
            DG: After the FSM had existed qua FSM for about two months, then I began actually to understand what was going on in the way of politics, and what politics were about, and things like that. But I really didn’t understand. I felt very much over my head, whenever I was at a meeting, but I always went.
            MS: Were you at the Sunday meeting when . . .
            DG: I was at all the meetings . . .
            MS: . . . the Steering Committee was chosen?
            DG: . . . all the meetings.
            MS: . . . first Steering Committee?
            DG: I remember I spoke for Sandor Fuchs because I’d run into him very well when I was working on slate, he was a hard worker and he was obviously decent and all that. And then later I found out that he was an idiot, but I mean I didn’t know that at that time.
            PI: (laughs)
            DG: I remember that we had some discussions on what we should do with Lennie Glazer. And, this was something I did understand, and I made an impassioned speech which swung the whole thing back again. It was just about decided that we should abandon him, then I made an impassioned solidarity type speech and . . . which shook Mario up, and Mario made an impassioned speech and it swung the whole thing back again. We agreed to do something and never did it, as I remember. We never did get around to doing anything.
            MS: Were you there Pat?
            PI: Yeah, I remember that.
            DG: Were you there?
            MS: Do you remember some of the discussions that . . that . . . that took place at those meetings?
            DG: I remember the selection of the . . .
            PI: I just remember . . .
            DG: The selection . . .
            MS: Like who ran for the Steering Committee that didn’t get on and . . .
            DG: Oh, I remember, let's see, Jackie Goldberg ran . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: . . . and Sandor Fuchs ran, didn’t . . . not . . . never got on. Several times and never got on. And then a bunch of other people. See I didn’t even know these people, so I couldn’t vote. I voted from how they spoke. I didn’t know their reputations or anything else. And I picked pretty bad slates. No, I didn’t. I picked about three-quarters of the people who won. As I remember about one-quarter of the people I picked . . .
            MS: Who've you vote for that didn't win?
            DG: Sandor Fuchs.
            MS: And who else.
            DG: He's the only one I remember. And I remember that . . . Jack Weinberg and Mario Savio . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: . . . and I sort of assumed that Mario because he was a good speaker, and I remember that I voted for Mario, and I voted for Jack. Later on I got to where I would pick a winning slate every time. Got very classy at that. But, I never ran myself, but was a de facto member.
            MS: You ran but . . . but . . . but withdrew
            DG: I never ran. Oh, yes, I ran once but withdrew, because I didn’t . . . I felt that my presence on it would take somebody else off who would probably be better.
            PI: I remember that! I was going to vote for you. (laughs)
            MS: Yeah, I was sort of mad that you withdrew.
            DG: I probably would have been elected.
            MS: You certainly would have been better than Benson Brown.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: Well, Benson never did anything. And Art Goldberg never did anything.
            PI: Well, Art Goldberg . . .
            DG: There was this big crisis about his not getting on.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . get to it much later. But . . . then about the . . . it was Sunday afternoon, and what day would that make it? I remember it was Sunday afternoon . . .
            MS: The fourth.
            DG: . . . all I remember was . . .
            MS: October the fourth. If there’s something that you can remember, that you want to interject, please do, you know, in the interests . . .
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: We were having a great deal of trouble with communications. Like, nobody know where anybody was or what anybody was doing. And I was alone at that time with Sandor in the house . . . in Art Goldberg’s house . . . and I . . . the idea came to me that we should set up a sort of central communications bureau. And, Sandor agreed that it was a good idea, ‘cause I had a very shaky faith in myself, I didn’t know whether it would be a good idea or not. So, we agreed to set it up and found a house, set it up, and some absolute jackass broadcast the main number. We started calling around, all the people we know, and found out in about two hours that two hideous things were wrong with it. One, that it was a unit telephone on which we’d made about one-hundred telephone calls, and, two, that some jackass had taken the main number—which was supposed to be secret and put it up on the main screen in Wheeler Auditorium for two hours. So, we abandoned that number within about five minutes, set up a new one at Deward Hastings’ house up on . . . Whatchamacallit avenue . . . which was well isolated from everybody. And I manned that alone for about three days.
            MS: Starting when?
            DG: Starting that Sunday.
            MS: OK. I wanna know, were you at that meeting on the evening—either of you—when they started getting the phone calls from the professors. And . . .
            DG: I remember something vaguely . . .
            MS: . . . Glazer and . . .
            DG: Oh! I'm sorry! I missed something very important. Going back to the . . . to when we were fighting the cops, at Sproul Hall door. Nathan Glazer was supposed to have made some kind of negotiations with the administration which he failed to do, and therefore we didn't know that the police were going to come to the door. And it's because of his failure to get from spot A to spot B on time he’d got hung up somewhere in the middle-dawdling around, I'm sure. And because of his failure to get there we had to fight the cops. If he've come there, we never would have had to fight the cops. If he've been on time.
            MS: What would have been the result?
            DG: There was some kind of agreement: We won’t . . . we won’t leave until this agreement is made. The agreement hadn’t been made, and we would have occupied . . . re-occupied the building, obviating the necessity of the cops trying to close the doors, because we would have been inside already. The doors were to stay open until . . . no, it was until six thirty, not seven thirty . . . and he showed up late after the fight, and we cursed him roundly, and he was a fink in my mind from that day onward. Which was borne out very clearly by every action of his later. That he was really and truly a . . .
            MS: But even though he was a fink you spoke for him at the meeting on the weekend.
            DG: Did I?
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: What did I say?
            MS: You just said that.
            PI: No. He didn't just say that.
            DG: I was speaking of Sandor Fuchs, not Nathan Glazer.
            PI: He was speaking of Sandor, not Glazer.
            MS: Oh! I thought you were talking about . . .
            DG: . . . Nathan Glazer.
            MS: I thought you were talking about . . .
            DG: Nathan Glazer.
            MS: . . . now, wait a minute. You’re talking about Nathan Glazer?
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: Professor Nathan Glazer.
            MS: I kept thinking of Lenny Glazer, and wondered if . . .
            PI: Oh!
            DG: No, no, no, no, no.
            MS: Yeah, OK!
            DG: I thought they were related for a while.
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: I never forget when Lenny Glazer . . . you know, when Nathan got up there, he says ‘Did you sign the’. . . Lenny says, ‘Did you sign the loyalty oath?’ And Nathan Glazer says, ‘That’s not fayuh! That’s not fayuh!’ he says. And of course I can’t imitate his . . . but he has this very distinct annoying sound.
            DG: Very Brooklynish accent. Very New York Jewish. Um . . . well . . .
            MS: OK, uh . . .
            DG: That . . . that . . . some night meeting I was at but I left early.
            MS: The Steering Committee had been chosen by the time you left.
            DG: Then I went back up. I believe so.
            MS: Were you at that meeting? Pat?
            DG: I periodically left for the hidy-hole . . .
            PI: I was there that afternoon. I wasn’t there Sunday night. I think I was there when the Steering Committee was chosen, but I don’t remember. I mean, I thought . . . I thought I voted for the Steering Committee. But I’m not sure.
            DG: It was during the intermission . . .
            MS: Were you Campus for Women for Peace?
            DG: She was Women for Peace.
            PI: No, I was . . . when I was there I think they . . . oh, yes . . . I think they did kick me out of that . . . when I’d been there, when was it Saturday night, they put me on as SLATE.
            DG: It was during the intermission between the afternoon and the evening meeting that I conceived the idea of a central. And I figured it wouldn’t be necessary then and so I came to the meeting. Then I went back . . . and then . . . I imagine you’ll want . . . you’ll want Marilyn Noble into this, won’t you.
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: Because she caused 100% fantastic chaos several times. A real nudnik. She came about three days after I’d set up the place. And it was working pretty well, it was very sporadic . . .
            MS: I remember I told you up at Central and I said ‘where is so-and-so,’ and you says, ‘I don’t know,’
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: And I call up later on and I said, ‘Like tell me where’s so-and-so?’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ and I said ‘Well, I thought your job’s supposed to know where people are.’
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: And you stuttered and you sort of swore at me.
            DG: Well, you see the point is that a lot of people weren’t telling me where they were.
            MS: Yeah?
            DG: They were supposed to call me every half hour and tell me where they were. I had a beautiful set-up, where I took all the main people, about twenty people, and staggered them so that one would me calling every five minutes.
            PI: Jeez!
            DG: And they were supposed to call God damn it, and they didn’t! And I got roaring pissed off, some of them were very faithful, as I remember Jack always was very faithful in the beginning, and then he got terribly negligent. And Mario was impossible.
            MS: Oh, yeah.
            DG: And Bettina I think was pretty good, too. But, I got though to them the importance of everybody knowing where everybody else was. And gradually, after about two day’s service, the place really was running like a clock, and I knew where everybody was almost all the time either by . . . you see, whenever anybody would call, I’d ask him, ‘where’s everybody?’ and he’d tell me where everybody he’d seen was last. So pretty soon I’d say . . . somebody would call and I’d say, ‘Two minutes ago he was walking down Telegraph toward Pepi’s, you know. And they’d call up again, ‘Found him.’ Now let’s see, ‘Where’s thus-and-such, where’s thus-and-such, and it was working pretty well. And then I got a little help, every now and then, from a couple of people. Tom Weller helped me and this fellow Peter helped me and his girlfriend helped me, and then Marilyn Noble came. Deward Hastings did a little bit.
            MS: What about Larry Marks?
            DG: Yeah, he helped some too. He was doing quite a bit in the early part about transportation and getting food and swiping me cigarettes from the store and things like that. I used to have a fine relationship with him where I’d go in and he’d turn his head and I’d steal cigarettes. And that was . . . it was pretty good. I was smoking Russian cigarettes.
            MS: He got let go.
            DG: He let go and our relationship nevertheless remained about what it was . . .
            MS: No, I mean at this smoke shop.
            DG: Yeah, that's too bad. He also shaved off his mustache. Which I think is a crime. It was such a beautiful mustache. Anyway. Beautiful mustache. Just beautiful.
            PI: I remember.
            DG: But he’s gonna grow it back. And, gradually I was getting to know all these people. And, at the end of the FSM I knew about two or three thousand people. Either on sight, or, you know, by name or a nodding acquaintance. So I ran Central for I think . . . I was personally in charge of and present at Central for about two weeks. Then I got Central going to where it was running well enough without me, to where I could start leaving and doing other things. I became sort of commissar in charge of you name it I can get it for you. I remember one night up at Deward’s house on the hill, I went to sleep with my girlfriend and woke up in the morning with Mario Savio. My girlfriend had left to do her shift on the phones and I was sleeping and I woke up with my arm around Mario. And I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I said, “Well, politics makes strange bedfellows!”And he struck me, and we went back to sleep. That will live forever in my memories. One of the worst puns of my life. He was looking terrible, absolutely ghastly. He was getting thinner and thinner and thinner, and he hadn’t shaved in ‘bout three weeks, something like that. And he was looking wretched.
            Then we moved Central down from the hill, to 2536 [College Avenue] and set it up again. At this time, Marilyn Noble was running around doing quite a bit of the shit work that I didn’t want to do. She was manning the phones and cooking food buying groceries. We used her car, and that was . . .
            MS: She was . . . she was . . . she was at Deward’s for a while, too . . .
            DG: Right. Then Deward kicked us all out, which was a wise move on Deward’s part, and uh . . . otherwise his house would have been torn down instead of 2536 I’m sure . . .
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: Did you have a lot of room up there? I’ve never been there.
            DG: No, it was very cramped. Very small. And then 2536 had . . . I got a lot more workers, a lot more regular staff, more telephones, we set up an extension up there but down at 2536 we set up two telephones. After about two weeks the whole works was again running very smoothly, and I left pretty much, although I was still very definitely and very clearly the . . . in charge of it and I would come in and raise hell whenever I wanted which I did whenever I wanted. I would come in maybe two, three times a day. I was also living there. And I lived there for maybe a month or two months.
            MS: Where were you living before? Did you commute or what?
            DG: No, I lived on Grove Street and I walked to school. I stopped living on Grove Street the day I got thrown out of school. I also lost my job, which was in the library. I lost that on the second. I also left my home and quit paying the rent, and the other guy got a new room mate.
            PI: Wasn't Tom your room mate?
            DG: No, Tom wasn't there. It was a guy named Al. Then Central . . . now, just precisely how Central was set up on 2536 . . . how . . . we came in, and sort of took the place . . . (tape ends)
(tape resumes)
            MS: Hello! Hello! OK. Um, what’s the date today?
            PI: Today's the twentieth.
            MS: July 20th. Yesterday was the 19th?
            PI: Yeah!
            MS: Let's see . . . the last side was on the 19th. So, you started . . . did you spend most of your time at Central while you were setting them up?
            DG: No. Oh, when I was setting them up?
            MS: You said it took about two weeks to Central . . .
            DG: Central on College. Right.
            MS: And during those two weeks were you pretty much there most of the time?
            DG: Well, the first one I set up I was there most of the time. then, the second time I set it up more people knew what to do and Central sort of became a boarding house for most of the people who were doing a good deal of the work and weren’t living at home anymore. Jack Weinberg was living there, Mario was living there—’course it was his house—I was living there, quiet a few other people were living there. We ate there, many of the leaflets were written there, some of the work was done there, planning sessions . . .
            MS: What I would like to do is gimme some of the stuff that I . . for example were you there when any particular crucial liaison came in from faculty; that kind of thing.
            DG: Usually, what happened . . .
            MS: Were you doing any liaison in that time?
            DG: The . . . the responsibility of Central . . .
            MS: . . . Steering Committee and that kind of thing.
            DG: . . . was to, A, know where the people were, and therefore assemble them, call them together, and find out where they were if some message came in we would get the person for whom the message was intended and hang him onto it.
            MS: What about Work Central. When did that . . .
            DG: All the other multitude of Centrals were established at later dates. Gradually as the needs of the Central expanded Central broke off, but most of them were however . . .
            MS: Were all the Centrals part of a master plan or they just sort of grow?
            DG: They just grew. At one time we had ‘em pretty well hooked up, but they were always very awkward. Very, very awkward. The only Central which really ran well was the Legal Central. And that one I also set up after the arrests had occurred. And it’s the only one under David Stein. I put in charge David Stein after it’d been running for about a week, and it’s the only one which I feel ran as well as it could of, with very few hang-ups, very few personality difficulties and all that. Marilyn Noble was a . . . was a big problem and got bigger as the FSM went on and finally she was just . . . she was asked to leave and left and came back and was almost thrown out because her . . . oppressive presence made it very difficult for people to work.
            MS: Yeah. I was always curious about one thing: there are many people who don’t like Rosemary [Feitis]. . .
            DG: She came in . . .
            MS: . . . and yet you get along with Rosemary tremendously. But you couldn’t get along with Marilyn, and I thought that was kind of interesting.
            DG: Marilyn Noble is an entirely different kind of person. She was paranoid to a degree which was disturbing; she was very, very . . . a very, very odd chick. She was very hung up and she transferred all her hang-ups to everybody else. She threw passionate rages and broke down about once a day and drove everybody nuts! Was very motherish and commanding and ran the show. And if she couldn’t run the show it really bothered her. And of course, she couldn’t run the show; she was utterly incapable of running the show. And when her duties began to get cut down more and more and putting other people into it more and more she began to crack up.
            No, the Centrals. There was Work Central, which never did work, it was a farce from almost the very beginning. The people who were in charge of it didn’t ever carry out their duties to any desired degree. It was a bunch of girls living in an apartment house, I’m not sure of which one. It may have been this one.
            PI: Carol Baum, wasn't it?
            DG: Carol Baum. I'm not sure. I don't know. Anyway, it was a bunch of girls living in an apartment house, then it was transferred from there when they were utterly useless, not even being home most of the time; transferred from there to another location and eventually wound up at Central again. The big Central at 2536, which actually carried out most of the work. John Sutake did a good deal of the work at Central, but unfortunately he has an anarchistic personality which means he'll work fine if you give him a specific task, just stick him in a little room, and tell him to go to it, but he's a not a good person for working with people. And, most of the people who worked at the Central were of a bureaucratic temperament and, while easy to control while you were in their presence, you had to keep riding herd on 'em and this, of course, didn't do them any good at all. Central after a month of two months boiled down to a pretty steady crew of people who both lived there and worked there day and night, and did an admirable job, considering the anarchy that persisted there. Of course, they're all a bunch of anarchists.
            MS: OK. Did you do any liaison for the Steering Committee . . .
            DG: Oh, of course.
            MS: I'm thinking of up to October 15th, when the October 15th agreement was signed. I believe you were not . . .
            DG: Through Central? Was any liaison work done through Central up to about October 15th? Not much.
            MS: For, yeah, for the Steering Committee.
            DG: Most of it was done through individuals.
            MS: The Steering Committee . . .
            DG: Because the faculty either wasn’t aware of or didn’t use . . . and actually the Steering Committee didn’t use Central as much as they could of at the beginning, until they began to catch on to its convenience. Of having a central communications bureau.
            Then we had a Press Central, which sprang up relatively soon after the big Central, which was located at Tom Irwin’s house, in Tom Irwin’s basement. Tom Irwin ran than particular . . . the press liaison with the help of a couple of other people, but mostly single-handedly throughout the entirety of the FSM. Relatively thankless task because no one know or cared what he was doing, and he was always being neglected. People wouldn’t tell him what was going on, he would have to more or less rely on leaflets and bits and pieces of information. He was always screaming for more information. His job was mostly all responsibility and very little thanks or praise. He was never in the public eye, he missed almost everything by being in his basement all the time. But without him we would have had an even more violently distorted view coming from the press I’m sure, because the press did report our releases, and whenever we were gonna do something we’d prime the press for it.
            Then there was Printing Central, which was run almost directly by me. In the early part Jack Weinberg was doing the leaflets, then he trained me how to do it, and I took over, usually alone, but I would draft people to help me. I don’t remember that there was any person who was ever reliable enough for me to put in charge of that, because it called for being awakened at every conceivable hour of the day and night and working solid until the job was done. Then taking the leaflets that were printed to the campus and making sure they were distributed. Thus I took care of the distribution of about one-half million leaflets. And printed them. With, of course, help. But I was in charge of that operation.
            MS: Well, let's see. What were you doing during the CCPA you were more or less organizing it all during that time.
            DG: Another thing that I was in charge of was rallies. I was in charge of monitors . . . I organized all the monitors, with help of course from other people, mainly . . . one of my mainstays as I remember was a fellow named George. One of my mainstays in leaflet handing out was a fellow named Peter Israel, who helped me almost every morning. I believe that I could count on him to show up . . . in the rain he would help me and the like. A few people would help me whenever a big job came along, mimeographing. There was one fellow whose name I can’t remember right now who could usually be counted on to help me with a 72-hour mimeographing job. We Want a University was a 72-hour job, and he helped me put it out. When Marvin Garson got back he was working to a good extent, on the printing . . .
            MS: I helped make that possible.
            DG: What?
            MS: . . . make it possible for you to be able to do that.
            DG: Hmm.
            MS: I sort of encouraged them not to put it out real quick . . . they wanted to do it out real quick, but . . .
            DG: It was a bad job. It was a bad job, bad writing, and it wasn’t worth doing, but we did it. It was a mistake.
            MS: Everybody wants copies of it now.
            DG: Yeah, everybody wants copies that we printed.
            MS: All across the country.
            DG: Fifteen thousand copies. We printed fifteen thousand copies and I don’t know where they went.
            MS: They’ve gone . . . people took them, because everybody said, “What’s . . . what’s this about?”  You know, on all the other campuses they wrote and said “What is it? Give us any kind of information on the Free University.”
            PI: Yeah.
            MS: So that was always . . .
            DG: How many copies do you have?
            MS: Oh, I have about three, you know the standard . . .
            DG: Jesus Christ.
            PI: I have three too.
            Tom Petris: Brian somehow got one in San Diego.
            DG: Oh, really?
            PI: (laughs)
            DG: Amazing.
            PI: I sent them out to all these friends of mine.
            MS: Well, lets get the . . .
            DG: For rallies for example I’d have a pretty consistent crew of people who I’d assemble about me at about eleven thirty every day . . . every morning, and we would go and get the equipment and set it up. One of the main duties of this group of people was to guard the equipment, because we were constantly expecting that it . . . the possibility . . . constantly prepared for the possibility of police rushing the podium and taking away the microphones, or University people doing something like that. I worked with a couple of people getting equipment—Bob Mundy was usually in charge of the equipment, making sure that it got back to where it was supposed to go, and making sure where it was all the time—but, he fucked up a couple of times, which cost some money. During the sit-in we lost a fantastic amount of equipment. We lost five hundred dollars worth of equipment, some of which we recovered, and some of which we have not recovered. We had to pay that all off. Also monitor captain, I guess I took care of about a hundred, hundred and fifty different monitors. And the rallies were very well monitored, very well controlled. we’d have, you know like at the big rally where we had something like twelve thousand people, we had a beautiful straight aisle running right down the middle. Bravo. The monitors were more or less little policemen, running around and making sure that people were sitting down, making sure that there were clear aisles, they also were very useful in case of any kind of disturbance, because they were pretty well trained, and they followed orders very well. There was a short chain of command which went from me in most cases to the monitors or from the Steering Committee and then to me and to the monitors. And, so good control was maintained during the sit-in, for example, the control was magnificent. We really did a good job. The monitors. I mean, it was rare that we even had to tell people what to do, because they knew their duties so well. And, of course, many people helped out who didn’t know, who hadn’t been monitors.
            Another thing was the . . . to cover printing, leaflet distribution. Most of the leaflets were written between the hours of twelve and four in the morning. Almost all the leaflets were written and usually I would be either aroused or awake. I wrote no leaflets to my remembrance. I participated in writing, and criticized the English of some. . . Mario’s a bad writer. Jack wrote most of the leaflets, with help of some other people.
            MS: Didn't Michael Rossman write . . .
            DG: Michael wrote quite a few leaflets, too. Michael Rossman.  . .
            MS: Why don't we get to the . . . did you go to any of the CCPA meetings?
            DG: No. What exactly is CCPA, I don’t . . .
            MS: Campus Committee on Political Activity.
            DG: What . . . what was that doing. What was the . . .
            MS: That was Mario, you know, Mario and all . . .
            DG: Yeah. Right. I went to the . . . I meant to come to some of those meetings, I never was on the board. Yeah, I went to some of those meetings.
            PI: The hearings . . .
            MS: Were you there at the time Meyers provoked Mario?
            DG: I'm sorry?
            MS: Were you at the meeting where Meyers provoked Mario?
            DG: To where he stood up and shouted? Yes.
            MS: Do you remember that very well?
            DG: Yeah. Well it seemed to me to be a . . .
            MS: So upset?
            DG: No, it wasn't that he was so upset, it was that he was making a good political move. He was . . . I don't think he was too upset.
            MS: I didn’t . . . I wasn’t there but I heard it referred to as “blowing his cool.”
            DG: He did. But he blew his cool in a fashion calculated to shake the committee up. He didn’t blow his cool for real, I don’t think. He didn’t blow his cool for real. The committee had been dawdling and delaying and fucking around for a couple three four weeks, and it was a big waste of time.
            MS: I want to talk to you, Tom.
            DG: I want to talk to you. Why don’t we get you on. Why don’t I quit right now. Put Petris on.
            MS: I don't know I want him on this tape. I want to talk to him about something else.
            DG: OK. . . . and dawdling around and Mario had . . . I think was calculating to provoke them to do something; either break off negotiations or actually do something. We were trying at that time to get them to break off negotiations, and this blowing of his cool was an action calculated to . . . not to particularly to win sympathy, but one to frighten the committee. Have them either break off negotiations or do something that they promised to. They were just fucking around.
            MS: Why don't we go into the setting up of the tables, then. The . . .
            DG: Well, setting up of the tables, I mean, whaddaya mean. The first time we set up tables . . .?
            MS: This was when the . . . the . . .
            DG: The big faction fight?
            MS: Yes.
            DG: OK, well that . . . I'll tell you how I saw it myself with my own eyes, from my own angle. I won't tell you what . . .
            MS: Yeah, I want to know how you saw it when experienced it.
            DG: What!?
            PI: Crittenden was suddenly stricken ill and court didn’t reconvene until three-thirty this afternoon.
            MS: Must be gall bladder, I can tell you that.
            DG: Maybe he'll die. Gall bladder, yeah. It's an affliction of bureaucrats.
            Anyway, about eleven thirty, twelve o'clock . . . and I don't remember the time, it was sometime in February, or January, I don’t remember. No, no, no, no, I’m all wrong. Sometime in November. I am very bad on dates. I can’t remember the date.
            MS: I know the date, I don't remember the day. Was it the day before the tables were set up?
            DG: Yeah. The night before the tables were to be set up . . .
            MS: Before the first tables were to be set up?
            DG: Before the tables were to be set up after the interim. After the breaking off of negotiations. The Steering Committee was in favor of setting up the tables. There’d been no consultation with the Executive Committee, and the Steering Committee had gotten a little far away from the Executive Committee. And was acting much more independently than perhaps it should have. A small faction of dissidents . . .
            MS: A vocal minority.
            DG: Dissidents. Negotiated, including Jo Freeman and Brian Turner, and I believe Art Goldberg and Jackie Goldberg, went to negotiate with the administration independently of, and purporting to represent the FSM.
            MS: Now when did you first find this out? This is . . .
            DG: Much later. It was the next day.
            MS: Can you give me the account as . . . chronologically as much as possible.
            DG: OK. Fine.
            MS: When the information came to you, how it came to you.
            DG: Alright, fine. About eleven thirty, twelve o’clock, I received a call from either Jack Weinberg or Mario, and I don’t remember who—I believe that the first part of the call was from Jack and the second part of the call was from Mario—for me that there’d been a . . . somewhat of a political play on the part of a dissident minority, they didn’t know what was happening, and they considered it very important to prevent a coup.
            MS: Where were you located?
            DG: I was in Central. At 2536.
            MS: And where were they calling from?
            DG: They were at Ron Anastasi’s. They told me to get all important files and all important materials and information and get out of the house with them as fast as possible and take them over to Anastasi’s house. And so I said to people around me, including Marilyn Noble who’s car I borrowed, ‘I’m going to take the files up to the Steering Committee for them to take a look at them, and bring ‘em right back. So get me all important files. And, they did, having no reason to mistrust me, and I took all the important files and got in Marilyn’s car and split. Delivered them to the Steering Committee, found out what happened; what happened was that Brian Turner, et al, had called an Executive Committee meeting for eight o’clock the next morning. And they said, . . .
            MS: Now he had, they had . . .
            PI: Wait, I can tell it!
            MS: Now wait a minute. He's telling it. I wanna know, were there any calls to Central before you were to take the files over to . . . I mean, were there any calls with respect to this particular calling of the meeting?
            DG: There may have been, but I certainly didn’t know about it.
            MS: I see, OK. Go on.
            DG: Although I don't think there was. Or, if there were . . . Oh, I know. Marilyn Noble had been ordered by Brian Turner to call an Executive Committee Meeting by calling the list. Of Executive Committee members.
            MS: What I want to know is did he call before you took the files over.
            DG: He didn't call me.
            MS: Did Brian call her before.
            DG: Right. Before I took the files. But they assumed it was legitimate. I didn’t know that, no. The Steering Committee found out about it only indirectly, and by accident, to my knowledge. Alright, so I took the files and went over there and was informed that these people had twelve names, which was the required amount to call a meeting; that they had twenty-seven names, only twelve of which were required to call a meeting, and wanted to call a meeting. The Steering Committee protested that you couldn’t call a meeting without informing the Steering Committee at least twelve hours in advance. Because it would throw things out of whack. It was a very serious squabble. They replied that they had the sufficient names, and the Steering Committee demanded that they produce these names. Whereupon they were reduced to confusion; they couldn’t produce the names. They didn’t have ‘em. Then they produced a list of twelve names, about one hour later. Meanwhile, I’d gone back to Central, and I sat on the phones—we had two phones at that time—physically almost, and said that I would be the only person answering or receiving or giving out calls. If anyone tried to do anything I’d pull the phones out of the wall. And this really shook ‘em up. Because they really didn’t know what was coming off. Then they discovered that I’d . . .
            MS: Who was shook up . . .
            DG: . . . everybody in the place . . .
            MS: . . . in Central.
            DG: . . . and immediately alienated everyone from me, and they feared and mistrusted me for the remainder of the FSM. I mean, they hated my guts for a couple of . . .
            MS: How many people were there?
            DG: About twelve.
            MS: Twelve!
            DG: About twelve people were there at Central. About ten.
            MS: Who was there besides Marilyn.
            DG: Marilyn Noble, John Sutake, Bob Mundy, some girls whose names I don’t remember I think Barbara Goldberg, I’m not sure. But the whole staff, that was working there at that time, became violently alienated me . . . from me at that time and while my authority over them wasn’t diminished, their terror of me was greatly increased.
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: Fascist!
            DG: And, they were so frightened of me that they were convinced about a week or two weeks later and all during the remainder of the FSM that at any time I would come barging in with an axe and rip the place apart and throw them all out. They were very frightened of being emasculated, and they had just been emasculated. In effect, their job had been taken away from them; I had taken away their files, which was the only thing that legitimized their existence, and I’d taken away their telephones. So they were stuck, and they fumed and fussed and threw things at me.

            MS: OK. So you sat on the phone.
            DG: Right. And . . .
            MS: While they fumed.
            DG: Then Art Goldberg, Sandor Fuchs came in, and started babbling away.
            MS: Central?
            DG: Central. Sandor was . . .
            MS: About what time?
            DG: About one o'cock. Sandor was in tears, practically; convinced that there was going to be bloody riot, that the whole student movement would be crushed, and that death would ensue for everybody. And he . . . he, you know, absolutely hysterical. Art Goldberg was almost as bad. This is when I began to lose my respect for Goldberg and Fuchs in violent decline. I've begun to respect them less and less because of the statements Goldberg would make and the way that Fuchs responded to them.
            Then, I found out . . . at that time I knew more about this meeting that had been called . . . then they asked . . . sort of asking around about the meeting, and I said, do what you want, and I let them use one of the phones as I remember to communicate with . . .
            MS: What were they asking about?
