Why my parrents got arrested with Dorothy Day and how it changed my life for ever..... Garrick Beck
Frank Cordaro
From: Garrick Beck <gar...@nets.com>
Date: Sat, Dec 25, 2010
A Christmas chapter from Garrick Beck's memoir, "Generation"
(Bio info on Garrick, his parrents and thier connection with Dorothy
Day below.....)
Dorothy
The breezes of the Cold War between The Imperial Soviet
and The American Empire blew chills into the rosy-cheeked smiles of
the Nineteen-fifties.
Just when we Americans thought we had figured out how to
live the good life because we had some elementary security and
well-being, and televised entertainment in the living room of every
home every evening, here come these honchos from the power elite
telling us we're going to have to build bomb shelters. Every building
in New York has to have one. Or designate a cellar or basement room as
"the bomb shelter". Signs are going to be posted in public buildings,
to direct people.
Not only that but the whole city - New York - the Empire
City - is going to practice taking shelter together. You didn't have
to be an Einstein to figure out that hiding in the downstairs hallway
of the school, or the boiler room of the apartment building, or some
designated office basement is not much protection from the heat of one
of those hydrogen atom explosives. Still at the sound of the sirens
it's going to be "Everyone off the streets!” and, in theory at least,
everyone down into the basements in all five Boroughs of New York
City. Anyone found outside will be arrested. No, I am not kidding.
This was the Cold War.
At the same time in a little house on Chrystie Street,
just off the Bowery in Lower Manhattan dwelt a small band of Catholics
devoted to service to the poor. They took vows of poverty, and lived
among the people who they served, helped with health problems,
clothed, fed and sheltered at their "House of Hospitality."
They published a newspaper called "The Catholic Worker"
and that's what they were called themselves, Catholic Workers. They
also had a farm in the countryside where they could retreat or
rehabilitate. The group was founded in the 1930’s by a woman who had
converted from Protestantism and helped to begin this independent
sect.
But twenty-five years later, here she is, Dorothy Day,
telling people that these bomb tests and shelter drills are an
abomination, an offense to the eyes of God.
She and the Catholic Worker people are planning a public
protest. A young anarchist (and marvelous poet) Jackson Mac Low had
been helping serve at the Catholic Worker's kitchen. Jackson was a
performer in my parents’ Off-Broadway theatre company, The Living
Theatre. He had been cast in Racine’s Phedre and called in to say he
would have to miss a rehearsal for the demonstration. And he invited
my mother, Judith Malina, and others from the Theatre to join him.
So Jackson and Judith from the Living Theatre joined the
small band of Catholic Workers publicly outside City Hall when the
sirens started howling. The whole cityscape emptied of people. It got
very quiet.
Then the police came. They ordered everyone to leave City
Hall Park and take shelter. And when no one left, they arrested all of
the demonstrators.
Over the next several years these annual demonstrations -
on the day of the yearly shelter drill - grew in size; at the first
only a dozen people, then the second year just a few over two dozen,
then hundreds, then a thousand; by the early Sixties many thousands.
Everyone couldn't be arrested. There was a great deal of communication
at these yearly demos, where people isolated in the long sleepy
Fifties began to meet and discover each other. The protests got too
big to be contained; people all over the city weren't taking shelter,
and the Shelter Drills came to an end.
It was from this burgeoning scene that many of the more
famous "1960's" peace action and civil rights groups sprouted and
grew.
But the second of these many shelter-drill demonstrations
was the one that affected me most. The entire group, all of whom had
been arrested, was sentenced to - and served - thirty days in the
city's prisons. Judith spent her time in the Women's House of
Detention, a towering brown building at the north end of Greenwich
Village, and my father, Julian Beck, did his in the Bronx repository
affectionately – dreadfully - nicknamed "the Tombs."
Let me tell you, I woke up with a perfect understanding
that my own government can be seriously wrong.
I knew that my parents were both kind, caring people who
were always teaching me, showing me right from wrong, encouraging me
to do good; and that they had done nothing bad -- except speak up for
what they thought was right and good for everyone. And the government,
"my government," was putting them in jail.
I woke up right then and there.
I have been skeptical ever since of government authority.
Of bomb testing. Of the usefulness of jails. Or of getting justice in
the courts.
Julian wrote me regularly from jail, long pencil-printed letters.
