Today's Stories

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 21, 2009

The Presidio Mutineers

Lindy Blake's Great Escape

By RANDY ROWLAND

Randy Rowland was one of 27 GIs imprisoned at the Presidio of San Francisco stockade who staged a non-violent protest in October, 1968. They were charged with mutiny by Army brass trying to suppress dissent. The first three “mutineers” to be court-martialed got sentences of 15, 14, and 16 years. The case was widely publicized and helped alert the country to the level of dissent among rank-and-file GIs. Less severe sentences were meted out in subsequent court-martials, and the first few were reduced on appeal.

It was 40 years ago. We were all young. Facing a potential death sentence for singing “We Shall Overcome,” the 27 “mutineers” held a meeting in the cell block of the Presidio Stockade. Everyone who could escape should, we decided. We were not cooperating with the Brass, not even to participate in their kangaroo court-martial.

Not long after, some of the Presido 27 did escape. Walter Pawlowski, the guy who stood up during our sit-down, to read our demands to the commandant, was one of the escapees. Keith Mather, one of the “9-For-Peace,” and the contact I was supposed to meet up with when I arrived in the stockade, was another. They were recognizable ringleaders in the stockade protest which became known as the Presidio Mutiny. They had good reason to leave. Even before the sit-down strike, both were already facing many years in prison for GI resistance to the US invasion and occupation of Viet Nam. Now they faced additional charges of mutiny, the most serious of military offenses. Military regulations simply say “there is no maximum sentence” for mutiny.

Later, Lindy Blake and I, both “mutineers,” were cell mates in the prison ward of the post hospital when the first mutiny sentences came down, for 14 and 16 years, given to the first two of the 27 to be court martialed. I was the third ringleader, sent in to the stockade by the movement after a guard had killed a prisoner. My mission had been to learn what was going on inside, and find out what could be organized to take the prisoners’ struggle to a higher level. Lindy was a free spirit from LA, a lanky, blond hippie dancing to his own tune through the stockade experience. He had refused to go to Viet Nam, and was facing five years at hard labor. He was quick to flash a grin, knew some yoga postions, and could sing all the words to every Bob Dylan song there ever was. In the photo of the sit down where Pawlowski stands up to read our demands, I can be seen directly behind him, with glasses on. Lindy sits in front of Pawlowski, arms linked with Mike Marino and Ricky Dodd, looking over his shoulder at the camera. 

Now we were in this cell together, with the mandate to escape if we could. Lindy and I decided this was as good a chance as we were likely to get. We were outside the fence, but heavily guarded. Our cement-walled cell was one of several lining both sides of a short corridor. A guard, who held the keys to each cell, was stationed in the corridor. Another guard manned his post outside a locked gate not far down the corridor, which separated the prison wing from the rest of Letterman General Hospital. A third guard, a rover, armed with a .45, patrolled back and forth outside, covering both sides of the prison wing. We had an outside window and decided the best escape was through its bars, so we arranged for a hack-saw blade to be smuggled in, and began to saw.     We only worked at night. One of us would stand watch at the cell door, straining at the barred inspection port to catch the first sight of an approaching guard. The other guy would saw, timing his efforts to correspond to the 5 or so minutes when the roving guard was on the other side of the building.

To cover the sound of sawing, whoever was watching at the cell door would call down the corridor, asking the guards to turn up their radio. It was San Francisco, 1969. The guards were young too, and at night they tended to sit on either side of the mesh that separated them, listening to the FM. If they were nice guys, they would turn up the music when asked, which kept them from hearing the sound of our saw blade working the metal bar. If they were jerks, the lookout at the cell door would loud-talk them, with non-stop begging or verbal abuse. Most of the time they would turn it up just to drown him out. If they didn’t, his constant nagging provided the sonic cover needed to mask the sound of sawing.