            DG: About the meeting that they were planning for the next morning. And I said that as far as I knew the Steering Committee was sitting on that meeting, and they couldn’t call it. And, I agreed with the Steering Committee. Then . . .
            MS: Did you say that they started asking to use the phone?
            DG: Yeah. Then I let them use the phone. One phone.
            MS: Do you know who they called?
            DG: Yes. They called their own people. They called Brian Turner and Jackie Goldberg and what’s-her-name, the girl . . .
            PI: Jo Freeman?
            DG: Jo Freeman. And got their meeting lined up again, and then when they were required to produce their names produced twelve names, which was the required number, four of which were illegitimate. Two people . . . one person had not been contacted and knew nothing about it, another person violently denied that he had ever said anything of the sort . . . that he wished to be on that list of twelve, another person wasn’t on the Executive Committee, and I don’t remember what was with the fourth person, but he was utterly illegitimate. So, the Steering Committee . . .
            MS: Do you remember Brian calling you to be on that list?
            DG: I don’t remember him calling me but I remember him saying I was on the list. I remember something abut Art Goldberg saying, “Do you object to a meeting?” and I said, “no, I don’t object to a meeting, but it has to be etcetera.” But he took that out of context and put me on the list, so I was one of the persons who violently objected that I’d ever belonged on the list.    MS: So then, Brian hadn’t asked you directly. Was he talking to . . . was Brian talking to Art on the phone and then said ヤWhat about David,ユ and then . . .
            DG: Art Goldberg asked me independently, ‘Do you object to a meeting,’ and I said . . .
            MS: While he was on the phone?
            DG: No. Not to my remembrance. I said, ‘No, I don’t object to a . . . you know, he put in tone of, ‘Do you object to democracy?’ that kind of . . . kind of thing. ‘Are you against motherhood?’ That kind of thing, and you say, ‘Of course I’m for a meeting. Meetings are great. But they should be through proper channels, and this particular case it’s very dangerous to have a meeting of one faction running around going to the University and threatening to explode the whole FSM. So, at finally . . . at long last it was all ironed out, and a meeting was called for the next day at eight o’clock.
            MS: So, when did Art . . . did Art leave then? Did he have anything more to say after he’d made the calls?
            DG: After . . .
            MS: What was the reply from Turner . . .
            DG: After we've got into a violent fight about whether I've agreed to be on this list or not, to my remembrance, I left, and went to the Steering Committee. This was after the meeting had been called, for the next day. Eight o'cock the next morning. I went up to the Steering Committee.
            Eight o'cock the next morning we all convened at a house on . . .
            PI: Ridge.
            DG: Ridge, I don't remember the guy's name . . .
            MS: Barry Jablon?
            DG: Yeah. Barry Jablon. And . . . Barry Jablon. The meeting was packed with political organizations that had been defunct for years, and representatives that had been dug up from nowhere. People who had never appeared at the FSM, hiking club people, really insane things.
            MS: For now I want to go back to the Steering Committee meeting. Do you remember what happened at the Steering Committee when you went back? What was it like?
            DG: There was fantastic confusion.
            MS: I'm trying to think of what happened. Do you remember who was there?
            DG: Most of the Steering Committee.
            MS: Anybody besides the Steering Committee? Was Stephanie Coontz there?
            PI: Stephanie and I were there. I don’t think we were there when David was.
            MS: Was Art there?
            DG: No. Although he came in later.
            PI: Well, then you must have been there! Because Stephanie and I walked in when Art . . .
            DG: No, I remember that Stephanie was there. I don’t remember you, but I remember that Stephanie was there.
            PI: Well, I was there.
            DG: Alright. I don't remember very specifically.
            MS: Why don't we go . . . did he tell you . . .
            PI: Well let . . . Stephanie got word . . . Brian Turner talked with Stephanie . . .
            MS: Did he go over to her place?
            PI: Yeah, he went over to her place and he came over and he said, ‘I want to talk with you about this it’s gotta be top secret,’ you know, this and this and this, and so he told her that they were negotiating . . . that he and a small group of people were negotiating on their own with the administration and he said he didn’t quite know what was coming off, they were trying to set up a meeting or something. And so then he left Stephanie’s and said he would come back again at twelve. And she . . you know he wanted to see if she was in on it, and so she lied and said she was, and she agreed and said she’d go along, and she was completely panicked and she didn’t want to be on her own so she called me up and said, ‘I’ve got to talk with you,’ so we went out and we talked and she told me what had happened and she said that . . . she wanted to put me, you know, to have me along with her as another witness and we were going to go to their meeting at twelve o’clock. So, around twelve o’clock Brian called her up and told her where to go and we both went over to this house, I don’t know whose it was, but Mike Abramovitz was there, and Jo Freeman, and Brian Turner and a couple of other people whose names I don’t remember. And, Jo was on the phone trying to get names to call a meeting, and . . .
            MS: Do you remember it Walt Herbert was there?
            DG: I think Walt Herbert was at the . . . Anastasi’s.
            MS: At twelve o'clock?
            DG: I'm not positive, but I seem to remember that he was.
            PI: I don't . . . I don't remember him being there. Anyway, they were having . . . they were talking about what they were going to do, and they were going to . . . they had this plan Brian Turner didn’t agree with it, but they were going to . . . in the middle of the rally they were going to suddenly get up and say, “We don’t agree with this at all and we . . . don’t approve of setting up the tables and we’re not going to support this at all,” and they were going to walk away and try to carry the rest of the crowd with them. And then they got into this huge argument over whether or not that was the right tactic because Brian Turner didn’t agree with that. And he said, “Well, we should have a meeting.” Oh, maybe Jo Freeman wasn't calling for that meeting. They were just trying to get support I guess at the time and then . . .
            DG: But they were really hamstrung by the fact that it had to be awfully secret.
            PI: Yeah . . . it had to be really secret.
            MS: (unintelligible)
            PI: . . . there was a call from Mario and he wanted to speak to Brian, and evidently what had happened was Brian had also called up Mike Tigar and told him about it, and asked him if he would come in and . . . and also get up and say something about how he disagreed with what was going on. And so Mike Tigar of course had called up Steering Committee and let them know what was happening, and Mario . . .
            DG: That must have been about midnight.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: ‘Cause that's when they called me. (spills coffee?) Shit.
            PI: And so. So anyhow, Stephanie talked with Mario after Brian had, and told him what was going on. And so we . . . we asked who else was in on it.
            MS: You talked on the phone right there in front of Brian?
            PI: Yeah, well she said she had to talk with him about something, but Brian didn’t realize you see . . . not . . . none of them . . . oh, Lewis Lester was with us too, because he was the most . . . we wanted a guy there, I don’t know why.
            DG: Ah, these tricky Stalinists.
            MS: Well, was Art there?
            PI: No. He wasn't.
            DG: No.
            PI: And the point was we kept asking, ‘Where’s Art? Where’s Art and Sandor?’ And they said, ‘Well, they’ve been negotiating,’ They had said . . . they said that they were going to talk with Clark Kerr . . . they were going to get an answer from Kerr by ten o’clock the next morning, and so they wanted to have a meeting before then at eight o’clock in the morning to . . . you know, to support what they were doing so they could give Kerr an answer. You know, on . . . on the negotiations.
            DG: So, at eight o'cock the next morning the meeting was convened. It began about a quarter of eight . . .
            MS: Now, wait a minute. I want to get . . .
            DG: . . . (unintelligible)
            PI: Well, did you want to know something about the Steering Committee meeting with Art and Sandor?
            MS: Yeah, I wanna . . .
            DG: Oh. Go ahead.
            PI: Oh, so, anyway, so when we went over to Steering Committee . . .
            MS: They just love to talk to me.
            PI: (laughs) So when we went over to Steering Committee . . .
            MS: Wait a minute. Wait a minute . . .
            PI: So they said Art and Sandor weren’t there.
            MS: So when did you . . . what time did you leave this meeting, and what was the progress of the meeting.
            PI: About . . . about one o’clock. It wasn’t really a meeting! It was just a bunch of people standing around there talking, and they were trying to figure out what they were going to say to the press later on. Whether they were going to say “Yes we are part of the FSM,” or even to say “Well, we’re a part of FSM but no longer a part,” you know, what they were going . . . exactly what they were going to say . . . Brian Turner was very confused, he didn’t know what was coming off. . . . He just . . .
            MS: Well, did you get the feeling that it was Brian Turner or that it was really Jo Freeman.
            DG: Somebody's here.
            PI: Oh, it was Jo Freeman.
            DG: Get the door, Sweet. Look, lets . . .
            MS: I . . . I wanna . . . I'm really not . . . (taping ends)
(taping resumes)
            PI: So we, we left their thing on the pretext that I had to go home and Stephanie was going to drive me and she left Lewis there to report on what was going on while we were, you know, otherwise . . . whatchamaycallit. Then we went over to the Steering Committee meeting at Ron Anastasi’s I guess it was, I don’t know whose place it was at. And we walked in and just as we walked in, almost, Art and Sandor walked in. This was about one, one thirty, and . . . so we stepped out of the room in a hurry. And we closed the door, and we thought that Art had seen us, but we weren’t sure, so we closed the door, and we were listening to what he was saying, and he . . . we got furious, because he was lying through his teeth, he said he had nothing to do with the thing, all he wanted to do was make sure that their . . . that a meeting would be called because of democracy, you know, that every side should be heard and that the issue had not been fully discussed in the other Ex Comm meetings; it had been rushed through. And he was going on and on like this, and at the other meeting everybody was waiting for Art and Sandor to come back, because “Art and Sandor are leaders, they’re the ones who know everything about what’s going on and we’re not really that sure.” So then we came . . . we talked with Bettina and she said, ‘Well, come on in,’ and . . . and . . . confront them. And so, we came on in and . . . and Art and Sandor evidently didn’t realize . . . I guess they didn't realize at first what role Stephanie and I had played. And then . . . she started contradicting them, speaking up in Steering Committee meeting and contradicting them, and . . . they left in a big huff . . . they were . . . they kept saying they were innocent, that they hadn't promoted this at all and they . . . that Brian Turner had come up to them and said that he was negotiating on his own and would they help and arrange a meeting . . .
            MS: Well, then . . . Art never admitted that he was lying or never . . .
            PI: He wouldn't admit it. No. But everybody on Steering Committee felt that he was (laughs). And then he and Sandor left and we . . . we stayed and discussed what we should do. And we knew they were going to try and pack it the . . . the next morning.
            MS: Well did Art . . . did Art go away saying “Well there’s going to be a meeting anyway if you want or not,” or . . .
            PI: No. Well, you see the thing was that we . . .
            MS: Did he sort of sheepishly . . . half-sheepishly and half-mad walk out . . .
            PI: Yeah, well he sort of . . . he was pretty sheepish I suppose in a way. He was . . . it was very weird, he just didn’t . . . he wouldn’t admit that he was wrong, that he had . . . he had been lying about his negotiations with Kerr. And he just said, “Well, we’ll see at the meeting tomorrow, what happens.” And, I think he had agreed to abide by the decision at the meeting.
            MS: Well, now do you feel that Art really was . . . was still in, or is there any reason to . . . I mean, have you heard anything since to . . . to contradict that, or . . . confirm it, I mean, or do you still think that Art was probably the leader. And Sandor.
            PI: Oh, I don't know, I think Jo Freeman had an awful lot to do with it, also. But we never really fully discussed it afterwards, I mean, everybody tried to forget about the split, and tried to heal it up, although it's very hard because there were very bitter feelings on my part, anyway. That they would even think of trying to negotiate on their own.
            MS: Were you at the SLATE meeting when they passed the resolution?
            PI: Yes! I was . . . I came in at the very end.
            MS: (unintelligible)
            PI: . . . two of my roommates were there and they were furious; they tried to speak and Sandor wouldn’t call on them, after they . . . they let Linda [Lustig] speak for a minute, and after they realized that she was against what they were trying to do, they wouldn’t call on her again. And Linda told me that Mario had tried to speak, and had been over ruled. They said he couldn’t speak because he wasn’t a SLATE member or something. That people weren’t listening to the points at all, that they had so much confidence in both Art Goldberg and Sandor Fuchs that they wouldn’t listen to other members of Ex Comm or anything about what had really happened. And of what the resolution really meant. So . . . but I know we all came away from that meeting with a feeling of . . . futility.
            MS: Do you remember some of the people who were at the Steering Committee?
            PI: Bob Kauffman, I believe Benson Brown was there, I’m not sure, and Bettina, Mario, Suzanne, Jack . . . I’m not too sure.
            MS: Think primarily of non-Steering members.
            PI: Non-Steering Committee? I don’t remember David at all. (laughs) I really can't remember. It was very little impact that I remember . . .
            MS: Well . . . (tape ends)
(tape resumes)
            MS: Today is the twenty-third . . .
            DG: Of July . . . and . . . we were at the . . . big meeting.
            MS: Right.
            DG: On the morning when we were going to set tables up again.
            MS: Right.
            DG: Mmm-K. The meeting convened at about eight o’clock with the parties divided geographically in the room. With very few people on the other person’s side, in the main forces. It became apparent at that time that Jo Freeman was the inspiring influence, and was actually running the whole show. Brian Turner looked guilty and confused, and really . . . uh, yeah . . .
            MS: There's something on the mike that picks up on the microphone.
            DG: What?
            MS: Your feet.
            DG: Oh. I'm shuffling my feet. (shuffling sounds) Put 'em up here?
            MS: It doesn't make any difference; if it's on the bed it will pick up.
            DG: Move my feet?
            MS: Move your feet, God damn it.
            DG: . . . and the other parties were obviously following her lead. She made a couple of finky speeches attempting to defend her position. And, also the room was filled with paper organizations and non-functioning, defunct organizations—organizations we’d never heard of, and the . . . the split was pretty even. You see, the Executive Committee had never really provided for who should be a member and who should not be a member. Merely, any organization has the right to send two representatives. Any legitimate student organization. So, since the rules weren’t clear, they had us by the balls. Then the votes came up. There was a considerable amount of debate, and all of it was being pressed by time. We wanted to get the tables set up and wanted to prepare for the rally. We argued and debated and then came to one of the votes, and I don’t remember what the votes were, but there were two significant votes. The first vote, the vote was seventeen to eighteen, the second vote twenty to twenty-one. Unless I’m mistaken. At any rates . . . at any rate, the votes were very, very close.
            MS: What were the two issues?
            DG: Well, the main issue was whether we were gonna set up tables or not . . .
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: . . . and what this meant. And we were afraid to censure . . . afraid to attempt to censure this portion of the Executive Committee right then and there, because they had too much of a . . . too much power. And we recognized, and they recognized, that it wasn’t legitimate power they had, but they still had enough power to gum up the works, so we didn’t . . . and we never did get around to it.
            MS: Well, what do you mean by legitimate power?
            DG: That the paper organizations clearly had no business in that meeting.
            MS: Well, what was the two votes? There was one on the tables, what was the other one?
            DG: I'm not sure. But I . . . but perhaps it was this, that whether the opposing side should have a voice in the rally.
            MS: Wasn't there about . . . was there something about AC, the UCLC or something.
            DG: Oh, that's right. Whether one of the groups could vote. That's why the vote was smaller on the first vote than on the second vote. And I think we agreed that it could vote.
            MS: And, do you remember Rosenthal being there.
            DG: Mmm-hmm! Dan Rosenthal made a very nasty scene, and a big display of himself, and he made threats about smearing the FSM publicly, and in his usual manner almost got into a fist-fight with somebody. I don’t remember who. He was very obnoxious.
            MS: Do you remember anything about accusing him . . . of his . . . that his organization didn’t belong anymore, that they’d quit?
            DG: That was essentially the issue.
            MS: But you don't remember what happened.
            DG: I remember that there was a big argument about it, and Rosenthal was very vociferous, pugnacious and nasty; and was threatening to smear people, and the like. Come out and make public statements that the FSM had done thus-and-such.
            MS: Going back to the Steering Committee, do you remember anything more about the Steering Committee? Anything pop up?
            DG: I just remember there was a lot of confusion. And a lot of back-biting and back-stabbing and arguing.
            MS: Like when Art came in and all that stuff.
            DG: I remember about Art coming in to the Central but I don’t remember exactly what went on when he came up to the Steering Committee meeting.
            MS: Were you . . . when you began to tell it you said that I . . . you said I’m going to tell it to you the way I saw it, not the way something-or-other. This was . . .
            DG: Mmm-hmm.
            MS: What was the other way you could have told me? You talking about.
            DG: What I heard.
            MS: Huh.
            DG: Gee, I don't remember what I we said exactly.
            MS: Well, then is there any other additional information that would be classified as rumor or second or third hand and that . . .
            DG: Most of the second-hand information was received from the people who’d seen what went on. Second-hand information is how . . . what went on between this dissenting party and the administration of the University. I was not there and neither was anybody else, if you want to know what they did. We found this out from Brian Turner, mostly. They’d gone to the administration and wanted to speak with Clark Kerr and had gotten into negotiations with him, and they made this sort of agreement that Clark Kerr would make certain concessions and they kill the FSM. They divided the FSM and made it fall apart. And they agreed to this, and they set another meeting for later. They came back to the later meeting and Clark Kerr . . . Clark Kerr disclaimed any knowledge of any agreement which would make any concessions to the FSM.
            MS: They're supposed to have met twice.
            DG: They did meet twice. The first time they made the agreement with Clark Kerr . . . contingent upon the second meeting . . . we will divide and kill the FSM if you agree to give the FSM certain concessions. And Clark Kerr said, ‘OK, good deal.’ They . . . they . . . began to implement their half of the deal, then they went back and saw Kerr again. And Kerr . . . (coughs) ‘scuse me . . . (coughs) . . . acted as if he didn’t know what was coming off. He says, “Really? Concession? Um, what are you talking about? I thought you said you were going to destroy the FSM.” And they became very wary at this point. You know, they . . . they’re not particularly brilliant people, any of ‘em.
            MS: Well, when was the second meeting, when did that take place. Was that after the tables had gone up?
            DG: H'm-mm. Before. But they still felt they were in the right, and they felt that the FSM was doing more harm than good. So they agreed to kill it. Hoping that they could get out of Kerr by this previous agreement. Holding to his promise, which was complete insanity. But none of them being particularly brilliant political strategists, they didn't grasp that. Then we found out about this and naturally we were outraged, because their stupidity could have killed everything. We very . . . we were very unhappy. Then the tables went up—the meeting broke up about . . . couldn’t have been much later than nine-thirty or ten o’clock . . and the tables went up, and that was the end of the big split. The participating members were virtually ostracized by really being given a very bad time, both independently and collectively by everybody else, and most of them didn’t show their faces too frequently again. Except of course Art Goldberg who hasn’t got much of a sense of shame and Jo Freeman who later came out attempting to spoil things again in the abortive sit-in. You know that there were three sit-ins? The second one in Sproul Hall and the one that didn’t come off and she made speeches against it. Publicly. To people as they were going in, not to go in. This was later. And that really killed her political capital, what little she had left was shot completely then. And also killed the political capital of her organization. And Art Goldberg, who never did appear at Steering Committee meetings—he was a member of the Steering Committee—never appeared, never participated, never did any work, finally ended up by getting voted off by a reconstitution of the Steering Committee which just didn’t include him on it. A big thing was made out of this by the papers, and his following made a big stink and so he was put back on again. And he never showed up at meetings again anyhow. With rare exception. He showed up at a couple of meetings, but not very many. Maybe two. Maybe three. At the outside. But if any notoriety was to be gained by his presence he would come. Any notoriety to him.
            MS: Well, nothing happened between . . . I think Monday . . . that overshadows everything. The much didn’t much . . . nothing much happened until we had the . . . Regent’s rally on the twentieth.
            DG: Well, these are the high spots. I mean, there’s a lot of work in between time and a lot of scrounging around but it wasn’t . . .
            MS: Yeah I'm talking about . . . I know.
            DG: . . . no big public show.
            MS: Well, what about let's see . . . then there was before the sit-in and those you . . . you went in on that.
            DG: Yeah. I slept through it.
            DG and MS: (unintelligible)
            DG: I went in and went to sleep, and was awakened at five o’clock and went out.
            MS: What did you do over the weekend that . . . the Thanksgiving weekend?
            DG: Thanksgiving weekend was a very depressing time; we were considering disbanding the FSM. This was just prior to the information coming out about the four students who were expelled.
            MS: Who’s “we”?
            DG: Jack Weinberg and I felt pretty much the same. I don’t know about Mario; I didn’t talk to him too much about it.      
            MS: Any others? Can you think of any others who were. . . ?
            DG: A lot of other people. I mean, that’s about all I can say. we were talking about disbanding the FSM, given that we couldn’t accomplish more than had . . . we’d reached all we could . . .
            MS: Mmm-hmm.
            DG: . . . and gotten all we could get. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted. There wasn’t any point in carrying on because we had no issues to bounce off of. And, so we were considering disbanding it and right after that those four letters came out. And we would have officially disbanded the FSM, I’m sure, I mean I’m almost positive of it, in that next week.
            MS: Then the arrests . . . let’s come up to the sit-in. What kind of work did you do in preparation for the sit-in?
            DG: Well, I . . . was in charge of the sit-in. I was in charge of setting the sit-in up. The mechanical aspects of the sit-in, and making sure that everything came off. I gathered equipment, organized monitors and gave monitors briefing meetings, set things up for non-violent resistance . . . had some dry-run practice sessions of doing certain things within the limited amount of time. Wrecked all the locks on the front door and the basement with toothpicks and matchsticks. I understand that Barbara Garson did the same thing independently.
            MS: You did what?
            DG: Stuffed toothpicks and matchsticks into the locks so that they couldn’t be locked . . . so the doors couldn’t be locked.
            MS: Which doors were these?
            DG: The main doors of Sproul Hall, and also the basement doors. So that . . . all the doors. With the help of some other people.
            MS: Did it work?
            DG: Oh, yes! It definitely did. The object of it was when they would . . . they would want to lock at seven o’clock, and they probably wouldn’t think of locking the doors before that, and that would give us an extra hour’s grace which we might need at that time. We weren’t sure; we didn’t know whether we’d need it or not. And, it’d take them an hour to fix all the locks. If even just one lock were sufficiently jammed to where they’d have to take it apart it’d give us an hour. And, it did work, but they put policemen by the doors to guard the doors, they just crowded each door with policemen. They had to dismantle the locks; they had to call locksmiths.
            MS: Did you see this, did you know?
            DG: No, but there was testimony in court concerning the dismantling of the locks.
            MS: I see.
            DG: They found . . . there was testimony in court about them being found jammed full of things. We were considering . . . I discussed this with Benson Brown . . . considering filling them with epoxy, and we had that all set up . . . had it all mixed, in a squirter, ready to squirt into the locks, and . . . to do that in the morning, and it would be dry by noon, and by about . . . maybe if they got the bright idea of trying to lock the doors at five o’clock or something like that . . . they would not be able to do it. The doors would be completely . . . the locks would be completely wrecked; they’d have to take them out and replace every single lock in the building. But we decided against that because it . . . it . . . it might look less like kid-stuff than for-real and they might get worked up about it and decide to prosecute people. Also, this was done with the eye in mind that they might try to lock the doors at noon, you see. So, we messed the locks up before noon. But not much before noon, just by about eleven-thirty I think the locks were finally completed.
            Also gathering speaking equipment, getting it all ready to be set up inside from the outside, carry it inside from the outside. Guards—heavy guards around everything—of monitors to prevent any police taking equipment or charging podiums and things like that.
            Getting arm-bands ready; getting food ready; setting up the food sup . . . setting up the supply lines; sort of as it were, you know; figuring out who was gonna do what; setting up the food. Doesn’t sound like much right now, but as I remember it took me 48 hours to do it, and I finished it all right on time.
            MS: What about the walkie-talkies? Did you have anything to do with the . . .
            DG: Yeah, I got them . . .
            MS: . . . communications?
            DG: . . . I got them and got them to the right people but that was about it. I didn’t use the walkie-talkies . . .
            MS: Did you know anything about Command Central; how that was organized or anything?
            DG: Command Central was right across the street and that was . . . at Bob MacClaren’s house.
            MS: No, Command was . . .
            DG: Wasn't that at MacClaren's?
            MS: That was where the Steering Committee was.
            DG: I'm almost . . .
            MS:. . . The Steering Committee headquarters.
            DG: Oh, well Command Central switched again and again and again, you know. We had one Command Central and . . .
            MS: . . . on Durant.
            DG: . . . on Durant, and we switched it; and then we set it up again at MacClaren’s and I believe MacClaren’s . . . and if I’m not grievously mistaken MacClaren's was Command Central all the way through the sit-in and all the way the time . . . through the time we were in jail, and it never was . . .
            MS: Well, when I got out of jail Command Central was on Durant.
            DG: It may have remained there.
            MS: As I understood it they used . . .
            DG: It was very unclear where it was . . .
            MS: . . . the Steering Committee (unintelligible) to command and command and get a message to . . .
            DG: Well, it never . . . I never used it, so I really . . . I mean, I never had to go through it, ‘cause I always know where the Steering Committee was . . .
            MS: Did you know about any preparations in terms of how to liaison for determining whether the police would come, you know, when they would come and so forth?
            DG: Yeah, we had that set up.
            MS: Do you know how it was set up?
            DG: Well, we had professors and persons in the know, who would communicate information to certain persons in the Steering Committee, and we more-or-less knew when the police came for about an hour . . . about an hour in advance. But it was not announced until we knew for sure. It’d been announced on the radio, that the police were coming, and then we felt that it was sufficiently clear information that . . . to authorize preparations for a sit-in. And, that was all set up it advance, too. We had monitors on every floor; divided as to the number of people that was on that floor. The fourth floor was the study hall and sleeping room, and the third floor was a sort of a quasi-study hall—it never really was—second floor was you name it you can do it, and the first floor was . . . was mostly sleeping. Sleeping and also the celebrations that were going on like the Chanukah service; the fun and games.
            MS: What about the basement?
            DG: The basement was cleared out very quickly after we occupied the building. They cleared the basement and locked the doors.
            MS: What about . . . and during the arrests. I mean . . . during . . . during the sit-in what were you doing most of the time. Just checking my notes.
            DG: Most of the time I was running up and down and up and down and up and down, checking on things, relaying information. I remember I ran into Lieutenant Chandler about four o’clock in the afternoon and he was doing . . . I was under the impression that he was trying to lock bathroom doors, and became very angry with him, and read him out, and told him that if he locked the doors, A we would piss on the floor and B we would make life difficult for him, so he . . . I believe at that point he stopped locking the doors, but we were afraid that they would lock the doors to the bathrooms so I believe I told several monitors to do it—and also some people did it on their own—to take the doors off their hinges, and that was done. The locks were either jammed or the doors were taken off their hinges to the bathrooms.
            MS: Well then you're the one that . . . that began . . . that started the news of the locking of the doors.
            DG: Yes, because I've seen Lieutenant Chandler and I was also the one who ordered that the doors be taken off their hinges or jammed.
            PI: I thought that was later in the evening.
            DG: No, it was about four o'cock.
            PI: Oh, ‘cause Stephanie was really furious I remember . . .
            DG: Yeah, well I was . . .
            MS: I think something like that happened around eleven o’clock.
            PI: Yeah, Stephanie was really upset . . .
            DG: Some doors were taken off . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: . . . and I've said to monitors that if they saw people trying to lock the doors those doors should be taken off their hinges and, jam the locks, now.
            PI: Yeah, but Stephanie’d been in with Lieutenant Chandler, and Chandler've said that he was going to go and unlock all the doors, and then Mario had by that time taken the door off the hinges and they . . . and Stephanie was very mad.
            DG: This may have been going on at separate times, but I remember when I was . . . when I was independently talking with Chandler I became very angry at him . . .
            MS: . . . funny (unintelligible) . . .
            DG: I think he wanted . . .
            MS: Did you actually . . .
            DG: I think he wanted to lock the doors . . .
            MS: . . . did you actually . . . you didn’t see him lock any doors though.
            DG: I saw him going up to a door with keys in his hand and I got in front of . . . between him and the door, that was on the third floor at the far end . . .
            MS: Mmhmm.
            DG: . . . and told him that if he locked the door we’d piss in the hall. We’d set up a special . . . sector off a section of the building as a latrine and God damn it we’d piss in it. And if he liked that let him cram that up his ass and smoke it, you know? And then he got very shaken up and took off. I mean he’s a very easy . . . easy . . . easiest guy to intimidate that I know of. You’d just yell at him and he falls apart.
            MS: But you actually . . . but you never did let . . . didn’t let him lock the . . . lock the door.
            DG: No! No doors were locked in my presence by any policemen. And then the doors got taken off the hinges and the locks were jammed. To prevent that possibility. I mean, that would be utterly horrible if that happened.
            MS: You know we pulled off the . . . we pulled things off and kept the pins, and I put the pins back when I heard that the police were coming. I went back and put the pins back.
            DG: Well, as I remember on the fourth floor . . .
            MS: I guess it would have been . . .
            DG: . . . we kept the door open and kept people by it . . .
            MS: Yeah, this was on the third floor, when I did this.
            DG: . . . and never did take the door off its hinges. But I think the lock . . . lock was messed up. Matchsticks and things. We only had one john on the fourth floor and it was used by anybody who felt like it. I don’t think there was a women’s john, I think it was . . . or there wasn’t a men’s john or something, I don’t remember which it was. I don’t remember using it. And I was charging around on the roofs some of the time looking around and finding ways in and out of the building . . .
            MS: Did you find any other ways . . .
            DG: . . . checking things out.
            MS: . . . besides . . .
            DG: . . . that one bathroom window? Oh, there was a rope . . . there was that one bathroom window that went up a staircase . . . you went out the window and up a staircase, and that led . . . took you onto the roof to a spot where you could probably get either into an office or out of the building without being seen by anyone.
            MS: Where did the stairways go, down?
            DG: They went up.
            MS: Which was it . . .
            DG: We set up a rope on the outside.
            MS: What floor was the, uh . . .
            DG: You ended up on the . . . I think you ended up on the third floor. Or the fourth floor.
            MS: When you went out, which floor did you go out on?
            DG: Second floor.
            MS: The bathroom on the second floor. You go outside and up the stairs.
            DG: Right.
            MS: And then you're on the third floor.
