Up Against the Wall Motherfucker
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Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, often shortened as The Motherfuckers or UAW/MF, was a
anarchist affinity group based in New York City. This "street gang with analysis" was famous for its Lower East Side direct action
.
History
The Motherfuckers grew out of a
Angry Arts week, held in January 1967.[1] Formed in 1966 by Ben Morea, a painter of Catalan origins,[2] and the poet Dan Georgakas, Black Mask produced a broadside of the same name and declared that revolutionary art should be "an integral part of life, as in primitive society, and not an appendage to wealth".[3] In May 1968, Black Mask changed its name and went underground. Their new name, Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, came from a poem by Amiri Baraka. Abbie Hoffman characterized them as "the middle-class nightmare... an anti-media phenomenon simply because their name could not be printed".[4]
- 1967 – Forced their way into The Pentagon during an anti-war protest.[5]
- 1967 – Flung blood, eggs and stones at U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk who was attending a Foreign Policy Association event in New York.[6]
- January, 1968 – "Assassinated" poet Kenneth Koch (using blanks).[7]
- February, 1968 - Dumped uncollected refuse from the Lower East Side into the fountain at Lincoln Center on the opening night of a gala "bourgeois cultural event" during a NYC garbage strike (an event documented in the Newsreel film Garbage).[8][9]
- 1968 – Organized and produced free concert nights in the Fillmore East after successfully demanding that owner Bill Graham give the community the venue for a series of weekly free concerts. These "Free Nights" were short-lived as the combined forces of NY City Hall, the police, and Graham terminated the arrangement.[10]
- December 12, 1968 - Created a ruckus at the Velvet Underground one of the Motherfuckers got on stage and started haranguing the audience, directing them to "...burn this place down and take to the streets...". This got "The Five" banned from the venue.[11]
- December 18, 1968 - Rioted at an MC5 show at the Fillmore East. Some "beat (Graham) with a chain and broke his nose". This got the Detroit band banned from all venues controlled by Graham and his friends.[12]
- Cut the fences at Woodstock, allowing thousands to enter for free.[5]
Associations
radical feminist and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol, was friends with Morea and associated with the Motherfuckers.[3] In the film I Shot Andy Warhol
, the gun used in her attack is alleged to have been taken from Morea.
When Morea was asked in a 2005 interview by
The New York Press how he had been able to rationalize supporting Solanas, Morea replied, "Rationalize? I didn't rationalize anything. I loved Valerie and I loathed Andy Warhol, so that's all there was to it." He then added "I mean, I didn't want to shoot him." He then added: "Andy Warhol ruined art."[5]
Prior to becoming the Motherfuckers, the Situationist International accepted Morea's group as its New York chapter.[13]
Influence as a slogan
The phrase was taken from the poem, "Black People!" by
the university president.[15]
Most of the lyrics for the 1969 song "
We Can Be Together", by the acid rock band Jefferson Airplane, were taken virtually word-for-word from a leaflet written by Motherfucker John Sundstrom, and published as "The Outlaw Page" in the East Village Other.[16] The lyrics read in part, "We are all outlaws in the eyes of America. In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide, and deal... Everything you say we are, we are... Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!" The song marked the first use of the word "fuck" on U.S. television, when the group played it uncensored on The Dick Cavett Show on August 19, 1969.[17] This song also helped popularize the phrase as a counterculture
rallying cry, over and beyond the immediate impact of the anarchist group.
At various times, the line became popular among several groups that came out of the sixties, from
rednecks." In 1968, David Peel and the Lower East Side included the song "Up against the Wall, Motherfucker" on their album entitled Have a Marijuana. In the 1970s, Texas country singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard adapted the famous phrase for a song he wrote entitled "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother". The phrase was also used as a song title on the album Penance Soiree by the Icarus Line
.
The line was famously shouted by Patty Hearst during the robbery of Hibernia Bank in San Francisco.[18]
Simulation game
In 1969, Columbia University history major
The game was based on recent disturbances at Columbia University and allowed the players to play either as protestors or administration with victory determined by winning over various stakeholder groups.References
- ISBN 978-1-58322-849-4.
- ^ Morea Name Meaning: Spanish and Catalan: habitational name from any of the places named Morea in Navarre, Lleida, or Badajoz provinces
- ^ a b Hinderer, Eve (June 7, 2004). "Ben Morea: art and anarchism". Archived from the original on April 25, 2009. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ISBN 0-8135-2017-7.
- ^ a b c McMillian, Jon (June 5, 2005). "Garbage Guerrilla". Archived from the original on October 12, 2007. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ^ Greenberg, David (July 5, 2018). "Here's What Happened the Last Time the Left Got Nasty". Politico. Archived from the original on 2020-08-24. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
In 1967, when Secretary of State Dean Rusk tried to attend a banquet of the Foreign Policy Association in New York, a radical group called Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers (often called "the Motherfuckers" for short) threw eggs, rocks and bags of cows' blood
- ISBN 978-1-58322-849-4.
- ^ "Garbage". Roz's Newsreel Archives. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ^ "Garbage NY Newsreel / Motherfuckers, 1968 – YouTube". YouTube.
- ISBN 978-1604860214.
- ISBN 978-1906002220.
- ^ "Remembering Bill Graham & the Fillmore East".
- ISBN 978-0-87113-725-8.
- ISBN 9781451606263.
- ISBN 978-0-252-09058-5.
- ^ Tusman, Lee (ed.). Really Free Culture: Anarchist Communities, Radical Movements and Public Practices. p. 166.
- ^ "We Can Be Together by Jefferson Airplane". Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ^ "American Experience—More about the film Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst—Transcript". PBS. Archived from the original on October 3, 2005. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ^ Dunnigan, Jim (March 11, 1969). "A few theoretical remarks". Columbia Daily Spectator. Vol. 1, no. 10. Columbia University. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- ^ "Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!". modcult. December 16, 2014. Archived from the original on October 30, 2015. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
Further reading
- Black Mask & Up Against The Wall Motherfucker. ISBN 1-873176-70-8.
- "The Brown Paper Bag Theory of Affinity Groups". Archived from the original on June 7, 2008. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- Casey, Caitlin (2017). "Up against the Wall Motherfucker: Ideology and Action in a 'Street Gang with an Analysis'". In Goyens, Tom (ed.). ISBN 978-0-252-08254-2.
- McMillian, Jon (June 5, 2005). "Garbage Guerrilla". Archived from the original on October 12, 2007. Retrieved December 26, 2019.
- Neumann, Osha (2008). Up Against the Wall Motherf**ker: A Memoir of the '60s, With Notes for Next Time. Seven Stories. ISBN 978-1-58322-849-4.
- Benvega, Luca (2014). The cultural workers. Fenomeni politico culturali e contestazione giovanile negli anni '60 (in Italian). Bepress. ISBN 978-8896130407.
- Ben Morea's blog
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