The bars were fairly big, and the going slow. Each morning, when we knocked off for the day, we’d fill in the saw marks with soap, then blend in the soap with dirt from the floor to make the bar look whole. It was tense work, stressful enough to give you the bad pit. If we were caught, it would mean many years of additional charges on top of all the years we already faced. We only had one chance to get this right, so we were determined, methodical, and very, very careful. Finally we had one cut completed, and began on the next. Our blade was already dull, but eventually we could take the big bar completely out of the window and then soap it back into place to cover our progress. Each dawn we’d fill in our night’s work with the bar of soap, dispose of the night’s debris, hide our saw blade and collapse wearily into our bunks to sleep until the turn-key would kick us awake for morning count.   

When we were about a week away from being done, I got a visit from the Catholic priest who served as my connection to the movement. “We’ve been talking it over, Randy,” he told me, “and we don’t think you should escape.” His reasoning was sound: the other recognizable ringleaders had already escaped. If I fled as well, those still in custody would be left with no solid connection to the movement. He had a moral argument as well. I had been sent into the stockade to organize the protest and if I ran away, those who had answered the call to resist would be left to face the drum roll alone. It was the moral equivalent of the captain being the last one off the sinking ship.  I wasn’t eager to spend my life in a penitentiary. I was young and newly married. I had put a lot of work and many tense nights into our escape plot. But I immediately knew that the priest was right. I couldn’t go. Back in the cell, I explained to Lindy my decision to stay, and pointed out as cheerfully as I could that there was nothing in the new situation that said that I couldn’t help him escape. So that night we started up our old routine, one at the cell door, one sawing at the window.

One time we thought that the plot was exposed. Thinking back, I can’t remember why we thought that, but to get rid of the evidence we ditched our hacksaw blade in a laundry hamper, hidden in our dirty sheets. Almost immediately we realized that we had panicked. But now our blade was across the corridor in a little utility room. Somehow we conned the turn-key into unlocking the cell to let one of us get into the utility room barely long enough to retrieve the blade, while the other distracted the guard momentarily. That clown act blows the top off any stress scale ever devised. Once back in the cell with our precious blade, and with the turn-key returned to his chair down the corridor, we danced wildly, between the bunks, out of our minds with fear and excitement. Even now, I can hardly believe we managed to retrieve our blade, but somehow we did, and the work went on.

Then one day, not too long before we figured to be done with our nightly sawing, the guards put another prisoner into the cell with us, a guy we didn’t know. Since we didn’t know him, and didn’t have contact with the general prison population to get anyone else to vouch for him, we decided not to risk the plot by bringing him in on it. His presence in the little cell added a whole new level of complexity to our efforts. We would be as boring as possible each evening, and he would eventually drift off to sleep. Once he was sound asleep, one of us would take the cell door position, and call down to the guards like usual, asking them to turn up the music. Only now, if they wouldn’t do it, we’d have to wait, because the plan B razz we had used in the past to cover the noise of sawing would most likely wake our cellmate. But often enough the guards would turn up their radio, and whoever was at the window, minding the rover outside, would begin to saw.    

The lookout at the door had to watch for the guards in the corridor, and keep another eye on our cellmate. This guy turned out to be a sound sleeper, and although he woke up a few times, he never discovered our plot. It was incredibly tense, with the lookout job the worst, all worry and no activity. Sawing through steel with a hacksaw blade is tough but the guy with the blade had only to saw and to keep an eye out for the rover. Somehow, the act of sawing seemed to dissipate the tension. On the other hand, the lookout had to put himself into a state of hyper alertness, to watch our sleeping cellmate, watch for the turn-key in the corridor, and count the minutes before the rover would most likely return to our side of the building. We took turns in each position, not so much to relieve the sawman’s aching fingers, but to relieve the lookout’s stress.

Progress slowed down, but eventually the big night came. I don’t know how we were able to bore our cellmate to sleep. Finally, at the appointed hour, in the wee hours of a dark night, we waited for the rover to head to the other side of the building. Lindy stripped, to avoid having his clothes hang up on the jagged metal. I helped stuff him through the hole. He dropped to the ground below. I handed down a pillowcase full of broken window glass and other debris, threw him his pants, and he scampered off, naked, into the darkness, sack under his arm, pants over his shoulder, heading for a pre-arranged place where a car was supposed to be waiting to pick him up. That vision of Lindy, sprinting nude into the night, making a break for freedom, was my last look at him for many years. 

