JOHN SINCLAIR VISITS ROCHESTER

John Sinclair May Be Just As Fired Up As He Was in The 1960s, but His
Profile Is a Bit Lower

John Sinclair spent two years in jail because he gave two marijuana
joints to a cop.

No, let's be honest about this: John Sinclair spent two years in jail
because he was a beatnik who sided with Malcolm X and the
anti-Vietnam War movement, listened to weird jazz, formed a commune
and arts workshop in his hometown of Detroit for promoting dissident
messages that the authorities didn't like, created the White Panther
Party to support Huey P. Newton's Black Panther Party and managed the
groundbreaking rock group MC5, whose anarchism-laden live
performances gave a musical voice to Sinclair's belief in "total
assault on the culture."

Sinclair continues the assault, but it seems less visible these days.
He's 65, and since 2003 has lived in Amsterdam. "Why not?" he laughs;
a gruff laugh seems to accompany almost all of Sinclair's statements,
no matter how seemingly outrageous. Certainly, Amsterdam's tolerance
of drugs is an attraction. But he likes the mass transit, the
architecture, everything. The attitude there is a balm for one of his
major concerns, "The consumer world that envelopes us.

"I was reading this morning in The New York Times about 'the hip,
edgy new car models.' A $40,000 car edgy? What planet are these people on?"

Not Sinclair's planet. "I don't drive a ... thing," he huffs. "I take
the train."

Sinclair winds up a week in Rochester with two gigs of music, spoken
word, poetry and rants. Thursday, he's at Daily Perks Coffeehouse.
Friday, he plays at Rochester Institute of Technology with a blues
band, hoping to rouse the same rabble he did in the 1960s.

He's not holding his breath. Although Sinclair sees the Internet as
the today's version of burning the campus ROTC building, "They just
don't have any ideas," he says. "Kids don't have a clue. They're
vaguely aware that something they don't like is going on.

"George W. Bush can go over there and bomb people about nothing, and
no one says anything," Sinclair says. "And there's no hope for them,
anyone who supports that. They'll go straight to hell. If there is a
hell, it should open up right now and accept them."

What does Sinclair attribute this complacency to?

"Nobody says anything because white people are happy in this
country," he says. "They're happy that their kids are over there,
bombing innocent people into oblivion.

"Saddam Hussein didn't blow up the Twin Towers. Three out of four
Americans believe that. They're idiots. They're watching television.
Television is just a tool. The New York Times is just a tool. I was
just reading their bio of the new general in charge of the activities
over in Iraq. It was like a bio by a public relations firm."

Sinclair once aligned himself with the Black Panthers because he
believed that black Americans in the '60s -- particularly through
music and culture -- were leading a tide of change. He no longer sees
it that way. "The capitalists bought them off," he snorts. "They give
50 Cent his own clothing line."

Can the dissatisfied American hold out for any hope?

"Total collapse," Sinclair says. "Pretty soon, you'll have the
Republic of Ohio. The Duchy of Oklahoma. Disintegration is what I'm
hoping for. The end of the social fabric."

Yes, he is a professional provocateur who has published his seemingly
Don Quixote quests in books such as Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution
With the MC5 and the White Panther Party. But such strong words were
once common, and it wasn't uncommon to see a crowd gather to hear
them. After Sinclair was sentenced in 1969 to 10 years for passing
those two joints to a cop, a Free John campaign went to work. It led
to a 1971 benefit concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., featuring Phil Ochs,
Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, Bobby Seale, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Three days after the concert, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned
the conviction, and Sinclair was released.

He remains defiant, outspoken and frequently outrageous: Sinclair
believes the CIA was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy
because "he was going to pull us out of Vietnam the next week." Yet
there has been no need for another Free John campaign to rescue
Sinclair from the authorities.

"They don't even know I exist," he says. "I haven't had any problems
for 35 years. Once I stopped taunting them, I learned that important
thing: If you want to do something to the authorities, don't call a
press conference. Let them learn about it on their own. Work from the
underground."