Day in the Life:            
photo: © Robert Altman

The Sun Always Rises

Rain pouring down
like house arrest,
stumble with cane
looking out wet windows, trying
to remember the glowing sun
which made me believe in revolution
when it didn't go away in December --
during my first Berkeley winter.

__Stew Albert - 2006

 

de Stew --by Jomo

   Stew Albert was one of these rare individuals who seemed able to survive, no matter what. For years, I thought that he'd go on living if not forever than at least until old age. After all, he'd beaten the Hepatitis C that threatened to destroy him, and he'd had many a bout with "Dr. Doom" as we called that unpredictable beast who seemed to spring in our lives from time to time.

I met Stew for the first time, in New York and though, like me, he'd been born in Brooklyn, I assumed California had given birth to him. He looked like a Californian to me - blond, curly haired and muscular. In the fall of 1970, we flew to Rome as part of a Yippie delegation, and then to Algiers, where Eldridge Cleaver had persuaded the government to offer political sanctuary to Timothy Leary. On that occasion, Stew did not travel with a suitcase. He only had the clothes on his own back, and a toothbrush he carried in a back pocket. We stayed in a Moslem hotel - men on one floor and women on the other - and, since there weren't enough rooms for all of us, Stew and I shared a bed. He was perhaps the strangest bedfellow I have ever encountered, and perhaps I was the strangest he ever encountered, too, though he certainly encountered a great many strange bedfellows, and creatures of the night, and extremist of all different stripes. Leary and Cleaver were among them. The Algiers trip proved to be a fiasco; many of our subsequent expeditions turned out disastrously, too, or at least not the way we planned. I always looked for the deep, hidden reasons for the failure or the disaster. Stew assumed that that was just the way things were; chaos, chance and the accidental played a big part in his scheme of the universe. Once, in Hollywood at the home of movie producer, Paula Weinstein, I watched Robert Scheer rake Stew over the coals. You'd have thought, from Scheer's tirade, that Stew was responsible for every mistake that the American left - the Yippies, the Black Panthers, the Weathermen - had ever made in the 1960s and the 1970s. I wouldn't have been able to stand up to Scheer's attack; Stew did quite nicely and calm, too.

Every time we got together in Portland we talked and talked and talked, and what I liked most about talking with Stew was that I didn't have to explain anything to him; he'd been there, and done that and knew what I meant. Then, too, we could pick up the thread of a conversation after a month, or six months, or a year. I'd have to call Stew a friend. I think that I'd also call him a comrade, though I feel uncomfortable using that word that has fallen into disuse and that he and I often used ironically, Soviet communists having abused it, thorough. Still, there's something noble about comrades and comradeship - in the way that Jack London, one of Stew's favorite authors, envisioned.

And so, farewell, Comrade Stew, farewell. __Jomo

 

From Paul Krassner

   Stew was on the front lines of the countercuIture, in every way.

We met in 1965 when I was invited to emcee the first Vietnam Teach-In on the UC-Berkeley campus. He was on the Vietnam Day Committee, and was the first to turn me on to marijuana, with Thai stick.

"Now I know why we're fighting in Southeast Asia," I observed. "To protect the crops."

During the antiwar demonstrations in the summer of 1968 at the Democrats national convention, Stew was the first to get smashed on the head with a police billy club. After his head was stitched and bandaged, we went to a Western Union office and sent a telegram (remember them?) to the UN, requesting them to send in a human rights unit to investigate violations in Chicago.

Stew, who had acted as a liaison between the Yippies and the Black Panthers, told me, "Malcolm X, and then the Black Panthers, had planned to take their case to the UN."

We were both unindicted co-conspirators for crossing state lines to foment rioting--later, an official investigation concluded what had occurred was "a police riot"--unindicted because they were afraid we would have a freedom-of-the-press defense; in addition to being there as protesters, Stew was covering the event for the Berkeley Barb, and I was covering it for The Realist.

What I will miss most about Stew is the empathetic way that he served as a peacemaker, whether it was creating a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, or mediating a disagreement between Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

Stew was like a wise old rabbi in the guise of an affable blond teddy bear. __ Paul Krassner

 

Stew Albert 1939-2006--by Louise Yellin:

For Judy, Jessica, Paula, and Hannah and in memory of Mark, Abbie, Jerry, Anita, and Stew.