Soaping the big bar back into place, I stuffed his bunk to make it look like somebody was in it. The longer it took for the guards to notice he was gone, the greater Lindy’s chances of making good his get-away. Pleased, but already missing the company of my comrade, I sat for a while on the edge of my bunk. We had pulled it off! Filled with both a big sense of victory and a huge empty place of sadness, I finally curled up and went to sleep.    The next morning, as usual, the turn-key opened the cell door and came in, kicking each bunk to rouse the prisoners for morning count. At night they just periodically shine a flashlight through the inspection port to count bodies sleeping in bunks, but each morning they made you get up. This particular morning started off as usual. The guard kicked our cellmate’s bunk, “Get up, get up!” he barked. The cellmate stirred. The guard walked over to Lindy’s bunk and kicked it, repeating his command. Then he turned to my bunk. The rasp of his key in the lock had put me instantly awake, but I feigned sleep. He kicked my bunk and I pretended to be groggy. Lindy had been gone for hours, but there was no way I could know for sure that he had been picked up by our co-conspirators on the outside. Determined to stall as long as possible as a rear-guard action, I took extra time waking up. Finally I was dangling on the edge of my bunk when the guard turned back to Lindy, who had not moved. Kicking his bunk with greater force, the guard yelled “Get up!” and yanked back Lindy’s covers, only to realize there was no body in the bed.

Turning to me with a nervous look, the guard growled, “How many prisoners are supposed to be in this cell?”  “I don’t know, you’re the turn-key,” I shrugged.

Nervously looking around the cell, he retreated back into the corridor to consult the gate guard. I could hear them swearing down the hall. In a couple minutes they both came into the cell, a violation of prison protocol for the gate guard to come inside the gate. They didn’t know what to do. The roster listed three prisoners, but the cell looked intact. If they reported a missing prisoner, and there was only supposed to be two of us, then they would be laughingstocks, at best. If they failed to report a missing prisoner, on the assumption that the paperwork was wrong, they would be in deep shit.     They nervously talked to each other while looking around the cell. After all those nights of high anxiety, I was calm. The cellmate really didn’t know what was going on, but prisoners always enjoy seeing guards get some of their own medicine, so we just silently sat on our bunks enjoying the show. The guards were ramping up, searching the cell now. There wasn’t really any place for a prisoner to hide, but they searched anyway. They looked under all the bunks. One of them walked over, picked up a towel off the floor, as if he expected to see Lindy hiding beneath it. They were really nervous now, sure there was supposed to be three prisoners, but with no explanation for what might have happened.

They went back out and consulted the rover. Soon enough all three were in the cell, demanding to know where the third prisoner was. The cellmate truly didn’t know, and I played dumb, offering them nothing to ease their situation. The rover, who is never supposed to come into a prisoner area with his weapon, was nevertheless smarter than the other two and started methodically shaking the bars, determined to find an explanation. When he came to the soaped bar, it pulled off in his hand. He pivoted, wild-eyed, face contorted, steel bar held out like it was some sort of vile object. All three guards cried out like they’d been stung, and stampeded for the cell door, trying to get through all at once, in their rush to sound the alarm. We were left behind to placidly eat our breakfast, in a cell with a gaping hole. It was a long time later when somebody higher up the chain of command finally ordered the remaining prisoners be moved to a different, more secure cell.  

Lindy had indeed been picked up at the designated place that night, and was spirited away to Vancouver, Canada, where he joined Mather and Pawlowski and a whole community of GI resisters living in exile.

     
Lindy’s Great Escape, Part 2

It was almost exactly forty years ago that I helped Lindy escape from jail. Now Lindy lays dying in this cabin. His grand daughter is softly playing the old piano. Propped up in a hospital bed, in his own living room, Lindy is surrounded by windows that look out on the trees, mostly evergreens, which ring his giant garden. In his line of vision are rhododendrons in bloom, sagging fences and hand-hewn sheds. A black tail deer stands mid-day in the yard, accepting the generosity of family and strangers who have gathered for this passing.  

