Tribal Stomp Rap

From a speach at the Tribal Stomp, Jan. 19 1972

by John Sinclair Chairman, Rainbow People's Party

We're here tonight to celebrate the first anniversary of the People's Food Coop. For one year the food co-op has served the community by providing low cost fresh vegetables and fruit to families in Ann Arbor. And Matt Lampe just told me that this month, specifically January 1 1 , is the first anniversary of the Free People's Clinic. So that's another institution we have a year's experience with. Yeah! And a couple more years there'll be a people's hospital, and we'll keep on like that!

The other thing about this month, what I wanted to talk about, is that next Monday January 24, is the fifth anniversary of the big dope raid in Detroit, where I got popped and which I did that time on, where 55 other people all got cracked on that one night. [voices from the audience] Yeah!

I been thinkin' on that a lot because we're lookin' back on five years of development and what we call five years of struggle, starting on January 24, 1967.

Five years ago this thing that all of us are involved in now was just starting to emerge. And in Detroit there was a very small community of people who got high, and dug music together, and did all the things that people do now, and ate together and lived together and all that. But t was a very small thing and it was just starting to grow- the Grande Ballroom had just opened up that fall - five years ago, and the first rock 'n' roll dances were being held, and people were starting to be busted for the first time, and there was a whole lot of activity going on all at once that had never been going on before. [shouts from the audience] : Yeah!

On January 24, 1967, the Detroit Narcotics Squad, the Police Commissioner, and the Mayor, and the whole power structure of the city of Detroit picked this day to, like, ride down on this little community of people that was trying to get itself together. They just rode down on the neighborhood and just took off the whole neighborhood. Took off people from five or six different communes which was like all there were, you know, and just rounded them all up, and put the killer headlines in the paper- "Lightning Dope Raid- 56 Arrested- Campus Dope Ring Smashed," all that bullshit, you know? We've always looked on it all this time, right from the beginning, as a conscientious attempt on the part of the police and the city power structure to crush this thing out before it could really get going. And they took extreme measures- they kept pressure on people all the time, they drove us out of Detroit for example, a year and a half after that - just literally drove us out of Detroit. They, at the time that this was just starting to grow, they were trying to crush it out, to dowse it completely so it couldn't get any farther. Because they knew that what all these people were doing - dropping all this acid, and having all these spaced out visions and shit, and people walking around saying "I love everybody, this is all beautiful," and this and that, you know.

[Voice from the audience] : It was wrong!

Aw, no, man, I mean it wasn't wrong then, you know, because it's what happened. If something else was supposed to happen it would have happened, so it must have been right. You dig? All right.

It's always been significant, and we have to realize that the whole thing was meant to tell people who were in high school and in the suburbs and in different parts of the city and around the campus there, to try and tell all these people that were starting to grow their hair long and starting to smoke weed, you know, and fuck and everything else- They were trying to tell them by just moving in on people and putting the big scrunch on them that this is what happens, you see, this is what happens. You got to toe the line and if you get out of line we arrest you and put you in the papers and make you criminals and shit, you know. So you got to stay in line. They made what we always considered a last ditch attempt to stop us and said, look we're just going to take these people and lock them up. And it backfired right then and it backfired now, and they get more and more desperate, and they do things like take me and lock me up and say, we're going to give you 9 1/2 to 10 years for these two joints and everybody will stop smoking weed, you know, because everybody will be terrified and we're going to break you and break your motherfuckin' spirit and do all this and put you out completely, right?

And it backfired on them- they can't do that, they can do it for a while but it catches up with them, you know. They can do it in my case for two and a half years, but two and a half years ain't even a blink in the eye of eternity, really. It was necessary to bring about a change, that's all, and it went down like that, but it didn't stop nothin' like they wanted it to.

So they do that and it don't work and they can't even keep us, they couldn't even keep me locked up! Because people wouldn't let them do it, you know. [Audience explodes with cheers and wild gyrations!]

