Demonstration or Spectacle as Example, As Communication, or How to Make a March / Spectacle

By Allen Ginsberg (Nov. 19, 1965)

The following are specific suggestions for organizing a march and turning marchers on to their roles in the demonstration.

1. Masses of flowers—a visual spectacle—especially concentrated in the front lines. Can be used to set up barricades, to present to Hell’s Angels, police, politicians, and press and spectators whenever needed or at parade’s end. Masses of marchers can be asked to bring their own flowers. Front lines should be organized and provided with flowers in advance.

2. Front lines should be the psychologically less vulnerable groups. The Women for Peace or any other respectable organization, perhaps a line of poets and artists, mothers, families, professors. This should also be announced (publicized in advance).

3. Marchers should bring crosses, to be held up in front in case of violence; like in the movies dealing with Dracula. (This for those who use crosses or Jewish stars.)

4. Marchers who use American flags should bring those: at least one front row of American flags and myriad in the spectacle.

5. Marchers should bring harmonicas, flutes, recorders, guitars, banjos and violins. Those who don’t use crosses or flags.) Bongos and tambourines.

6. Marchers should bring certain children’s toys (not firecrackers or balloons which cause noise hysteria) which can be used for distracting attackers: such as sparklers, toy rubber swords, especially the little whirling carbon wheels which make red-white-blue sparkles, toy soldiers.

7. In case of heavy anxiety, confusion or struggle in isolated spots marchers could be led in
   Sit Down
   Mass Calisthenics
   In case of threat of attack marchers could intone en masse the following mantras:

• The Lord’s Prayer

• Three Blind Mice (sung)

• OM (AUM) long breath in unison

• Star Spangled Banner

• Mary Had a Little Lamb (spoken in unison)

8. More interesting Zen/Spectacle SIGNS

• As In Oakland So In Vietnam

• Everybody’s Made Of Meat

• Nobody Wants To Get Hurt—Us Or Them

• Everybody’s Wrong Including U.S.

• Hell’s Angels Vietcong Birch Society

• DON’T FLIP

• We Love You Too

9. Candy bars carried by marchers to offer Hell’s Angels and police.

10. Marchers encouraged to carry copies of the Constitution if they have them; or can buy them.

11. Little paper halos to offer Angels, police and spectators and patriots.

12. A row of marchers with white flags and many white flags in mass.

13. Those who have movie cameras bring them and take pictures of spectacle or any action. (To combine for documentary film which could be used in court in case of legal hassles later, and also to circulate for propaganda and profits.) Monitors who can should have cameras.

---

OTHER MORE GRANDIOSE POSSIBILITIES.

14. Corps of student newsmen to interview newsmen, propagandize and soften and charm TV crews etc.

15. Small floats or replicas in front:

• Christ with sacred heart and cross (invite church groups to prepare)

• Buddha in meditation (invite Zen people to come march and meditate on floats)

• George Washington, Lincoln, Whitman, etc. (float or living masquerade)

• Thoreau behind bars (float)

• Hell’s Angels float—with halos, happy, praying (no ugly provocative caricature)

• Birch Society float (old ladies in tennis sneakers)

• Dixieland Band float dressed as Hitler Stalin Mussolini Napoleon and Caesar (See Universal Soldier song)

16. At first sign of disturbance, public address systems swing into vast sound to loud Beatles “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and marchers instructed to dance (if not doing calisthenics or Lord’s Prayer). (These could be schematized as strategy 1, 2, 3, etc. for diverting crowd and angels from violence.)

17. The Mime Troupe in costume a block down the march, walking doing pantomime.

18. Sound trucks with Bay area rock ‘n’ roll bands every 2 blocks, Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans, etc. (These bands have their own sound systems.) Family Dogg people might be able to arrange this. This scheme to pick up on the universal youth rock’n’roll protest of Dylan, “Eve of Destruction,” “Universal Soldier,” etc. and concretize all that consciousness in the parade.

19. Front (or toward front)—toy army in costume, Civil War or Revolutionary War or WW I uniforms and signs:
    NO MORE
    LEAVE ME ALONE

---

Addenda: Pre-March Propaganda

1. Muslims, unions etc. all invited to join inside the masses.

2. Leaflets with above instructions to marchers how to channel their anxiety and respond to attack.

3. Daily delegations to Hell’s Angels to talk to them, pestering them in advance.

4. Petitions and letters and news releases to papers setting tone of march: Petitions to [Gov.] Brown, open letter to Hell’s Angels, one news release (We’re NOT going to fight); open letters to Young Republicans, Democrats, Birchers, Army, Johnson etc. All the propaganda suggested at Tuesday meeting—conferences with Oakland police to force them to keep peace.

5. Emphasize in propaganda TRUST THE MARCHERS to be hip, calm and tranquil with a sense of humor and not get sidetracked into frustration/personal violence.

6. Perhaps as propaganda, an imaginary ladies corps to pull down Hell’s Angels pants in case of attack, or a (theoretical) corps of trained fairies to seduce them in mid-battle. This is a sort of press release joke to lighten the atmosphere.

---

FIRST PUBLISHED: Berkeley Barb (Nov. 19, 1965) pp. 1, 4. Reprinted: Liberation, vol. 10, no. 10 (Jan. 1966); Massimo Teodori, ed., The New Left (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

---