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squatter: They just grabbed him. There was no identifying ... all that "One Adam-12" and "Dragnet"? That's out the window. None of that.
nessie: No identification?
squatter: None of that.
nessie: They grabbed the neighbor and they smashed his head on the pavement?
squatter: Right. And he fights them and they bring up a car and bash his head a couple more times and throw him in the car.
nessie: This is in the kind of neighborhood where people get grabbed and bashed to the sidewalk anyhow.
squatter: Right. Yeah.
nessie: So he had a reason to run, is what I'm getting at.
squatter: Yeah, right. This is not out of the ordinary except that he's white. In our neighborhood they usually only do this to black people. But this was like a "Whites Only" day.
nessie: Yeah, right. Happens sometimes. Seen it myself.
squatter: (laughing) And so, like, he's really bent, and he's like, down for it. He says, "I'm gonna be a witness for you guys, man. I don't care what the fuck you did.Both: (crack up severely)
squatter: "I'll be a witness for you!" And we're like, "Yeah, guy. Sorry about all this. Really. We didn't have much control over it. If we had it our way, it'd be different, too." We immediately became, like, on the same team. He became a good contact throughout the summer. He stayed in touch with us. So anyway, so he's in the car, and the pickup truck comes, and turns the corner, and here's Heidi and Heather and they no sooner, like ... The cops blocked off our whole block. They didn't just take our house; they took our whole block, blocked off both ends of the street, y'know, and nobody could get in. And Heidi and Heather say, "Hey, we live down there," thinking that maybe this is a crack crackdown on the neighborhood. They get busted. So they bring them over to us. Then Guin comes walkin' up.
nessie: They grab some guy off the sidewalk; they grab some passersby in a car, no, in a truck ... what kind of truck?
squatter: A pickup truck.
nessie: They pull over a pick up truck because they look like freaks?
squatter: No, because they said they said, "Hey, we're goin' to our house." Y'know, hey! So then Guin comes around the corner and he's, "Hey! I live there!" And they grab him and bring him over and then Michael comes and they grab him. Pretty soon they realize that everybody, everybody, is coming to our house, because it's right before an action. It's no longer like, "We grab a few people and we got some shit and like let's go."
nessie: Well, wait a minute! There was going to be a meeting, right? Judi was on her way to a meeting, right?
squatter: No, no, no. We'd already had the meeting the night before. But ...
nessie: Why was she going over to the house that afternoon, then.
squatter: She was going to go to a copy shop and come over the house with the finished product and drop off some so we could take some.
nessie:So she wasn't going to hang out there? She was just gonna drop some flyers off.
squatter: And pick up Darryl and George Shook and then they were all gonna go down to Santa Cruz for a gig, that evening.
nessie: OK. Got it.
squatter: At this point, the cops were starting to realize they're gonna have to arrest about all of south Berkeley. The quicker they can get these suspects outa here, the quicker there will not be any more volunteers, they're hoping.
nessie: Lotta paperwork.
squatter: Yeah, whole lotta paperwork. It was starting to get to be a lot of people and, y'know, this is Berkeley; this neighborhood could break out into a "demonstration" at any moment.
nessie: Yeah.
squatter: And meanwhile they're goin' through our house.
nessie: Had they put the sawhorses up yet?
squatter: No. I think they were using yellow tape. Well, first they used a line of police. Not a line of police, but a couple of cops. The crowd's got big, so they had to make it more, y'know, yellow line. I don't know how it got, because I was in jail for quite a while.
nessie: When I got there ...
squatter: When'd you get there?
nessie: I don't know what time I got there. From other people's accounts, probably about two o'clock. ... called me. He said he'd been on his way over there, saw what happened and left.
squatter: Oh, good for ... Another person that got away.
nessie: Yeah, well he learned that in the old country. So he called me, and I went over there and, like, parked around the corner and looked and they had two sawhorses and a couple of blue coats. Blue coats! They wore blue coats! Were they wearing blue coats or were they wearing brown? I don't remember. It makes a difference, right?
squatter: Not to me. Only to them.
nessie: Well, it's south Berkeley, so it'd be Berkeley cops. They wear brown. Oakland wears blue. I don't remember. They had the block blocked off. I thought it was a good time for me to go away somewhere else.
squatter: Right. They took our whole neighborhood that day. They had to, it was ... our neighborhood!
nessie: Did they search any other houses there?
squatter: Well they searched our house really, like, thoroughly and trashed it in the process. Really thoroughly. Only a few things they didn't trash. Like the index card file they didn't trash. I was blown away. Ten thousand index cards. I'd of had a field day with it. But they didn't really fuck with it, though I think they probably went through it.
nessie: Let's stop for a minute and explain what Seeds is, and what it does, and who's on those index cards, and all that shit.