Judith's thirty days in state custody were spent in a cell
with Dorothy Day.
I was mercifully sent to summer camp before sentencing
time. The whole thing was difficult enough even from a distance.
During Dorothy's stay in the Woman's House of Detention
she told the other "girls" - that's what the prisoners there were all
called - Dorothy told them she'd be back to visit them come Christmas
Eve.
And indeed she did. She - and the Catholic Workers -
organized a group of Christmas carolers to sing on the blustery eve of
Christmas to the six tall sides of the woman's prison: the group
moving from adjacent to the Jefferson Courthouse on Sixth Avenue to
the traffic island in between Sixth and Greenwich, then onto the busy
sidewalk of Greenwich Ave. itself, next up along Patchin Place and one
last stop by the alleyway where an odd bend in the architecture faced
the bricks of the back of the Courthouse.
They had mimeographed texts of the carols but most of the
people there knew the songs already. Of course Julian and Judith were
there, and some of their friends from the theatre. And myself. This
was where I was exposed really for the first time to Christianity. I
had to ask about what the lines in the songs meant or what the stories
in the songs were about. And I saw, plain as day, plain as the crisp
cold air of Christmas night that these sweet people were singing to
let the inmates know something very deep and simple and beautiful. And
a few of the prisoners hollered back requests, some asked for pop
tunes and the choir obliged as best it could.
And the next year the little choir grew a bit larger and
came back again. Some of the same prisoners were still inside; some
were in again on new charges. Most, statistics showed, were in for
prostitution or heroin.
For years I spent Christmas Eve's caroling there. I
learned all the verses to Good King Wenceslas. The "girls" came to
expect us, they lit and waved matches, they hollered "We love you" 's
from inside the glass brick windows. Some of the prisoners who'd been
released joined us. They were out, had jobs, families, but they came
down here, hoping to find us, to sing.
It must have been about the fifth or sixth year we were
doing this, while we were along the Greenwich Avenue side, facing the
main entrance of the prison when one of the doors swung open and a
portly woman, a woman with many keys came out. She was in uniform and
she slowly went to the corner and crossed the street approaching us.
When she stopped and stood next to us she had our
attention. She spoke carefully, even kindly. "I know you mean well,
but you have no idea how upset you make the girls. They cry and cry
after you're gone. You remind them of all the things they can't have
out here, all their loved ones that they miss.
"Inside, we give them a nice Christmas program. Those who
want to sing the songs can sing them. They get an extra nice meal and
then to bed. Then you come and all that peaceful quiet turns into
crying and sobbing all night long.
"I know," she continues, "I've been here years and I've
seen the difference these times you've been coming. If you care about
these girls, let them get their rest."
There was a moment as quiet as the twinkle of a star.
Then Dorothy was speaking, in fact agreeing that we all
cared about these girls very much and that that's why we were all
here. "In fact the very best Christmas present we could give these
girls is some time with their families."
She leaned just slightly closer toward the Warden. "You
know, you could let those girls go home for Christmas. That would stop
their crying. That's what Jesus Christ would do if He had those keys."
In the space between moments I saw Dorothy the Saint
extending like an elder Mary the true meaning of the Blessed Heart,
and the Warden uniformed in Satan's army, chained herself by
Beelzebub's keys.
For a moment she smiles a tiny smile at Dorothy, then her
face regains her sternness and she looks down and shakes her head
"no." Slowly she backs up, quickly shaking her head. She's frightened.
She saw more than she had wanted to see. She re-crosses the street
and, still shaking her head in broad series of "no's, she relocks
herself into the prison building.
It was clear to me from that moment, that the inner truth
of religion wasn't bounded by the various sects we call Christianity,
Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Anyother-ism. No, the truths that
spiritual insight gives are boundless and belong to anyone who gives
them voice.
For months afterward I hummed the Christmas carol tunes. I
got in trouble for humming them in the hallway at Hebrew school. I
still hum them. Good King Wenceslas looked out da da da da daa
daaaa....
For years I went back every Christmas Eve. Even long after
my parents had migrated to Europe. Then, one year they tore that rat
hole of a prison down. No doubt they built another one somewhere else,
but as I write these words a beautiful community garden full of trees,
flowers, benches - open to the public - rests upon that spot.
