The Birth of an Organizer, A Spirit Set Free

Looking back over my experiences in 1965, I recognize that this was a very important year in my life. Following my conscience and my desire to be where the struggle for the soul of America was happening, I joined the freedom struggle in Mississippi. My experience working with SNCC in the Black belt of the South changed my life.

When I returned to Berkeley, LSD opened another world to me. My rigid atheism crumbled. Acid gave me a new sense of being, a deeper sense of spirituality, a feeling for a oneness with mankind, and opening to my sensuality. Under its influence, I lost my virginity, dealt with the pain of my mother’s death and decided to devote my life to the struggle for a just, peaceful and humanistic world.

The burgeoning resistance to the Vietnam war became my life. The example of the Vietnamese people, my country’s betrayal of our wartime allies, embrace of French colonialism betrayed the ideals of what we fought for in World War II, and what I believed my country stood for.