Lindy’s 3-corner fool’s hat, its velvet somewhat faded with age, hangs on a hook near the bed. He lies quietly, mostly sleeping, but arousing once in a while to flash his grin at some new arrival here to pay him respects. Lindy’s time is measured in days, if not hours. The hospital opened him up, saw he was a goner, and merely sutured him back up. They released him to spend his last days in the place he loves, among those who love him.     Both of his sons are here with their families. There is a scattering of friends sitting in the yard. Neighbors drop in with food and supplies. I notice that the women seem to curtsey or bow to Lindy when they approach, flashing mischievous grins. They treat him with the tenderness of old lovers, which—as it turns out—is pretty much universally true.

This place is a hippie’s dream of back to nature. The house posts are pealed logs, some found on the beach nearby, and some harvested from this patch of land on this remote Canadian Island. Walls and ceilings are unfinished tongue and groove. The plywood floors are painted in wild shades of blue and purple. Water comes from rain barrels on the roof, electricity from solar panels. The room is toasty, heated by the warm rays of the spring sun, and a wood stove.    Lindy told me he knew in his heart for a long time that something was wrong with him. Then a few months back, part of a tree he was felling struck him in the chest. After that he attributed his escalating pain to the blow, not to cancer. Finally Lindy drove himself to the hospital, and now, only a week or so later, we gather to bid him farewell. 

In response to my call that Lindy was dying, Keith Mather, one of the key players in the Presidio Mutiny flew up from San Francisco. Together we drove north from Seattle, over the border, taking three ferries to this island, where there are no policemen, to stand by our comrade in his final hours.    One of the women who was with him during his short stay in the hospital tells us a classic Lindy story. At one point after receiving his grim news, he held his breath, she told us, pretending to be dead. She fell for the gag, until he laughed and said “Got you!” “I was yelling at him, ‘You BASTARD!’” she related in her Quebec French accent, “I was so mad at him. The nurses must have thought I was crazy.”
When Lindy called me from the hospital, to say his end was near, he remarked in that whimsical way of his, “Randy, it seems like I’m always escaping and leaving you behind.”

As I sit beside him now, I’m thinking that the significance of a person’s demise is commensurate with the value of their life. Sharing the prison cell with Lindy, I learned lessons from him that I have treasured and held true ever since. I’m up here now because he sat down then. I’m sure that each person holding death-watch in this hand-made cabin, and many who are not right here, can testify how they, too, were touched and enriched by rubbing alongside this amazing spirit, my old comrade.    My mental image of Lindy has always been of a lithe young man dressed in a three-corner fool’s hat, dancing gently to his own tune, through a happy crowd on a warm summer’s day. He never lost that flop-eared grin, he never ceased being a free spirit.

On April 9, 2009, forty years after he escaped from the Presidio, Lindy Blake, Presidio 27 mutineer, lover of many, father of two, passed away in his home on Cortes Island, at the mouth of Desolation Sound, in Canada. Keith Mather and I stood at his bedside and sang “We Shall Overcome” one last time for him. I wrote the following while sitting by his bedside that day:

Free Spirits Will Always Escape

Its me, Lindy, the one who helped you peck your way
From the cell so many years ago.

I  have come, so you may take flight again.
I was your co-conspirator then and I call you now,
My hummingbird, my jailbird, my escapee.
Hover about in the garden. Check the flowers.
Peer in the window from time to time,
Then flit on, as you will.

I’m here to remove our secret "bar of soap."
Here’s my hand, Brother, step up.
Wiggle through the hole to freedom.

I have come for you.
When the guards turn their backs,
I’ll give you the signal, and once you’re gone,
I’ll replace the bar to mask your retreat.

Free Spirits will always escape.

Randy Rowland lives in Seattle, where he works as a registered nurse at a trauma center. He co-founded and is a producer for PepperSpray Productions, a radical video collective. He can be reached at randyro@comcast.net

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