            DG: Then you're on the third floor or the fourth floor. And . . . but you're . . . you're on a little verandah thing. Which seems to have been built . . .
            MS: It's a fire escape?
            DG: . . . it seems to have been built for faculty teas, I mean I don’t know. It’s a very odd building. It’s a very odd kind of a thing for a building like that to have. And then you can . . .
            MS: I had heard about there was some way of getting up and down inside the building.
            DG: Right. You could be inside the building and get up on the roof and down from the roof inside the building. We used that as a secret. I don’t think the cops knew about it.
            MS: I’d heard about . . . I mean I've heard about some of the stuff that there's a secret way of getting . . .
            DG: Well, unless I'm grievously mistaken it's a women's john . . .
            MS: . . . of getting to some internal stairs . . .
            DG: . . . unless I’m mistaken it’s a women’s john, and you go into it and you open the window, and you climb out through the window . . . it’s a very arduous process . . . you climb through the window to . . . to a staircase and then you come up the staircase which is on the inside of the building, you go up through the building, come up the staircase and you come out onto this little verandah thing; looking into two offices. And then you climb off . . . over it onto the roof. And, I spent sometime on the roof but not much. And then in the third floor . . . I mean on the fourth floor, you can open a window and thereby get onto the roof. And it was cordoned off by police. That happened a little later they had a policeman out there. And Chandler kept coming up and saying “If you go out that window anymore onto the roof I will close the window,” and I said “Well, then we’ll break the window so fuck you.”
            MS: What . . . did you ever hear about Steve’s plan about putting a rope . . .
            DG: Yeah. It had been discussed in the Steering Committee meeting and we voted against it.
            MS: Were you at that Steering Committee meeting?
            DG: Yeah. I was a voting member of the Steering Committee. During the sit-in.
            MS: Where . . . when . . . what meeting was this?
            DG: It was held on the third floor in the john. The john at the far end of the hall.
            MS: What else did they discuss?
            DG: A lot. You know, I mean I can't . . . We discussed the idea of setting a kind of trapeze and monkey thing between the Sproul Hall and the . . . and the Student Union. And we had some people who were ready, willing and able to do it, but we felt that it would be just too risky and if someone were hurt or killed by it, it would be really disastrous for us. And so we voted against it. The things that we voted on was just a couple of things. Mostly it was consensus. As the Steering Committee carried on by consensus most of the time, with only really rough issues voted on. Really divided questions we've vote.
            MS: Oh, let's see. We went to jail. Were you working close to the Steering Committee then after that?
            DG: After the jail?
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: Oh yeah. I always worked closely with the Steering Committee. I mean, I was . . . I was the executive arm of the Steering Committee.
            MS: Then, well . . . can you remember what you did like . . .
            DG: Well, the first thing I did . . . I got tossed into solitary confinement and Jack got me out and then we got released, as I remember.
            MS: Why were you in solitary?
            DG: I refused to sign the form which required that I do some . . . that I say that I did something before I’d done it. Gotten . . . say that I’d gotten my money before I’d gotten it. And I said I’m not gonna sign this form, I haven’t gotten my money yet . . .
            MS: This was when you were leaving?
            DG: Yeah. And then they threw me in solitary.
            MS: How long was that?
            DG: I wasn't in there more than twenty minutes. Then another guy got me. Then another guy came in, y’know, who refused to do the same thing. And then, uh, Jack . . . got me out, as I remember.
            MS: And then what happened?
            DG: Well see, then we went home, and, uh, I know it was very encouraging when we got out of jail to see long rows of cars parked by the prison, you know. And you’d just hop into a car and it took off. And that was really heart-warming, you know. And you’d hear reports now and then that, uh, that you know swarms and swarms of cars were coming down, and faculty members were raising money and very encouraging. And, um, we went back to the campus in time for the rally that day, noon rally, and . . . and I was helping working, setting the rally up, getting things going, re-constituting the monitor. Mostly it was just getting . . . just coordinating everything that needed to be done. That was just about what I did. That, and the only real duty that I had consistently was the physical labor on my own part was the mimeographing and distributing leaflets. And I mimeographed the leaflets, usually took the leaflet from the person who’d written it, got it typed up into a stencil, ran it off, brought it down to campus, set up a group of people to distribute it and then would go around back to my other duties. And I usually got about three hours sleep every night, on the average. Some nights I would get five or six and other nights I wouldn’t get any.
            MS: Lemme see. Then, uh, . . . were there any Steering Committee meetings following that?
            DG: Oh, yeah.
            MS: Remember anything significant that you think . . .
            DG: Yeah, I can think of one really very interesting Steering Committee meeting. Let’s see, uh, most of the Steering Committee meetings were pretty boring. You’d talk this over, I’d make my reports how this and that was going, we’d talk about this and that, and, they usually occurred about three times a day, and we’d get the leaflet going and decide what had to be done here and what had to be done there and one meeting there was on New Year’s Eve. And Mario and Suzanne and I and Marty Roysher were there, no one else came, and we were writing that pamphlet ‘We want a University,’ we didn’t get much done. We’d been working that afternoon. We’d been working a long time on that. And I’d mostly been sitting around, I was taking my ease that day. And Jack had gotten most of the writing done and was off somewhere with somebody, I think he was with Phoebe [Graubard], I’m not sure. And we went out and bought some booze, and at midnight Suzanne fixed Russian . . . I think they’re called a Russian cocktail, I’m not sure, anyway it’s one-third vodka and one-third creme de cacao and one-third gin. And we had about eight-ounce glasses, and we slugged a couple of those down, and we were really pretty smashed. And, this is the night that Mario and Suzanne got together as I remember.
            MS: Oh, yeah?
            DG: Mario was very turned on and Suzanne was very turned on and they were making it right there on the floor. You know I was sort of embarrassed. So eventually they retired and Marty and I sat up and looked at each other for a while and then I went to bed. We all sort of passed out in various attitudes in Marty’s house.
            I mean, you know. The Steering Committee meetings were dull.
            MS: What about . . .
            DG: All meetings are dull, as far as I’m . . . I hate meetings.
            MS: Nexus.
            DG: Oh Nexus. Nexus was a mistake.
            MS: Well, tell me about it.
            DG: The purpose of Nexus . . . well see there was a fantastic difficulties there having Central. Because of Marilyn Noble and because of John Sutake and because of the whole way the place was set up. It’d gone too long without any heavy hand on it to keep it running properly. And the files were a mess and the place was running in a disorganized fashion, they were very authoritarian about what they would let out and what they wouldn’t let out, what information they would get, you know, very slow very inefficient and we got very pissed off at their inefficiency and slowness and fucking up constantly. Constant fuckups. One after another. We appreciated that they had a lot of stuff to handle and a lot of work to do but the fuckups were just too much to bear. We weren’t getting things done on time because they weren’t getting the information out to us. Somebody’d call and eighteen hours later you’d find out that he’d called, and you should’ve called back two hours later after he've called, you know? And so we’re getting very pissed off. So we tried setting up a place called Nexus, which would leave to Central the shit work, which they got done pretty well, and take all the important things out of their hands. Like phone calls from faculty members. Phone calls from notables, and things like that which were just getting gobbled. And a lot of money was being wasted and I believe misappropriated. Actually physically swiped at Central, ‘cause all the money was coming into Central that came . . . came into . . . came into the FSM which was all going through Central, and Central was just doing fantastic things with it. We were very turned off . . . mostly this was Marilyn Noble, who was hiding it. I mean, I found . . . the day we cleaned Central out and moved everything out, I found behind a bunch of books something like forty bucks just stuck away behind there. And we found in cupboards a hundred and fifty dollars, and Marilyn would say, ‘Oh, that’s my milk money’ or something, you know, and pass it off very casually. Or I would find these little caches of bread, and fantastic amounts of money . . . about a thousand bucks hidden . . . hidden here and there, you know. And so we cracked down on them pretty hard and they got very pissed off, and this is paranoia still remains about from the time I stole the files and they expected me to come in with an axe and a bunch of goons and just tear the place down. So they really didn’t like me too well, there. (taping ends)
(taping resumes)
            MS: What about the decisions to have . . . you know, who decided about Nexus and who . . .
            DG: This was after about a month of breast beating and virtual riot and chaos and difficulty and . . . and maybe a whole week was wasted on Central. What would we do about Central, you know? And, we finally decided to set up a place called Nexus. And, um . . .
            MS: Well, who . . . who . . .
            DG: We.
            MS: Well, who’s “we”?
            DG: The people concerned. I mean I really can’t say exactly who they were. It was the Steering Committee, and myself, and . . . and other persons. For example, Gretchen Kitteridge, who was the treasurer, was very pissed off at the amount of money that was going down the drain. And I was very pissed off at the inefficiency, because it was making my life real chaos to try to coordinate things that couldn’t be coordinated.
            MS: How did Jack feel about this?
            DG: Jack was essentially the mediator in the whole thing. He felt that something had to be done, but he did not want to violently alienate everybody in Central. And I was, at certain points, I was in favor of going in there and shooting them all down. I mean, I was getting to where the last stages of exasperation.
            MS: Mm-hmm.
            DG: I felt to tolerate anymore would be to blow my brains out, and I was just in favor of going in with an axe and saying, ‘Alright,’ you know, holding them off with the axe and stealing their files and saying, ‘Now, stew in your own juice!’ You know. Ripping out their telephones. Yeah, I was really getting terrible, terribly worked up about it. And I feel it was justified, you know. They were making everybody’s life extremely difficult with their bureaucratic nincompooperies, which they compounded fantastically. We finally succeeded in kicking Marilyn Noble out, to where she didn’t come back. She got kicked out once and then came back and then got kicked out and stayed away. That alleviated the difficulty pretty considerably. But, we set up Nexus at Ed Rosenfeldt’s house. I didn’t like the selection because it was too far away. At the time, none of us had any information that Ed Rosenfeldt would turn out to be another Marilyn Noble. We had no idea of this. Ed Rosenfeldt seemed a very solid, dependable, intelligent guy, you know? And he was on, I believe, what the . . . the supplementary Steering Committee . . . things like that. He was considered by Mario to be a pretty good guy, and Jack liked him and I liked him. We got along. And so we set up Nexus, and we got a couple of phones in there and files and set to work. And, I turned out to be a terrible bureaucrat, and just fucked up fantastically. And they were gonna . . . and I hated it! So I pretty much abdicated my post at Central . . . at Nexus, and . . . I’m simply not a bureaucratic guy, and most of the work was left to Rosenfeldt. And he fucked it up pretty badly, too. And he was gradually going out of his gourd. So, we got to the point where nothing was going through Nexus that should go through Nexus; Central was carrying the work again as it had before, and fucking up again as it had before but not so badly, and Nexus was a real drain on money. Rosenfeldt was doing really insane things.
            MS: Like what?
            DG: Funny things with money, usually. And doing things independently and not telling anybody about them. He said that he was taking care of the defense, you know, getting money, and he just was procrastinating, and procrastinating, and getting nothing done. We needed the money very badly and he just was not getting any of that money. He was pissing around and saying, ‘I’m doing! I’m working!’ and he wouldn’t allow anyone else to work and yet he wasn’t doing the work himself. He became very paranoid about his telephones. If anyone even mentioned moving the telephones out of Nexus he would fly into a rage; and the setup at the door, you know, with this loudspeaker, was set up more to keep people from coming in for the telephones than to keep . . . East Bay Transit authorities from coming in. How ya doin’ Pat?
            MS: East Bay Transit? Was that who he was running from?
            DG: Yeah. No, no, he wasn't running at all. He've been living there for about six months without paying rent.
            MS: Stealing from.
            DG: Yeah. Stealing from. And so finally it just absolutely did not work out, and was moved, after a good deal of bloodshed and breast beating again. So, this was the time that the FSM was really falling apart.
            MS: What about the . . . you mentioned the provisional Steering Committee. Did that ever do any work?
            DG: Not to my knowledge.
            MS: Did you ever have any contact with it?
            DG: It never did much. The old Steering Committee took over right after it came out of jail, and the provisional Steering Committee never did anything at all. Really.
            MS: Do you remember who was on that? On the Provisional Steering Committee?
            DG: I can't say. I . . . I think I was at the . . . I don't know, I really don't.
            MS: Well, was there anything . . . seems to be . . . you weren’t involved in the obscenity thing or the SPIDER thing, were you?
            DG: I was in CORE. A lot of impetus was given to CORE by the FSM’s . . . more impetus was given to CORE by the fact that the big people on the FSM were running CORE . . . They were in the leadership of CORE; and Marvin Garson had gotten with some of his good writing, and we got good leaflets out and Jack was there and I was there and . . .
            MS: Well, why don't you go back to the demise of the FSM, then.
            DG: It just gradually and slowly and surely fell apart. The ability to do something . . . after the strike, we really had blown our last wad. We were capitalizing on everything that had occurred before what we were doing at the moment. Planning, and having no ability to do anything . . . anything else. We’d done our damnedest and we couldn’t do any more. We capitalized on this for quite a while and the bureaucracy gradually slowed down; we moved the Centrals--the old Central got torn down, we moved the Central to a place on Bancroft. A lot of things got done in it; mostly defense. The big thing that was going on was the defense. Getting money for the defense, and the defense itself, and setting up lawyers and setting up meetings and setting up defendant’s meetings and figuring out where defendant’s were and what we would do and how we would get the money for it. After that got done with, after the trial itself began, the FSM really broke down. The only people who were involved were those people who, as Jack says, are incapable of being bored. The real, hardcore bureaucrats.
            MS: What about Mario?
            DG: . . . and Mario, who I think has cracked up and I don’t think he’s much good anymore. He . . . he’s not thinking well and his speaking ability has gone right down the drain. He can’t get a coherent thought out. Without . . . any coherent thought that he might state is surrounded by such hemming and hawing and such superfluous statement that you can’t understand what he’s talking about.
            PI: Well, this is what he was like before.
            MS: Right.
            PI: I remember when he was . . . before he went down to Mississippi I remember we were horrified that he was elected chairman of the SNCC on campus. He was such an ineffective speaker that we said that SNCC is just going to fall apart completely. And . . .
            DG: Well, perhaps the FSM fired him from the heights.
            PI: Yeah . . . he . . .
            DG: Because he was such a beautiful and eloquent speaker and a very good thinker insofar as explaining things.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: You know, he could explain something well and understandably. But after the FSM he went back to being a bad speaker. I don’t think the FSM did him much harm. The most amazing thing about Mario is that he didn’t crack up, because the press blew him up to be something that absolutely was not and he was expected to live up to it and was hounded day and night by everybody. You name it and he was hounded. From abject worship on the part of some persons to . . . to the newsmen who drove him nuts and . . . I’m surprised that he managed to find a decent love life out of it all.
            One thing that was . . . there was a hell of a lot of during the FSM was, you know, a lot of women. That was great . . .
            MS: Tell us about it.
            PI: (protesting noises)
            DG: Well, I think that . . .
            PI: . . . not around me (laughs) . . .
            DG: . . . considering the presence of certain a young lady in this room . . . No, I mean that wasn’t bad at all. I mean, for example you always needed someplace to sleep. I wasn’t living anywhere and neither was Jack, and we’d just sort of sleep around. Somebody happened to be there and say, ‘Bed,’ you know how it is, and you can't really kick 'em out of their bed, you know, and so . . . but it was a very unsatisfactory love life . . . Pardon?
            MS: Very considerate . . .
            DG: Yeah. I'm a good guy. But it was a very unsatisfactory love life. Harried by . . . at four o'cock in the morning you've get a phone call and split. You know. This chick would feel sort of put out. I'm quite certain that I never did get a solid night's sleep during the whole of the FSM. The entire time from September 30th to about . . . to about January . . . to about the middle of January I'm quite sure I never did get a solid night's sleep. Except in jail.
            MS: . . . in your analysis of Mario, whaddaya think happened . . . this . . . you know, like the FSM afterwards, after the next semester they . . . were you ever at the meetings where he tried to reorganize the FSM?
            DG: Yeah. They were silly.
            MS: What?
            DG: They were silly! In the first place, reorganizing past glories, which is just not the way to do it. And there was nothing that could be done and he wasn’t appreciating that fact. He was still driven . . . he was still being given the illusion of a great deal of . . . of power and importance by newsmen, by the papers and by other people and he was doing a lot of speaking . . .
            MS: Do you remember the meeting in which Dusty [Miller] was there and he proposed that they . . . that they have a . . . form an organization . . . or reorganize along the lines that it would be a . . . a . . . you know, you lie low, and you wait for an incident, and you sort of keep the . . .
            PI: Oh, I . . .
            DG: But this was an overwhelming sentiment.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: And . . . he said he was voted down completely. Mario was there, Mario spoke against it at the . . . what he wanted was something like the FSU, especially.
            PI: Yeah, right.
            MS: . . . and he was completely out-voted.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: This was . . . this was an overwhelming sentiment on the part of many of the bureaucratic people. For a while it was . . .
            MS: Dusty's not a bureacra . . . one of the bureaucratic people.
            PI: Yes, but the bureaucratic people didn’t have the votes, and the people who had the votes didn’t . . .
            DG: . . . people who had the votes didn’t think it was a good idea for the following reason . . . for the following reason. . .
            PI: . . . thought it was dumb.
            DG: . . . A, we didn't want to maintain an expensive bureaucracy . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: . . . B, the people who . . .
            MS: . . . don't think they were talking about maintaining an office necessarily or anything like that . . .
            DG: . . . the bureaucracy would be maintained.
            PI: You had to have the bureaucracy in order to have the . . . contact all the people and get them out when you needed them . . .
            DG: So the . . . the point is this, that . . . I felt this way, and feel this way: If there’s another crisis that new people will take care of it. The old people will not be capable of taking care of it. Because they’ll want to run it in the old way. They’ll be able to offer a lot, but I don’t think they’ll be able to run it. If there’s a new explosion the old people will . . . I’m quite certain not run it. I don’t think Mario got this idea until very recently, if he’s got this idea at all.
            MS: When did that idea come to you?
            DG: Oh, months and months ago.
            MS: This is the way Jack feels, too?
            DG: I don't know. I would conjecture so, yeah. I don't . . . think that the FSM . . . I . . . the FSM should have been disbanded officially, I think after December 8th. The FSM should have been officially disbanded and a . . . another organization should have been spring up, which was a bureaucratic organization set up to take care of the defense. We should not have had an FSM.
            PI: I remember Stephanie and I proposed that at an Ex Comm meeting. I don’t remember when it was, and we were voted down overwhelmingly.
            MS: Well see there's this . . . at this meeting where Dusty was at . . he recommended this thing, and he said that the name should be changed, and everything . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: . . . were you at that meeting?
            PI: Mm-hmm.
            MS: . . . and, uh, he mentioned that Mario said . . . ‘No, I like FSM.’ And . . .
            PI: Well, a lot of people . . . see, Mario and a lot of other people felt that the name itself . . . that you shouldn’t, that you’d lose the defense fund and stuff like this, that you should have the name to bring in the money and this kind of thing . . . and that argument was advanced. And a lot of people just . . .
            DG: Well, the FSM as a viable organization really lost it . . .
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . in about January, I think.
            MS: Yeah, right.
            DG: . . . early in the spring.
            PI: Well, a lot of people didn’t want to acknowledge that.
            DG: Yeah. Well, that was the problem, especially the bureaucrats and especially Mario. And, Mario soon turned in . . . soon turned into sort of a one-man organization. If he wasn’t at the meeting, the meeting didn’t mean a damn’ thing. And, so . . .
            MS: What about . . .
            DG: People like Jack and I discussed it in court a long time before that; we just dropped out.
            MS: Well, what about . . . what do you think of the FSU?
            DG: I don't think it's a viable organization. It's a great idea . . .
            MS: Why don't you . . . why . . . why is it . . . I mean . . .
            DG: The wrong people for one thing are running it. They’re bureaucratic-minded people. And bureaucratic-minded people . . .
            MS: Jack . . .
            DG: . . . just have to have. . .
            MS: Jack and Marvin Garson and yourself and . . .
            DG: We're not running it.
            MS: . . . had major roles in starting it.
            DG: Right. We set it up. We thought it would be great, and then we saw that it just, it just wasn’t going to make it. We sort of dropped out. And it may have not . . . it may be that it just didn’t make it because we dropped out. But, keep in mind that Marvin Garson and Jack Weinberg and David Goines not only had gone . . . Jack Weinberg and David Goines for example . . . had gone from the very beginning of the FSM, working like demons all the way through, soon as the FSM . . . soon as we felt the FSM was no longer a viable organization, bingo! into CORE. We worked like demons through CORE, soon as we felt that CORE wasn’t accomplishing anything else, bingo! out of CORE and into the FSU. We set the FSU up and then we just collapsed. We just fell apart. And I . . . I’m just now beginning to get up energy to where I’m doing things again. And Jack is . . . I don’t know if Jack’s got the energy yet, but . . . you know, we worked ourselves to death! I mean, I think if you take the eight-hour day as a working day, we put in I think maybe two or three years of working days. During that one year. During that one school year. We set the FSU up and didn’t have the energy to really plug along and keep it going. And then, what are the issues to organize it around? There are threats of issues, there are threats to organize it around. And there are real things that are going wrong, and we’re really getting screwed in a lot of ways by the administration, but they’re not the kind of things you can defy, you know? They’re not the kinds of things you can . . . they say ‘Don’t set up tables,’ you set up tables. It’s very easy to do. But if they say for example . . . ‘Fantastic long paragraph concerning who shall be admitted to a student organization, who shall not.’ And, what a student organization is and what it isn't, you know? How you gonna fight that? Not very well. So, I don’t know. I think next semester people will be coming to this university with the anticipation of maybe a new FSM, and the anticipation that it’s gonna be kind of a Mecca. And I think to a certain extent that the whole United States university system has been very badly shaken up. Or, very goodly shaken up, you know, you might say by the experience of the FSM, and the word, you know, the threat of,  “You want another Berkeley?” is enough to scare off a lot of the administrators and it’s got a lot of advances at quite a few universities, by just saying, “We’ll organize and fuck you,” has scared them off to the point where they’ve gotten quite a few concessions. And, I think the effect of the FSM . . . had an historical effect and . . . an effect on the university system in the United States it’s gonna be a good one. We will win a lot. We won a lot, and we will win a lot in the future by the very existence of the FSM, the fact that students can organize in the United States . . . get up and fight something. Can win. I don’t know how much we’re going to win at Berkeley, but we’ve . . . one of the things we’ve won that they can’t take back is that we’ve won a lot of self-respect, and that we know we’ve got the guts to do it.
            MS: What did the FSM do for you?
            DG: It politicized me. I was a pretty much a-political guy. And it gave me an entirely new outlook on everything. You name it, I got . . . I’ve got a new outlook. And I met thousands of people; I mean, I met thousands and thousands of people and know most of them now.
            MS: Jerry Miller told me that David Goines is just totally different from the way he was . . .
            DG: Yeah, I am, I am quite different. I mean, I’ve learned a tremendous amount; I’ve learned for example the importance of organization and how to organize. My big fortéŽ is that I’m an organizer. I’m not a great strategist . . . as long as Jack Weinberg is around we don’t need any more, he’s terrific, but I learned a great deal about politics and I know what makes thing tick, people tick, and who to trust and who not to trust. I don’t think I’ve become considerably more cynical, I think I’ve become much less cynical than I was before. ‘Cause given the right conditions you can do something.
            I think Berkeley in the fall is going to be awful. And that’s why I didn’t want to come back to school here.
            MS: Why?
            DG: Because I think I'm . . . we're going to see before ourselves, I mean right under our noses, the dissolution of everything we won, except for a few . . . except for a few basic things, you know, like setting up tables.
            MS: You mean (unintelligible) . . .
            DG: Speaker bans and you can’t have rallies here you gotta have ‘em there and . . . there’s just not the energy or the oomph to fight them. Maybe in another couple of years you’ll have another FSM. But certainly not next semester. I just didn’t want to be around when I saw it all fall apart. Because I just haven’t got the energy to fight it again.
            MS: Yeah . . . you . . . I've be very . . . you said that tomorrow that you didn't want to get arrested again.
            DG: I don't particularly want to get arrested . . . Ive been arrested five times now, since December eighth . . . including December eighth I’ve been arrested five times.
            MS: December eighth?
            DG: Since and including. I mean, since December third, you know, four times since then. December third. And, I mean, you know, just getting that record, and going to that court, and grinding around, it’s just, you know, really debilitating.
            MS: What were you arrested for on the other four things?
            DG: Once, on civil-rights and three times for traffic tickets.            
            MS: What was the civil-rights . . . that was when you were . . .
            DG: Jack London Square.
            MS: . . . and what was the charge on that?
            DG: Resisting . . . rather . . .
            PI: Weren't you pretty much . . .
            DG: . . . interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty. A completely trumped-up charge and it was . . .
            MS: Was it dropped?
            DG: . . . charges were dropped. It was absurd. Preposterous. They shouldn’t make such charges. All I did was . . . all I did was ask him what the name of the person who’d been arrested was and he arrested me. And, I mean, while notoriety has its advantages, it has its disadvantage; and that for example you get in-bads with the police and they make your life miserable. And that's where I get all my traffic tickets. Before I was in the FSM I drove the same way I drive now, I mean, that hasn't changed, but . . . but . . .
            MS: You were just as bad a driver before the FSM!
            (all laugh)
            DG: No! I'm a good driver! But I mean, you know, I never got tickets, you know. But when the policeman recognizes you on sight, he knows you’re a person who doesn’t like him, he’s not gonna, you know, treat you as nicely as he could. And so I got a tremendous amount of tickets. A good half of which I’m positive were harassment tickets. Like you know a policeman would lurk around where I’d park and they’d jump out and get me for things, you know? And I’d get hauled in walking down the street ‘cause I didn’t have my driver’s license on me. That’s pretty bad.
            MS: Walking down the street!
            DG: Yeah! I was walking down the street in front of the University one day and a cop pops out of his car and says ‘Lemme see your driver’s license’ and I say, you know, ‘Cram it up your ass, cop, I don’t need to show you my driver’s license!’ And he says, ‘Either show me your driver’s license or come down to the station,’ so I went down to the station.
            MS: Yeah?
            DG: Then they let me go an hour later. I didn’t ever know what it was all about. I never did figure what it was all about.
            MS: So after, you became really involved in CORE.
            DG: In CORE, you know, got to know more policemen; you know how it is. And I was essentially the same thing in CORE as I was in the FSM. I wasn’t on the Executive Committee of CORE. You know: the do-er.
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: And I've also by that time gained much more political cool. Much more political knowledge; I mean I went in as a babe in the woods. I mean, I really did not know what was coming off until the FSM had been going on for about a month, and then I began to get vague notions of what was actually happening, and now I feel pretty confident in myself. I have the concepts of politics as well as the execution.
            MS: Are you going to go back to Classics?
            DG: Oh, yeah. I like Classics. It's great. So . . .
            MS: So . . .
            DG: That's about that.
            MS: Oh, Patti, can you think of anything to add? No?
            PI: Well, I can think of . . .
            DG: She can add, but we're hungry and wanna go to bed. You can add, if you want. If you don't want to go to bed; we don't have to.
            MS: Well, what about Ex Comm?
            PI: Well, I mean, you know, I played a very minor role in Ex Comm. I was very bad at talking out at meetings . . .
            MS: Well, you were there though . . .
            PI: . . . and I just . . .
            MS: . . . what about . . . you remember significant conflicts or decisions, that sort of thing in Executive Committee meetings.
            PI: Oh, well, I remember that time when we were . . . at the abortive sit-in, but then that’s . . . that’s . . .
            MS: . . . what?
            PI: . . . yeah, I remember that.
            MS: Where was that?
            PI: Where was it? I think it was at Westminster. No, not Westminster, it’s that new . . . modern new building across the street.
            DG: What meeting was this?
            PI: . . . at Sproul Hall.
            DG: What meeting was this?
            PI: It was the one where we were voting on the abortive sit-in. Whether or not to have it. I remember this huge, huge discussion . . .
            MS: Oh, the Executive Committee, yeah . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: Was it at Wesley?
            PI: Was it Wesley?
            MS: Across from Stiles.
            PI: Yeah. It's the one across from Stiles.
            MS: Do you remember anything about the discussion?
            PI: A lot of people thought the timing was wrong; and that we couldn’t pull it off, and the FSM was just about dead; we were having . . . I remember we were having discussions about, you know, about disbanding. I remember Mario had talked about it for several meetings, saying there was nothing more we could do. We were obviously losing support on campus, and . . .
            DG: Which we by the way were not. But we weren’t aware of that.
            PI: No, we weren't aware of that. And . . . and I know a lot of us wanted, if we were gonna go . . . oh! (slapping sounds) David! Anyway . . . (laughs)
            DG: You can do it for posterity.
            PI: (laughter) umm . . . you know a lot of us didn’t want to just sort of die off like we have done, but we had wanted (laughs) to go out with a bang!
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: Oh, we went out with a bang.
            MS: Do you think there was a lot of that sort of . . . uh, well, masochistic type of attitude . . . and just we’ll all . . . we’ll get screwed but we’ll go out . . . we’ll just go out and we’ll be . . .
            PI: I don't think it was masochistic so much; I think . . . I mean it wasn't so much that . . .
            DG: . . . an attempt to rally student support . . .
            PI: It was just a last ditch attempt, you know it was sort of like a despairing . . . tch! DAVID!
            MS: . . . it sounds much worse on the tape . . .
            PI: (laughs) . . . anyway . . . and I know a lot of us were despairing, and I voted for . . . for the sit-in anyway, even though I knew there was a lot of opposition to it . . . I felt that it would be the only thing we could do. . . . So, I remember that meeting quite clearly.
            MS: (sighs) Well . . .
            PI: I don't know . . .
            MS: What about the meeting before the sit-in?
            PI: . . . these interminable meetings . . . Well, everybody agreed that they wanted to sit-in. I remember the . . . there didn’t seem to be any significant opposition at all, as I recall, I think . . . because . . .
            DG: Jo Freeman made a public speech while we were sitting-in.
            PI: Well that . . . that was on the first one; that was the abortive one.
            DG: Oh.
            PI: And . . .
            DG: Oh, which one, the main sit-in?
