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ALLEN GINSBERG
that makes us that much of a god, so if we've got the responsibility
to take power over the universe like that, or over the human universe,
we have to have the consciousness balanced sufficiently broadly to
make decisions which are not going to exterminate whales, or human
sensitives.
INT:
Have you read the "New Morning" statement, the Bernadine
Dorn statement? Did it change your attitude to.ward Weathermen
at all?
GINSBERG:
Mmm . . . No, I always felt sympathetic because I always
felt that they were sincere. I thought that they did fall into. what
the "New Morning" statement called the "military error" and the
maJCho
error of confusing guns with a phallus. I'm not really in a
position to criticize since they gave their bodies so painfully to what
they thought was necessary. They were like extremely sensitive to
the pain on the other side of the planet, and I think they were doing
the best they could, certainly doing better than the government. The
government is indulging in murderous violence on so vast a scale that
nobody's mind can contain it. That's why it's easy to headline the
Weatherman's bomb, lonely little bomb, lonely little antirobot bomb,
that wasn't intended for humans, even. I don't know if anybody's
got any answer that really will save us all. I don't.
INT:
Have you ever done things like what the Berrigans did, like
pouring blood on draft files?
GINSBERG:
I once threatened to send a paper bag full of shit up to
Time
magazine in 1958. No, just things like getting arrested with
Doctor Spock at Whitehall, blocking the steps.
If
we can all hold
it together, I think, if we can
all
hold it together, that means all of
us, you know - Weathermen to liberals to Panthers - I think large–
scale non-violent - non-violent against humans - active resistance,
civil disobedience might help edge the nation toward ending the war
and taking on a greater consciousness, but it would require a com–
plete community to do that. And would require trust to do it-it
would require acting out the new nation that we're talking about, or
that everybody - that
we
are talking about. . . . One problem in
mass groupings, mass assemblages, has been that, I think, it would
be necessary to call out grandmothers and babies. No.w grandmothers
and babies and middle-class folk could withstand the violence of the
police, or take it, or be martyred, or whatever, could prevent large–
scale carnage. But they can't do that if, in the large crowd, there are
police-agent
provocateurs
creating chaotic undisciplined violence–
insanity rages - or if there are political radicals insistent on forcing
their own apocalyptic fright on others to make a political confronta-
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