   Stew was ahead of his time. He knew, in 1972, that South Beach would be the next big thing. Along with hundreds of others, he went to Miami to organize around the Democratic Convention in July (piece of cake: remember McGovern?) and to coordinate protests against Richard Nixon and the war in Vietnam at the Republican Convention in August. Earlier that year, Stew had experienced chest pains; they must have been awful, since he had an amazing chest. Someone sent him to a fancy East Side cardiologist, who told him that he had arrhythmia and advised him to take it easy. (Not likely.) Never one to complain or languish, Stew turned his ailment into an organizing tool, using it to spearhead one of the most unusual coalitions in the New Left, the A-K [alte-kocke] / Yippie Alliance. When Stew arrived in Miami, he checked into the Albion Hotel, Youth International Party HQ, and checked out the Jewish seniors, exiles from Brooklyn like himself, denizens of the Albion and other shabby venues, whom he found hanging out in the local park. Stew soon discovered that the seniors hated Nixon as much as we did (?) well, almost as much. Schmoozing, kibbitzing, noshing, and, no doubt, kvetching about his cardiologist, Stew got the seniors to overcome their initial antipathy to longhairs and braless feminists, and he finally laid to rest the Yippie injunction not to trust anyone over 30, a milestone that he and Jerry and Abbie had long left behind. By the time that I got to Miami, Stew had a reserve army of grandparents ready to back up the demonstrators swarming all over not-yet-chic South Beach. Sitting on porches throughout the neighborhood, the old folks kept watch on us, paying special attention to a pair of organizers they called the two tall ones from New York, Robert Friedman and Lewis Cole, editors of University Review (UR). We had first met Stew when he fetched up there as the resident sage and chiropractor, and he continued to advise us and adjust our spines throughout the more than 30 years that we were friends. I wish he'd remained in Miami in August, 1972: perhaps he would have joined Allen Ginsberg in drawing thousands of demonstrators together by showing us how a chanted om can be put to many uses. As I recall, though, Stew had to return to NY to take care of his heart, leaving us to OM our way to the Convention where we hoped to stop the Nixon renomination but instead were busted for removing sand from the beach. My job in Miami was to serve as liaison between the Attica Brothers and the protest organizers. (I was assigned this job by Mark Rosenberg, who had been working as an unpaid advisor to the Attica Brothers and was now making $75 a week selling ad space in UR to movie studios. Mark had to stay in New York to keep the operation and the rest of us afloat.) The Brothers had been promised hotel rooms and spending money that never materialized; they were understandably angry, and I was mortified about letting them and Mark down.

Many years later, I learned that a FOIA search had identified whoever was in charge of the money for the demonstrations as a Cointelpro agent: Brilliant, I thought, set a group of black ex-prisoners recently released from Attica against the white radicals who brought them to Miami and, the Brothers believed, left them high and dry. Stew, of course, could have predicted this; nothing that the government did in those days -- or was doing in the weeks before he died surprised him. I didn't get around to asking him what he thought about what happened to South Beach in the years after we evacuated, but I'm sure he would have had as much to say to the margarita-swilling swells as he did to the 'oy-voy-voyers' they displaced. Stew never succumbed to paranoia or to false hopes, and he faced the world with a sly and delicious humor that sustained the rest of us. Earlier today, I found on his blog this quintessentially Albertian wisdom, dated only a few days earlier when he was clearly suffering as intensely from chemo as from cancer: "I wouldn't stick around, but I need options. I'll try to keep you posted." I wish I believed that he'd continue blogging from the beyond. I guess we'll have to keep each other posted now.__Louise Yelin

 

From Robert Greenwald
Producer of Steal This Movie and the Wal*Mart documentary.

   Hero is an overused word, and yet with the death of Stew Albert yesterday, it is the only word that comes to mind. As a key organizer of the movement against Vietnam, he helped spearhead one of the most famous anti-war protests, where thousands surrounded the Pentagon and chanted in an effort to levitate the building. Along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin he was one of the leading figures of the Yippies! - a life long activist - most recently with his own blog --Stew worked for justice with rare passion.

I first met Stew when I decided to make a film about Abbie Hoffman. Stew became an inspiration, a model, a guide and a constant thorn in the side of self-seriousness throughout the process of developing and shooting Steal This Movie.

I will always remember his arrival on the set with his partner Judy and the cast's initial nervous excitement about meeting Stew and Judy. Donal Logue, who was playing Stew was very concerned about portraying him accurately. Within an hour, Stew and Judy were embraced by the cast and pushed for details of what the `60s were really like. Everyone from Vincent D'Onofrio who played Abbie, to Janeane Garofalo who played Anita Hoffman, surrounded them and spent hours in intense and ultimately completely inspiring conversation.