            PI: Uh-huh. The main . . .
            DG: Oh, there were three votes against it.
            PI: Yeah. And because . . .
            DG: . . . all of which were for ideological and not practical reasons.
            PI: Right.
            MS: Whaddaya . . .
            DG: Well, for example, David Kolodny was one . . .
            MS: Ideological?
            DG: He . . . he came up with some half-baked idea . . .
            MS: C'mon, that's not ideological . . .
            PI: He didn't want . . .
            DG: I mean, he's a real conservative guy . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: . . . but he's not ideological!
            PI: Well, he didn't want to have a sit-in, in the sense that we meant it. He wanted it . . . wasn't he the one who wanted the, uh, this . . . this thing where we would go in and not try and disrupt anything, you know, we would . . . we've . . .
            DG: He wanted a sit-in but a different kind of a sit-in.
            PI: He just wanted to have a sit-in where we’d have aisles cleared constantly and no noise, everybody just sort of like a vigil.
            DG: Sit and read, yeah.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: But, um, and there was another vote against . . . two votes against and they were all for obscure reasons. Odd, funny little reasons. Not disagreeing with the idea of a sit-in, y’know.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: But, with some aspect of the idea of the sit-in, y’know. The sit-in’s great but you either . . . not now . . . one of them was ‘not now;’ one of them was ‘the masses are not yet ready, you know,’ and another one was if you don’t . . .
            PI: Yeah ‘cause a lot of people . . .
            DG: . . . behave like nuns and monks . . .
            MS: . . . you guys meet with Tigar once you were in there?
            DG & PI: (in unison) Oh, yeah.
            MS: You remember that?
            PI: Yeah?
            MS: What happened at that meeting?
            PI: Well . . . I really can't talk!
            MS: C’mon, David!
            DG: Oh . . .
            PI: . . . sorry . . .
            MS: Just a few more minutes . . .
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: . . . octopus . . .
            PI: . . . yes . . . um, let's see . . . no, I don't remember it now. (sighs) (laughs) Why don't you say what you remember about it.
            MS: He can't remember anything; he hates meetings. He's got a block against meetings.
            PI: Oh, he remembers.
            DG: No. No, I . . . I . . . I would remember if . . .
            Ms: . . . if it stuck in your mind.
            DG: Well, I . . .
            PI: That's not what he was saying . . .
            DG: . . . I remember the meetings not so well because, “A,” I hate meetings . . .
            MS: Yeah, I know.
            DG: . . . and,  I . . .
            MS: That . . . that's why I’m . . .
            DG: . . . y’know . . .
            MS: . . . give up . . .
            DG: I went to . . . all the meetings . . . I don’t think I missed any . . . and I voted in ‘em; I was an Executive Committee member, and I participated in everything, and I’m quite sure I could probably remember them all in minute detail if I were to be . . . shown . . . if I were to be discussing the meeting with a bunch of people, I would remember . . . if we went . . . if we went from beginning to end I probably would remember absolutely everything that went on.
            MS: (laughs)
            DG: You know, I think there were probably ten thousand meetings that I went to. And to try to remember what went on at a meeting on the date of which I don’t even remember . . . I remember general characteristics . . .
            MS: The Tigar meeting . . . want me to fill you in . . .
            DG: Absolutely.
            MS: . . . was at Westminster House . . .
            DG: I know that.
            MS: Tigar gave this nice, eloquent speech . . .
            DG: Which was really absurd . . .
            MS: . . . and then . . .
            DG: . . . which I violently disagreed with.
            MS: . . . and then someone else . . . and then Jack gave this eloquent . . .
            DG: It was interesting.
            MS: . . . speech and then Tigar gave a speech again and Mario asked him some questions . . . special wording in the draft and then Tigar said that ‘You may not get more but you won’t get less,’ and Mario says ‘Ah, that’s what we thought.’
            PI: Well, you seem to remember it quite vividly.
            MS: Yeah, but I'm trying to get other people's . . . you know, I'm trying to get other people's testimony.
            DG: Well, I won't remember it. I’d . . .
            PI: Exactly what was Tigar’s proposal? I remember that everybody didn’t like it.
            MS: I don't remember.
            DG: I don't remember either.
            PI: I remember that I liked Jack’s . . . I went with Jack on it.
            DG: All I remember is that I was opposed to Tigar.
            PI: . . . but then I generally liked what Jack said anyhow.
            MS: (clears throat)
            PI: I remember at the very beginning, several of us who’d been very political before, when we found out it was Jack in the car we got all panicked . . . eeeee! Ye Gods! No! Anybody but him! (laughs)
            DG: Why?
            PI: Because we had this concept of him as being this . . . this . . . this fellow who had . . . who just went around making trouble without any sense of strategy, without any sense of tactics, who . . . you know, who was just, you know, one of these alienated types of people (laughs) that just didn't contribute much to a movement. And . . .
            DG: You sure found out, didn't you.
            PI: Boy, we sure did!
            DG: I didn't have any weird ideas. I didn't even know him.
            PI: Well, you didn't . . .
            DG: I didn't know anybody.
            PI: Yeah, well . . .
            MS: I’d never met Jack Weinberg before.
            DG: I was a nobody.
            PI: And I remember how stunned we were when Mario . . . was so eloquent. That was an amazing thing; I couldn’t believe it.
            MS: That's funny that he's gone back to the . . .
            DG: Yeah. He was that way before.
            PI: I don't know, I’de always thought that he was never really that eloquent unless he was angry; if he was really furious about something, and then he got very eloquent. But then, like I noticed even when he wasn’t really that mad he . . . his speech deteriorates. He’s got to be really furious . . .
            MS: Yeah.
            PI: So . . .
            DG: Tape-recording lots of silence . . . That sticks out . . .
            PI: (laughs) David Goines!
            DG: What's that?
            PI: You fix it.
            PI & DG: (laugh)
            PI: (laughing) Oh, stop, David . . . this is being preserved for posterity.
            DG: All this is being preserved for posterity.
            MS: Right. (laughs)
            PI: I’m sure he'll erase these parts. (laughs)
            MS: OK. Really . . .
            DG: (whistles a bar of ‘And the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole.’)
            MS: . . . and there's nothing that you can think of right now . . .
            PI: No, it's . . . if you would bring up a specific issue . . .
            DG: I can think of billions of things that really . . . you know, but the point is that . . .
            MS: Well, what! You can't think of 'em or you’d say 'em.
            DG: We can't think of 'em.
            PI: If you suggested something just that . . .
            DG: I mean, I can't just talk by myself. I mean, I get turned on about things. If I were talking with Jack and with maybe five or six other people and we were reminiscing . . .
            PI: Yeah . . . that's what you should do, get . . .
            DG: . . . I’d remember everything.
            MS: I know I should, and impossible . . . you know how it’s impossible to get ahold of people alone much less . . .
            PI: Well, they . . . (tape ends)

 

Article IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: David Goines <dlg@goines.net>
To: Barbara Stack <BTStack@aol.com>
Sent: Mon, Nov 16, 2015 12:42 pm
Subject: improved and more cleaned up

1965 INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GOINES & PATTI IIYAMA

This is the transcript of a taped interview conducted by Marston Schultz on July 19, 20 and 23 of 1965, approximately seven months after the FSM had attained its goals. Patti Iiyama and I lived together at 2006 University Avenue, a Berkeley apartment above the Darling Flower Shop.
Jack Weinberg and I had just returned from a stint of CORE activism in Bogalusa, Louisiana and, together with other FSM veterans were about to serve part of our sentences in Santa Rita county jail.
This interview encompasses in considerable detail aspects of pivotal events that are not covered elsewhere nearly as well, particularly the failed palace coup. Patti Iiyama was present as a spy at the secret meeting of the plotters, and I was the executor of the powers of the legitimate Steering Committee. Between the two of us, we have the event covered. All that is lacking is Jo Freeman’s point of view, and that of Kerr himself.
The interviews were conducted in Patti’s bedroom, which faced the street, so there is a lot of traffic noise in the background. I have eliminated a certain percentage of superfluous “and’s,” “uh’s,” “um’s” and most of the “you know’s” but otherwise this is a verbatim transcript. Ellipses indicate a pause or a meaningless interjection. Some of the names are probably slightly garbled, through mis-hearing or simply not remembering who was who thirty years ago.

            Marston Schultz: When did you first get involved?
David Goines: The classic question.
MS: Did you have anything to do with the United Front?
DG: Well, I became involved sort of accidentally. I’d lived with Jon Petri and Tom Weller during the summer, and he  [Tom] had something to do with the SLATE Supplement to the General Catalogue, and I’d done all the artwork on it. I designed the cover, and things like that, and so I’d become more or less involved with it. I didn't really give a shit about it; I was involved with the artwork, and I wanted to see it sold. And I've seen people running around on campus and heard a little bit of squabbling, and I knew who Art Goldberg was, but that was it. I mean, I didn't know anybody else; that was absolutely it. I knew who he was, y’know, I would recognize him.
MS: You weren't a member of any organization.
DG: No. I was a member of no organization. And on October first—no, on September 30—I came on campus, I woke up about eleven o’clock, I walked to campus and I got there about twelve o’clock, and it was about five of twelve, and I’d heard that somebody had been thrown out of school for doing something. You know, selling something, or . . . something that seemed to me very simple and very reasonable that people should be able to do. And I’d been talking that morning with a friend of mine, two friends of mine, Tom Weller and a fellow named Peter [Paskin], who’s not here anymore, and we’d all sort of agreed that we’d had enough shit, from the whole works. Sort of abstract ‘I’ve had enough shit from the whole system.’ And so I became very, very angry and I ran up to Jon Petri’s house, and I grabbed a card table and a box of SLATE Supplements.
Oh, wait. Previous to that I’d sat at tables.
MS: Well, were you . . . was this . . . was Turner . . . did you remember who it was that got knocked off?
DG: I knew it was Turner, but I didn’t know who he was . . I didn’t know that it was Turner at that time.
MS: Well, did you go up to Sather Gate?
DG: I went up to Sather Gate; I heard that something had happened. I got very angry. I didn’t even stop to check it out.
MS: Was this while Mario was giving a speech about Brian?
DG: No.
MS: That was even before?
DG: No speeches were being given. There was a small group of people, maybe forty people. I’d never attended any rallies, I’d never gone to any political meetings.
MS: Yeah, you never went to the picket line before that, or the vigil.
DG: I hadn't gone to the vigil and I seem to remember that I've walked in the picket line maybe once around, talking to a friend of mine.
MS: (Question directed to Patti Iiyama) Did you go to the vigil?
Patti Iiyama: Yeah, I went to the vigil, and I went to the picket line, but I wasn’t really very involved. I thought it was just another thing, you know, where we’d get smashed again, and I thought ‘Well, I mean with all these (unintelligible) activists . . .
MS: Tell me, I was wondering . . . I’d like to get some account of the vigil, you know, what went on. There was something about marching up to the University House. Did they . . .
PI: That's about when I left. So I don't know. I didn't stay all night.
DG: Why don't we start this whole thing over again?
PI: Yeah.
DG: I'm remembering now what I did.
MS: Doesn't matter. Let's keep going.
DG: No, let's start over.
MS: No, C'mon.
PI: Go ahead.
DG: Fine.
MS: Don't think of this as like I'm . . . you know, don't play like I'm a radio announcer or . . .
DG: I mean, it makes me nervous to have that thing there.
PI: (laughs)
MS: Don't think about it.
DG: Well, anyway. I’d sat table, I think, twice. And I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just knew that some friends of mine were doing it, and so I helped them out, more or less. And, I was absolutely a-political. I had nothing to do with politics and no interest in politics. I didn't know what they were about. And, I suppose I had a liberal temperament.
MS: What were you, a freshman or sophomore?
DG: Yeah. I was a sophomore. Incoming. Classics. Incoming sophomore, second year. And so, I ran up to Jon Petri’s house, and grabbed a card table, and a box of SLATE Supplements, and a money can, and I ran down again to campus. And I set the table up, working myself up into a greater and greater rage, you know, because—I was very [fired up?] at the fact that somebody could actually be thrown out of school for doing something that seemed so reasonable, and so innocent. And I became more and more angry, and fed my own fuel by getting madder and madder. And I sat there for about an hour, and a friend of mine was going to spell me but he had to go to a class.
MS: He was going to what?
DG: He was gonna, you know, take my place, and I was going to go get something to eat. And, I was selling SLATE memberships, and I was advocating persons to . . . advocating that persons join slate, and I was advocating political positions that I knew nothing about, and I was selling SLATE Supplements, and then I saw the Deans come to a table across from me, and I’m not sure what table it was . . . I think it was the YSA table, which Beth Stapleton operated, but I’m really not sure.
MS: What was Sandor at this time?
DG: I never . . . I didn't know Sandor. I knew no one except Art Goldberg at sight, and I knew nothing about him.
MS: Because I think Sandor was selling Supplements also.
DG: He was doing that on the 28th. He was busted on the 28th for selling Supplements.
PI: That's right!
DG: Not, not, not on the 30th. There was a one day lapse.
MS: I didn't know that. Turner was busted on the thirtieth also.
DG: Right. Five of us were busted on the thirtieth, two of them were busted on the 28th, and . . . Mario . . .
MS: No, wait a minute . . .
PI: No, no, that's not right. It's because Sandor had been selling them before, but that didn't matter, they didn't . . . they didn't care . . . they didn't do anything about it.
MS: They didn't do anything until the 30th.
PI: No, not until the 30th. And then, see the reason why they picked on . . .
DG: I know all that.
PI: . . . Mario and Art and, and Sandor was because they were leaders . . .
DG: I know all that.
PI: . . . and in CORE.
DG: No. Here's what happened. On the 28th, Sandor Fuchs, specifically, and I don't remember precisely . . . oh . . . here's how it goes: here's exactly it: on the 28th, when Sandor was given it, was informed that he've better stop . . . selling SLATE Supplements . . .
PI: Yeah.
DG: . . . he refused. And they went away without doing anything, except that he was informed that he should appear before the Dean on the 30th at three o’clock in the afternoon. Mario and Art Goldberg led a demonstration against the University, at a University meeting in the lower plaza. Another person who led this was Dan Rosenthal, and this proved very incriminating to the University, when evidence was brought up along with photographs from the Daily Cal; one of which was on the front of the Daily Cal of Dean Murphy . . . no, wait. Dean . . . what’s the bigwig (snaps fingers) . . .
PI: Williams? Arleigh?
DG: No . . . Arleigh Williams! Talking to Dan Rosenthal; Dan Rosenthal leading the line of march to the picket. And he’s not . . .
MS: Did this all come out in the . . .
DG: This all came out in the testimony.
MS: Yeah, in the Hymen Committee.
DG: The Heyman Committee. And, then the five of us were the group. We thought we were alone, and then we found out there were three more—at least I found out there were three more—that night at eleven o’clock. OK. So, the five of us, then we were all busted.
The Deans came up to me, and they said, ‘Are you aware that you are violating University rules and regulations.’ And I said, ‘Are you aware that you are violating my Constitutional rights.’ And they said, ‘Are you going to take your table down?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And, then I said to the Dean, ‘Would you care to engage in debate? If you beat me in debate, I’ll go away. And then I’ll stop.’ And the Dean said, ‘No, not today.’ And I said, y’know, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you know what you’re talking about? Don’t you believe in what you stand for?’ Y’know, and I became very incensed and was absolutely in a fury, and jumped up on top of the . . . of my chair and began to harangue the crowd around me—which had grown rather large, I think there were about sixty people—screaming at the top of my lungs, absolutely in a fury. And, I understand it was a good speech. But, I’d never delivered a speech before in my life, so I really can’t say.
MS: Where was this, now?
DG: This was at Sather Gate. And, we began . . . I don’t know who started it . . . I believe it was Mario . . . but I’m absolutely not sure . . . started a list of people who would go in with us saying, ‘We bear equal responsibility. Y’know, We . . . we too, sat . . .
PI: Yeah.
DG: . . . at a table. It was very . . .
MS: Where was your table located?
DG: My table, as you proceed toward Sather Gate, from Bancroft and Telegraph . . . mine was on the extreme right.
MS: To the right . . . it was to the left of Turner’s.
DG: The most extreme right table.
MS: Yeah.
DG: Furthest over and very close to the edge of the concrete abutment there. And, we gathered a very large and gathered something like 400 signatures on our various lists. The wording was slightly different on each list. Some of them said that I . . .
MS: Copies of which we don't have.
DG: Copies of which we don't have because they were all given to . . .
PI: . . . they were all given to . . .
DG: . . . Dean Murphy, and they disappeared. And, I imagine they reside in some file in Murphy’s office or similar . . . y’know someplace . . .
PI: Yeah.
DG: . . . waiting to screw whoever it was that signed . . .
MS: We'll try and get them.
DG: Some of them . . . some of them are signed by kooks. I mean, some . . . some of them are signed ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ and things like that. But I’d say not more than one percent. Most . . . most people became very, very angry as well.
PI: Yeah . . .
DG: One thing I've noticed . . . the previous week . . . I noticed this afterward . . . but that in the previous week, there had been very agitated letters to the Daily Cal about . . . concerning student rights, and it was building up and building up and there was an undertone of . . . of excitement and outrage throughout the entire campus, which was sort of sloshing around seeking for a place to burst out. And so it started . . . as though by a miracle, everyone sort of conglomerated at this spot on campus and signed his name up. And at three o’clock, we lined up by, I believe, twos, and marched into the Sproul Hall, and of course everything was blowing up at that time. Everybody was elated and confused, and nobody knew what was coming off, and this was of course the greatest thing that had ever come off on the campus ever. And . . . go ahead.
MS: Well, I was there, y’know, and I marched in with the . . . I missed the speeches, more or less. But, I marched in with the group and stayed until we left.
DG: That was two o'cock.
MS: Yeah. So I don't . . . you don't need to give me account of y’know, blow by blow . . .
DG: Well, I can tell you a couple of things . . .
MS: But you can tell me the things . . . tell me the things that specifically happened to you. Or the time . . . or did take a . . . did you start taking a leadership role . . .
DG: I began from that time taking a leadership role . . .
MS: Tell me the kind of . . . the kind of . . . yeah.
DG: I began at that time taking a leadership role. My fury egged me on throughout the entirety of the FSM, and kept me going for a considerable amount of time afterward, y’know, in CORE. I became . . . I was overwhelmingly angry at the whole works, and as I became more and more aware of what I was angry at, under the tutelage of people who knew much more about politics than I, I became more aware of what I was angry at, and consequently became more angry. Less than this outraged sputtering type of anger that characterized me, I’m sure, then in the first couple of days, and complete bewilderment for what I was doing. Sort of . . . you need to pee so you pee your pants, was just about what I was doing. I didn’t know what toilets were yet. So. I sort of took a monitor role. As I remember I got provisions, and I’d heard of sit-ins, and I sort of got the idea that this was going to be a sit-in. And, I monitored, more or less.
MS: Had you ever been in a sit-in before?
DG: Never in my life. I've never been. Well, I've been in the demonstration at the Sheraton-Palace but I was not arrested and did not participate in the sit-in. I started doing that on a lark. More or less. I really didn't know what I was doing. And, then, that night, when I found out that I've been expelled . . . oh, I made speeches out of the windows, and I was taken off by I think . . . I think Tom . . . what the hell was his name . . . Gretchen Kitteridge's boyfriend . . .
MS: Miller.
DG: Tom Miller; who told me my speeches were too radical and were alienating people.
PI: (laughs)
MS: What were your speeches saying?
DG: Yeah. Right after I got in I was making speeches out the window. I was in effect saying, ‘If you’re not in here, you’re screwing me, and you're screwing yourself, and you’re screwing everybody, and you’re . . . you’re a nudge and a fink and everything else, y’know. Although not in those words. I don’t know if they were good speeches. I imagine they weren’t. But they were very incensed. I remember a group of six people came in and said, “You’ve convinced me,” and another group of six said that “I’m never gonna go in because of you,” y’know, so I imagine I was alienating people. But, you know, the radical approach and all that. So, that night, after I’d found out that I’d been expelled, I made another speech out of the window, and I referred to the University as a . . . not an education, but a cloister. I was very angry! I was almost in tears. And, then I went . . . hell’s bells, where did I go. I went off with my friend Peter, and his girlfriend, and slept at her house. And, got up the next morning about eight o’clock, because I’d heard that there was going to be another demonstration the next day. I had no (unintelligible).
MS: You didn't go in to the meetings the night before.
DG: I don't believe I did. I don't remember that I did. All I remember is that I went home. And, I remember I got my picture taken and . . . and made a statement to the press, and it was probably pretty dumb, I'm glad that it didn't get printed. And I met the other people that had got thrown out, and I didn't know any of them; and they all seemed to know each other, which sort of bewildered me. Y’know, I couldn't understand why. I found out later that they were all political people and knew each other. But, they were sort of bewildered that I’d gotten thrown out, because they didn’t know me.
MS: You weren't part of the plan.
PI: (laughs)
DG: No. I wasn't part of the plan, you're right “The great SLATE plan.” Oh, I’d also had some intercourse with Brad Cleveland. Only enough to where I've figured that he was sort of a nut. And, very bewildered my his theories which . . . which escaped me completely. And I went home and I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and took off for school again, y’know with this fantastically elated feeling that I've been thrown out and I didn't have to give a fuck about anything, y’know, because I’d sort of not liked the idea of going to school that semester anyway, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do. And, then about nine o’clock that morning I was helping in setting up the tables. I didn’t ever sit at a table after that, on that day. And I was helping setting up tables and was quite elated at the whole works. And especially delighted at the great big huge table that CORE had set up. Jack Weinberg-whom I did not know at that time-sitting in the middle of it, and then about fifteen minutes of twelve, there was going to be a rally at noon, and so we were making preparations for a rally, and one of the Deans . . . we saw the Deans coming, and so we all clustered around, one of the Deans came up to a person with a mustache and said to him, “You realize blah, etcetera.” And he says he wasn’t gonna leave. And, so the Deans went away and came back with four cops. And, they grabbed him, and, each one carrying an arm or a leg, and began carrying . . . I remember he had a very bored look on his face, and I was very cheered by it and patted him on the stomach as he went past. And . . . when they grabbed him, someone said “sit down,” and I repeated it, and everybody just sat down, y’know, boom! just like that. And so the cops had to walk over seated people. It couldn’t have taken more than about ten seconds for everybody to sit down, and there were thousands of people around. There must have been two or three thousand people around.
MS: The way you say it, the people sat-in . . . sat down before the Jack got in the car.
DG: M-hmm! Definitely! Then I noticed that a car had been brought on. I did not notice . . . I don't know when the car was brought on . . . but I know it was brought on when my back was turned. And, I turned around, and I saw the car, I ran over to the car, and sat down behind it. The engine was still running at this time, and exhaust fumes were coming into my face. But, I was delighted by . . .
MS: People . . . now, the people who had sat down were not sitting down around the car, but just . . .
DG: No! They were sitting down around the car . . .
MS . . . but were just sitting down in the path of the police . . .
DG: . . . there were people sitting down everyplace! And, they happened to be sitting down right around the car. I’m sure it was an accident that they sat down around the car. But they just . . . everybody says, ‘Sit down!’ so everybody sat down and the car happened to be there, y’know. And there were thousands of people in front of it, and thousands of people behind it, and I remember that people lined themselves up behind the car in rows, and there were about twelve people to a row, stretching back about ten rows. And I was sitting next to a girl whom I’ve never seen since, and we had a very interesting conversation about ‘wasn’t it all grand.’ I still didn’t know quite what was coming off but it was really great. “These motherfuckers they’re gonna throw me outa school I’ll show them!” And, I remember one of the things that . . . that made . . . made me feel most pleased was that there was a tremendous amount of . . a feeling of solidarity among the people and a tremendous amount of comradeship and friendship . . . real genuine friendship among all these people who didn’t even know each other. Because for example people would go down into the Bear’s Lair and buy, you know, maybe twenty-five glasses of pink lemonade and they’d bring ‘em up and they’d send ‘em out into the crowd, and it would just go off. And, everybody would take just a little sip, just enough for them, and they’d pass it on. And they’d put some money into the tray. And nobody took any of the money, and nobody took more than his share. I remember going down to buy some, and brought it back up, and I’m sure there was absolutely . . . I’m sure there wasn’t a cent stolen . . . and, it seemed that no one took more than his share, and everybody was very concerned that his neighbor be comfortable and all that. And, as the sit-in progressed I became more and more elated, and finally . . . about one-half hour after . . . well, about ten minutes after we stopped the car he turned off his engine, and I got three of my friends to sit around the car by the tires, with pocket knives, and I told ‘em that if the engine started up again—which it did later, but they didn’t stab tires—to stab the tires. Which was kind of dumb, ‘cause they could have slit the valves. But I’m sure they figured that out for themselves. The engine started up again very shortly . . . for a very short time, and then went off again. They never turned it on again, that I saw. If the engine started up again they were gonna slit the valves or cut the tires so that the car would be immobilized by squatting down. Then about 45 minutes or maybe half-an-hour or less—I’m not quite sure of the time span—I remember a person who later turned out to be Mario Savio who also happened to know the person inside of the car, for some obscure reason. All these people seemed to know each other, and I was very befuddled by the whole thing. Got up on top of the car, took off his shoes—and the policeman was saying, ‘Be careful of the antenna, be careful of the antenna,’ and he was saying, ‘Alright, I will,’ and he was wearing white socks. And he stood up on top of the car, and began to make a speech. And then another person got up on the car, and made a speech. This began the thirty-six hour marathon of speeches. Or thirty-two hour marathon of speeches, which went on I’m sure continuously with the exception of a couple of hours from about two o’clock . . .
MS: People were sleeping, yeah.
DG: . . . to seven o’clock. About two o’clock to seven o’clock. In the morning. There were no speeches, but that was the only time. These people spoke, and gradually they stopped taking off their shoes, and pretty soon the antenna got busted off, and the roof was getting dented in more and more, and the sides were getting dented in. Somebody pasted on a “No on 14” sticker on the car, and the car was squatting lower and lower because the suspension was gradually getting wrecked to shit. I didn’t leave the scene except for once, when I went off to buy some whole bunch of Coke. That was on the second day. I went out to buy about . . . about ten o’clock in the morning I went out and bought ten cases of Coke I think, with some money that somebody handed me.
MS: Were you there when the policemen rushed the car?
DG: Yes. I was there the whole time. I missed absolutely nothing.
MS: OK, well then, what was the rushing the car about?
DG: Well, you're getting way ahead of yourself.
MS: Well, I mean . . .
PI: Way ahead. Yeah.
DG: There are a lot of things in between.
MS: Well, OK. Don't leave out any significant incidents that occurred around the car. ‘Cause I was coming and going at that time.
DG: I thought . . . for some strange reason, during the entirety of the FSM, I was always where the action was. I mean, I never missed anything. I don’t know why, precisely . . .
MS: Just tell me everything.
DG: Alright. It's been a long time since I’ve related any of this stuff. Actually it’d be better if we could have two of these sessions.
MS: Yeah. Well I’d be willing.
DG: Go back for another one.
MS: Sure.
DG: Do it again. ‘Cause I'll remember things. Well, all during that time, starting about four o'clock that afternoon . . . I became clear enough on the issues from listening to the speeches. I became clear enough on the issues to know what I was doing, and why. I had all the issues down, absolutely pat, to about a one-and-a-half-hour spiel. I mean, I’d talk continuously, uninterruptedly, and spiel off every fact and figure I could think of. I got about ten more people convinced. I remember two of these people that were in the sit-in, one of the persons I talked to when I was haranguing off my chair was at the sit-in, whom I took about an hour to convince of something or other, as I remember. But, mostly it was just sitting around the car. People were singing, and I was wandering around, but always, always by the car. Sitting down sometimes, sometimes up. About five forty-five that night, that’s the first night of October the first, I was up on the upper part of the plaza—you know that there’s the lower part of the upper part of the plaza and the upper part of the upper plaza, that wide place between the two steps—talking to two friends who had come up to see me, and who said that they’d seen me on telly. As I was talking to them, I was pretty much alone on the plaza there, I noticed a large group of policemen was starting to close the doors in Sproul Hall. During all that day we’d held the Hall I never was in there. But we’d held the Hall. We’d made an agreement—I’d gathered more by osmosis—that the doors wouldn’t be shut before seven thirty. The police were starting to close it and it was about quarter to six. So, I began to yell that ‘They’re closing the doors,’ and I ran up to the middle door and slammed myself up against it and at that precise instant Mario reached the other door and slammed himself up against it. That’s when I met Mario. I don’t believe we introduced each other. And then Ron Pickard came up, and then Mike Rossman.
MS: Who was this person?
DG: Ron Pickard came up. And then Michael Rossman. Then we . . . then more and more people began to come, but this is the order in which I remember people arriving. I didn’t know any of these people at that time. We threw ourselves up against the door in two rows, facing each other against the doors, and people behind us and beside us, and a couple of people inside, but not very many. They’d thrown them all out. Then the police came up, and Mario was arguing with the police and asking on what grounds they were trying to close the doors, and the police said they were given orders, and he said “By whom,’
‘By the captain,’
‘Who gave the captain orders,’
‘I dunno, I just follow orders,’
‘Well, at least this is one order you’re not gonna obey,’
‘Oh, yeah?’
And this kinda stuff, ‘Your mother,’ and, ‘So are you,’ this kind of thing is precisely how it went. We were getting angrier and angrier, and this great big cop, about six-five or six-six I’m sure, came walking up from the outside to the inside. And, he walked on some of our feet. And we said, ‘You’re walking on our hands and feet, stop it!’