We can't look at it from a position of weakness, that I was in the penitentiary for 2 1/2 years because people are weak and nobody cares and shit, it wasn't about that. It was about . . . they say it's 10 years, that's what they wanted, and we said it ain't gonna be any more than 2 1/2 years - STOP! And we made them stop, they had their plans set up, you dig they got papers in there now with all their plans all laid out, and they just have to smoke them up or something, because their plan is gone, you know? It's just like their plan for the whole planet, as grim as it might look to us most of the time, we just have to realize that we are getting stronger all the time, oppressed peoples all over the planet are getting stronger all the time because these dinosaurs- their time is over with. They can't carry out their program anymore, you know? They can't carry it out- no way! They keep trying to carry it out and they're going to shoot people for refusing to go along with it- but it ain't going to work, it's done with. Period. This is the way that we have to see the world that we're living in, otherwise if we look at it from the other angle we're just going to be downed out all the time. We have to look into the future from our base in the past, from the way things used to be, and always be checking out where we came from, so we can see how far we've got. When you're here, and this is the way it is now you have his body of experience, you can go back five years ago and you can say- this is the way is was five years ago. There wasn't as many freeks in Detroit five years ago as there in this little room in Ann Arbor, Michigan! There wasn't this many freeks in the city of Detroit! We had rock 'n' roll dances and there would be like 100 people at the Grande Ballroom, right? It just blows me out- I didn't expect nothing like this! I was in the penitentiary, I'm reading the papers all the time, where they say there's nothin' going on in the streets, students are all laying down and everybody in the streets is shooting smack and there's no rock 'n' roll, you know? They get you believing that shit, you read t in the papers and say - WOW! - it must really be like that. But they're just lying, they're just trying to fix this shit so that nobody finds out more about it than they can, and it don't work. That's all I'm trying to say, it don't work. Us standing here now is proof that it don't work, you dig?
I don't want to run no thing because everybody knows that we have to just keep pushin'. What I'm concerned with is that all of us can see that we're pushin' on increasingly from a position of strength. We aren't just fightin' back blindly, we're getting our selves together! We got a Free People's Clinic that's a year old now, we got a people's food co-op that's a year old now. We got free concerts in the park that go back to 1967! We got experience, I mean, we're doin' it, ya know! We ain't bullshittin'!

[The audience once again spontaneously erupted and . . .]

We got a community center, a building, with these institutions in it that take care of people's needs so you don't have to go to some honkies and have them take care of your shit for you, you know.

I mean, I was in the penitentiary, and after six months of struggle to get the SUN in there, I finally get it where I can read it, and I read in the paper about the people's programs and the people's committees and the Tribal Council, I remember the community center and the first pictures that they ran and I sat and cried, it was so fuckin' beautiful, you know. They had this picture in the SUN of this cadillac garage, right, and it was just a mess, but it was so beautiful because there it is, and we can make, whatever we need it to be, ourselves! Instead of even coming over here to the University and beg them for this shit here, this little room that belongs to us anyway, and going through all the changes and shit, you have a place over there like this which is the people's community center. You don't have to go through a bunch of creeps in the University and have them put you through a bunch of shit to get a place to get down with the people. You talk with Joe Tiboni, the brother that was just up here, or some brothers like that, or some sisters, just like anybody here, and that's what it's about.

That's all I really wanted to say- and the other thing is that one of the main reasons we are in a position of strength now, one of the main reasons we were able to survive five years of struggle- I don't know how anybody out here felt, but to me it was a struggle, it was a struggle doin' that time in the penitentiary, everyday it's a struggle to fight this shit, but that's all there is. If you ain't strugglin' you might as well hang it up, right? [Voice from the audience] : Right On!

So what I was trying to say is one of the main things that puts us in this position of strength is the fact that we have this powerful rock 'n' roll music at the center of our community- it's at the very center of our whole culture and our whole way of life and that's as solid as rock 'n' roll is solid- it's solid. It's right at the core, and it's held together by plenty of weed, weed and music, that's what holds us together, and that's what inspires us to go on no matter what happens. Bands like Guardian Angel, and the Up, and Detroit, these are the real power at the center of our struggle, they're what helps us survive and grow, and I think even though we all know that already, we can't ever forget it because it's real. Bands bringing their economic power and their music power back to the people, and just do that, so we can be here like this, and see who we are, and how many of us there are, and what we can do with each other to bring about change and get what we need for our community and each of us in the community. And that's what it's Power for the People

So, let me get off here so Mitch and Detroit and everybody can be stompin' and gettin' down and carryin' on, and I know that you can dig that! See you all at the community dinner tomorrow night at the Conspiracy and see you all on the streets- rockin'! 

-John Sinclair

Photo Caption: Scott Bailey of the Up