Stew walked the walk, not just talked the talk. His warmth, passion and great prankster nature were with him until the end. He has inspired me, he has taught me and he will be missed dearly.
We need all our heroes. __Robert Greenwald

 



Judy & Stew - Catskills 2005


   Stew's obituary has appeared in so many places across the country including the Oregonian, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, AP, Counterpunch, the Huffington Post, on the radio and reportedly even on local tv. Their universal theme is that Stew kept his commitment to his ideals and will to act on them to the day he died. Stew would have loved to know that this is the way he's being remembered. I am moved & very grateful for the hundreds and hundreds of e-mails and cards Jessica and I are receiving -- from close, dear and long time friends to people we haven't heard from for years & years to folks who begin: "You don't know me but..." and then go on to tell a story about how Stew or the Yippies influenced their lives. If you have a "dead tree" copy of his obituary that appeared in your local paper, please e-mail me at: Thank you again for all your kind thoughts and words. __ Judy 'Gumbo' and Jessica Albert

 

Judy in Disguise

Memory

There she stood,
outside the Capitol Building
recently bombed and blasted
by the Weather Underground.

Old news footage in a documentary
at a 1972 press conference proclaiming
we didn't do it! - but we dug it.


Falsely accused of a crime -
a crime we didn't commit
yet were committed too.

She looked so cute in her painted face,
the essential hippie chick of yesteryear
with flashing eyes looking into the future -
which is today.

And now with silver hair and echoing eyes
always walking next to the history of herself
twice as good for the cost of time.

2003 - Stew Albert

 


FROM TOM HAYDEN:

Dear Judy, Jessica and Friends of Stew wherever we all are:

    I am sorry not to be there but I share my love with all who are trying to hold on to Stew even as, in the words of my father in law Jack Williams, Stew "caught the box car." That is an IWW metaphor for the last ride in a long life of catching a ride to the newest place where hope rises from the grave where it is meant to be buried.

Stew was a Wobbly lost in time. So he became a Yippie. He was a whole person in a time of broken lives. An anti-Renaissance Renaissance man. A lover. An intellectual. A Jew. A curly blond Greek God. A dope fiend. A warrior. A story-teller. A devoted dependent husband, an adoring father, a mystic, a Marxist, a madman, a moral man, a communist whose only party was compassion. He would have freaked out Karl Marx, but not Commandante Marcos.

Others did not survive the divide between the youth revolution and the muddle of middle age as well as Stew, because he discovered that he could find love in the cracks of the very life he hated. I suspect he knew that love and learning were the only human responses to a universe that is the utterly incredible, incomprehensible, and infinite home to which we all return. He was my roommate long ago, in Berkeley. If there is a counter-universe, Stew will be there, and he'll remember to leave us all a key. See you all on the boxcar. __ Tom Hyaden

 

The Quiet Genius -- Remembering Stew Albert by Jim Retherford

   I am greatly saddened by the news of Stew Albert's death. The last of the Yippies' unholy trinity of Abbie, Jerry, and Stew, noted "theoretician" of the Youth International Party, the "quiet one" -- Stew was a very decent man as well as an indefatigable True Believer. My heart goes out to Judy Gumbo and their daughter Jessica Pearl.

I am especially moved by Stew's dignified dialogue with death during his last days as he continued to post thoughts and feelings on his blog every day until the day before his passing. You will find no remorse, no regrets, no backing down in the face of his own mortality: "Dreaming of sleep / in a nice warm hole / forever." I am pleased to say that he died with his passion fully focused on the business at hand.

Stew Albert will always live in my memory because of two extraordinary events in late-Sixties NYC:

The first was a group visit to the Palestine Liberation Organization observer team at the United Nations (probably in 1969). I don't remember who planned it or who attended, other than Stew and Gumbo and (I think) Daria Price. Maybe Dennis Dalrymple /aka/ Crunchy Granola. Maybe Robin Palmer and Sharon Krebs. A small contingent of NYC leftist crazies. We met with a passionate young Palestinian (late 20s) and had an extraordinarily candid discussion about the Palestinian "question." At one point Stew announced that he was Jewish and was very concerned about the public perception that the PLO hated Jews.