Dorothy's life has been chronicled by a number of
religious and socialist writers and if the Catholic Church has enough
good sense, they'll recognize her as a Saint. I sure did, and she
still stands in that moment, tall as the centuries, shimmering in the
robe of bravery, gently, firmly speaking words that illuminate the
way.
Bylines for attached photos:
Christmas Eve, 1957. Christmas caroling at the prison with Dorothy.
Author, center, between Judith Malina, Julian Beck. Dorothy Day at far
right.
Garrick Beck's parrents at a peace demo in 1958
----------------------
A little bio info on Garrick Beck and how to get a hold of him below:
I was raised as a theatre-child in Off-Broadway's still-ongoing Living
Theatre. My parents were both intensely influenced by Dorothy, as was
I - at an early age. My mother, Judith Malina, as noted in the
memoir, was imprisoned in a cell with Dorothy for 30 days after
their shelter drill protest and arrest in 1957.
My memoir is really an accounting of what I think of as The New World
Culture which stands in stark contrast to The New World Order. The 50
true stories in the memoir recount tales from the anti-vietnam war
student movement, the back-to-the-land-movement, the West coast
grass-roots sponsored festivals of the late 60's and early 70's
(Vortex, Sky River, Buffalo Party, The Eugene Country Faires, etc.)
which have gone largely unreported because they were not
corporate-sponsored altho they drew altogether hundreds of thousands
of people. I tell the story of the origination of the Rainbow
Gatherings (free, peaceful, anarchic, spiritual gatherings which today
take place in over 40 countries) and the spread and growth of the
organic food movement and the rise of the urban community garden
movement.
Personally I was tremendously influenced by Dorothy who I met on
numerous occaisions, and saw 'in action' as recounted in the tale I
just sent you.
I don't have a blog, but you could check out welcomehome.org which is
one of the 100 oldest web stites on the net and has archived huge
amounts of Rainbow Gathering materials which, humbly put, I was party
to founding.
Today, I still work with the Rainbow Gatherings in their efforts to
make a living example of a non-violent anarchic temporary community,
and I am working with my mother (She's 85 now) as executive director
of the Living Theatre. We just opened the play 'Korach' at our 21
Clinton Street in New Yorkvenue last week - you can read a tepid, but
somewhat charming review in last week's NY Times, available thru the
paper's website. It's a religious, social and political parable about
the Biblical anarchist Korach who spoke out against Moses' creation of
a priestly class. Her "Diaries (1947-1957)" recount in long, detailed
entries her relationship with Dorothy.
I'm at gar...@nets.com or reachable at my small business: Natural
Stones, 930 Baca Street, Santa Fe, NM 87505, tel. # 505-820-7764. We
do lapidary work for numerous independent jewelry designers.
For the past 10 years I have taught a four-part program at The
Childrens Museum here in Santa Fe: Rocks and Minerals, Metals,
Fossils, Gems and Gemstones.
I am still part of a functioning back-to-the-land
organic-farming-based community begun in 1970 (we called it a
'commune' when we opened)that is populated now mostly by the children
of people who were there at its founding. That's in the Coast Range
outside of Drain, Oregon. There is a business there producing organic
vegetable seeds, plant starts and foods. We help manage three farmers
markets, one in Eugene and the others in Cottage Grove and Drain,
Oregon.
As a child I was friendly with Ammon Hennacy and today I am still in
touch with Mary Ann Dugan whose parents were also arrested and jailed
along with Dorothy and my parents at that same anti-shelter drill
protest ibn City Hall Park, New York. My mother, Ammon and Joan Baez
were arrested together at an Atomic Energy Commission sit-in in ?1962?
There's more to my own story than can be told here, but my writing is
aimed at today's young people who have gained much from the
fountainhead movements which have gone before. Most of the stories in
the memoir highlight people both known and unknown who stood up and
spoke out in a way that inspired others or set in motion events that
grew into larger movements.
I hope this is helpful to you. Since finishing my memoir, "Generation,
Stories from The New World Culture" I have submtted it to 9 publishers
or agents who have been recommended for various reaons. All have
politely declined to take it on. but I'm not giving up. It's at
prospect number ten currently. The story I sent you is the opening
chapter to the book.
All my very best holiday season wishes,
Garrick Beck
ps. You can google "Judith Malina," "Julian Beck," "The Living
Theatre," "Rainbow Gatherings," or me and get tons more information
about all of us.