squatter: OK. Seeds of Peace is, at this point, an unincorporated association. And it's actually a group of people, usually numbering around 15 to 20 that provide infrastructures for massive public demonstrations. Redwood Summer was this project that ...
nessie: What do you mean infrastructure?
squatter: We have portable kitchen trailers, water trailers, shitters, all that kind of stuff, busses, and the technical skills and know-how to put together these really big public actions where you throw down in the middle of nowhere, a mini-city. Y'know, like, anywheres from 200 to 10,000. And we've done it in some of the starkest environments that there are, like right outside the Nevada Test Site where there ain't nothing. That's why they decided to blow up bombs there.
nessie: A-Bombs and Wackenhut.
squatter: There isn't much else there. Really. Truly. Not much.So the FBI had taken down Earth First! in Arizona, Dave Foreman and those folks ...
nessie: How long before that raid did that happen?
squatter: Less than a year, but how long, exactly, I don't know. Probably nine, 10 months earlier than we had been. We knew about it and we said, "Wow! These people are being targeted COINTELPRO-style by the FBI. These are people we should support. Let's do it." They came up with "Mississippi Summer in the Redwoods" We said, "Hey, we can help. This'll be a great action. We can really bring some pressure to bear. We can do it. Make this action really powerful. Let's help these people out and let them not be targeted by the FBI." Heh. Yeah. Well, I really, honestly believe, because of the efforts that Seeds made, those two people are not sitting in Federal prison, rotting the rest of their lives away. They tried to hang it on 'em. Sarah, personally, saved their butts.
nessie: How?
squatter: She got some of the nails from the building Judi was working on, had 'em checked out – some nail expert, whatever – had them traced, where the nails were made, all the way back to, I believe it was Korea, found out that instead of the six- or eight-hundred nails in the whole batch that are like this like the FBI was putting out, found out that they were a lot of like a quarter million nails, that went to every Ace Hardware on the west coast of the United States. And when she proved that to the media, they stopped parroting the police line. It changed immediately from dogging these people to questioning everything the police said. And the police lost that vehicle right afterwards. The house investigation of the FBI began right afterwards. And it all went down.
nessie: What investigation? The House investigation?
squatter: In Congress there was a House investigation the Judicial Committee. I think it was the Judicial Committee, Tom Bates, what ever he's head of.
nessie: Tom Bates?
squatter: I think it was Tom Bates. I can't remember.
nessie: He's from around here?
squatter: Yeah, he's California. I think out on the peninsula he represents.(Stephanie returns from work, exhausted)
nessie: Hello! Stephanie: Hi.
nessie: (to tape recorder) Stephanie came in. (to Stephanie) Keep talkin' to my tape recorder. You wanna talk to my tape recorder? I'll make you famous.Stephanie: (suspiciously) What do I want to talk to your tape recorder about?
nessie: Judi Bari's case. Some recent interest has arisen in it.Stephanie: (fanning face with newspaper) This is unbearable. Can we open some windows?
squatter: Do what ever you want, yeah. The heat of the day, it soaks into the house. The sun's out all day (Instead, she goes into the back of the house.) Um, so that really turned it. In my opinion, that was the one incident that made them from villains to, uh, victims, y'know. It made them from at least not going to Federal prison. Because it was lookin' like that. The railroad was greased pretty much up until then. I didn't have much hope that ... I didn't have a sense that we were gonna win, that we were gonna turn the media tide.
nessie: How long did it take? They were charged immediately ...
squatter: Yeah.
nessie: Where was Darryl? Where did they grab Darryl?
squatter: In the car! He was in the car. He was bombed also.
nessie: Duh. Right. He was in the car! I'm getting stupider by the minute. (laughs, takes another hit)
squatter: So, uh, anyways ...(Stephanie returns to living room)
nessie: I like the bullet holes in your window, Stephanie. It's very becoming.Stephanie: It's the ethnic touch, isn't it.All: (laugh)
squatter: Anyways, we're on the front yard. They keep grabbing people. They decided they need to transport us. So they come up and they ask me, "Look, loudmouth," cause all the time I'd been kinda harassing them and asking for attorneys and charges and warrants and ...
nessie: You're a real loud mouth.
squatter: A mouth, yeah.
nessie: You're a real fuckin' nuisance, Jim.
squatter: So, they say, "All right, you're going downtown. You can either go voluntarily ...
nessie: (inhales roach, coughs profusely) Well that didn't work.
squatter: ...or we can charge you." I said, "Voluntarily, that means you take off the handcuffs; you go call me and make an appointment." They're like, "Oh, no, no, no." I says, "Well that's what voluntarily is, right? In handcuffs, in the back of a police car is not 'voluntarily' where I come from." "Well, you can either come down or we charge you." I said, "Well, what are the charges?" And he said, "You don't want 'em." That's kind of a threat, y'know. Threats don't work.(Stephanie opens the window and tries to tie back curtain and it falls on top of all of us.)