Our host replied: "Hate Jews!?! I cannot hate Jews. I am Jewish. That would be like hating myself. My mother is Jewish, my father Arab. By Jewish law, I am therefore Jewish."

"In my village in Palestine," he continued, "Jews and Arabs, for many many generations, lived together peacefully as one people, Palestinian people. We laughed and played and sang songs and ate at the same table for supper. Many, like my parents, intermarried. This ended when the Zionists came and drove us from our homes at gunpoint. Our Jewish neighbors, Sephartic Jews, dark Jews, were driven away also.

"We do not hate Jews. We hate Zionism."

The second event was the nationwide Guy Goodwin "witchhunt" grand juries of 1970. After Leslie Bacon had been "abducted" by FBI agents in D.C. and driven incommunicado across the country to appear before a Portland grand jury without counsel, special prosecutor Guy Goodwin convened grand juries in several U.S. cities, including NYC, ostensibly to investigate the United States Capitol bombing by the Weather Underground. Six of us were subpoenaed to appear before the NYC panel -- myself, Stew, Judy, Sandra Wardwell from Isla Vista, Ellen Stone, and Walter Teague.

We all -- except Walter -- decided to play dress-up for our grand jury appearances. I rented a gorilla costume (since I didn't want to disappoint the feds in their search for guerrillas). Judy and Sandra dressed appropriately as broomstick-carrying witches (Ellen Stone would have been the third witch from Macbeth but was never served with a subpoena). Walter portrayed himself as, well, vintage Walter: picture your everyday working class commie in blue flannel work shirt festooned with National Liberation Front support buttons, blue jeans, work boots.

Stew, however, stole the show! He appeared as a cross-dressing female terrorist bombshell, glamming to the nines in an utterly fabuuuulous rainbow-striped minidress with the name "Bernadine" stitched in sequins across the bodice. All the trannies of Lower Manhattan dropped their mascara pencils at the sight of this burly 6-2 bearded beauty with a tall blonde 'fro. Meanwhile, the ever-present undercover cops could be seen nervously shifting from one foot to the other, trying to hide the billyclubs bulging in their pants pockets, and special persecutor Goodwin blinked, freaked, and called off the entire proceeding when he realized that Stew wasn't wearing panties.

Fond farewell to a courageous comrade, freedom fighter, revolutionary prankster, and defender of a real Palestine of Jews and Arabs alike ...

__ James Retherford

 

STEW LIVES! by Michael Simmons


Stew Albert
1939-2006

"My politics have not changed."

   So read the simple blog entry by Stew Albert on January 28, 2006. Two days later, he died in his sleep at his home in Portland, Oregon, surrounded by his wife Judy Albert, daughter Jessica and friends. Suffering from cancer and unable to write at length, he was clearly determined to make a statement -- a last stand -- that blended the legendary Yippie's defiance and wit. As if his politics would ever change!

For the Yippies - the Youth International Party -- the word "party"meant both political group and outrageously good time. The Yippies merged left-wing activism and freak culture in the late 1960s. One of the "non-leaders" along with Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner was another party animal -- equally irresponsible for the chaos and comedy: Stew Albert, a fierce soldier for justice as well as subversive prankster.

Born on December 4, 1939 in Brooklyn to a working-class family, Stew was genetically nonconformist - a natural blonde Jew. In 1960, he visited the young, idealistic revolutionary Cuba and it derailed his plans for civil servitude. "I saw people living exciting, meaningful lives not based on self-promotion or small-time ideology," he later wrote. After a failed attempt at reintegrating into normalcy, he got bit by wanderlust and ended up in Berkeley, California working for the anti-war Vietnam Day Committee whose most effective founding member was Jerry Rubin. Soon, Stew and Jerry were best friends and Stew was in the thick of Berkeley's cannabinoided counter-culture. Despite his "growing rage" at America's war on Vietnam, his "private joy was complete." In 1966, his pal Rubin ran for Mayor of Berkeley and Stew became campaign manager and created a campaign that advocated social justice, an end to war and racism as well as the legalization of marijuana - a brave, new demand - and he laid out the campaign pamphlet in a decidedly psychedelic style. The same year, Rubin was called before the commie-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee and he showed up wearing a Revolutionary War costume. These examples of performance politics successfully blew the minds of the congressional creeps and thrilled young anti-war activists by establishing a new tactic - capture their imaginations and their hearts will follow.