And he just looked down on us from his cloudy height and kept on walking. So we grabbed him, and pushed him down, and took off his shoes. And then he walked through . . . he was very chagrined at that . . . he was really pissed off . . . so he walked through, and this did it. At that precise moment, when we had him down, and he was getting up, a policeman grabbed Ron Pickard by the head in a hammer lock, and started hitting him in the face with his fist. I jumped up and dived at the nearest policeman and grabbed his wrists—both his wrists, like that—and was screaming every variety of obscenity I know, and I know a very large selection, right into his face. He was looking absolutely no idea . . . if Jesus Christ had come down to earth at that precise moment, he couldn’t have looked more astonished. And then everybody else began jumping up, and began slugging the cops, and hitting them, and biting them, and scratching them, and chopping on them . . . they didn’t use their guns or their sticks, but I was fully expecting to be shot anytime. It just wasn’t a very reasonable kind of thing. Hitting them and biting them and everything, and kicking, and they withdrew in terror. They were pulling people in, that . . . they soon noticed in about five seconds that the more they pulled in the more came in. There was an enormous crowd, had come up from around the police car. I think the police car could have gotten away at that moment if it had wanted to. Because I think most of the people left. The policemen withdrew. I remember there were twenty-five policemen precisely. They withdrew up the stairs and cowered there, absolutely dumbfounded. We were shaking our fists at them, ‘This is what you’ll get again if you try it,’ same sort of thing. Making remarks. Then we occupied the building with half the people inside and half the people outside. At this time, I believe Jackie Goldberg was sort of the de facto leader of the movement, in so far as it was a movement. She was giving orders, but nobody was paying too much attention to her, ‘cause she was a girl, I think was the main reason. She really wasn’t running the show very well, she wasn’t thinking very clearly.
MS: Why do you pick her as the leader at that time?
DG: This . . . this is the impression that I got. She was the person who was standing up, making the speeches, who seemed to know much more about it than anybody else, and who seemed to know what to do. But I soon noticed that, I mean, whatever she advocated seemed a little screwy. Like, she wanted everybody inside. And then she said, ‘No, no, that’s not a good idea.’ Sort of carrying on this soliloquy by herself. Then more people wanted to speak, there was debate, there was a vote, and we decided that we would occupy the building until nine o’clock, to show that we could do it if we wanted to, and then we would get out, because we didn’t want to divide our forces, and have half inside and half outside. Which would give the police an opportunity if they wanted to, to rush the car, and we were assuming that they would probably want to do something like that. Then at nine o’clock we abandoned the building, and they locked it up . . . I think they locked it up, but I’m not sure . . . and we went back around the car.
Then a large number of people began to come. More and more and more people. A lot of people who were fraternity boys came. And they stood around, and were making remarks, and throwing things. We were using for light the light from the Student Union, and at the point where the tension was at its highest, they turned off the lights inside, and here we were arguing with Forrest Tregay to turn ‘em back on again, and finally convinced him to turn the lights back on again inside the Student Union.
MS: Who argued with Tregay?
PI: Oh, I remember that!
DG: I did and several other people, I don’t remember who. I remember Peter, was one of them, this friend of mine Peter, and I was one, and I don’t remember who else. But we finally got him to turn them on again, and somebody got inside . . .
MS: What time was this?
DG: About midnight.
MS: How did you find Tregay?
DG: He was standing inside. And somebody was talking to him inside, and finally convinced him to turn the lights back on again. And we also got an extension cord inside for our power for the speakers which had been set up, I don’t know when, by somebody up on top of the car. By that time the car was a wreck.
Then a group of fraternity boys began jeering more and more violently. They were carrying placards and the tension was growing greater, and greater and greater and I was very much expecting a riot. I also noticed that there were enormous numbers of police around, mostly Alameda County Sheriffs, and Oakland cops. And there were Berkeley cops, sort of divided up on sides: the Berkeley cops were on the side of the demonstrators, the Alameda and Oakland cops were on the side of the freddies. If there were a fight, it seemed to me very reasonable that the Alameda County Sheriffs would be fighting the Berkeley Police. I still had great faith in Berkeley Police at that time; who were quite decent throughout, it must be remarked. The Campus cops were quite decent throughout. I mean, they had no real choice, but there seemed to me no reason they were nasty and truculent. Then about, a little bit after twelve, a fire engine came roaring up, and I was positive that they were going to hose us off. I’d heard about this, too. So I assumed that they were going to hose us all away from the car. I gathered that a lot of other people believed that too. The fire engine was going after something in the . . . not Wheeler, but what the hell is that other hall named . . .
PI: Dwinelle.
DG: Dwinelle. Dwinelle Hall, and took care of it and went away. But, I was just absolutely convinced that they were there to wash us all off. Although it seems rather strange to come up there with lights flashing and siren going. Well, maybe to warn us or something. Then about two o’clock, the tension was absolutely so thick you could cut it with a knife. There were fights breaking out, and the freddies were throwing things, and we were throwing things back at them, and it was getting very violent, when Father Fisher, whom I did not know at that time, either, came up, said he . . . stood up on top of the car, said he didn’t know what was going on, but it looked pretty bad and he was sure God didn’t approve, and why don’t we behave like nice people, and pray, and spontaneously, I’m sure, right after his prayer, every single one of the demonstrators fell silent. No noise at all. There was only one remark made, and he was quickly shushed, during that whole time which must have lasted as long as thirty minutes. The only sounds that there were, were ‘shhhh!’-ings from a couple thousand people. Soon it became painfully obvious who was standing up and who was sitting down, and who was being noisy and who was being quiet. And the freddies began to break away and ‘C’mon fellahs, let’s go!’ and ‘Gee, this is a drag, let’s beat it!’ and breaking off in little bunches of twos and threes and twelves, and finally were all gone by about two fifteen or two thirty. Then we set up monitors and I aided, I believe Bettina Aptheker was one of them, and Stephanie Coontz was one of them . . . aided them in setting up a monitor’s patrol to watch both for freddies, for police. We were anticipating a rush in the early hours of the morning from the police, to try and get the car away, when everyone would go away.
MS: Wait a minute. You were talking about seeing Alameda County Police that night. Sure that wasn’t the night they were . . .
DG: I thought they were Alameda County Police. They were dressed in blue uniforms. They may have been Oakland cops. Just Oakland cops, not Alameda’s. But I thought there were Alameda cops.
MS: And this was the night before the big show.
DG: This was the night before the big show; this was the night of the freddies, with all the ruckus. Then, most of the people bedded down; I didn’t go to sleep. I was too keyed up to sleep. I didn’t sleep anytime during that four-day period. I sort of cracked up . . . no, I was awake for five days . . . I sort of cracked up afterwards, for a couple of days. I’d met a girl, too, who I was talking to once in a while, and so we sort of wandered around patrol, and talked to people and bummed cigarettes, and I remember somebody went out and bought two, or three four cartons of cigarettes about five o’clock, and I went around passing them out to people. Handing out cigarettes to somebody who needs cigarettes, handing out Marlboros and Pall Malls, handing them out whether you liked filters or non-filters.
MS: I remember that.
DG: The feeling of comradeship was growing much, much stronger. The group had dwindled to about four hundred. Maybe even fewer that four hundred. But, they were behind, and in front, and a few on each side. Some were on the grass. Then also about five o’clock somebody in the administration building turned on the water on the lawn, and got a lot of people wet. I ran up and got the people off one lawn, and ran out and got the other people off the lawn. I remember that one group of people inside a tent, which was gyrating remarkably for that hour of the morning—the quietness of the earth and all that—sort of remarkable that a tent should gyrate like that, told me to go away, not to bother them, if it rains or it freezes, and I guess it was a waterproof tent, because it didn’t bother them a bit. People came down off of there and got on the pavement.
MS: As I understand it, those are automatic water sprinklers.
DG: The people in the administration building certainly . . . they looked out their windows, and thought it was pretty funny, so I assumed automatically that they’d turned the water on. Maybe they were automatic.
MS: I've heard that they were automatic.
DG: But I think that they were turned on by people in the administration building. And they also let off an alarm clock.
MS: Ah, you're paranoid.
PI: (laughs)
DG: Right! And they also let off an alarm clock at some time in that area, too. Lots of things happened around five o’clock. Then, about six, we started to clean the area up. I noticed that there was a police car sitting out there all night, sort of cruising back and forth, sitting by the corner and cruising back and forth. We started to clean up, and we picked the lock of the maintenance, of the little maintenance building below the ASUC building and hauled out that big slurper, you know that big vacuum cleaner and some brooms and rakes and things and cleaned the whole area up.
MS: What do you mean you picked the lock?
DG: We picked the lock. You know, with a hairpin.
MS: Where's this room?
DG: I'll show it to you sometime. It's down below, in the lower plaza area, but way on the other side. Anyway, I've seen it once before so I knew where it was. ‘Cause I came on campus early, I liked it early. You know. By about seven o'cock the whole area was cleaned up, and everybody was awake except for maybe one or two people who just did not want to get up. We've gotten the morning papers, and I was infuriated by the morning papers, which made me explode with rage. I cursed . . . roundly cursed every newsman I saw, and they were very hurt. I didn’t understand at the time that they were not responsible for this. That the newsman takes pictures and reports and the desk does what it wants. They completely distort what is said. It said ‘riots,’ and it said, ‘beatniks and Communists,’ and this, and I became absolutely furious.
We were serving free coffee, to the demonstrators and to the newsmen. Anybody else wanted it they had to pay a dime, but that didn’t go over very well so everybody got free coffee. We had coffee and donuts. More and more the day picked up, and more and more people came by, fewer and fewer people on their way to classes actually went to class. They sort of stayed around the car. They figured, ‘Well, hell’s bells. We can cut a class today. Something like this doesn’t occur every day.’
MS: The police rush hadn't come on the car yet, huh?
DG: No. There was no police . . . NO police trouble at all. The police were very pleasant, very sort of tired, they changed shifts once, about . . . I think about two o’clock they changed shifts. Maybe two, two-fifteen. Maybe three. Maybe even before that. But I remember somewhere between twelve and three they changed shifts, ‘cause I saw some new cops. And I made the acquaintance of the man in the car and shook hands, you know, ‘Hi,’ he didn’t pay much attention to me and I didn’t pay much attention to him. I mean, he was a very incidental guy to the whole thing. He may as well not have been there as far as I cared. Paid no attention to him.
The little maintenance man came out and looked very wounded that the whole place had been cleaned up. So he got out his little vacuum cleaner thing and went over the whole area again. Because after all you know, you got a job to do you gotta do your job whether it’s been done or not. The whole area was immaculately clean. So he cleaned it up all again, anyway. I think this improved my mood.
Then the day went pretty blah. People coming, more soft drinks being bought, more people. Buying pink lemonade and sending it out. The same sort of comradeship existed just as strongly as the first day. This went on throughout the day. Relatively uneventfully, with speeches. I talked to some people and told ‘em what was going on and proselytized a little bit more, never during this whole time getting more than a hundred yards from the car, I’m sure. I can’t think of a single time I got more than a hundred yards away from the car except for that one time I went to buy Cokes on the second day. Then, about five o’clock, a number of people disappeared, who had been doing a good deal of the speaking, and other speakers took over who weren’t quite so good. By this time I was beginning to get my second wind of being awake. I wasn’t used to staying up all night; I didn’t rest well. I was sort of glazed, you know, in my head. And I was gonna stay up for two more days. Let’s see, I hadn’t gotten any sleep the first night, from the thirtieth to the first, nor the first to the second, nor the second to the third. Nor the third to the fourth, nor the fourth to the fifth. So I stayed awake all that time.
Then about seven o’clock, Mario came back and began to make a speech, and the newsmen shined lights right in his eyes, and he became very angry at them and pushed them away. Lots of people grabbed them and they finally stopped them and got them out of his eyes. And this is I guess when he became the official leader of the Free Speech Movement. Before this it was sort of loosely called the United Front, and the only . . . I know nothing about this United Front, except that’s what it was called. I didn’t know who was in it or what.
MS: You didn't sense that Mario was the leader . . .
DG: No.
MS: . . . during the sit-in?
PI: But I had.
DG: I never sensed that Mario was the leader at all. Ever. At any time. Even now.
MS: Yeah.
DG: This is a fabrication of the press, and of people who don’t know what’s going on. He was a good speaker. A fine orator. And a good thinker. And a terrible strategist. A blockheaded strategist. He had no organizing ability, he had no stick-to-it-iveness when it came to shit work, he blew his cool far too easily, he could not make a tactical decision if his life depended on it. And, he couldn’t organize or anything like that. Couldn’t do the bureaucratic work, couldn’t organize. All he could do was speak well, and state clearly, succinctly, and in very beautiful terms, what everybody else was thinking. So he did the majority of the speaking.
MS: How do you feel?
PI: Yeah, I agree. I think Jack was the brains of the whole movement.
DG: I don't agree with that, either.
PI: Well, I mean that he . . . I, I don’t know . . . I feel personally . . .
DG: Jack was the strategist.
PI: Well, I always looked to him for counseling.
DG: But strategy is not everything, you know. Then a speech was made, and I didn’t quite understand what was going on. This whole thing confused me very much. I was tired, and I was keyed up, and so I didn’t understand what was going on, precisely. But somebody here was making a plea for us to stay, somebody else was making a plea for us to go, and right about this time we began forming concentric rings about the car and locking arms; and getting set for a big rush from what we had heard was fantastic numbers of police that were there. Fantastic numbers were anywhere from estimates of a thousand to millions and millions of police. I was fully equipped to believe this, ‘cause I hadn’t seen any of ‘em, I never saw a single policeman the whole time except for the Berkeley and Campus police, but I heard that there were just seas of Oakland cops swarming all over the campus. So we were . . . I was fully prepared to fight to the death this time, again, for what I understood be a gross insult to my dignity at that time.
My . . . me, DG, had been insulted by the University, therefore I was very pissed off. This was about the extent of it. Also, we had to get a conception of something: rights. More than . . . more than the idea of individual rights—collective rights. Which took me a terribly long time to . . . it took me two or three months before I got this idea completely through my head. The idea of working together, and organization, and collective rights. Collective duties and responsibilities and the like. Which was totally alien to my nature.
Then the Berkeley cops rushed the group, and there’s a photograph in . . . I’m not sure where . . . somebody has it, and I’m in it . . .
PI: The front page of the Chronicle.
DG: Was it the front page of the Chronicle? Of the cops rushing and several of us yelling . . . we were yelling ‘lock arms’
PI: I thought that came before Mario . .
DG . . . cops were rushing us . . .
PI: . . . made the thing about how we should . . .
DG: I think it was . . .
PI: . . . because as I remember it was, it was around . . .
MS: Yeah, it had to be before Mario resolved the dispute . . . actually announced . . .
PI: Yeah! . . . about whether or not to break up, people were muttering and everything . . . yeah.
MS: Nobody had any second thoughts about . . .
DG: By this time I was very fuzzy in the head, and things were not at all clear to me and my time sequences were very badly fouled up.
MS: You were sitting in the audience?
DG: No! I was around the car . . .
PI: No, I was standing around . . .
DG: . . . with arms locked with two people next to me . . .
PI: . . . I was sitting in the audience, because I’d tried to lock arms . . .
MS: Could you tell the response of the audience. What was the feeling of the people at that time. As your sense, anyway. What’s the response to the agreement.
PI: The response to the agreement . . .
MS: . . . the situation and everything, were they pretty much satisfied or did they . . I mean, did they understand . . . or they didn’t know what to do . . .
PI: Well, I remember that our . . . the two of us sitting there, our first reaction was “My God! He had no right to make that agreement without coming back and taking a vote of everybody sitting around the car, because here we were willing to get our heads bashed in, and he’d . . . you know . . . and, and Mario and several other people had signed this agreement that, you know, you could see this terrible stress they were under but they should of come back, and I know I was very mad and several people I . . . you know, around me, they all were muttering, nobody wanted to leave, you know, and . . . and you could see it on peopleユs faces that nobody wanted to leave, and they said “Why should we go,” and then, you know, and then they started muttering to themselves a little bit, and then they left, but they were . . . people were very unhappy. You could see it on everybody’s faces. I saw unhappy faces. Everybody was very disappointed at the outcome.
DG: Well, I was . . . I had my arms locked with about the, uh, fifth circle out, and we put . . . we kicked most of the girls out . . .
PI: I know.
DG: . . . because we figured that they couldn’t form anything strong enough to hold. I mean, I had two real bulls beside me. You know, I mean really enormous guys, and they’d taken off their shirts. We were taking . . . we were taking off like, our glasses, and we were taking pens out of our pockets and buttons off and undoing belt buckles, and really . . . really setting up for a knock-down, drag-out blood-and-guts fight. Which we were fully prepared to undertake. You know, a fight to the death. And I’m sure there would be somebody get killed if the Oakland cops had been let loose on us.
PI: Yeah.
DG: Because we weren't giving any more or budging anywhere from that car. And, I didn't know that the car could get away under it's own power.
MS: I had it figured out how they were gonna do it: they had two columns of cycles, and the way I figured it they was gonna pull in, and go straight to the, y’know . . . two rows of cycles into the demonstrators. And then the cops would come in right between them. And they would just pull he demonstrators out. You know, through . . . the cycles being blocking off everybody from getting in. Just so nobody could block off. I think that that’s what they were gonna do. I couldn’t imagine why those cycles were there for any purposes.
DG: I remember the cycles. I’d heard motorcycles and they all started up all at once. And, I remember I was standing next to two people and we all three simultaneously thought together that it was tanks . . .
PI: Tanks! Yeah, we thought that too . . .
DG: For some strange reason it seemed to run through the whole crowd. Everyone I talked to later was very convinced that, that was a tank, or two . . . or several tanks. For real, that they’d brought up. We were real convinced that they were tanks. Is that the first thing you thought?
PI: Yeah! ‘Cause everybody I talked to . . .
DG: Everybody! Everybody I talked to was convinced that those were tanks.
PI: Yeah.
DG: And later, we were convinced that it was motorcycles, but during that time . . . when we first heard that, the first thing that sprang to our minds was tanks. And, I don’t know why, there’d been a rumor that the army and navy would participate, and there were army and navy paddy wagons, ‘cause I noticed ‘em later running around. They’d blocked off Bancroft and Telegraph for several blocks down each way, and they were just chuck full of cops, from what I hear. We were convinced, then, that they were going to take the motorcycles and just run the motorcycles into the crowd. That’s what we thought they were going to do. And then when the crowd was all broken up, in the confusion the cops would charge. And, I thought it was an awfully big fuss over one police car. But, see, it was also you know their pride and honor against our pride and honor, theirs would probably win out. So, then the announcement was made that we should leave and, at that point . . . that particular moment, I was so tired, and so fuzzy in the head, that I would have . . . if Mario had said at that moment, ‘Stand on your head and click your heels together,’ I would have done it. I was absolutely an automaton. So, I just left. I just got up and walked away, with several of my friends and a couple of the people there . . . I mean, we walked down the street. I ran into a group of people on the corner and made a big, rousing speech, and got dragged off again. I was out of my head at that particular moment.
MS: Were you . . .
DG: Yeah . . .
MS: . . . to go back to the sit-in. Were you in on the decision when they said . . . when they made a decision to go out?
DG: Only insofar as I was a member of the audience.
MS: You know they had a meeting in the north end . . .
DG: I had nothing to do with that. Oh! I'm sorry! I was there . . .
MS: . . . the second . . . the first floor . . .
DG: . . . the first floor in the north end that little cubicle where we all . . . and it became very hot and stuffy.
MS: Yeah, what was . . . what happened in that?
DG: I didn't participate; I was only there.
MS: Well, I mean, can you remember who or more . . . if there was a team . . .
DG: There was an argument; there was Tom, Tom, what the hell his name . . .
MS: Miller.
PI: Miller?
DG: Tom Miller was there, Mario Savio was there, all of the eight people were there, and several other people. And I really don't remember who they were.
MS: Do you remember what they were arguing about . . . what the issues were?
DG: Arguing about whether we should leave or not leave.
MS: And, can you remember the arguments for and against?
DG: The arguments for were: if we leave, it will seem that we’re chickening out; we fought for this, and kept it for so long, we . . . we . . . we really shouldn’t leave now; we’ve got this far we really shouldn’t split. The arguments against—which I really thought were much stronger—were that, staying is kind of absurd, we can’t gain anything, we’re not disrupting anybody’s anything, we . . . if we want to do something come back in tomorrow morning about seven o’clock. If we want to disrupt things . . . we should disrupt things then. But, we’re not doing anything now, it's purely symbolic, we're wearing everybody out, everybody's tired, we want to go home and go to bed. That argument won out. I didn't participate and didn't understand it.
Who's here?
PI: Mike Tyson.
DG: Oh.
MS: Hi, Mike.
Mike Tyson: Hi.
MS: Taping DG.
Mike Tyson: What's he taping you for?
DG: So, anyway, then I went home, and drank a whole bunch of beer, then walked this girl home, and then ran into a freddy—this is about five o’clock in the morning—ran into this freddy and had a discussion with him that lasted until about nine o’clock the next morning. He was very, very amenable to the whole idea. He was quite confused by it, and at that time I had such a stock of facts and figures under my belt that I could stun an ox, you know, by their weight alone. And, pretty much convinced him that what we had done was very kosher. And then went home again . . . no, I didn’t go home, I went to a friend’s house . . .
Mike Tyson: Patti, is the door unlocked? I gotta get some stuff out.
DG: . . . stayed there, got up, not having slept, I don’t think . . . maybe an hour of sleep . . . got up and went to Art Goldberg’s house. Where I . . . somebody’d told me to go to Art Goldberg’s house tomorrow morning. So, I went to Art Goldberg’s house, and then we had the first meeting of the FSM.
MS: OK, now wait a minute.
DG: And this was the point at which it was actually named the FSM. I did not participate in the naming of it, which had occurred before that.
MS: I happened to be at that meeting, too.
DG: I was not at that meeting.
MS: OK. Uh, just before . . . the police . . . the rush on the car.
DG: Mmm-hmm.
MS: Was there actually . . . they did, actually at one point,
PI: I remember that they broke through . . .
DG: . . . broke through the lines . . .
PI: Yeah. . .
DG: . . . it was Berkeley Police, they broke through the lines . . .
MS: This was after everybody’d been locking arms . . .
PI: Right
DG: Right
PI: After . . . we were all . . .
DG: We weren't prepared for it, and we were very surprised.
PI: Yeah.
DG: . . . and we did not expect that . . .
MS: What did it appear that they were about to do . . .
DG: It occurred to me, for a few moments, that they were gonna rush the car and try to take it . . .
PI: Right.
DG: . . . and then it became clear that they weren’t trying to rush the car at all, they were just trying to get around it.
Mike Tyson: Why didn't we tip it over?
MS: Hmm?
Mike Tyson: Why didn't we tip the car over?
DG: I don't know. Might of not thought of it.
Mike Tyson: (laughs).
MS: So . . . I mean . . . they just sort of posted the guard around the car.
DG: Yeah.
MS: And that was all.
DG: That's right. Couple of details.
MS: OK.
DG: And they didn't do anything. I've expected when they started that they were gonna try to break the ranks and promote confusion, and the like.
MS: OK. Let's go . . . let's go then to the meeting at Art Goldberg's.
DG: OK. Now. The meeting . . . the first couple of meetings at Goldberg’s I absolutely was in a fog. I didn’t understand anything that was going . . . I was in a fog. I didn’t understand anything that was going on, it made no sense to me; there was politicking going on, and I just did not know what was going . . . I mean it didn’t . . . there wasn’t . . . I didn’t understand. It was a completely alien world to me. It involved matters of strategy . . . just . . . I was utterly befuddled. So, I don’t remember much of it, because I never participated.
PI: But, you were there so you . . .
DG: Up until about . . .
MS: Well, I know some of it. I was in on the Saturday meeting . . .
DG: Up until about . . .
MS: . . . and the Sunday meeting . . .
DG: After the FSM had existed qua FSM for about two months, then I began actually to understand what was going on in the way of politics, and what politics were about, and things like that. But I really didn’t understand. I felt very much over my head, whenever I was at a meeting, but I always went.
MS: Were you at the Sunday meeting when . . .
DG: I was at all the meetings . . .
MS: . . . the Steering Committee was chosen?
DG: . . . all the meetings.
MS: . . . first Steering Committee?
DG: I remember I spoke for Sandor Fuchs because I’d run into him very well when I was working on slate, he was a hard worker and he was obviously decent and all that. And then later I found out that he was an idiot, but I mean I didn’t know that at that time.
PI: (laughs)
DG: I remember that we had some discussions on what we should do with Lennie Glazer. And, this was something I did understand, and I made an impassioned speech which swung the whole thing back again. It was just about decided that we should abandon him, then I made an impassioned solidarity type speech and . . . which shook Mario up, and Mario made an impassioned speech and it swung the whole thing back again. We agreed to do something and never did it, as I remember. We never did get around to doing anything.
MS: Were you there Pat?
PI: Yeah, I remember that.
DG: Were you there?
MS: Do you remember some of the discussions that . . that . . . that took place at those meetings?
DG: I remember the selection of the . . .
PI: I just remember . . .
DG: The selection . . .
MS: Like who ran for the Steering Committee that didn’t get on and . . .
DG: Oh, I remember, let's see, Jackie Goldberg ran . . .
PI: Yeah . . .
DG: . . . and Sandor Fuchs ran, didn’t . . . not . . . never got on. Several times and never got on. And then a bunch of other people. See I didn’t even know these people, so I couldn’t vote. I voted from how they spoke. I didn’t know their reputations or anything else. And I picked pretty bad slates. No, I didn’t. I picked about three-quarters of the people who won. As I remember about one-quarter of the people I picked . . .
MS: Who've you vote for that didn't win?
DG: Sandor Fuchs.
MS: And who else.
DG: He's the only one I remember. And I remember that . . . Jack Weinberg and Mario Savio . . .
PI: Yeah . . .
DG: . . . and I sort of assumed that Mario because he was a good speaker, and I remember that I voted for Mario, and I voted for Jack. Later on I got to where I would pick a winning slate every time. Got very classy at that. But, I never ran myself, but was a de facto member.
MS: You ran but . . . but . . . but withdrew
DG: I never ran. Oh, yes, I ran once but withdrew, because I didn’t . . . I felt that my presence on it would take somebody else off who would probably be better.
PI: I remember that! I was going to vote for you. (laughs)
MS: Yeah, I was sort of mad that you withdrew.
DG: I probably would have been elected.
MS: You certainly would have been better than Benson Brown.
PI: Yeah.
DG: Well, Benson never did anything. And Art Goldberg never did anything.
PI: Well, Art Goldberg . . .
DG: There was this big crisis about his not getting on.
PI: Yeah.
DG: . . . get to it much later. But . . . then about the . . . it was Sunday afternoon, and what day would that make it? I remember it was Sunday afternoon . . .
MS: The fourth.
DG: . . . all I remember was . . .
MS: October the fourth. If there’s something that you can remember, that you want to interject, please do, you know, in the interests . . .
PI: Yeah.
DG: We were having a great deal of trouble with communications. Like, nobody know where anybody was or what anybody was doing. And I was alone at that time with Sandor in the house . . . in Art Goldberg’s house . . . and I . . . the idea came to me that we should set up a sort of central communications bureau. And, Sandor agreed that it was a good idea, ‘cause I had a very shaky faith in myself, I didn’t know whether it would be a good idea or not. So, we agreed to set it up and found a house, set it up, and some absolute jackass broadcast the main number. We started calling around, all the people we know, and found out in about two hours that two hideous things were wrong with it. One, that it was a unit telephone on which we’d made about one-hundred telephone calls, and, two, that some jackass had taken the main number—which was supposed to be secret and put it up on the main screen in Wheeler Auditorium for two hours. So, we abandoned that number within about five minutes, set up a new one at Deward Hastings’ house up on . . . Whatchamacallit avenue . . . which was well isolated from everybody. And I manned that alone for about three days.
MS: Starting when?
DG: Starting that Sunday.
MS: OK. I wanna know, were you at that meeting on the evening—either of you—when they started getting the phone calls from the professors. And . . .
DG: I remember something vaguely . . .
MS: . . . Glazer and . . .
DG: Oh! I'm sorry! I missed something very important. Going back to the . . . to when we were fighting the cops, at Sproul Hall door. Nathan Glazer was supposed to have made some kind of negotiations with the administration which he failed to do, and therefore we didn't know that the police were going to come to the door. And it's because of his failure to get from spot A to spot B on time he’d got hung up somewhere in the middle-dawdling around, I'm sure. And because of his failure to get there we had to fight the cops. If he've come there, we never would have had to fight the cops. If he've been on time.
MS: What would have been the result?
DG: There was some kind of agreement: We won’t . . . we won’t leave until this agreement is made. The agreement hadn’t been made, and we would have occupied . . . re-occupied the building, obviating the necessity of the cops trying to close the doors, because we would have been inside already. The doors were to stay open until . . . no, it was until six thirty, not seven thirty . . . and he showed up late after the fight, and we cursed him roundly, and he was a fink in my mind from that day onward. Which was borne out very clearly by every action of his later. That he was really and truly a . . .
MS: But even though he was a fink you spoke for him at the meeting on the weekend.
DG: Did I?
MS: Yeah.
DG: What did I say?
MS: You just said that.
PI: No. He didn't just say that.
DG: I was speaking of Sandor Fuchs, not Nathan Glazer.
PI: He was speaking of Sandor, not Glazer.
MS: Oh! I thought you were talking about . . .
DG: . . . Nathan Glazer.
MS: I thought you were talking about . . .
DG: Nathan Glazer.
MS: . . . now, wait a minute. You’re talking about Nathan Glazer?
PI: Yeah.
DG: Professor Nathan Glazer.
MS: I kept thinking of Lenny Glazer, and wondered if . . .
PI: Oh!
DG: No, no, no, no, no.
MS: Yeah, OK!
DG: I thought they were related for a while.
PI: (laughs)
MS: I never forget when Lenny Glazer . . . you know, when Nathan got up there, he says ‘Did you sign the’. . . Lenny says, ‘Did you sign the loyalty oath?’ And Nathan Glazer says, ‘That’s not fayuh! That’s not fayuh!’ he says. And of course I can’t imitate his . . . but he has this very distinct annoying sound.
DG: Very Brooklynish accent. Very New York Jewish. Um . . . well . . .
MS: OK, uh . . .
DG: That . . . that . . . some night meeting I was at but I left early.
MS: The Steering Committee had been chosen by the time you left.
DG: Then I went back up. I believe so.
MS: Were you at that meeting? Pat?
DG: I periodically left for the hidy-hole . . .
PI: I was there that afternoon. I wasn’t there Sunday night. I think I was there when the Steering Committee was chosen, but I don’t remember. I mean, I thought . . . I thought I voted for the Steering Committee. But I’m not sure.
