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One of the most amusing episodes in the Coalition's history was to occur that spring. Starting in early March we had begun to hear reports from one or two members about an important new organization for artists. It had originated in Chicago and had, we were told, already achieved successes far beyond our own slender accomplishments. This group, called Artists United, had already managed to rally all the artists in Chicago around, a program embracing both artists' rights and the more standard goals of radical politics. It was reported to us that artists throughout the Midwest were beginning to form their own chapters.

A resolution was proposed that the Coalition should find out more about this group and try to learn the secret of their great success so that we could perhaps join with them in various actions. As I have said, resolutions came easy to the Coalition, and this one passed quickly amid a warm glow of socialist solidarity. The only problem a few of us had with this account was that it had been related to us by an artist named Lou Stettner. Lou was a middle-aging trade unionist whom I had found to be a fine drinking companion but was otherwise a rather doctrinaire old leftist who kept talking about the need to unionize ourselves to "lock out" what he called "scab artists"

I had tried pointing out to Lou that the art world didn't quite work like that, if indeed it ever could or should, but Lou stuck to his argument. And if some of us were skeptical, I suppose there was also a certain disinclination among New Yorkers to believe that anything significant could really be coming out of Chicago.

Two weeks later Lou and a black artist friend of his were at it again, recounting yet further triumphs of Artists United and its slow but inexorable advance eastward through Detroit ant Cleveland, uniting all artists in its irresistible wake. We were told there was a chance that one of their organizers might soon be in New York, and wouldn't it be a good idea him to talk to us and advise us of their methods? Once again a resolution was readily forthcoming with the needed invitation, though for some reason the organizer didn't show up as scheduled.

Finally, towards the end of March, every single member, of the Coalition received in his mail an invitation to the first meeting of Artists United in New York. It was scheduled for April 3 at "MUSEUM," the very place where our own meetings were normally held. April 3 fell on a Friday, but for some reason the upcoming meeting had not been mentioned at our regular Coalition session the preceding, Monday. It was clear that the letters must have been put in the mail, using our own mailing list, the very day after our meeting.

The invitation was dominated by a large drawing of a fist, and this message was further spelled out in capital letters reading "THE CULTURAL FIST OF THE MOVEMENT." The program this group advocated seemed remarkably similar to the Coalition's. Naturally, my curiosity was aroused, and I went to the meeting. I found that a few other Coalition members had been equally curious and had also come to see what was going on. Prominently in authority were Lou Stettner, his black artist friend, and what I will call, after having consulted with a militant feminist friend, two mousy little girls. I recognized them as art students vaguely associated with the Coalition. And sitting in a. corner of the room, trying to look unobtrusive but not quite succeeding, was a white-haired, elderly gentleman whom all the others seemed to be looking to for guidance. Like Lou, he had the looks of a brusque trade unionist and an edgy authoritative voice.

One of the girls called the meeting to order, stating that strict parliamentary procedure would be followed. She pointedly observed that this group did not wish to fall into the procedural errors that characterized the meetings of the Art Workers Coalition. And indeed a strict procedure was followed, as though they had been rehearsing it for three nights previously. There were further references to the Coalition and boasts that their own group would quickly surpass our attainments, for they were not limiting themselves to visual artists but embraced all of the arts. I smiled to myself at this, reflecting how much trouble we had with just our own people, but I purposely refrained from any comment.

About an hour into the meeting, a girl whom I had seen at a few Coalition meetings gained the floor after trying in vain several times to do so and to my pleasure launched into much the attack I might have made. She chided the group for attacking the Coalition and told them it was very transparent who they were. She said she had no doubt as to their identity as she had been brought up a "red diaper baby" in a communist family, and she had seen the party make the same mistake over and over again, just as they were doing tonight, destroying an existing political movement by creating what she called "sectarianism" within it. I started to laugh and was warned that I was out of order. Then another Coalition member tiptoed over and whispered to me that he was leaving, that the only reason he had stayed that long was that he had seen me there.

