bs

Se SNA ea

Black power explained

BLACK POWER by Stokely Car-
michael and Charles V. Hamil-
ton (Random House, $2.25)

“ Rege finest hour will be when
the Blacks realize they
have Black Power.

During Booker T. Washing-
ton’s time, Black and white
people acclaimed him as Ameri-
ca’s greatest Negro educator.
Stokely Carmichael exposes him
as an Uncle Tom who steered
Blacks away from politics,
Stokely says Booker thought
that Negroes should learn trades
and that politics was none of
their business..

Most likely Stokely will be
called something else after he’s
gone but there is one difference
between Stokely and Booker:
both Blacks and whites are
afraid of him and his ideas.

Stokely refuses to tie himself
to an ideology. He is looking
for something new and hopes to
find it while working in the
Black ghettos not in the halls
and homes of Black and white

liberals or the middle class. .

After reading this book, no mat-
ter what you thought of him
before, you’ll have to agree on
one thing: this man loves his
people.

This brings to my mind an-
other great Black man, Malcolm
X who lived in Stokely’s time,
but strangely enough and too
obviously, ‘he is not mentioned
in Black Power.

Stokely talks of local elec-
tions and how the power of the
Black vote can effect the out-
come of an election. There is no
overall political plan for Ameri-
ca as a whole. He talks of pock-
ets of Black Power in big cities
and small communities.

This will disappoint the arm-
chair revolutionary who talks
and solves the world problems
of starvation and want while
eating and drinking lavishly.

Stokely is thinking and work-
ing on the level of his people,

not to. say that this is a low
level. In fact it is the highest
level a leader can reach,

Too many of us lose the peo-
ple we want to help by getting

too involved in sophisticated
theories that are far above the
people. :

The liberal (Black and white)
will never understand men like
Stokely _ because Carmichael
undresses them in public and the
white and Black liberal can’t
function in public without at
least a. fig leaf. :

I like the book because it
doesn’t go into a lot of W.A.S.P.
theories. True, on one hand he
says he has to have a new plan
and theory and on the other he
gets trapped into using the same
old tired methods such as vot-
ing. There’s nothing new about
that. I think Stokely will find
himself in a trap if he thinks
Black votes in a community are
going to change things. Voting
only gets you a piece of the rot-
ten capitalist pie.

The reason for Stokely’s con-
fusion in helping his | people is
that he has no help from his
white brother. If the progressive
whites would work in the poor
white communities, awakening
their people to the injustice that
they suffer, showing them that
hate for your fellow Black man

Play blows fresh

ENTLEMEN BE SEATED, a
white-face minstrel show,
Toronto Workshop - Productions’
first offering on its new stage at
12 Alexander St. (behind Maple
Leaf Gardens) is probably the
first time the Negro position in
U.S. history has been examined
in a theatre through what could
be described as Marxist criteria.
To call it a play about civil
rights underestimates its broad-
er probing of the Negro’s eco-
nomic poverty, political exploi-
tation and social discrimination.
With the U.S. Civil War and
Reconstruction periods as its
area, the play, by the Canadian-
based Guayana writer, Jan Ca-
rew, with creative improviza-
tions by the Workshop’s actors
and director, George Luscombe,
blows a fresh breeze into our
understanding of the Negro’s
place in modern times.

We can relive the debates of
the Lincoln period between
Thaddeus Stevens’ left-wing lib-
eralism and the go-slow, white
supremacist politicians around
Lincoln. Abe Lincoln, indeed,
emerges as a cautious, pontifi-

JANUARY 26, 1968-'PACIFIC TRIBUNE Page io! oi!)
aman ae =

cating, white knight scared of
his charger.

The debunking is timely, helps
us understand the forces which,
for a century, have prepared to-
day’s American crisis.

There is, further, the deadly
parallel between the Confeder-
ate Booth’s conspiracy to kill
Lincoln and the more recent
anti-Kennedy hysteria in Texas.

Workshop shows are never
run-of-the-mill in direction (ori-
ginality, experimentation, audi-
ence rapport) in acting (mime,
impressionism, characterization)
or design (Nancy Jowsey’s vivid
costumes, the changing kaleido-
scope projection, the fexible
props, the metal framework set-
ting).

Mr. Luscombe’s actors. work
within a stage discipline that
unites the emotion with the idea.
Inspired, they inspire their au-
dience. Few companies create so
conscientiously as a unit, so that
we hesitate to single out any
member for special mention.
Playing individual and multiple
roles are Geoffrey Read, Ray

elan, Jack Boschulte, Fran

‘ite

G

only helped the man on top to
exploit both Black and white.

But strangely enough the
whites leave their fighting to
fat union. leaders and flunky
politicians, :

I think Stokely is hoping t6
organize the people outside of
the political system, and regard-
less of who is in, the people’s
organization will wield the
power. Negroes shied away from
the word Black. During slavery
it was forced on him to be
ashamed of his color and heri-
tage. You can control a man
much easier if you can deprive
him of his heritage.

Stokely and Malcolm X give
the Black man back his roots.
They told him Black was beau-
tiful. Power is nothing new. You
have to have power to walk. The
difference in this case is when
you say Black Power. This is
new. It is new to Black and
white. They can’t imagine a
Black man with power because
they are taught that he is only
here for the white’s scorn or
comfort.

Stokely moves out of neces-
sity. The Black people would die
if there were only Black leaders
like Martin Luther King. King
keeps the white man happy and
pacifies the Black. Stokely stirs
them. He stirs them and makes
them do things for themselves.

King asks for freedom and
equality. He even begs with hat
in hand. Stokely says you earn
your freedom and equality by
taking. it.