DG: It was during the intermission . . .
MS: Were you Campus for Women for Peace?
DG: She was Women for Peace.
PI: No, I was . . . when I was there I think they . . . oh, yes . . . I think they did kick me out of that . . . when I’d been there, when was it Saturday night, they put me on as SLATE.
DG: It was during the intermission between the afternoon and the evening meeting that I conceived the idea of a central. And I figured it wouldn’t be necessary then and so I came to the meeting. Then I went back . . . and then . . . I imagine you’ll want . . . you’ll want Marilyn Noble into this, won’t you.
MS: Yeah.
DG: Because she caused 100% fantastic chaos several times. A real nudnik. She came about three days after I’d set up the place. And it was working pretty well, it was very sporadic . . .
MS: I remember I told you up at Central and I said ‘where is so-and-so,’ and you says, ‘I don’t know,’
PI: (laughs)
MS: And I call up later on and I said, ‘Like tell me where’s so-and-so?’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ and I said ‘Well, I thought your job’s supposed to know where people are.’
PI: (laughs)
MS: And you stuttered and you sort of swore at me.
DG: Well, you see the point is that a lot of people weren’t telling me where they were.
MS: Yeah?
DG: They were supposed to call me every half hour and tell me where they were. I had a beautiful set-up, where I took all the main people, about twenty people, and staggered them so that one would me calling every five minutes.
PI: Jeez!
DG: And they were supposed to call God damn it, and they didn’t! And I got roaring pissed off, some of them were very faithful, as I remember Jack always was very faithful in the beginning, and then he got terribly negligent. And Mario was impossible.
MS: Oh, yeah.
DG: And Bettina I think was pretty good, too. But, I got though to them the importance of everybody knowing where everybody else was. And gradually, after about two day’s service, the place really was running like a clock, and I knew where everybody was almost all the time either by . . . you see, whenever anybody would call, I’d ask him, ‘where’s everybody?’ and he’d tell me where everybody he’d seen was last. So pretty soon I’d say . . . somebody would call and I’d say, ‘Two minutes ago he was walking down Telegraph toward Pepi’s, you know. And they’d call up again, ‘Found him.’ Now let’s see, ‘Where’s thus-and-such, where’s thus-and-such, and it was working pretty well. And then I got a little help, every now and then, from a couple of people. Tom Weller helped me and this fellow Peter helped me and his girlfriend helped me, and then Marilyn Noble came. Deward Hastings did a little bit.
MS: What about Larry Marks?
DG: Yeah, he helped some too. He was doing quite a bit in the early part about transportation and getting food and swiping me cigarettes from the store and things like that. I used to have a fine relationship with him where I’d go in and he’d turn his head and I’d steal cigarettes. And that was . . . it was pretty good. I was smoking Russian cigarettes.
MS: He got let go.
DG: He let go and our relationship nevertheless remained about what it was . . .
MS: No, I mean at this smoke shop.
DG: Yeah, that's too bad. He also shaved off his mustache. Which I think is a crime. It was such a beautiful mustache. Anyway. Beautiful mustache. Just beautiful.
PI: I remember.
DG: But he’s gonna grow it back. And, gradually I was getting to know all these people. And, at the end of the FSM I knew about two or three thousand people. Either on sight, or, you know, by name or a nodding acquaintance. So I ran Central for I think . . . I was personally in charge of and present at Central for about two weeks. Then I got Central going to where it was running well enough without me, to where I could start leaving and doing other things. I became sort of commissar in charge of you name it I can get it for you. I remember one night up at Deward’s house on the hill, I went to sleep with my girlfriend and woke up in the morning with Mario Savio. My girlfriend had left to do her shift on the phones and I was sleeping and I woke up with my arm around Mario. And I looked at him, and he looked at me, and I said, “Well, politics makes strange bedfellows!”And he struck me, and we went back to sleep. That will live forever in my memories. One of the worst puns of my life. He was looking terrible, absolutely ghastly. He was getting thinner and thinner and thinner, and he hadn’t shaved in ‘bout three weeks, something like that. And he was looking wretched.
Then we moved Central down from the hill, to 2536 [College Avenue] and set it up again. At this time, Marilyn Noble was running around doing quite a bit of the shit work that I didn’t want to do. She was manning the phones and cooking food buying groceries. We used her car, and that was . . .
MS: She was . . . she was . . . she was at Deward’s for a while, too . . .
DG: Right. Then Deward kicked us all out, which was a wise move on Deward’s part, and uh . . . otherwise his house would have been torn down instead of 2536 I’m sure . . .
PI: (laughs)
MS: Did you have a lot of room up there? I’ve never been there.
DG: No, it was very cramped. Very small. And then 2536 had . . . I got a lot more workers, a lot more regular staff, more telephones, we set up an extension up there but down at 2536 we set up two telephones. After about two weeks the whole works was again running very smoothly, and I left pretty much, although I was still very definitely and very clearly the . . . in charge of it and I would come in and raise hell whenever I wanted which I did whenever I wanted. I would come in maybe two, three times a day. I was also living there. And I lived there for maybe a month or two months.
MS: Where were you living before? Did you commute or what?
DG: No, I lived on Grove Street and I walked to school. I stopped living on Grove Street the day I got thrown out of school. I also lost my job, which was in the library. I lost that on the second. I also left my home and quit paying the rent, and the other guy got a new room mate.
PI: Wasn't Tom your room mate?
DG: No, Tom wasn't there. It was a guy named Al. Then Central . . . now, just precisely how Central was set up on 2536 . . . how . . . we came in, and sort of took the place . . . (tape ends)
(tape resumes)
MS: Hello! Hello! OK. Um, what’s the date today?
PI: Today's the twentieth.
MS: July 20th. Yesterday was the 19th?
PI: Yeah!
MS: Let's see . . . the last side was on the 19th. So, you started . . . did you spend most of your time at Central while you were setting them up?
DG: No. Oh, when I was setting them up?
MS: You said it took about two weeks to Central . . .
DG: Central on College. Right.
MS: And during those two weeks were you pretty much there most of the time?
DG: Well, the first one I set up I was there most of the time. then, the second time I set it up more people knew what to do and Central sort of became a boarding house for most of the people who were doing a good deal of the work and weren’t living at home anymore. Jack Weinberg was living there, Mario was living there—’course it was his house—I was living there, quiet a few other people were living there. We ate there, many of the leaflets were written there, some of the work was done there, planning sessions . . .
MS: What I would like to do is gimme some of the stuff that I . . for example were you there when any particular crucial liaison came in from faculty; that kind of thing.
DG: Usually, what happened . . .
MS: Were you doing any liaison in that time?
DG: The . . . the responsibility of Central . . .
MS: . . . Steering Committee and that kind of thing.
DG: . . . was to, A, know where the people were, and therefore assemble them, call them together, and find out where they were if some message came in we would get the person for whom the message was intended and hang him onto it.
MS: What about Work Central. When did that . . .
DG: All the other multitude of Centrals were established at later dates. Gradually as the needs of the Central expanded Central broke off, but most of them were however . . .
MS: Were all the Centrals part of a master plan or they just sort of grow?
DG: They just grew. At one time we had ‘em pretty well hooked up, but they were always very awkward. Very, very awkward. The only Central which really ran well was the Legal Central. And that one I also set up after the arrests had occurred. And it’s the only one under David Stein. I put in charge David Stein after it’d been running for about a week, and it’s the only one which I feel ran as well as it could of, with very few hang-ups, very few personality difficulties and all that. Marilyn Noble was a . . . was a big problem and got bigger as the FSM went on and finally she was just . . . she was asked to leave and left and came back and was almost thrown out because her . . . oppressive presence made it very difficult for people to work.
MS: Yeah. I was always curious about one thing: there are many people who don’t like Rosemary [Feitis]. . .
DG: She came in . . .
MS: . . . and yet you get along with Rosemary tremendously. But you couldn’t get along with Marilyn, and I thought that was kind of interesting.
DG: Marilyn Noble is an entirely different kind of person. She was paranoid to a degree which was disturbing; she was very, very . . . a very, very odd chick. She was very hung up and she transferred all her hang-ups to everybody else. She threw passionate rages and broke down about once a day and drove everybody nuts! Was very motherish and commanding and ran the show. And if she couldn’t run the show it really bothered her. And of course, she couldn’t run the show; she was utterly incapable of running the show. And when her duties began to get cut down more and more and putting other people into it more and more she began to crack up.
No, the Centrals. There was Work Central, which never did work, it was a farce from almost the very beginning. The people who were in charge of it didn’t ever carry out their duties to any desired degree. It was a bunch of girls living in an apartment house, I’m not sure of which one. It may have been this one.
PI: Carol Baum, wasn't it?
DG: Carol Baum. I'm not sure. I don't know. Anyway, it was a bunch of girls living in an apartment house, then it was transferred from there when they were utterly useless, not even being home most of the time; transferred from there to another location and eventually wound up at Central again. The big Central at 2536, which actually carried out most of the work. John Sutake did a good deal of the work at Central, but unfortunately he has an anarchistic personality which means he'll work fine if you give him a specific task, just stick him in a little room, and tell him to go to it, but he's a not a good person for working with people. And, most of the people who worked at the Central were of a bureaucratic temperament and, while easy to control while you were in their presence, you had to keep riding herd on 'em and this, of course, didn't do them any good at all. Central after a month of two months boiled down to a pretty steady crew of people who both lived there and worked there day and night, and did an admirable job, considering the anarchy that persisted there. Of course, they're all a bunch of anarchists.
MS: OK. Did you do any liaison for the Steering Committee . . .

            DG: Oh, of course.
            MS: I'm thinking of up to October 15th, when the October 15th agreement was signed. I believe you were not . . .
            DG: Through Central? Was any liaison work done through Central up to about October 15th? Not much.
            MS: For, yeah, for the Steering Committee.
            DG: Most of it was done through individuals.
            MS: The Steering Committee . . .
            DG: Because the faculty either wasn’t aware of or didn’t use . . . and actually the Steering Committee didn’t use Central as much as they could of at the beginning, until they began to catch on to its convenience. Of having a central communications bureau.
            Then we had a Press Central, which sprang up relatively soon after the big Central, which was located at Tom Irwin’s house, in Tom Irwin’s basement. Tom Irwin ran than particular . . . the press liaison with the help of a couple of other people, but mostly single-handedly throughout the entirety of the FSM. Relatively thankless task because no one know or cared what he was doing, and he was always being neglected. People wouldn’t tell him what was going on, he would have to more or less rely on leaflets and bits and pieces of information. He was always screaming for more information. His job was mostly all responsibility and very little thanks or praise. He was never in the public eye, he missed almost everything by being in his basement all the time. But without him we would have had an even more violently distorted view coming from the press I’m sure, because the press did report our releases, and whenever we were gonna do something we’d prime the press for it.
            Then there was Printing Central, which was run almost directly by me. In the early part Jack Weinberg was doing the leaflets, then he trained me how to do it, and I took over, usually alone, but I would draft people to help me. I don’t remember that there was any person who was ever reliable enough for me to put in charge of that, because it called for being awakened at every conceivable hour of the day and night and working solid until the job was done. Then taking the leaflets that were printed to the campus and making sure they were distributed. Thus I took care of the distribution of about one-half million leaflets. And printed them. With, of course, help. But I was in charge of that operation.
            MS: Well, let's see. What were you doing during the CCPA you were more or less organizing it all during that time.
            DG: Another thing that I was in charge of was rallies. I was in charge of monitors . . . I organized all the monitors, with help of course from other people, mainly . . . one of my mainstays as I remember was a fellow named George. One of my mainstays in leaflet handing out was a fellow named Peter Israel, who helped me almost every morning. I believe that I could count on him to show up . . . in the rain he would help me and the like. A few people would help me whenever a big job came along, mimeographing. There was one fellow whose name I can’t remember right now who could usually be counted on to help me with a 72-hour mimeographing job. We Want a University was a 72-hour job, and he helped me put it out. When Marvin Garson got back he was working to a good extent, on the printing . . .
            MS: I helped make that possible.
            DG: What?
            MS: . . . make it possible for you to be able to do that.
            DG: Hmm.
            MS: I sort of encouraged them not to put it out real quick . . . they wanted to do it out real quick, but . . .
            DG: It was a bad job. It was a bad job, bad writing, and it wasn’t worth doing, but we did it. It was a mistake.
            MS: Everybody wants copies of it now.
            DG: Yeah, everybody wants copies that we printed.
            MS: All across the country.
            DG: Fifteen thousand copies. We printed fifteen thousand copies and I don’t know where they went.
            MS: They’ve gone . . . people took them, because everybody said, “What’s . . . what’s this about?”  You know, on all the other campuses they wrote and said “What is it? Give us any kind of information on the Free University.”
            PI: Yeah.
            MS: So that was always . . .
            DG: How many copies do you have?
            MS: Oh, I have about three, you know the standard . . .
            DG: Jesus Christ.
            PI: I have three too.
            Tom Petris: Brian somehow got one in San Diego.
            DG: Oh, really?
            PI: (laughs)
            DG: Amazing.
            PI: I sent them out to all these friends of mine.
            MS: Well, lets get the . . .
            DG: For rallies for example I’d have a pretty consistent crew of people who I’d assemble about me at about eleven thirty every day . . . every morning, and we would go and get the equipment and set it up. One of the main duties of this group of people was to guard the equipment, because we were constantly expecting that it . . . the possibility . . . constantly prepared for the possibility of police rushing the podium and taking away the microphones, or University people doing something like that. I worked with a couple of people getting equipment—Bob Mundy was usually in charge of the equipment, making sure that it got back to where it was supposed to go, and making sure where it was all the time—but, he fucked up a couple of times, which cost some money. During the sit-in we lost a fantastic amount of equipment. We lost five hundred dollars worth of equipment, some of which we recovered, and some of which we have not recovered. We had to pay that all off. Also monitor captain, I guess I took care of about a hundred, hundred and fifty different monitors. And the rallies were very well monitored, very well controlled. we’d have, you know like at the big rally where we had something like twelve thousand people, we had a beautiful straight aisle running right down the middle. Bravo. The monitors were more or less little policemen, running around and making sure that people were sitting down, making sure that there were clear aisles, they also were very useful in case of any kind of disturbance, because they were pretty well trained, and they followed orders very well. There was a short chain of command which went from me in most cases to the monitors or from the Steering Committee and then to me and to the monitors. And, so good control was maintained during the sit-in, for example, the control was magnificent. We really did a good job. The monitors. I mean, it was rare that we even had to tell people what to do, because they knew their duties so well. And, of course, many people helped out who didn’t know, who hadn’t been monitors.
            Another thing was the . . . to cover printing, leaflet distribution. Most of the leaflets were written between the hours of twelve and four in the morning. Almost all the leaflets were written and usually I would be either aroused or awake. I wrote no leaflets to my remembrance. I participated in writing, and criticized the English of some. . . Mario’s a bad writer. Jack wrote most of the leaflets, with help of some other people.
            MS: Didn't Michael Rossman write . . .
            DG: Michael wrote quite a few leaflets, too. Michael Rossman.  . .
            MS: Why don't we get to the . . . did you go to any of the CCPA meetings?
            DG: No. What exactly is CCPA, I don’t . . .
            MS: Campus Committee on Political Activity.
            DG: What . . . what was that doing. What was the . . .
            MS: That was Mario, you know, Mario and all . . .
            DG: Yeah. Right. I went to the . . . I meant to come to some of those meetings, I never was on the board. Yeah, I went to some of those meetings.
            PI: The hearings . . .
            MS: Were you there at the time Meyers provoked Mario?
            DG: I'm sorry?
            MS: Were you at the meeting where Meyers provoked Mario?
            DG: To where he stood up and shouted? Yes.
            MS: Do you remember that very well?
            DG: Yeah. Well it seemed to me to be a . . .
            MS: So upset?
            DG: No, it wasn't that he was so upset, it was that he was making a good political move. He was . . . I don't think he was too upset.
            MS: I didn’t . . . I wasn’t there but I heard it referred to as “blowing his cool.”
            DG: He did. But he blew his cool in a fashion calculated to shake the committee up. He didn’t blow his cool for real, I don’t think. He didn’t blow his cool for real. The committee had been dawdling and delaying and fucking around for a couple three four weeks, and it was a big waste of time.
            MS: I want to talk to you, Tom.
            DG: I want to talk to you. Why don’t we get you on. Why don’t I quit right now. Put Petris on.
            MS: I don't know I want him on this tape. I want to talk to him about something else.
            DG: OK. . . . and dawdling around and Mario had . . . I think was calculating to provoke them to do something; either break off negotiations or actually do something. We were trying at that time to get them to break off negotiations, and this blowing of his cool was an action calculated to . . . not to particularly to win sympathy, but one to frighten the committee. Have them either break off negotiations or do something that they promised to. They were just fucking around.
            MS: Why don't we go into the setting up of the tables, then. The . . .
            DG: Well, setting up of the tables, I mean, whaddaya mean. The first time we set up tables . . .?
            MS: This was when the . . . the . . .
            DG: The big faction fight?
            MS: Yes.
            DG: OK, well that . . . I'll tell you how I saw it myself with my own eyes, from my own angle. I won't tell you what . . .
            MS: Yeah, I want to know how you saw it when experienced it.
            DG: What!?
            PI: Crittenden was suddenly stricken ill and court didn’t reconvene until three-thirty this afternoon.
            MS: Must be gall bladder, I can tell you that.
            DG: Maybe he'll die. Gall bladder, yeah. It's an affliction of bureaucrats.
            Anyway, about eleven thirty, twelve o'clock . . . and I don't remember the time, it was sometime in February, or January, I don’t remember. No, no, no, no, I’m all wrong. Sometime in November. I am very bad on dates. I can’t remember the date.
            MS: I know the date, I don't remember the day. Was it the day before the tables were set up?
            DG: Yeah. The night before the tables were to be set up . . .
            MS: Before the first tables were to be set up?
            DG: Before the tables were to be set up after the interim. After the breaking off of negotiations. The Steering Committee was in favor of setting up the tables. There’d been no consultation with the Executive Committee, and the Steering Committee had gotten a little far away from the Executive Committee. And was acting much more independently than perhaps it should have. A small faction of dissidents . . .
            MS: A vocal minority.
            DG: Dissidents. Negotiated, including Jo Freeman and Brian Turner, and I believe Art Goldberg and Jackie Goldberg, went to negotiate with the administration independently of, and purporting to represent the FSM.
            MS: Now when did you first find this out? This is . . .
            DG: Much later. It was the next day.
            MS: Can you give me the account as . . . chronologically as much as possible.
            DG: OK. Fine.
            MS: When the information came to you, how it came to you.
            DG: Alright, fine. About eleven thirty, twelve o’clock, I received a call from either Jack Weinberg or Mario, and I don’t remember who—I believe that the first part of the call was from Jack and the second part of the call was from Mario—for me that there’d been a . . . somewhat of a political play on the part of a dissident minority, they didn’t know what was happening, and they considered it very important to prevent a coup.
            MS: Where were you located?
            DG: I was in Central. At 2536.
            MS: And where were they calling from?
            DG: They were at Ron Anastasi’s. They told me to get all important files and all important materials and information and get out of the house with them as fast as possible and take them over to Anastasi’s house. And so I said to people around me, including Marilyn Noble who’s car I borrowed, ‘I’m going to take the files up to the Steering Committee for them to take a look at them, and bring ‘em right back. So get me all important files. And, they did, having no reason to mistrust me, and I took all the important files and got in Marilyn’s car and split. Delivered them to the Steering Committee, found out what happened; what happened was that Brian Turner, et al, had called an Executive Committee meeting for eight o’clock the next morning. And they said, . . .
            MS: Now he had, they had . . .
            PI: Wait, I can tell it!
            MS: Now wait a minute. He's telling it. I wanna know, were there any calls to Central before you were to take the files over to . . . I mean, were there any calls with respect to this particular calling of the meeting?
            DG: There may have been, but I certainly didn’t know about it.
            MS: I see, OK. Go on.
            DG: Although I don't think there was. Or, if there were . . . Oh, I know. Marilyn Noble had been ordered by Brian Turner to call an Executive Committee Meeting by calling the list. Of Executive Committee members.
            MS: What I want to know is did he call before you took the files over.
            DG: He didn't call me.
            MS: Did Brian call her before.
            DG: Right. Before I took the files. But they assumed it was legitimate. I didn’t know that, no. The Steering Committee found out about it only indirectly, and by accident, to my knowledge. Alright, so I took the files and went over there and was informed that these people had twelve names, which was the required amount to call a meeting; that they had twenty-seven names, only twelve of which were required to call a meeting, and wanted to call a meeting. The Steering Committee protested that you couldn’t call a meeting without informing the Steering Committee at least twelve hours in advance. Because it would throw things out of whack. It was a very serious squabble. They replied that they had the sufficient names, and the Steering Committee demanded that they produce these names. Whereupon they were reduced to confusion; they couldn’t produce the names. They didn’t have ‘em. Then they produced a list of twelve names, about one hour later. Meanwhile, I’d gone back to Central, and I sat on the phones—we had two phones at that time—physically almost, and said that I would be the only person answering or receiving or giving out calls. If anyone tried to do anything I’d pull the phones out of the wall. And this really shook ‘em up. Because they really didn’t know what was coming off. Then they discovered that I’d . . .
            MS: Who was shook up . . .
            DG: . . . everybody in the place . . .
            MS: . . . in Central.
            DG: . . . and immediately alienated everyone from me, and they feared and mistrusted me for the remainder of the FSM. I mean, they hated my guts for a couple of . . .
            MS: How many people were there?
            DG: About twelve.
            MS: Twelve!
            DG: About twelve people were there at Central. About ten.
            MS: Who was there besides Marilyn.
            DG: Marilyn Noble, John Sutake, Bob Mundy, some girls whose names I don’t remember I think Barbara Goldberg, I’m not sure. But the whole staff, that was working there at that time, became violently alienated me . . . from me at that time and while my authority over them wasn’t diminished, their terror of me was greatly increased.
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: Fascist!
            DG: And, they were so frightened of me that they were convinced about a week or two weeks later and all during the remainder of the FSM that at any time I would come barging in with an axe and rip the place apart and throw them all out. They were very frightened of being emasculated, and they had just been emasculated. In effect, their job had been taken away from them; I had taken away their files, which was the only thing that legitimized their existence, and I’d taken away their telephones. So they were stuck, and they fumed and fussed and threw things at me.
            MS: OK. So you sat on the phone.
            DG: Right. And . . .
            MS: While they fumed.
            DG: Then Art Goldberg, Sandor Fuchs came in, and started babbling away.
            MS: Central?
            DG: Central. Sandor was . . .
            MS: About what time?
            DG: About one o'cock. Sandor was in tears, practically; convinced that there was going to be bloody riot, that the whole student movement would be crushed, and that death would ensue for everybody. And he . . . he, you know, absolutely hysterical. Art Goldberg was almost as bad. This is when I began to lose my respect for Goldberg and Fuchs in violent decline. I've begun to respect them less and less because of the statements Goldberg would make and the way that Fuchs responded to them.
            Then, I found out . . . at that time I knew more about this meeting that had been called . . . then they asked . . . sort of asking around about the meeting, and I said, do what you want, and I let them use one of the phones as I remember to communicate with . . .
            MS: What were they asking about?
            DG: About the meeting that they were planning for the next morning. And I said that as far as I knew the Steering Committee was sitting on that meeting, and they couldn’t call it. And, I agreed with the Steering Committee. Then . . .
            MS: Did you say that they started asking to use the phone?
            DG: Yeah. Then I let them use the phone. One phone.
            MS: Do you know who they called?
            DG: Yes. They called their own people. They called Brian Turner and Jackie Goldberg and what’s-her-name, the girl . . .
            PI: Jo Freeman?
            DG: Jo Freeman. And got their meeting lined up again, and then when they were required to produce their names produced twelve names, which was the required number, four of which were illegitimate. Two people . . . one person had not been contacted and knew nothing about it, another person violently denied that he had ever said anything of the sort . . . that he wished to be on that list of twelve, another person wasn’t on the Executive Committee, and I don’t remember what was with the fourth person, but he was utterly illegitimate. So, the Steering Committee . . .
            MS: Do you remember Brian calling you to be on that list?
            DG: I don’t remember him calling me but I remember him saying I was on the list. I remember something abut Art Goldberg saying, “Do you object to a meeting?” and I said, “no, I don’t object to a meeting, but it has to be etcetera.” But he took that out of context and put me on the list, so I was one of the persons who violently objected that I’d ever belonged on the list.    MS: So then, Brian hadn’t asked you directly. Was he talking to . . . was Brian talking to Art on the phone and then said ヤWhat about David,ユ and then . . .
            DG: Art Goldberg asked me independently, ‘Do you object to a meeting,’ and I said . . .
            MS: While he was on the phone?
            DG: No. Not to my remembrance. I said, ‘No, I don’t object to a . . . you know, he put in tone of, ‘Do you object to democracy?’ that kind of . . . kind of thing. ‘Are you against motherhood?’ That kind of thing, and you say, ‘Of course I’m for a meeting. Meetings are great. But they should be through proper channels, and this particular case it’s very dangerous to have a meeting of one faction running around going to the University and threatening to explode the whole FSM. So, at finally . . . at long last it was all ironed out, and a meeting was called for the next day at eight o’clock.
            MS: So, when did Art . . . did Art leave then? Did he have anything more to say after he’d made the calls?
            DG: After . . .
            MS: What was the reply from Turner . . .
            DG: After we've got into a violent fight about whether I've agreed to be on this list or not, to my remembrance, I left, and went to the Steering Committee. This was after the meeting had been called, for the next day. Eight o'cock the next morning. I went up to the Steering Committee.
            Eight o'cock the next morning we all convened at a house on . . .
            PI: Ridge.
            DG: Ridge, I don't remember the guy's name . . .
            MS: Barry Jablon?
            DG: Yeah. Barry Jablon. And . . . Barry Jablon. The meeting was packed with political organizations that had been defunct for years, and representatives that had been dug up from nowhere. People who had never appeared at the FSM, hiking club people, really insane things.
            MS: For now I want to go back to the Steering Committee meeting. Do you remember what happened at the Steering Committee when you went back? What was it like?
            DG: There was fantastic confusion.
            MS: I'm trying to think of what happened. Do you remember who was there?
            DG: Most of the Steering Committee.
            MS: Anybody besides the Steering Committee? Was Stephanie Coontz there?
            PI: Stephanie and I were there. I don’t think we were there when David was.
            MS: Was Art there?
            DG: No. Although he came in later.
            PI: Well, then you must have been there! Because Stephanie and I walked in when Art . . .
            DG: No, I remember that Stephanie was there. I don’t remember you, but I remember that Stephanie was there.
            PI: Well, I was there.
            DG: Alright. I don't remember very specifically.
            MS: Why don't we go . . . did he tell you . . .
            PI: Well let . . . Stephanie got word . . . Brian Turner talked with Stephanie . . .
            MS: Did he go over to her place?
            PI: Yeah, he went over to her place and he came over and he said, ‘I want to talk with you about this it’s gotta be top secret,’ you know, this and this and this, and so he told her that they were negotiating . . . that he and a small group of people were negotiating on their own with the administration and he said he didn’t quite know what was coming off, they were trying to set up a meeting or something. And so then he left Stephanie’s and said he would come back again at twelve. And she . . you know he wanted to see if she was in on it, and so she lied and said she was, and she agreed and said she’d go along, and she was completely panicked and she didn’t want to be on her own so she called me up and said, ‘I’ve got to talk with you,’ so we went out and we talked and she told me what had happened and she said that . . . she wanted to put me, you know, to have me along with her as another witness and we were going to go to their meeting at twelve o’clock. So, around twelve o’clock Brian called her up and told her where to go and we both went over to this house, I don’t know whose it was, but Mike Abramovitz was there, and Jo Freeman, and Brian Turner and a couple of other people whose names I don’t remember. And, Jo was on the phone trying to get names to call a meeting, and . . .
            MS: Do you remember it Walt Herbert was there?
            DG: I think Walt Herbert was at the . . . Anastasi’s.
            MS: At twelve o'clock?
            DG: I'm not positive, but I seem to remember that he was.
            PI: I don't . . . I don't remember him being there. Anyway, they were having . . . they were talking about what they were going to do, and they were going to . . . they had this plan Brian Turner didn’t agree with it, but they were going to . . . in the middle of the rally they were going to suddenly get up and say, “We don’t agree with this at all and we . . . don’t approve of setting up the tables and we’re not going to support this at all,” and they were going to walk away and try to carry the rest of the crowd with them. And then they got into this huge argument over whether or not that was the right tactic because Brian Turner didn’t agree with that. And he said, “Well, we should have a meeting.” Oh, maybe Jo Freeman wasn't calling for that meeting. They were just trying to get support I guess at the time and then . . .
            DG: But they were really hamstrung by the fact that it had to be awfully secret.
            PI: Yeah . . . it had to be really secret.
            MS: (unintelligible)
            PI: . . . there was a call from Mario and he wanted to speak to Brian, and evidently what had happened was Brian had also called up Mike Tigar and told him about it, and asked him if he would come in and . . . and also get up and say something about how he disagreed with what was going on. And so Mike Tigar of course had called up Steering Committee and let them know what was happening, and Mario . . .
            DG: That must have been about midnight.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: ‘Cause that's when they called me. (spills coffee?) Shit.
            PI: And so. So anyhow, Stephanie talked with Mario after Brian had, and told him what was going on. And so we . . . we asked who else was in on it.
            MS: You talked on the phone right there in front of Brian?
            PI: Yeah, well she said she had to talk with him about something, but Brian didn’t realize you see . . . not . . . none of them . . . oh, Lewis Lester was with us too, because he was the most . . . we wanted a guy there, I don’t know why.
            DG: Ah, these tricky Stalinists.
            MS: Well, was Art there?
            PI: No. He wasn't.
            DG: No.
            PI: And the point was we kept asking, ‘Where’s Art? Where’s Art and Sandor?’ And they said, ‘Well, they’ve been negotiating,’ They had said . . . they said that they were going to talk with Clark Kerr . . . they were going to get an answer from Kerr by ten o’clock the next morning, and so they wanted to have a meeting before then at eight o’clock in the morning to . . . you know, to support what they were doing so they could give Kerr an answer. You know, on . . . on the negotiations.