I told him I too would be going soon, that I just wanted to see how it would develop. By now they had muzzled the girl, and I purposely broke their order to speak up in her defence, saying that if that was how they were going to keep order, then I didn't see how they were going to get artists to work with them. I was given a stern lecture for my outburst, and as the girl who had spoken out was now leaving I decided to accompany her. Outside, she reiterated what she had said upstairs—she was genuinely disturbed by this group and told me she feared the Coalition was doomed. I told her not to worry, as I didn't see how their approach could be effective.

But the problem didn't go away. The very next Monday, Lou and his friends were back on their feet describing what a great meeting Artists United had held the other night, and it was a shame that more of us hadn't come. Fortunately enough, there would be another meeting that very Friday. I purposely held back any challenge, as I didn't want to add to our own group's curiosity. But I rose to say that I was quite intrigued by the group and that as I happened to be going to Chicago later that week, did Lou think he could put me in touch with their leadership there, so I could come back with a report on their activities? Lou was forced to say yes in public, although he didn't have any addresses on him just then. I told him also in public not to worry, I would contact him by phone before I left town.

As luck would have it, I ran into Lou the next day, and between his not really knowing whether I was bluffing about going to Chicago and my insisting that I now had second thoughts about the group and had decided two organizations might be better than one, he gave me the address and phone number of someone to contact in Chicago. He really had no choice but to give it to me in any case, for if I were to claim at a subsequent meeting that he had refused me the address, a number of questions might have been asked.

As luck would have it, we really were going to Chicago, as it was Ilene's home town and we were able to combine the showing of our light machines with some tourism for a few days. We ended up staying in the attic of some artist friends, and I immediately called the number Lou had given me. After some difficulty I got through to someone who gave me another number, at which I finally reached an artist named Mark Rogovin. Mark seemed on his guard when I asked him if Artists United was holding any of its great mass meetings and demonstrations I had heard so much about in New York. I finally managed to persuade him that I was eager to attend one so that I could bring back a favorable report of it to New York. If he had been briefed on the phone by Lou, it had not been a very thorough job. After some hesitancy Mark invited me to a big function taking place that very weekend on the South Side and gave me all the details I needed to get there.

Accordingly, Ilene and I took the "El" down to South Fifty-Fifth Street and started to walk away from the University to the edge of the black section. There, in a field house belonging to the Chicago Parks Department, we found the concert Mark had told me about, which was billed as "A Tribute to Paul Robeson." No one who knows of Robeson's remarkable multifaceted career can doubt his genius nor the enormous contributions he made to American democracy and the advancement of his own people, however overshadowed this may have become for many by the aftermath of the Fifties and McCarthyism. But having dutifully recorded this observation, I must go on to say that this particular concert, if it can be called that, marked the absolute low point, artistically and politically, of almost any performance I have ever attended.

A heavier, more ham-handed series of amateurish sketches in song, poetry and dance, all celebrating Robeson, the black people, and the Soviet Union, could not possibly be imagined. The Soviet Cultural Attaché from Washington, was even present (mainly because of a show of soviet art going on elsewhere in Chicago) and made a little speech.

Bad rhetoric followed bad poetry followed excruciating song and dance. Perhaps the best test of the quality of this event was this: at the beginning of the evening the audience was 80% black and 2O% white, but by the end, several hours later, it had completely reversed and was now 80% white and 20% black. Ilene and I were among the unlucky ones—we could not leave because we wanted to talk to the organizers afterwards. We had come this far to find out about Artists United and we had to go the rest of the way. If the communists had been seeking to punish me for past derelictions, they could not have chosen a more effective way. I suspect this concert may have been the cruelest and most fiendish form of torture ever inflicted on Counter-Cultural agent.

Afterwards, we met with Mark and several others from the group, and from their reactions I became certain that Lou hadn't put them on their guard at all. We went out to dinner together and then proceeded to the North Side home of a sweet young couple named Dick and Jane Herbert. Dick was English and therefore quite eager for news of the radical scene "at home," which I was able to supply. I asked them numerous questions about their policies and activities, and they answered quite frankly that they were a small group and hadn't really done much yet—in fact the concert I had just survived was their first major event.