After reading this book if any-
one is confused or afraid of
Black Power, then he has never
wanted the Blacks to have the
right to determine their own
way of gaining what they think
is freedom. He may be wrong
but he deserves the right to
make his own mistakes.

There is no white nation in the
world who has the monopoly on
doing right. It’s still a game of
trial and error. Let’s hope it will
stay that way. — L. O. Johnson

breeze

cois Klanfer, Milo Ringham,
Peter Faulkner, Tom Fisher, Di-
ane Grant and Larry Matin.

. There are some weaknesses.
The guitar, banjo, tambourine
and jug band often drown out
the song lyrics, so that we can-
not follow their meaning. The
play, furthermore, lacks a
strong climax, an emotional im-
pact to carry us out into the
night; it ends but it isn’t really
over.

The new quarters provide a
much larger and loftier stage
area than the Fraser Ave. cellar,
and a larger and more comfort-
able audience area surrounding
the stage on three sides, though
still intimate and close to the
action, as well as a roomy lobby.
(There is still much to be done
—a matter of money).

Gentlemen Be Seated deserves
large audiences. It should be
seen particularly in the U.S.

One puzzle: Where were To-
ronto’s first-nighters on this im-
portant first night? Half the seats
were unoccupied.
»o9. =7Martin Stone »

fist PRE DALS

AS AN old ‘square’ I don’t
consider myself quali-

fied to inform readers
of this column or anyone else
just what the Hippies ‘be-
lieve in” Up until very re-
cently it has been current
practice by those who pres-
sume to ‘sit in judgment’ on
the Hippies, to use all the
derogatory adjectives in the
dictionary to air their ignor-
ant distatste of the Hippie
movement—then consider the
matter closed.

Vancouver’s Mayor, Tom
‘Terriffic’ Campbell, tried out
a few of these unpleasant ad-
jectives when he ‘ordered’ the
Hippie _ paper ‘Georgia
Straight’ suspended, only to
discover that instead of the
matter being closed, a whole
swarm of fundamental civil
and democratic rights began
to buzz around the mayor-
ality ears.

True, ‘Georgia Straight’
did at times use a varied as-
sortment of those ‘four-letter’
words on which our highly
hypocritical society pretends
to frown — while it uses the
Same words and worse 24-
hour day—sotto voce. Mean-
time ‘GS’ circulation figures
zoomed in a few short weeks
from a couple of thousand to
some 60,000, indicating that
people were more interested
in what the Hipplies had to

_ Say than how they ‘punctuat-

ed’ their mode of saying it.
Moreover while ‘Georgia
Straight’ was in the Camp-
bell ‘doghouse,’ the Hippies
sold the ‘PT’ on the streets
and proved themselves good
salesmen.

Now as to the main ques-
tion, what do the Hippies ‘be-
lieve in?’ That is best an-
swered by summarizing a
whole. lot of things they don’t
believe ‘in.

They don’t believe in kill-
ing their fellow human beings
—perhaps the most danger-
ous of all don’ts in an insane
Establishment, feverishly get-
ting set to blow itself and
the world we live in to hell-
and-gone in a nuclear holo-
caust. The Hippies sure don’t
believe in that ‘way-of-life.’

They also don’t believe in
conformity—in dress, habits,
fixed ideas or other long-
established norms of human
behaviour, which serve no
better purpose than to hogtie
the living creative genius of
Homo Sapiens.

Nor do they believe that
our modern education sys-
tem, operating like a convey-
or belt in a sausage from kin-
dergarten to university, real-

_ the ‘brink’ with each revolu-

ly ‘educates.’ They don’t b&
lieve that the human mind,
like a sausage, is something
to be ‘filled’ with whatevel
ingredients some body %
Scholastic ‘squares’ may %
decide.

They also don’t believe that
the Hippies—or any one els?
not sitting on top of the 5%
cial pile can get an equ
break in our highly-commeél
cialized news media — hencé
the projection of their oW2
‘underground’ press, foul |
letter words and all —thé
latter open to various trans
lations, such as telling thé
boss—‘Bugger You.’

They don’t believe they a
society’s ‘drop outs,’ but 14
ther that society itself aS 2 |
whole, already stands reveal:
ed as a gigantic ‘drop out
from civilized behaviour.
They have two horrible
World Wars, plus a whole —
series of smaller wars, plus |
U.S. genocide in Vietnam — :
with official Canada’s a;
proval, to confirm that ‘dont

Perhaps from all thos
things the Hippies ‘don’t be:
lieve’ in, and the above by
no means exhausts the sub-
ject, the reader will draw his
(or her) own conclusions eet |
the positive side of the Hip-
pie movement; one at least—
that it cannot be ‘wish
away’ by vitriolic name-call- f
ing. It is a feature of a chang
ing world which us ‘squares
have just got to get accus-
tomed to, whether we like it
or not.

My next-door neighbor,
one of the founders and first
editor of ‘Georgia Straight’
has just published another
book of his poems, this’ oné
entitled “Circle Without
Centre.”

To some readers this book-
let may appear to be a bit
‘far out,’ difficult to ‘dig,’ but
if they really try—its mes-
Sage comes through, strong
and clear. All humanity is on
that “Circle Without Centre,”
revolving faster and ever
faster, with its clinging ants
slipping closer and closer to

tion of its accelerating speed.
Soon, ‘Without Centre,’ un-
less its mad speed is checked,
is shattered by the pull of
gravity—and oblivion.

If the Hippies believe, and
who is to blame them if they
do, that we old ‘squares’ of
an older generation have
made one hell of a mess of
this old world, we don’t have
much to prove them wrong.
It was us and not they who
put the ‘Circle’ off, ne a

Ss. :
SLI ets
Sl: SES SF