            DG: So, at eight o'cock the next morning the meeting was convened. It began about a quarter of eight . . .
            MS: Now, wait a minute. I want to get . . .
            DG: . . . (unintelligible)
            PI: Well, did you want to know something about the Steering Committee meeting with Art and Sandor?
            MS: Yeah, I wanna . . .
            DG: Oh. Go ahead.
            PI: Oh, so, anyway, so when we went over to Steering Committee . . .
            MS: They just love to talk to me.
            PI: (laughs) So when we went over to Steering Committee . . .
            MS: Wait a minute. Wait a minute . . .
            PI: So they said Art and Sandor weren’t there.
            MS: So when did you . . . what time did you leave this meeting, and what was the progress of the meeting.
            PI: About . . . about one o’clock. It wasn’t really a meeting! It was just a bunch of people standing around there talking, and they were trying to figure out what they were going to say to the press later on. Whether they were going to say “Yes we are part of the FSM,” or even to say “Well, we’re a part of FSM but no longer a part,” you know, what they were going . . . exactly what they were going to say . . . Brian Turner was very confused, he didn’t know what was coming off. . . . He just . . .
            MS: Well, did you get the feeling that it was Brian Turner or that it was really Jo Freeman.
            DG: Somebody's here.
            PI: Oh, it was Jo Freeman.
            DG: Get the door, Sweet. Look, lets . . .
            MS: I . . . I wanna . . . I'm really not . . . (taping ends)
(taping resumes)
            PI: So we, we left their thing on the pretext that I had to go home and Stephanie was going to drive me and she left Lewis there to report on what was going on while we were, you know, otherwise . . . whatchamaycallit. Then we went over to the Steering Committee meeting at Ron Anastasi’s I guess it was, I don’t know whose place it was at. And we walked in and just as we walked in, almost, Art and Sandor walked in. This was about one, one thirty, and . . . so we stepped out of the room in a hurry. And we closed the door, and we thought that Art had seen us, but we weren’t sure, so we closed the door, and we were listening to what he was saying, and he . . . we got furious, because he was lying through his teeth, he said he had nothing to do with the thing, all he wanted to do was make sure that their . . . that a meeting would be called because of democracy, you know, that every side should be heard and that the issue had not been fully discussed in the other Ex Comm meetings; it had been rushed through. And he was going on and on like this, and at the other meeting everybody was waiting for Art and Sandor to come back, because “Art and Sandor are leaders, they’re the ones who know everything about what’s going on and we’re not really that sure.” So then we came . . . we talked with Bettina and she said, ‘Well, come on in,’ and . . . and . . . confront them. And so, we came on in and . . . and Art and Sandor evidently didn’t realize . . . I guess they didn't realize at first what role Stephanie and I had played. And then . . . she started contradicting them, speaking up in Steering Committee meeting and contradicting them, and . . . they left in a big huff . . . they were . . . they kept saying they were innocent, that they hadn't promoted this at all and they . . . that Brian Turner had come up to them and said that he was negotiating on his own and would they help and arrange a meeting . . .
            MS: Well, then . . . Art never admitted that he was lying or never . . .
            PI: He wouldn't admit it. No. But everybody on Steering Committee felt that he was (laughs). And then he and Sandor left and we . . . we stayed and discussed what we should do. And we knew they were going to try and pack it the . . . the next morning.
            MS: Well did Art . . . did Art go away saying “Well there’s going to be a meeting anyway if you want or not,” or . . .
            PI: No. Well, you see the thing was that we . . .
            MS: Did he sort of sheepishly . . . half-sheepishly and half-mad walk out . . .
            PI: Yeah, well he sort of . . . he was pretty sheepish I suppose in a way. He was . . . it was very weird, he just didn’t . . . he wouldn’t admit that he was wrong, that he had . . . he had been lying about his negotiations with Kerr. And he just said, “Well, we’ll see at the meeting tomorrow, what happens.” And, I think he had agreed to abide by the decision at the meeting.
            MS: Well, now do you feel that Art really was . . . was still in, or is there any reason to . . . I mean, have you heard anything since to . . . to contradict that, or . . . confirm it, I mean, or do you still think that Art was probably the leader. And Sandor.
            PI: Oh, I don't know, I think Jo Freeman had an awful lot to do with it, also. But we never really fully discussed it afterwards, I mean, everybody tried to forget about the split, and tried to heal it up, although it's very hard because there were very bitter feelings on my part, anyway. That they would even think of trying to negotiate on their own.
            MS: Were you at the SLATE meeting when they passed the resolution?
            PI: Yes! I was . . . I came in at the very end.
            MS: (unintelligible)
            PI: . . . two of my roommates were there and they were furious; they tried to speak and Sandor wouldn’t call on them, after they . . . they let Linda [Lustig] speak for a minute, and after they realized that she was against what they were trying to do, they wouldn’t call on her again. And Linda told me that Mario had tried to speak, and had been over ruled. They said he couldn’t speak because he wasn’t a SLATE member or something. That people weren’t listening to the points at all, that they had so much confidence in both Art Goldberg and Sandor Fuchs that they wouldn’t listen to other members of Ex Comm or anything about what had really happened. And of what the resolution really meant. So . . . but I know we all came away from that meeting with a feeling of . . . futility.
            MS: Do you remember some of the people who were at the Steering Committee?
            PI: Bob Kauffman, I believe Benson Brown was there, I’m not sure, and Bettina, Mario, Suzanne, Jack . . . I’m not too sure.
            MS: Think primarily of non-Steering members.
            PI: Non-Steering Committee? I don’t remember David at all. (laughs) I really can't remember. It was very little impact that I remember . . .
            MS: Well . . . (tape ends)
(tape resumes)
            MS: Today is the twenty-third . . .
            DG: Of July . . . and . . . we were at the . . . big meeting.
            MS: Right.
            DG: On the morning when we were going to set tables up again.
            MS: Right.
            DG: Mmm-K. The meeting convened at about eight o’clock with the parties divided geographically in the room. With very few people on the other person’s side, in the main forces. It became apparent at that time that Jo Freeman was the inspiring influence, and was actually running the whole show. Brian Turner looked guilty and confused, and really . . . uh, yeah . . .
            MS: There's something on the mike that picks up on the microphone.
            DG: What?
            MS: Your feet.
            DG: Oh. I'm shuffling my feet. (shuffling sounds) Put 'em up here?
            MS: It doesn't make any difference; if it's on the bed it will pick up.
            DG: Move my feet?
            MS: Move your feet, God damn it.
            DG: . . . and the other parties were obviously following her lead. She made a couple of finky speeches attempting to defend her position. And, also the room was filled with paper organizations and non-functioning, defunct organizations—organizations we’d never heard of, and the . . . the split was pretty even. You see, the Executive Committee had never really provided for who should be a member and who should not be a member. Merely, any organization has the right to send two representatives. Any legitimate student organization. So, since the rules weren’t clear, they had us by the balls. Then the votes came up. There was a considerable amount of debate, and all of it was being pressed by time. We wanted to get the tables set up and wanted to prepare for the rally. We argued and debated and then came to one of the votes, and I don’t remember what the votes were, but there were two significant votes. The first vote, the vote was seventeen to eighteen, the second vote twenty to twenty-one. Unless I’m mistaken. At any rates . . . at any rate, the votes were very, very close.
            MS: What were the two issues?
            DG: Well, the main issue was whether we were gonna set up tables or not . . .
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: . . . and what this meant. And we were afraid to censure . . . afraid to attempt to censure this portion of the Executive Committee right then and there, because they had too much of a . . . too much power. And we recognized, and they recognized, that it wasn’t legitimate power they had, but they still had enough power to gum up the works, so we didn’t . . . and we never did get around to it.
            MS: Well, what do you mean by legitimate power?
            DG: That the paper organizations clearly had no business in that meeting.
            MS: Well, what was the two votes? There was one on the tables, what was the other one?
            DG: I'm not sure. But I . . . but perhaps it was this, that whether the opposing side should have a voice in the rally.
            MS: Wasn't there about . . . was there something about AC, the UCLC or something.
            DG: Oh, that's right. Whether one of the groups could vote. That's why the vote was smaller on the first vote than on the second vote. And I think we agreed that it could vote.
            MS: And, do you remember Rosenthal being there.
            DG: Mmm-hmm! Dan Rosenthal made a very nasty scene, and a big display of himself, and he made threats about smearing the FSM publicly, and in his usual manner almost got into a fist-fight with somebody. I don’t remember who. He was very obnoxious.
            MS: Do you remember anything about accusing him . . . of his . . . that his organization didn’t belong anymore, that they’d quit?
            DG: That was essentially the issue.
            MS: But you don't remember what happened.
            DG: I remember that there was a big argument about it, and Rosenthal was very vociferous, pugnacious and nasty; and was threatening to smear people, and the like. Come out and make public statements that the FSM had done thus-and-such.
            MS: Going back to the Steering Committee, do you remember anything more about the Steering Committee? Anything pop up?
            DG: I just remember there was a lot of confusion. And a lot of back-biting and back-stabbing and arguing.
            MS: Like when Art came in and all that stuff.
            DG: I remember about Art coming in to the Central but I don’t remember exactly what went on when he came up to the Steering Committee meeting.
            MS: Were you . . . when you began to tell it you said that I . . . you said I’m going to tell it to you the way I saw it, not the way something-or-other. This was . . .
            DG: Mmm-hmm.
            MS: What was the other way you could have told me? You talking about.
            DG: What I heard.
            MS: Huh.
            DG: Gee, I don't remember what I we said exactly.
            MS: Well, then is there any other additional information that would be classified as rumor or second or third hand and that . . .
            DG: Most of the second-hand information was received from the people who’d seen what went on. Second-hand information is how . . . what went on between this dissenting party and the administration of the University. I was not there and neither was anybody else, if you want to know what they did. We found this out from Brian Turner, mostly. They’d gone to the administration and wanted to speak with Clark Kerr and had gotten into negotiations with him, and they made this sort of agreement that Clark Kerr would make certain concessions and they kill the FSM. They divided the FSM and made it fall apart. And they agreed to this, and they set another meeting for later. They came back to the later meeting and Clark Kerr . . . Clark Kerr disclaimed any knowledge of any agreement which would make any concessions to the FSM.
            MS: They're supposed to have met twice.
            DG: They did meet twice. The first time they made the agreement with Clark Kerr . . . contingent upon the second meeting . . . we will divide and kill the FSM if you agree to give the FSM certain concessions. And Clark Kerr said, ‘OK, good deal.’ They . . . they . . . began to implement their half of the deal, then they went back and saw Kerr again. And Kerr . . . (coughs) ‘scuse me . . . (coughs) . . . acted as if he didn’t know what was coming off. He says, “Really? Concession? Um, what are you talking about? I thought you said you were going to destroy the FSM.” And they became very wary at this point. You know, they . . . they’re not particularly brilliant people, any of ‘em.
            MS: Well, when was the second meeting, when did that take place. Was that after the tables had gone up?
            DG: H'm-mm. Before. But they still felt they were in the right, and they felt that the FSM was doing more harm than good. So they agreed to kill it. Hoping that they could get out of Kerr by this previous agreement. Holding to his promise, which was complete insanity. But none of them being particularly brilliant political strategists, they didn't grasp that. Then we found out about this and naturally we were outraged, because their stupidity could have killed everything. We very . . . we were very unhappy. Then the tables went up—the meeting broke up about . . . couldn’t have been much later than nine-thirty or ten o’clock . . and the tables went up, and that was the end of the big split. The participating members were virtually ostracized by really being given a very bad time, both independently and collectively by everybody else, and most of them didn’t show their faces too frequently again. Except of course Art Goldberg who hasn’t got much of a sense of shame and Jo Freeman who later came out attempting to spoil things again in the abortive sit-in. You know that there were three sit-ins? The second one in Sproul Hall and the one that didn’t come off and she made speeches against it. Publicly. To people as they were going in, not to go in. This was later. And that really killed her political capital, what little she had left was shot completely then. And also killed the political capital of her organization. And Art Goldberg, who never did appear at Steering Committee meetings—he was a member of the Steering Committee—never appeared, never participated, never did any work, finally ended up by getting voted off by a reconstitution of the Steering Committee which just didn’t include him on it. A big thing was made out of this by the papers, and his following made a big stink and so he was put back on again. And he never showed up at meetings again anyhow. With rare exception. He showed up at a couple of meetings, but not very many. Maybe two. Maybe three. At the outside. But if any notoriety was to be gained by his presence he would come. Any notoriety to him.
            MS: Well, nothing happened between . . . I think Monday . . . that overshadows everything. The much didn’t much . . . nothing much happened until we had the . . . Regent’s rally on the twentieth.
            DG: Well, these are the high spots. I mean, there’s a lot of work in between time and a lot of scrounging around but it wasn’t . . .
            MS: Yeah I'm talking about . . . I know.
            DG: . . . no big public show.
            MS: Well, what about let's see . . . then there was before the sit-in and those you . . . you went in on that.
            DG: Yeah. I slept through it.
            DG and MS: (unintelligible)
            DG: I went in and went to sleep, and was awakened at five o’clock and went out.
            MS: What did you do over the weekend that . . . the Thanksgiving weekend?
            DG: Thanksgiving weekend was a very depressing time; we were considering disbanding the FSM. This was just prior to the information coming out about the four students who were expelled.
            MS: Who’s “we”?
            DG: Jack Weinberg and I felt pretty much the same. I don’t know about Mario; I didn’t talk to him too much about it.      
            MS: Any others? Can you think of any others who were. . . ?
            DG: A lot of other people. I mean, that’s about all I can say. we were talking about disbanding the FSM, given that we couldn’t accomplish more than had . . . we’d reached all we could . . .
            MS: Mmm-hmm.
            DG: . . . and gotten all we could get. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted. There wasn’t any point in carrying on because we had no issues to bounce off of. And, so we were considering disbanding it and right after that those four letters came out. And we would have officially disbanded the FSM, I’m sure, I mean I’m almost positive of it, in that next week.
            MS: Then the arrests . . . let’s come up to the sit-in. What kind of work did you do in preparation for the sit-in?
            DG: Well, I . . . was in charge of the sit-in. I was in charge of setting the sit-in up. The mechanical aspects of the sit-in, and making sure that everything came off. I gathered equipment, organized monitors and gave monitors briefing meetings, set things up for non-violent resistance . . . had some dry-run practice sessions of doing certain things within the limited amount of time. Wrecked all the locks on the front door and the basement with toothpicks and matchsticks. I understand that Barbara Garson did the same thing independently.
            MS: You did what?
            DG: Stuffed toothpicks and matchsticks into the locks so that they couldn’t be locked . . . so the doors couldn’t be locked.
            MS: Which doors were these?
            DG: The main doors of Sproul Hall, and also the basement doors. So that . . . all the doors. With the help of some other people.
            MS: Did it work?
            DG: Oh, yes! It definitely did. The object of it was when they would . . . they would want to lock at seven o’clock, and they probably wouldn’t think of locking the doors before that, and that would give us an extra hour’s grace which we might need at that time. We weren’t sure; we didn’t know whether we’d need it or not. And, it’d take them an hour to fix all the locks. If even just one lock were sufficiently jammed to where they’d have to take it apart it’d give us an hour. And, it did work, but they put policemen by the doors to guard the doors, they just crowded each door with policemen. They had to dismantle the locks; they had to call locksmiths.
            MS: Did you see this, did you know?
            DG: No, but there was testimony in court concerning the dismantling of the locks.
            MS: I see.
            DG: They found . . . there was testimony in court about them being found jammed full of things. We were considering . . . I discussed this with Benson Brown . . . considering filling them with epoxy, and we had that all set up . . . had it all mixed, in a squirter, ready to squirt into the locks, and . . . to do that in the morning, and it would be dry by noon, and by about . . . maybe if they got the bright idea of trying to lock the doors at five o’clock or something like that . . . they would not be able to do it. The doors would be completely . . . the locks would be completely wrecked; they’d have to take them out and replace every single lock in the building. But we decided against that because it . . . it . . . it might look less like kid-stuff than for-real and they might get worked up about it and decide to prosecute people. Also, this was done with the eye in mind that they might try to lock the doors at noon, you see. So, we messed the locks up before noon. But not much before noon, just by about eleven-thirty I think the locks were finally completed.
            Also gathering speaking equipment, getting it all ready to be set up inside from the outside, carry it inside from the outside. Guards—heavy guards around everything—of monitors to prevent any police taking equipment or charging podiums and things like that.
            Getting arm-bands ready; getting food ready; setting up the food sup . . . setting up the supply lines; sort of as it were, you know; figuring out who was gonna do what; setting up the food. Doesn’t sound like much right now, but as I remember it took me 48 hours to do it, and I finished it all right on time.
            MS: What about the walkie-talkies? Did you have anything to do with the . . .
            DG: Yeah, I got them . . .
            MS: . . . communications?
            DG: . . . I got them and got them to the right people but that was about it. I didn’t use the walkie-talkies . . .
            MS: Did you know anything about Command Central; how that was organized or anything?
            DG: Command Central was right across the street and that was . . . at Bob MacClaren’s house.
            MS: No, Command was . . .
            DG: Wasn't that at MacClaren's?
            MS: That was where the Steering Committee was.
            DG: I'm almost . . .
            MS:. . . The Steering Committee headquarters.
            DG: Oh, well Command Central switched again and again and again, you know. We had one Command Central and . . .
            MS: . . . on Durant.
            DG: . . . on Durant, and we switched it; and then we set it up again at MacClaren’s and I believe MacClaren’s . . . and if I’m not grievously mistaken MacClaren's was Command Central all the way through the sit-in and all the way the time . . . through the time we were in jail, and it never was . . .
            MS: Well, when I got out of jail Command Central was on Durant.
            DG: It may have remained there.
            MS: As I understood it they used . . .
            DG: It was very unclear where it was . . .
            MS: . . . the Steering Committee (unintelligible) to command and command and get a message to . . .
            DG: Well, it never . . . I never used it, so I really . . . I mean, I never had to go through it, ‘cause I always know where the Steering Committee was . . .
            MS: Did you know about any preparations in terms of how to liaison for determining whether the police would come, you know, when they would come and so forth?
            DG: Yeah, we had that set up.
            MS: Do you know how it was set up?
            DG: Well, we had professors and persons in the know, who would communicate information to certain persons in the Steering Committee, and we more-or-less knew when the police came for about an hour . . . about an hour in advance. But it was not announced until we knew for sure. It’d been announced on the radio, that the police were coming, and then we felt that it was sufficiently clear information that . . . to authorize preparations for a sit-in. And, that was all set up it advance, too. We had monitors on every floor; divided as to the number of people that was on that floor. The fourth floor was the study hall and sleeping room, and the third floor was a sort of a quasi-study hall—it never really was—second floor was you name it you can do it, and the first floor was . . . was mostly sleeping. Sleeping and also the celebrations that were going on like the Chanukah service; the fun and games.
            MS: What about the basement?
            DG: The basement was cleared out very quickly after we occupied the building. They cleared the basement and locked the doors.
            MS: What about . . . and during the arrests. I mean . . . during . . . during the sit-in what were you doing most of the time. Just checking my notes.
            DG: Most of the time I was running up and down and up and down and up and down, checking on things, relaying information. I remember I ran into Lieutenant Chandler about four o’clock in the afternoon and he was doing . . . I was under the impression that he was trying to lock bathroom doors, and became very angry with him, and read him out, and told him that if he locked the doors, A we would piss on the floor and B we would make life difficult for him, so he . . . I believe at that point he stopped locking the doors, but we were afraid that they would lock the doors to the bathrooms so I believe I told several monitors to do it—and also some people did it on their own—to take the doors off their hinges, and that was done. The locks were either jammed or the doors were taken off their hinges to the bathrooms.
            MS: Well then you're the one that . . . that began . . . that started the news of the locking of the doors.
            DG: Yes, because I've seen Lieutenant Chandler and I was also the one who ordered that the doors be taken off their hinges or jammed.
            PI: I thought that was later in the evening.
            DG: No, it was about four o'cock.
            PI: Oh, ‘cause Stephanie was really furious I remember . . .
            DG: Yeah, well I was . . .
            MS: I think something like that happened around eleven o’clock.
            PI: Yeah, Stephanie was really upset . . .
            DG: Some doors were taken off . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: . . . and I've said to monitors that if they saw people trying to lock the doors those doors should be taken off their hinges and, jam the locks, now.
            PI: Yeah, but Stephanie’d been in with Lieutenant Chandler, and Chandler've said that he was going to go and unlock all the doors, and then Mario had by that time taken the door off the hinges and they . . . and Stephanie was very mad.
            DG: This may have been going on at separate times, but I remember when I was . . . when I was independently talking with Chandler I became very angry at him . . .
            MS: . . . funny (unintelligible) . . .
            DG: I think he wanted . . .
            MS: Did you actually . . .
            DG: I think he wanted to lock the doors . . .
            MS: . . . did you actually . . . you didn’t see him lock any doors though.
            DG: I saw him going up to a door with keys in his hand and I got in front of . . . between him and the door, that was on the third floor at the far end . . .
            MS: Mmhmm.
            DG: . . . and told him that if he locked the door we’d piss in the hall. We’d set up a special . . . sector off a section of the building as a latrine and God damn it we’d piss in it. And if he liked that let him cram that up his ass and smoke it, you know? And then he got very shaken up and took off. I mean he’s a very easy . . . easy . . . easiest guy to intimidate that I know of. You’d just yell at him and he falls apart.
            MS: But you actually . . . but you never did let . . . didn’t let him lock the . . . lock the door.
            DG: No! No doors were locked in my presence by any policemen. And then the doors got taken off the hinges and the locks were jammed. To prevent that possibility. I mean, that would be utterly horrible if that happened.
            MS: You know we pulled off the . . . we pulled things off and kept the pins, and I put the pins back when I heard that the police were coming. I went back and put the pins back.
            DG: Well, as I remember on the fourth floor . . .
            MS: I guess it would have been . . .
            DG: . . . we kept the door open and kept people by it . . .
            MS: Yeah, this was on the third floor, when I did this.
            DG: . . . and never did take the door off its hinges. But I think the lock . . . lock was messed up. Matchsticks and things. We only had one john on the fourth floor and it was used by anybody who felt like it. I don’t think there was a women’s john, I think it was . . . or there wasn’t a men’s john or something, I don’t remember which it was. I don’t remember using it. And I was charging around on the roofs some of the time looking around and finding ways in and out of the building . . .
            MS: Did you find any other ways . . .
            DG: . . . checking things out.
            MS: . . . besides . . .
            DG: . . . that one bathroom window? Oh, there was a rope . . . there was that one bathroom window that went up a staircase . . . you went out the window and up a staircase, and that led . . . took you onto the roof to a spot where you could probably get either into an office or out of the building without being seen by anyone.
            MS: Where did the stairways go, down?
            DG: They went up.
            MS: Which was it . . .
            DG: We set up a rope on the outside.
            MS: What floor was the, uh . . .
            DG: You ended up on the . . . I think you ended up on the third floor. Or the fourth floor.
            MS: When you went out, which floor did you go out on?
            DG: Second floor.
            MS: The bathroom on the second floor. You go outside and up the stairs.
            DG: Right.
            MS: And then you're on the third floor.
            DG: Then you're on the third floor or the fourth floor. And . . . but you're . . . you're on a little verandah thing. Which seems to have been built . . .
            MS: It's a fire escape?
            DG: . . . it seems to have been built for faculty teas, I mean I don’t know. It’s a very odd building. It’s a very odd kind of a thing for a building like that to have. And then you can . . .
            MS: I had heard about there was some way of getting up and down inside the building.
            DG: Right. You could be inside the building and get up on the roof and down from the roof inside the building. We used that as a secret. I don’t think the cops knew about it.
            MS: I’d heard about . . . I mean I've heard about some of the stuff that there's a secret way of getting . . .
            DG: Well, unless I'm grievously mistaken it's a women's john . . .
            MS: . . . of getting to some internal stairs . . .
            DG: . . . unless I’m mistaken it’s a women’s john, and you go into it and you open the window, and you climb out through the window . . . it’s a very arduous process . . . you climb through the window to . . . to a staircase and then you come up the staircase which is on the inside of the building, you go up through the building, come up the staircase and you come out onto this little verandah thing; looking into two offices. And then you climb off . . . over it onto the roof. And, I spent sometime on the roof but not much. And then in the third floor . . . I mean on the fourth floor, you can open a window and thereby get onto the roof. And it was cordoned off by police. That happened a little later they had a policeman out there. And Chandler kept coming up and saying “If you go out that window anymore onto the roof I will close the window,” and I said “Well, then we’ll break the window so fuck you.”
            MS: What . . . did you ever hear about Steve’s plan about putting a rope . . .
            DG: Yeah. It had been discussed in the Steering Committee meeting and we voted against it.
            MS: Were you at that Steering Committee meeting?
            DG: Yeah. I was a voting member of the Steering Committee. During the sit-in.
            MS: Where . . . when . . . what meeting was this?
            DG: It was held on the third floor in the john. The john at the far end of the hall.
            MS: What else did they discuss?
            DG: A lot. You know, I mean I can't . . . We discussed the idea of setting a kind of trapeze and monkey thing between the Sproul Hall and the . . . and the Student Union. And we had some people who were ready, willing and able to do it, but we felt that it would be just too risky and if someone were hurt or killed by it, it would be really disastrous for us. And so we voted against it. The things that we voted on was just a couple of things. Mostly it was consensus. As the Steering Committee carried on by consensus most of the time, with only really rough issues voted on. Really divided questions we've vote.
            MS: Oh, let's see. We went to jail. Were you working close to the Steering Committee then after that?
            DG: After the jail?
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: Oh yeah. I always worked closely with the Steering Committee. I mean, I was . . . I was the executive arm of the Steering Committee.
            MS: Then, well . . . can you remember what you did like . . .
            DG: Well, the first thing I did . . . I got tossed into solitary confinement and Jack got me out and then we got released, as I remember.
            MS: Why were you in solitary?
            DG: I refused to sign the form which required that I do some . . . that I say that I did something before I’d done it. Gotten . . . say that I’d gotten my money before I’d gotten it. And I said I’m not gonna sign this form, I haven’t gotten my money yet . . .
            MS: This was when you were leaving?
            DG: Yeah. And then they threw me in solitary.
            MS: How long was that?
            DG: I wasn't in there more than twenty minutes. Then another guy got me. Then another guy came in, y’know, who refused to do the same thing. And then, uh, Jack . . . got me out, as I remember.
            MS: And then what happened?
            DG: Well see, then we went home, and, uh, I know it was very encouraging when we got out of jail to see long rows of cars parked by the prison, you know. And you’d just hop into a car and it took off. And that was really heart-warming, you know. And you’d hear reports now and then that, uh, that you know swarms and swarms of cars were coming down, and faculty members were raising money and very encouraging. And, um, we went back to the campus in time for the rally that day, noon rally, and . . . and I was helping working, setting the rally up, getting things going, re-constituting the monitor. Mostly it was just getting . . . just coordinating everything that needed to be done. That was just about what I did. That, and the only real duty that I had consistently was the physical labor on my own part was the mimeographing and distributing leaflets. And I mimeographed the leaflets, usually took the leaflet from the person who’d written it, got it typed up into a stencil, ran it off, brought it down to campus, set up a group of people to distribute it and then would go around back to my other duties. And I usually got about three hours sleep every night, on the average. Some nights I would get five or six and other nights I wouldn’t get any.
            MS: Lemme see. Then, uh, . . . were there any Steering Committee meetings following that?
            DG: Oh, yeah.
            MS: Remember anything significant that you think . . .
            DG: Yeah, I can think of one really very interesting Steering Committee meeting. Let’s see, uh, most of the Steering Committee meetings were pretty boring. You’d talk this over, I’d make my reports how this and that was going, we’d talk about this and that, and, they usually occurred about three times a day, and we’d get the leaflet going and decide what had to be done here and what had to be done there and one meeting there was on New Year’s Eve. And Mario and Suzanne and I and Marty Roysher were there, no one else came, and we were writing that pamphlet ‘We want a University,’ we didn’t get much done. We’d been working that afternoon. We’d been working a long time on that. And I’d mostly been sitting around, I was taking my ease that day. And Jack had gotten most of the writing done and was off somewhere with somebody, I think he was with Phoebe [Graubard], I’m not sure. And we went out and bought some booze, and at midnight Suzanne fixed Russian . . . I think they’re called a Russian cocktail, I’m not sure, anyway it’s one-third vodka and one-third creme de cacao and one-third gin. And we had about eight-ounce glasses, and we slugged a couple of those down, and we were really pretty smashed. And, this is the night that Mario and Suzanne got together as I remember.
            MS: Oh, yeah?
            DG: Mario was very turned on and Suzanne was very turned on and they were making it right there on the floor. You know I was sort of embarrassed. So eventually they retired and Marty and I sat up and looked at each other for a while and then I went to bed. We all sort of passed out in various attitudes in Marty’s house.
            I mean, you know. The Steering Committee meetings were dull.
            MS: What about . . .
            DG: All meetings are dull, as far as I’m . . . I hate meetings.
            MS: Nexus.
            DG: Oh Nexus. Nexus was a mistake.
            MS: Well, tell me about it.