nessie: (laughs) Well, that didn't work either. OK, so much for the curtain. Y'get a nice view of the bullet holes this way, though. One, two, three four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. (To tape recorder, in an exaggerated aside:) There's nine bullet holes in the window we're sitting in front of here. None of 'em have anything to do with this case, not a single one of 'em.
squatter: We're trying to figure if it's Bb's or a far away blast from a shotgun. I think it's a BB gun because there's none in the wood and if it was a shotgun, the pattern would have extended down more. Oh, well, that's livin' in the ghetto.
nessie: That's life on the planet, today. Y'saw the news last night, right?
squatter: Yep.
nessie: They shoot at ya; they blow ya up; what're ya gonna do?
squatter: Actually, I got some warrants, some petty-ass bullshit warrants in my name so if I go downtown, I stay downtown for a while until I work off these warrants. I don't really want to do that. I says, "I'm not giving you my name." He says, "Oh you motherfucker." He goes on to Heather and asks if she want's to go downtown voluntarily. She says, "Yea, I'll go downtown voluntarily, if you let me go." "Yeah, just make a statement and you can go." I'm like, "Don't talk to 'em." She says, "I'll go voluntarily. I'm not going to talk to 'em, but I'll go. We'll see how that goes." "Oh, yeah, we'll take the cuffs off. You can sit in the car." "Hey!" I says, "You didn't do that for me!" He says, "You want to come downtown voluntarily? We'll take off the cuffs. What's your name?" I say, "I don't wanna tell you my name." He says, "What's the matter? You got some warrants?" "Maybe."
nessie: (laughs)
squatter: He says, "We can be done with those. They're gone. Your warrants are gone. We don't care about those." They back-stopped me on that, by the way. Never believe a cop. Never. An important lesson that I relearn occasionally.
nessie: (laughs)
squatter: I thought, well maybe he doesn't. He can wipe out my warrants. Hey! Then I'm home free. 'Cause how long can this go on? So I say, "OK, I'll go downtown voluntarily." Mistake number one. Well we end up getting loaded into the car and going down to OPD, getting thrown in the little interview cubicles with the foam on the walls and shit. And so I was there for, I dunno, a couple of hours. I sleep a little while. I get up and like, this is fucked. I want outa here. You know, I'm not charged. I'm obviously being held as a witness. I have no rights. This is bullshit.
nessie: Did they tell you you were a material witness?
squatter: They probably tried to make it seem like we were witnesses. If they treat witnesses that bad, no wonder they lose all those cases. Hey, fuck that shit, y'know. Nobody would ever cooperate with that. So at this point I decide, well, I'm gonna break something in here and get me a vandalism beef and get me an attorney, y'know, a phone call and shit. I wanna know what's going on out in the world. Because at this point, we have no clue what's going on. They pull us out of the backyard. I'm asking, what's up? Who's in town? Gorbachev is supposed to be coming in a few days. Maybe his advance crew got done in, and they're rounding up the Left. That's my first theory on why we're going in. Then later when we're at the cars, I hear them say, "Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney" on the radio, on the cop radio, I went, "Wow! They're taking down more people. They are rounding up the Left."
nessie: Thumpa, thumpa, thumpa – there's the helicopter.
squatter: Yeah, they used to run a pattern over our house. I used to wonder about it. Here they just drive by every day.
nessie: They fucked with me once, right up there at 44th. They pulled me over with it. Scary shit. Scary shit.
squatter: I never been stopped by a helicopter.
nessie: Scar-rey.
squatter: They were chasing people down St. Marks with one during the Tomkin's Square riot.
nessie: What a world.
squatter: Yep. So anyways, uh, I think maybe it's got something to do with Judi and Darryl, y'know. And I'm thinkin' ... 'cause I don't know these people real well, and I'm thinkin' in my head, to myself, did these people do something like, do something crazy, y'know. Shit I hope not. But I'm thinkin' it doesn't matter, 'cause I'm still in the same soup, no matter what.
nessie: Right.
squatter: So after several hours, I want out, so I break into this little cabinet. There's this 1950s reel-to-reel tape recorder in it with big giant microphones, for confessions, I presume. Or whatever. As I pop that open, the door pops open and these cops come in and they're heavy, like "We're gonna beat you up." "Hey, fuck you! I didn't break nothin' yet. Hey man, I want out now. Look, I'm not hanging for this. This is not what I signed on for." Well, that didn't work. So they handcuffed me to this chair. And I'm thinkin', shit now I gotta break the chair.
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