Pandemonium movie hayden how to#
Pandemonium movie hayden trial#

It was also interesting that Dellinger was seen by much of the country as Jewish (he even got a few anti-Semitic letters), and he enjoyed puffing a little grass with us every once in a while.

(Rennie was a swing vote on this issue.) We were the hairy, hedonistic hippies, they the tough-nosed, intellectual politicians. Our faction was composed of dopers they drank liquor. It’s no accident the two factions broke on religious grounds. Hayden, Davis, and Froines made up one force within the conspiracy Rubin, Weiner, and myself the opposing tendency.

Pandemonium movie hayden how to#

Both prisoners of war, we had opposite ideas about how to cope with the situation. He kept saying that I shouldn’t make such a fuss, just let them do what they had to do. Tom was happily fixing his assimilated hairdo in the mirror. The barber, himself a convict, had tears in his eyes. They stretched me on the barbershop floor. He wore his hair long for “political” reasons. Two guards had to drag me, handcuffed and in leg irons, down four flights of stairs.

I fought them every inch of the way, kicking, spitting, cursing. Now that prophecy was coming to collect its truth. “Tonight the guards will sheer or heads and sell the hair outside the prison wall,” I had said. In my pre-sentencing speech I had alluded to this symbolic act. The hour was approaching for our ritualistic haircuts. Later, after the verdict and when we were all in jail, another incident demonstrated Hayden’s ability to turn fellow comrades into objects. His reasoning was as cold-blooded as any I had ever heard. Tom’s position was that since Dave was a pacifist, he wanted to end up in jail anyway and we shouldn’t interfere.

Pandemonium movie hayden trial#

Jerry and I argued strongly for standing with Dave and not letting the trial proceed until he was released. Later that night we held out most important strategy meeting. As Dave got dragged off to jail, pandemonium broke out in the courtroom. During the most climactic moment of the trial, the judge, upset over a newspaper account of a Dellinger speech, ordered Dave’s bail terminated. Everyone but Tom more or less favored the idea, and he effectively torpedoed all efforts at unity. I wanted to see us harness all the focus and energy directed toward the trial into an all-embracing left organization. Tom and Jerry fought like the cartoon characters that shared their names, with the rest of us shuttling back and forth to hold our fragile unity together. He avoided all collective decisions where he could be outvoted. He had a movement reputation for sending others to face the cops while he ducked out the back door.

He made me thankful there was more than one foxhole on our side of the barricades. If all of us had that touch of arrogance needed to be activists, Hayden had a double scoop. He considered his work more important and made it clear at the beginning that he would not go off speaking or raise any money for the defense. Tom Hayden was the only central figure who claimed he did not want to be on trial.