            DG: The purpose of Nexus . . . well see there was a fantastic difficulties there having Central. Because of Marilyn Noble and because of John Sutake and because of the whole way the place was set up. It’d gone too long without any heavy hand on it to keep it running properly. And the files were a mess and the place was running in a disorganized fashion, they were very authoritarian about what they would let out and what they wouldn’t let out, what information they would get, you know, very slow very inefficient and we got very pissed off at their inefficiency and slowness and fucking up constantly. Constant fuckups. One after another. We appreciated that they had a lot of stuff to handle and a lot of work to do but the fuckups were just too much to bear. We weren’t getting things done on time because they weren’t getting the information out to us. Somebody’d call and eighteen hours later you’d find out that he’d called, and you should’ve called back two hours later after he've called, you know? And so we’re getting very pissed off. So we tried setting up a place called Nexus, which would leave to Central the shit work, which they got done pretty well, and take all the important things out of their hands. Like phone calls from faculty members. Phone calls from notables, and things like that which were just getting gobbled. And a lot of money was being wasted and I believe misappropriated. Actually physically swiped at Central, ‘cause all the money was coming into Central that came . . . came into . . . came into the FSM which was all going through Central, and Central was just doing fantastic things with it. We were very turned off . . . mostly this was Marilyn Noble, who was hiding it. I mean, I found . . . the day we cleaned Central out and moved everything out, I found behind a bunch of books something like forty bucks just stuck away behind there. And we found in cupboards a hundred and fifty dollars, and Marilyn would say, ‘Oh, that’s my milk money’ or something, you know, and pass it off very casually. Or I would find these little caches of bread, and fantastic amounts of money . . . about a thousand bucks hidden . . . hidden here and there, you know. And so we cracked down on them pretty hard and they got very pissed off, and this is paranoia still remains about from the time I stole the files and they expected me to come in with an axe and a bunch of goons and just tear the place down. So they really didn’t like me too well, there. (taping ends)
(taping resumes)
            MS: What about the decisions to have . . . you know, who decided about Nexus and who . . .
            DG: This was after about a month of breast beating and virtual riot and chaos and difficulty and . . . and maybe a whole week was wasted on Central. What would we do about Central, you know? And, we finally decided to set up a place called Nexus. And, um . . .
            MS: Well, who . . . who . . .
            DG: We.
            MS: Well, who’s “we”?
            DG: The people concerned. I mean I really can’t say exactly who they were. It was the Steering Committee, and myself, and . . . and other persons. For example, Gretchen Kitteridge, who was the treasurer, was very pissed off at the amount of money that was going down the drain. And I was very pissed off at the inefficiency, because it was making my life real chaos to try to coordinate things that couldn’t be coordinated.
            MS: How did Jack feel about this?
            DG: Jack was essentially the mediator in the whole thing. He felt that something had to be done, but he did not want to violently alienate everybody in Central. And I was, at certain points, I was in favor of going in there and shooting them all down. I mean, I was getting to where the last stages of exasperation.
            MS: Mm-hmm.
            DG: I felt to tolerate anymore would be to blow my brains out, and I was just in favor of going in with an axe and saying, ‘Alright,’ you know, holding them off with the axe and stealing their files and saying, ‘Now, stew in your own juice!’ You know. Ripping out their telephones. Yeah, I was really getting terrible, terribly worked up about it. And I feel it was justified, you know. They were making everybody’s life extremely difficult with their bureaucratic nincompooperies, which they compounded fantastically. We finally succeeded in kicking Marilyn Noble out, to where she didn’t come back. She got kicked out once and then came back and then got kicked out and stayed away. That alleviated the difficulty pretty considerably. But, we set up Nexus at Ed Rosenfeldt’s house. I didn’t like the selection because it was too far away. At the time, none of us had any information that Ed Rosenfeldt would turn out to be another Marilyn Noble. We had no idea of this. Ed Rosenfeldt seemed a very solid, dependable, intelligent guy, you know? And he was on, I believe, what the . . . the supplementary Steering Committee . . . things like that. He was considered by Mario to be a pretty good guy, and Jack liked him and I liked him. We got along. And so we set up Nexus, and we got a couple of phones in there and files and set to work. And, I turned out to be a terrible bureaucrat, and just fucked up fantastically. And they were gonna . . . and I hated it! So I pretty much abdicated my post at Central . . . at Nexus, and . . . I’m simply not a bureaucratic guy, and most of the work was left to Rosenfeldt. And he fucked it up pretty badly, too. And he was gradually going out of his gourd. So, we got to the point where nothing was going through Nexus that should go through Nexus; Central was carrying the work again as it had before, and fucking up again as it had before but not so badly, and Nexus was a real drain on money. Rosenfeldt was doing really insane things.
            MS: Like what?
            DG: Funny things with money, usually. And doing things independently and not telling anybody about them. He said that he was taking care of the defense, you know, getting money, and he just was procrastinating, and procrastinating, and getting nothing done. We needed the money very badly and he just was not getting any of that money. He was pissing around and saying, ‘I’m doing! I’m working!’ and he wouldn’t allow anyone else to work and yet he wasn’t doing the work himself. He became very paranoid about his telephones. If anyone even mentioned moving the telephones out of Nexus he would fly into a rage; and the setup at the door, you know, with this loudspeaker, was set up more to keep people from coming in for the telephones than to keep . . . East Bay Transit authorities from coming in. How ya doin’ Pat?
            MS: East Bay Transit? Was that who he was running from?
            DG: Yeah. No, no, he wasn't running at all. He've been living there for about six months without paying rent.
            MS: Stealing from.
            DG: Yeah. Stealing from. And so finally it just absolutely did not work out, and was moved, after a good deal of bloodshed and breast beating again. So, this was the time that the FSM was really falling apart.
            MS: What about the . . . you mentioned the provisional Steering Committee. Did that ever do any work?
            DG: Not to my knowledge.
            MS: Did you ever have any contact with it?
            DG: It never did much. The old Steering Committee took over right after it came out of jail, and the provisional Steering Committee never did anything at all. Really.
            MS: Do you remember who was on that? On the Provisional Steering Committee?
            DG: I can't say. I . . . I think I was at the . . . I don't know, I really don't.
            MS: Well, was there anything . . . seems to be . . . you weren’t involved in the obscenity thing or the SPIDER thing, were you?
            DG: I was in CORE. A lot of impetus was given to CORE by the FSM’s . . . more impetus was given to CORE by the fact that the big people on the FSM were running CORE . . . They were in the leadership of CORE; and Marvin Garson had gotten with some of his good writing, and we got good leaflets out and Jack was there and I was there and . . .
            MS: Well, why don't you go back to the demise of the FSM, then.
            DG: It just gradually and slowly and surely fell apart. The ability to do something . . . after the strike, we really had blown our last wad. We were capitalizing on everything that had occurred before what we were doing at the moment. Planning, and having no ability to do anything . . . anything else. We’d done our damnedest and we couldn’t do any more. We capitalized on this for quite a while and the bureaucracy gradually slowed down; we moved the Centrals--the old Central got torn down, we moved the Central to a place on Bancroft. A lot of things got done in it; mostly defense. The big thing that was going on was the defense. Getting money for the defense, and the defense itself, and setting up lawyers and setting up meetings and setting up defendant’s meetings and figuring out where defendant’s were and what we would do and how we would get the money for it. After that got done with, after the trial itself began, the FSM really broke down. The only people who were involved were those people who, as Jack says, are incapable of being bored. The real, hardcore bureaucrats.
            MS: What about Mario?
            DG: . . . and Mario, who I think has cracked up and I don’t think he’s much good anymore. He . . . he’s not thinking well and his speaking ability has gone right down the drain. He can’t get a coherent thought out. Without . . . any coherent thought that he might state is surrounded by such hemming and hawing and such superfluous statement that you can’t understand what he’s talking about.
            PI: Well, this is what he was like before.
            MS: Right.
            PI: I remember when he was . . . before he went down to Mississippi I remember we were horrified that he was elected chairman of the SNCC on campus. He was such an ineffective speaker that we said that SNCC is just going to fall apart completely. And . . .
            DG: Well, perhaps the FSM fired him from the heights.
            PI: Yeah . . . he . . .
            DG: Because he was such a beautiful and eloquent speaker and a very good thinker insofar as explaining things.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: You know, he could explain something well and understandably. But after the FSM he went back to being a bad speaker. I don’t think the FSM did him much harm. The most amazing thing about Mario is that he didn’t crack up, because the press blew him up to be something that absolutely was not and he was expected to live up to it and was hounded day and night by everybody. You name it and he was hounded. From abject worship on the part of some persons to . . . to the newsmen who drove him nuts and . . . I’m surprised that he managed to find a decent love life out of it all.
            One thing that was . . . there was a hell of a lot of during the FSM was, you know, a lot of women. That was great . . .
            MS: Tell us about it.
            PI: (protesting noises)
            DG: Well, I think that . . .
            PI: . . . not around me (laughs) . . .
            DG: . . . considering the presence of certain a young lady in this room . . . No, I mean that wasn’t bad at all. I mean, for example you always needed someplace to sleep. I wasn’t living anywhere and neither was Jack, and we’d just sort of sleep around. Somebody happened to be there and say, ‘Bed,’ you know how it is, and you can't really kick 'em out of their bed, you know, and so . . . but it was a very unsatisfactory love life . . . Pardon?
            MS: Very considerate . . .
            DG: Yeah. I'm a good guy. But it was a very unsatisfactory love life. Harried by . . . at four o'cock in the morning you've get a phone call and split. You know. This chick would feel sort of put out. I'm quite certain that I never did get a solid night's sleep during the whole of the FSM. The entire time from September 30th to about . . . to about January . . . to about the middle of January I'm quite sure I never did get a solid night's sleep. Except in jail.
            MS: . . . in your analysis of Mario, whaddaya think happened . . . this . . . you know, like the FSM afterwards, after the next semester they . . . were you ever at the meetings where he tried to reorganize the FSM?
            DG: Yeah. They were silly.
            MS: What?
            DG: They were silly! In the first place, reorganizing past glories, which is just not the way to do it. And there was nothing that could be done and he wasn’t appreciating that fact. He was still driven . . . he was still being given the illusion of a great deal of . . . of power and importance by newsmen, by the papers and by other people and he was doing a lot of speaking . . .
            MS: Do you remember the meeting in which Dusty [Miller] was there and he proposed that they . . . that they have a . . . form an organization . . . or reorganize along the lines that it would be a . . . a . . . you know, you lie low, and you wait for an incident, and you sort of keep the . . .
            PI: Oh, I . . .
            DG: But this was an overwhelming sentiment.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: And . . . he said he was voted down completely. Mario was there, Mario spoke against it at the . . . what he wanted was something like the FSU, especially.
            PI: Yeah, right.
            MS: . . . and he was completely out-voted.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: This was . . . this was an overwhelming sentiment on the part of many of the bureaucratic people. For a while it was . . .
            MS: Dusty's not a bureacra . . . one of the bureaucratic people.
            PI: Yes, but the bureaucratic people didn’t have the votes, and the people who had the votes didn’t . . .
            DG: . . . people who had the votes didn’t think it was a good idea for the following reason . . . for the following reason. . .
            PI: . . . thought it was dumb.
            DG: . . . A, we didn't want to maintain an expensive bureaucracy . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: . . . B, the people who . . .
            MS: . . . don't think they were talking about maintaining an office necessarily or anything like that . . .
            DG: . . . the bureaucracy would be maintained.
            PI: You had to have the bureaucracy in order to have the . . . contact all the people and get them out when you needed them . . .
            DG: So the . . . the point is this, that . . . I felt this way, and feel this way: If there’s another crisis that new people will take care of it. The old people will not be capable of taking care of it. Because they’ll want to run it in the old way. They’ll be able to offer a lot, but I don’t think they’ll be able to run it. If there’s a new explosion the old people will . . . I’m quite certain not run it. I don’t think Mario got this idea until very recently, if he’s got this idea at all.
            MS: When did that idea come to you?
            DG: Oh, months and months ago.
            MS: This is the way Jack feels, too?
            DG: I don't know. I would conjecture so, yeah. I don't . . . think that the FSM . . . I . . . the FSM should have been disbanded officially, I think after December 8th. The FSM should have been officially disbanded and a . . . another organization should have been spring up, which was a bureaucratic organization set up to take care of the defense. We should not have had an FSM.
            PI: I remember Stephanie and I proposed that at an Ex Comm meeting. I don’t remember when it was, and we were voted down overwhelmingly.
            MS: Well see there's this . . . at this meeting where Dusty was at . . he recommended this thing, and he said that the name should be changed, and everything . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: . . . were you at that meeting?
            PI: Mm-hmm.
            MS: . . . and, uh, he mentioned that Mario said . . . ‘No, I like FSM.’ And . . .
            PI: Well, a lot of people . . . see, Mario and a lot of other people felt that the name itself . . . that you shouldn’t, that you’d lose the defense fund and stuff like this, that you should have the name to bring in the money and this kind of thing . . . and that argument was advanced. And a lot of people just . . .
            DG: Well, the FSM as a viable organization really lost it . . .
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: . . . in about January, I think.
            MS: Yeah, right.
            DG: . . . early in the spring.
            PI: Well, a lot of people didn’t want to acknowledge that.
            DG: Yeah. Well, that was the problem, especially the bureaucrats and especially Mario. And, Mario soon turned in . . . soon turned into sort of a one-man organization. If he wasn’t at the meeting, the meeting didn’t mean a damn’ thing. And, so . . .
            MS: What about . . .
            DG: People like Jack and I discussed it in court a long time before that; we just dropped out.
            MS: Well, what about . . . what do you think of the FSU?
            DG: I don't think it's a viable organization. It's a great idea . . .
            MS: Why don't you . . . why . . . why is it . . . I mean . . .
            DG: The wrong people for one thing are running it. They’re bureaucratic-minded people. And bureaucratic-minded people . . .
            MS: Jack . . .
            DG: . . . just have to have. . .
            MS: Jack and Marvin Garson and yourself and . . .
            DG: We're not running it.
            MS: . . . had major roles in starting it.
            DG: Right. We set it up. We thought it would be great, and then we saw that it just, it just wasn’t going to make it. We sort of dropped out. And it may have not . . . it may be that it just didn’t make it because we dropped out. But, keep in mind that Marvin Garson and Jack Weinberg and David Goines not only had gone . . . Jack Weinberg and David Goines for example . . . had gone from the very beginning of the FSM, working like demons all the way through, soon as the FSM . . . soon as we felt the FSM was no longer a viable organization, bingo! into CORE. We worked like demons through CORE, soon as we felt that CORE wasn’t accomplishing anything else, bingo! out of CORE and into the FSU. We set the FSU up and then we just collapsed. We just fell apart. And I . . . I’m just now beginning to get up energy to where I’m doing things again. And Jack is . . . I don’t know if Jack’s got the energy yet, but . . . you know, we worked ourselves to death! I mean, I think if you take the eight-hour day as a working day, we put in I think maybe two or three years of working days. During that one year. During that one school year. We set the FSU up and didn’t have the energy to really plug along and keep it going. And then, what are the issues to organize it around? There are threats of issues, there are threats to organize it around. And there are real things that are going wrong, and we’re really getting screwed in a lot of ways by the administration, but they’re not the kind of things you can defy, you know? They’re not the kinds of things you can . . . they say ‘Don’t set up tables,’ you set up tables. It’s very easy to do. But if they say for example . . . ‘Fantastic long paragraph concerning who shall be admitted to a student organization, who shall not.’ And, what a student organization is and what it isn't, you know? How you gonna fight that? Not very well. So, I don’t know. I think next semester people will be coming to this university with the anticipation of maybe a new FSM, and the anticipation that it’s gonna be kind of a Mecca. And I think to a certain extent that the whole United States university system has been very badly shaken up. Or, very goodly shaken up, you know, you might say by the experience of the FSM, and the word, you know, the threat of,  “You want another Berkeley?” is enough to scare off a lot of the administrators and it’s got a lot of advances at quite a few universities, by just saying, “We’ll organize and fuck you,” has scared them off to the point where they’ve gotten quite a few concessions. And, I think the effect of the FSM . . . had an historical effect and . . . an effect on the university system in the United States it’s gonna be a good one. We will win a lot. We won a lot, and we will win a lot in the future by the very existence of the FSM, the fact that students can organize in the United States . . . get up and fight something. Can win. I don’t know how much we’re going to win at Berkeley, but we’ve . . . one of the things we’ve won that they can’t take back is that we’ve won a lot of self-respect, and that we know we’ve got the guts to do it.
            MS: What did the FSM do for you?
            DG: It politicized me. I was a pretty much a-political guy. And it gave me an entirely new outlook on everything. You name it, I got . . . I’ve got a new outlook. And I met thousands of people; I mean, I met thousands and thousands of people and know most of them now.
            MS: Jerry Miller told me that David Goines is just totally different from the way he was . . .
            DG: Yeah, I am, I am quite different. I mean, I’ve learned a tremendous amount; I’ve learned for example the importance of organization and how to organize. My big fortéŽ is that I’m an organizer. I’m not a great strategist . . . as long as Jack Weinberg is around we don’t need any more, he’s terrific, but I learned a great deal about politics and I know what makes thing tick, people tick, and who to trust and who not to trust. I don’t think I’ve become considerably more cynical, I think I’ve become much less cynical than I was before. ‘Cause given the right conditions you can do something.
            I think Berkeley in the fall is going to be awful. And that’s why I didn’t want to come back to school here.
            MS: Why?
            DG: Because I think I'm . . . we're going to see before ourselves, I mean right under our noses, the dissolution of everything we won, except for a few . . . except for a few basic things, you know, like setting up tables.
            MS: You mean (unintelligible) . . .
            DG: Speaker bans and you can’t have rallies here you gotta have ‘em there and . . . there’s just not the energy or the oomph to fight them. Maybe in another couple of years you’ll have another FSM. But certainly not next semester. I just didn’t want to be around when I saw it all fall apart. Because I just haven’t got the energy to fight it again.
            MS: Yeah . . . you . . . I've be very . . . you said that tomorrow that you didn't want to get arrested again.
            DG: I don't particularly want to get arrested . . . Ive been arrested five times now, since December eighth . . . including December eighth I’ve been arrested five times.
            MS: December eighth?
            DG: Since and including. I mean, since December third, you know, four times since then. December third. And, I mean, you know, just getting that record, and going to that court, and grinding around, it’s just, you know, really debilitating.
            MS: What were you arrested for on the other four things?
            DG: Once, on civil-rights and three times for traffic tickets.            
            MS: What was the civil-rights . . . that was when you were . . .
            DG: Jack London Square.
            MS: . . . and what was the charge on that?
            DG: Resisting . . . rather . . .
            PI: Weren't you pretty much . . .
            DG: . . . interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty. A completely trumped-up charge and it was . . .
            MS: Was it dropped?
            DG: . . . charges were dropped. It was absurd. Preposterous. They shouldn’t make such charges. All I did was . . . all I did was ask him what the name of the person who’d been arrested was and he arrested me. And, I mean, while notoriety has its advantages, it has its disadvantage; and that for example you get in-bads with the police and they make your life miserable. And that's where I get all my traffic tickets. Before I was in the FSM I drove the same way I drive now, I mean, that hasn't changed, but . . . but . . .
            MS: You were just as bad a driver before the FSM!
            (all laugh)
            DG: No! I'm a good driver! But I mean, you know, I never got tickets, you know. But when the policeman recognizes you on sight, he knows you’re a person who doesn’t like him, he’s not gonna, you know, treat you as nicely as he could. And so I got a tremendous amount of tickets. A good half of which I’m positive were harassment tickets. Like you know a policeman would lurk around where I’d park and they’d jump out and get me for things, you know? And I’d get hauled in walking down the street ‘cause I didn’t have my driver’s license on me. That’s pretty bad.
            MS: Walking down the street!
            DG: Yeah! I was walking down the street in front of the University one day and a cop pops out of his car and says ‘Lemme see your driver’s license’ and I say, you know, ‘Cram it up your ass, cop, I don’t need to show you my driver’s license!’ And he says, ‘Either show me your driver’s license or come down to the station,’ so I went down to the station.
            MS: Yeah?
            DG: Then they let me go an hour later. I didn’t ever know what it was all about. I never did figure what it was all about.
            MS: So after, you became really involved in CORE.
            DG: In CORE, you know, got to know more policemen; you know how it is. And I was essentially the same thing in CORE as I was in the FSM. I wasn’t on the Executive Committee of CORE. You know: the do-er.
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: And I've also by that time gained much more political cool. Much more political knowledge; I mean I went in as a babe in the woods. I mean, I really did not know what was coming off until the FSM had been going on for about a month, and then I began to get vague notions of what was actually happening, and now I feel pretty confident in myself. I have the concepts of politics as well as the execution.
            MS: Are you going to go back to Classics?
            DG: Oh, yeah. I like Classics. It's great. So . . .
            MS: So . . .
            DG: That's about that.
            MS: Oh, Patti, can you think of anything to add? No?
            PI: Well, I can think of . . .
            DG: She can add, but we're hungry and wanna go to bed. You can add, if you want. If you don't want to go to bed; we don't have to.
            MS: Well, what about Ex Comm?
            PI: Well, I mean, you know, I played a very minor role in Ex Comm. I was very bad at talking out at meetings . . .
            MS: Well, you were there though . . .
            PI: . . . and I just . . .
            MS: . . . what about . . . you remember significant conflicts or decisions, that sort of thing in Executive Committee meetings.
            PI: Oh, well, I remember that time when we were . . . at the abortive sit-in, but then that’s . . . that’s . . .
            MS: . . . what?
            PI: . . . yeah, I remember that.
            MS: Where was that?
            PI: Where was it? I think it was at Westminster. No, not Westminster, it’s that new . . . modern new building across the street.
            DG: What meeting was this?
            PI: . . . at Sproul Hall.
            DG: What meeting was this?
            PI: It was the one where we were voting on the abortive sit-in. Whether or not to have it. I remember this huge, huge discussion . . .
            MS: Oh, the Executive Committee, yeah . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: Was it at Wesley?
            PI: Was it Wesley?
            MS: Across from Stiles.
            PI: Yeah. It's the one across from Stiles.
            MS: Do you remember anything about the discussion?
            PI: A lot of people thought the timing was wrong; and that we couldn’t pull it off, and the FSM was just about dead; we were having . . . I remember we were having discussions about, you know, about disbanding. I remember Mario had talked about it for several meetings, saying there was nothing more we could do. We were obviously losing support on campus, and . . .
            DG: Which we by the way were not. But we weren’t aware of that.
            PI: No, we weren't aware of that. And . . . and I know a lot of us wanted, if we were gonna go . . . oh! (slapping sounds) David! Anyway . . . (laughs)
            DG: You can do it for posterity.
            PI: (laughter) umm . . . you know a lot of us didn’t want to just sort of die off like we have done, but we had wanted (laughs) to go out with a bang!
            MS: Yeah.
            DG: Oh, we went out with a bang.
            MS: Do you think there was a lot of that sort of . . . uh, well, masochistic type of attitude . . . and just we’ll all . . . we’ll get screwed but we’ll go out . . . we’ll just go out and we’ll be . . .
            PI: I don't think it was masochistic so much; I think . . . I mean it wasn't so much that . . .
            DG: . . . an attempt to rally student support . . .
            PI: It was just a last ditch attempt, you know it was sort of like a despairing . . . tch! DAVID!
            MS: . . . it sounds much worse on the tape . . .
            PI: (laughs) . . . anyway . . . and I know a lot of us were despairing, and I voted for . . . for the sit-in anyway, even though I knew there was a lot of opposition to it . . . I felt that it would be the only thing we could do. . . . So, I remember that meeting quite clearly.
            MS: (sighs) Well . . .
            PI: I don't know . . .
            MS: What about the meeting before the sit-in?
            PI: . . . these interminable meetings . . . Well, everybody agreed that they wanted to sit-in. I remember the . . . there didn’t seem to be any significant opposition at all, as I recall, I think . . . because . . .
            DG: Jo Freeman made a public speech while we were sitting-in.
            PI: Well that . . . that was on the first one; that was the abortive one.
            DG: Oh.
            PI: And . . .
            DG: Oh, which one, the main sit-in?
            PI: Uh-huh. The main . . .
            DG: Oh, there were three votes against it.
            PI: Yeah. And because . . .
            DG: . . . all of which were for ideological and not practical reasons.
            PI: Right.
            MS: Whaddaya . . .
            DG: Well, for example, David Kolodny was one . . .
            MS: Ideological?
            DG: He . . . he came up with some half-baked idea . . .
            MS: C'mon, that's not ideological . . .
            PI: He didn't want . . .
            DG: I mean, he's a real conservative guy . . .
            PI: Yeah . . .
            MS: . . . but he's not ideological!
            PI: Well, he didn't want to have a sit-in, in the sense that we meant it. He wanted it . . . wasn't he the one who wanted the, uh, this . . . this thing where we would go in and not try and disrupt anything, you know, we would . . . we've . . .
            DG: He wanted a sit-in but a different kind of a sit-in.
            PI: He just wanted to have a sit-in where we’d have aisles cleared constantly and no noise, everybody just sort of like a vigil.
            DG: Sit and read, yeah.
            PI: Yeah . . .
            DG: But, um, and there was another vote against . . . two votes against and they were all for obscure reasons. Odd, funny little reasons. Not disagreeing with the idea of a sit-in, y’know.
            PI: Yeah.
            DG: But, with some aspect of the idea of the sit-in, y’know. The sit-in’s great but you either . . . not now . . . one of them was ‘not now;’ one of them was ‘the masses are not yet ready, you know,’ and another one was if you don’t . . .
            PI: Yeah ‘cause a lot of people . . .
            DG: . . . behave like nuns and monks . . .
            MS: . . . you guys meet with Tigar once you were in there?
            DG & PI: (in unison) Oh, yeah.
            MS: You remember that?
            PI: Yeah?
            MS: What happened at that meeting?
            PI: Well . . . I really can't talk!
            MS: C’mon, David!
            DG: Oh . . .
            PI: . . . sorry . . .
            MS: Just a few more minutes . . .
            PI: (laughs)
            MS: . . . octopus . . .
            PI: . . . yes . . . um, let's see . . . no, I don't remember it now. (sighs) (laughs) Why don't you say what you remember about it.
            MS: He can't remember anything; he hates meetings. He's got a block against meetings.
            PI: Oh, he remembers.
            DG: No. No, I . . . I . . . I would remember if . . .
            Ms: . . . if it stuck in your mind.
            DG: Well, I . . .
            PI: That's not what he was saying . . .
            DG: . . . I remember the meetings not so well because, “A,” I hate meetings . . .
            MS: Yeah, I know.
            DG: . . . and,  I . . .
            MS: That . . . that's why I’m . . .
            DG: . . . y’know . . .
            MS: . . . give up . . .
            DG: I went to . . . all the meetings . . . I don’t think I missed any . . . and I voted in ‘em; I was an Executive Committee member, and I participated in everything, and I’m quite sure I could probably remember them all in minute detail if I were to be . . . shown . . . if I were to be discussing the meeting with a bunch of people, I would remember . . . if we went . . . if we went from beginning to end I probably would remember absolutely everything that went on.
            MS: (laughs)
            DG: You know, I think there were probably ten thousand meetings that I went to. And to try to remember what went on at a meeting on the date of which I don’t even remember . . . I remember general characteristics . . .
            MS: The Tigar meeting . . . want me to fill you in . . .
            DG: Absolutely.
            MS: . . . was at Westminster House . . .
            DG: I know that.
            MS: Tigar gave this nice, eloquent speech . . .
            DG: Which was really absurd . . .
            MS: . . . and then . . .
            DG: . . . which I violently disagreed with.
            MS: . . . and then someone else . . . and then Jack gave this eloquent . . .
            DG: It was interesting.
            MS: . . . speech and then Tigar gave a speech again and Mario asked him some questions . . . special wording in the draft and then Tigar said that ‘You may not get more but you won’t get less,’ and Mario says ‘Ah, that’s what we thought.’
            PI: Well, you seem to remember it quite vividly.
            MS: Yeah, but I'm trying to get other people's . . . you know, I'm trying to get other people's testimony.
            DG: Well, I won't remember it. I’d . . .
            PI: Exactly what was Tigar’s proposal? I remember that everybody didn’t like it.
            MS: I don't remember.
            DG: I don't remember either.
            PI: I remember that I liked Jack’s . . . I went with Jack on it.
            DG: All I remember is that I was opposed to Tigar.
            PI: . . . but then I generally liked what Jack said anyhow.
            MS: (clears throat)
            PI: I remember at the very beginning, several of us who’d been very political before, when we found out it was Jack in the car we got all panicked . . . eeeee! Ye Gods! No! Anybody but him! (laughs)
            DG: Why?
            PI: Because we had this concept of him as being this . . . this . . . this fellow who had . . . who just went around making trouble without any sense of strategy, without any sense of tactics, who . . . you know, who was just, you know, one of these alienated types of people (laughs) that just didn't contribute much to a movement. And . . .
            DG: You sure found out, didn't you.
            PI: Boy, we sure did!
            DG: I didn't have any weird ideas. I didn't even know him.
            PI: Well, you didn't . . .
            DG: I didn't know anybody.
            PI: Yeah, well . . .
            MS: I’d never met Jack Weinberg before.
            DG: I was a nobody.
            PI: And I remember how stunned we were when Mario . . . was so eloquent. That was an amazing thing; I couldn’t believe it.
            MS: That's funny that he's gone back to the . . .
            DG: Yeah. He was that way before.
            PI: I don't know, I’de always thought that he was never really that eloquent unless he was angry; if he was really furious about something, and then he got very eloquent. But then, like I noticed even when he wasn’t really that mad he . . . his speech deteriorates. He’s got to be really furious . . .
            MS: Yeah.
            PI: So . . .
            DG: Tape-recording lots of silence . . . That sticks out . . .
            PI: (laughs) David Goines!
            DG: What's that?
            PI: You fix it.
            PI & DG: (laugh)
            PI: (laughing) Oh, stop, David . . . this is being preserved for posterity.
            DG: All this is being preserved for posterity.
            MS: Right. (laughs)
            PI: I’m sure he'll erase these parts. (laughs)
            MS: OK. Really . . .
            DG: (whistles a bar of ‘And the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole.’)
            MS: . . . and there's nothing that you can think of right now . . .
            PI: No, it's . . . if you would bring up a specific issue . . .
            DG: I can think of billions of things that really . . . you know, but the point is that . . .
            MS: Well, what! You can't think of 'em or you’d say 'em.
            DG: We can't think of 'em.
            PI: If you suggested something just that . . .
            DG: I mean, I can't just talk by myself. I mean, I get turned on about things. If I were talking with Jack and with maybe five or six other people and we were reminiscing . . .
            PI: Yeah . . . that's what you should do, get . . .
            DG: . . . I’d remember everything.
            MS: I know I should, and impossible . . . you know how it’s impossible to get ahold of people alone much less . . .
            PI: Well, they . . . (tape ends)

 

Article IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.