In preparation for a march on the Pentagon, Stew and Jerry flew to New York City in the summer of 1967 and befriended a fellow longhaired, wisecracking troublemaker named Abbie Hoffman. Stew, Jerry, Abbie, Jim Fouratt, and others descended on the visitor's gallery of the New York Stock Exchange and showered 500 one-dollar bills onto the floor below. For the first time in Wall Street's history, trading stopped on the floor while the greedheads went grabby ga-ga for the green. This merry band had pulled down the curtain on the wizards of capitalism and the media lapped up the story.

In October of that year, Stew helped organize the massive March on the Pentagon. Stew, Jerry, Abbie, along with Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs and others, announced that they were going to exorcise the Pentagon of evil spirits and levitate it. Again, the story made for thrilling press. By the end of 1967, these characters, along with Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Bob Fass, Anita Hoffman, Nancy Kurshan, Kate Coleman, Keith and Judy Lampe, and others, signed a unified statement of purpose and announced themselves as Yippie, a name thought up by Krassner.

The Yippies began planning a Festival of Life for the Democratic Convention in August of 1968. The idea was to present a counterpoint to the Convention of Death hosted by the politicians whoêd brought us the war in Vietnam. That year marked another watershed event in Stew's life when he met fellow traveler Judy Clavir in Berkeley, a love story that lasted his entire life. Judy, later dubbed "Gumbo" by Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, became his mate and a renowned activist in her own right.

Stew contributed Pigasus to The Festival of Life, an actual pig that he and Jerry announced was the Yippie candidate for president. The pig was later detained by the police and squealed in custody. The counter-convention devolved into a police riot where thousands of demonstrators - including Stew -- were savagely beaten in what was dubbed "a police riot" by a federal commission. Undeterred by the facts, the government prosecuted a group of the organizers for conspiracy to riot in what became known as the Chicago 8 (later 7) trial. Abbie and Jerry were two of the indictees and Stew was named an unindicted co-conspirator (evidently two Yippies were sufficient). The Chicago Conspiracy Trial became known as "The Trial Of The Century" and eventually all charges were dropped.

Stew cut a swath across the planet. He ended up in London on the David Frost Show (along with limey accomplices including writer/rocker Mick Farren) where he actually made a history book for being The First Person To Say 'Cunt' On British Television. He traveled to Algeria to facilitate escaped fugitive Timothy Leary's exile, where Leary stayed with another exile, Eldridge Cleaver. (Of all the Yippies, Stew was the closest to the Black Panthers, particularly Cleaver.) He enlisted John Lennon and Yoko Ono in a "Beatle/Yippie pact" that resulted in Lennon's radicalization and near-deportation.

Beyond YIP, he ran for Sheriff of Alameda County (and lost, but carried Berkeley), where he'd earlier done months of jail time for general agitation. With compadre and folksinger Phil Ochs, he traveled to Chile before the CIA-backed coup. When he implemented DIY egalitarianism by helping create People's Park in Berkeley, then-Governor Ronald Reagan responded to the unsanctioned green space by bringing in the National Guard and turning the streets into a war zone.

While living in the Catskills, Judy discovered a tracking device connected to their car, placed by the FBI. She and Stew eventually sued the FBI for illegal surveillance -- and won (proving there's a damn good reason the feds need judicial warrants). In 1977, their daughter Jessica Pearl Albert was born. Stew went on to become a private eye and reconnected with his Jewish roots. He was played by actor Donal Logue in the Abbie biopic Steal This Movie in 2000.

Through the years, Stew never stopped thirsting for peace and justice. He became a mentor and friend to younger activists, from the L.A. Cacophony Society to myriad anarchists. Young people from all over the world corresponded with Stew, asking about Yippie and seeking advice on contemporary shit-stirring. He continued to write extensively, publishing The Sixties Papers with Judy and his autobiography Who The Hell Is Stew Albert?

After being diagnosed with Hepatitis C, he spent the last year enduring chemotherapy. Just as he completed his treatment and was given a clean bill of health, he was diagnosed with liver cancer last December. It was a cruel twist, but in an e-mail to friends he was determined to confront it head-on and with humor. "I am still a Yippie," he noted. A week before his death, he gave a two hour plus interview to a film crew making a documentary about the Yippies and although he was clearly tired and in pain, he remained powerful, insightful, unrepentant, and funny as hell. As he wrote in his autobiography, he had "an uncontainable need to test my bravery," something he did until the end. And as the man said, his politics never changed. __ Michael Simmons