From the introduction by Ann Arbor magazine (February 1987): Probably no one person more exemplified Michigan's unrest in the '60s than did John Sinclair. Depending on one's age, the mere mention of his name caused tempers to flare or cheers to ring out. This retrospect on John Sinclair's life in those turbulent times is presented by a first-hand witness to the events—his mother.
“The Politicization of John Sinclair”
by Elsie Sinclair
"Politicized? You bet! Wouldn't you have been, had our so- called 'justice' system treated you the same?"
JOHN SINCLAIR is my son, a son considerably wiser now than he was in the '60s. He and his cohorts actually thought they could change the world! He thought that if everything were free it would eliminate greed and war, for at heart all people were good!
"It's the system that corrupts the people," he said. "Disrupt the system by refusing to participate in it and convince the youth of the nation that by not participating, the system will crumble." I don't know what he thought would replace it: the greatest good for the greatest number, I guess.
John started out as a poet, writer, and scholar, but he was eventually politicized, and it is that politicization I want to tell about. It's been gnawing at my innards like a termite ever-widening its territory for lo! these many years. Each time he was arrested I thought, "Now the truth will out," but it never came to pass. And the thousands and thousands of tax dollars that were wasted in the process!
Picture a couple of solid citizens living in a small town in Michigan, both working in order to put their three children through college, me as a teacher and my husband, a life- long Republican, as a minor executive at Buick Motor Car Company in Flint, Michigan.
Imagine our horror on learning that our eldest offspring had been arrested in Detroit on a marijuana charge. We were in court when he was put on probation. Over to the probation officer we went: we wanted to do everything we could to cooperate. Such babes in the woods were we!
The officer seemed to talk in circles, giving us veiled warnings of what could happen to our son, how "they" would be out to get him. "My god," we thought, "our son is in the hands of the Mafia!" But was the officer warning us of the machinations of the underground? No! He was warning us of the police! And get him they did!
He was living commune-style near the Wayne State campus, busy attending graduate classes, writing poetry, encouraging musicians, etc. I guess you'd have labelled him a beatnik. He thought the marijuana laws had been used discriminately for years by the police, and he was working hard to challenge the laws by publishing tracts, speaking, etc. (The newspapers later called it "guerrilla theater.") But he was not dealing.
So what did the police do? They sent an undercover agent — a minority person, of course, because they knew John was on the side of minorities — who sat around day after day pestering John to get him some pot. Evidently he knew John abhorred the effects of alcohol, because he told John he was hanging around bars to get his kicks but he really preferred a marijuana high as being less damaging.
Finally, in order to get rid of him, John rode across town with him in the other fellow's car — John didn't even have a car — where he purchased some stuff from a dealer he knew and accepted $5 from the undercover agent for his trouble. Did they arrest the dealer? Oh, no!
As soon as they got back to the house on the John C. Lodge service drive, police were waiting to arrest John. The charge? Sale of marijuana. The penalty? Twenty years to life!
Anyway, John needed $500 to raise bail, which we lent to him. He got a job in a parking lot to pay us back, but we paid the lawyer, who assured us it was a clear case of entrapment. Everytime we talked with the lawyer he demanded more money, $500 at a time. We paid it—I can't remember just how much. We certainly were not affluent, but our son's freedom was at stake, so what alternative did we have?
The day of the trial came. We sat in court with our hearts palpitating like the terrified parents we were; but what confidence, in all our innocence, we had in our lawyer. Do you know, not once did he bring up the fact of entrapment! Evidently he had taken the easy way out and made a deal with the prosecution: he told John it was too dangerous to chance conviction for which the penalty was so severe, so he should plead guilty to possession.
The verdict was six months in DeHoCo [the Detroit House of Correction], plus three years probation. I'll never forget the judge's saying, "There must be something about this case I don't know," or words to that effect. I wanted to scream, "Of course there is lots you don't know. Just let me say my piece." But I was too intimidated or too dumb to say anything. To this day I am ashamed of my naiveté.
We visited John regularly in DeHoCo, of course, where he was a model prisoner. John started his incarceration on February 24, 1966, and was released on August 5th, the same year. Not yet politicized, he was still determined to do everything legal he could to challenge the marijuana laws.
But it didn't take long before he was back in the news. On January 24, 1967 — my 55th birthday, no less — John's father and I were watching the 11:00 pm news when suddenly we heard a report about the round-up and arrest of a "big dope ring" near the Wayne State campus: "And everyone was released except the leader of the dope ring, John Sinclair." We were stunned!
Following his first "bust" in 1964, John had founded the Artists' Workshop in Detroit, which was just what its name implied: a place where musicians, poets, and writers could gather to read their output, and play their music — all free to anyone who wanted to participate.
But this posed a threat to the city’s police, and they had an undercover agent and his "wife" infiltrate the group. They would ask John to get them a joint, but John didn't comply until finally one night in December 1966, the "wife" convinced John that they didn't like liquor either. So John gave her two joints free of charge.
A month later, on the night of January 14, the police descended police cars all over the place. They arrested everyone who lived in the houses. Media coverage reported "56 Arrested in Campus Dope Raid." John was accused of "dispensing" two marijuana cigarettes to an undercover policewoman. Penalty: 20 years to life.
I couldn't believe it, so I went into a courtroom where I'd seen a familiar-looking lawyer from the Prosecutor's office, and asked him. Instead of answering my question, he said: "You know, things were really bad over there, all those beards and such. And do you know, the woman he was living with wasn't even his wife?" (John was legally married in 1965.)
The rest is history. John was found guilty on July 25, 1969, for "possession of narcotics" and was handed a sentence of 9-1/2 to ten years in prison. He was denied an appeal bond on the grounds of "cruel and unusual punishment" because he was a "danger to society," despite his challenge to the constitutionality of Michigan's marijuana laws, and the slightness of his offense.
After a brief indoctrination period at Jackson prison, John was sent to Marquette, a prison for the most hardened criminals in our society. He finally was released in December 1971, and on March 12, 1972, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned John's conviction.
On November 1, 1983, an Ann Arbor News analysis of the Court's action reported the following: "Marijuana is not hard narcotics. The court ruled that the conviction was the result of entrapment, that there was invasion of privacy and that the 10-year sentence was 'cruel and unusual punishment.'"
Politicized? You bet! Wouldn't you have been, had our so-called "justice" system treated you the same?
BUT THAT was more than 15 years ago, and sometimes I wish he were still raising hell with the establishment, because the current apathy is really dangerous: the acceptance of inequities in our society, the billions spent on weapons of destruction, our covert machinations in Central America, the politics of world hunger, the Iran/Contra scandal, etc. They demand some hell-raising, I think, guerrilla theater or not.
ELSIE SINCLAIR, John Sinclair's mother, lived in Ann Arbor. She passed on at the age of 88 in 2000.
View this article on our website.
