A wonderful Wavy Gravy story

From Jack Radey, who heard my interview with Wavy Gravy on the radio last night (posted here with his permission):

David,

I heard the name Denise Kaufman mentioned tonight, and just wanted you to know that Denise was one of those arrested at Sproul Hall in December, 1964, as part of the Free Speech Movement, was a member of the WEB DuBois Club in Berkeley, and was about the cutest person in the Free Speech Movement. When the cops arrested her, she went limp, like a lot of us, but the cops for some reason thought it would be fun to dislocate both of her elbows.

I have got to see this movie [Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie] (hasn’t come to Eugene yet I think).

I only had one encounter with Wavy, though no doubt we were in some of the same places at the same time. Mine was during the spring of 1985. I had been one of the three FSM veterans who had been central to putting on the 20th Anniversary gathering of the Free Speech Movement, a week long series of events. Mike Rossman and I had been thinking along the lines of stirring up the campus, in order to have troops to throw out into the streets when Reagan invaded Nicaragua, which looked likely in the near future. Well, dig up the ground, spread some bullshit around, sow some seeds, and… what sprang up in the spring but the Anti-Apartheid movement! We giggled a little, but were quite tickled at this development. It’s not like we were taking credit for it, but felt like proud grandparents.

Any rate, at some point, I forget the details, the cops decided to move in on the encampment on the steps of Sproul [Plaza] to haul the people away. I believe they hauled them first into Sproul, then out the back and put them in a bus. A bunch of us were standing in front of the bus, witnessing the treatment of the arrestees, and I noticed an older guy (I wasn’t the only greybeard present) with a clown nose and green coveralls on. Great, I thought, just what we need in a tense situation, a clown. The cops were freaked out. They were campus police, mostly pretty young, and they had learned their jobs during what must have seemed like The Big Sleep. Like in 1964, they were bumped-up traffic attendants, sheep dogs who were used to herding docile sheep, who one day woke up and discovered the sheep had turned into wolves. They were shitting their britches collectively, and a very nervous woman lieutenant was trying to figure out how to get the bus out from behind Sproul and away, and there were about 50 of us in the way showing some sign of not being willing to move.

Then the clown nose walked over to the bus, folded his arms and sat down in front of its right front tire. The lieutenant knew who he was, “Oh no, Wavy, don’t do this, please don’t do this, come on!” The students, whose education had not included watching non-violence in action in the Civil Rights Movement all during their formative years (these poor deprived kids missed ALL the good stuff), didn’t know what to do. The cops dragged Wavy out of the way, and then tried to drive us away. I had a ball, being an old hand at street dancing with the repressive arm of the bourgeois state, standing in front of the advancing police clubs saying loudly and calmly, “Officer, are you trying to tell us to disperse? Why don’t you talk to us instead of swinging that club, come on, didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s not nice to hit people? Why don’t you take a couple of deep breaths, no one here is threatening you, you can’t make good decisions while you are all panicky and excited like that…” All the while backing as slowly as I possibly could. The poor cops were getting more and more flustered. If I’d had 20-30 old timers we could have stopped the damn thing, but the kids were mostly screaming and getting out of the way, no one wanted to sit down.

Wavy was lovely, though. Reminded me of a few older Quaker ladies I know, who get all excited and happy at the possibility of getting arrested…

Jack