I soon detected doctrinal differences between Dick and Jane on the one hand and Mark and some of his friends on the other and was quick to probe these. They for their part were very curious about the Coalition's activities in New York, and I of course was able to describe these events quite thoroughly. By the end of the evening, I had Jane at least agreeing that it would be a good idea to limit the group's activities to clear-cut issues where victories could be won—or at least claimed as won—though Dick and especially Mark were still spouting old-left rhetoric. We all left good friends, and I told them we would be keeping in touch.

As soon as I got back to New York I called up Jean Toche and told him what I had discovered in Chicago. He was not at all surprised as he was beginning to have his own doubts about Artists United, which had been making yet further unfounded claims in the meantime. Toche and I agreed we would issue a statement together and distribute it at the next Coalition meeting. Toche was to the left of me on a number of issues, but I had called him because I knew he felt strongly about free speech and unlimited expression of personal opinions. Soon I had put together a first draft of our statement and corrected it in consultation with Jean.

We decided our best tactic was to leave our leaflet unsigned so as to prevent questions of personalities from entering into the issue. Also, if it were signed, there could be a disastrous fight at the meeting which would focus even more attention on the new group. Just a few hours before our next meeting, Jean took a look at the final draft, and had a hundred copies made. These we left in the middle of the circle of chairs that provided our usual seating arrangement, and our members went and picked up their copies as they arrived at the meeting.

Basically, the leaflet asked some searching questions about Artists United and their possible relations to Progressive Labor, the party front which at that time was busy taking over the American SDS. Here too our group was a microcosm of the larger movement. We questioned the need of another artists organization fighting the same battles as ours was. The leaflet had the desired result, though there were some side effects. At the next meeting, one of the most fervent (and richest) socialists among our members took the unknown author of the leaflet to task for his cowardly McCarthyistic attack on this noble group. It was assumed by many that I was the sole perpetrator, and it would have helped our cause if Toche had been known as the co-author.

The final result was that although Artists United lingered as a name for a few more months, its strength remained limited and it never really recovered from our leaflet. I suppose it was a sort of backhanded tribute to the Coalition that the party ever imagined we were worth the trouble of taking over. But the real joke is this: taking over the Coalition would have been an absolute cinch at any time for any group of twenty determined people who wanted to do so.

All they would have needed to do was come to our regular meetings and vote as a block. We would have been completely defenseless against such a tactic, for we had almost no procedural rules or constitutional safeguards. Any group who showed up at our Monday night meetings was automatically the Coalition. There was no other definition going for what we were. That the communist party should have failed in such an easy task is an interesting commentary on the nature of the so-called. communist threat to our society.

On May 2, the Coalition succeeded in binding together its internal wounds long enough to launch its first major demonstration in several months. It was mainly an action to support the Blacks and Puerto Ricans in their demand for what was now being called the Martin Luther King Jr. (hyphen) Pedro Albizu Canpos Study Center for Black and Puerto Rican Art at the Museum of Modern Art, Canpos being the name of a prominent Puerto Rican patriot. The Blacks and Puerto Ricans were to come closer to success in this enterprise than any one had dreamed.

Most of the Coalition opted to show up, despite the growing antipathy towards the black leader Tom Lloyd, possibly because this was the first major event we had mounted that spring and also because the Coalition had now become slightly fashionable. By now we had become almost a tradition at the Modern, and visitors who missed one of our demonstrations felt cheated. For whatever reason, the demonstration was quite successful, attracting a vast crowd of onlookers and a healthy contingent of strolling, mounted, and motorized police. But in some ways the crowd cut down on the excitement, and many of our artists got lost in it or found themselves involved in long conversations with museum-goers, who wanted to know exactly what was going on. Then just when the event seemed to be going downhill, it reached a new peak (as I reported it in the East Village Other):

"Suddenly a sleek black limousine rolled up in front of the Modern. Out of the limousine stepped Jon Hendricks and Jean Toche of the Guerilla Art Action Group, both of them dressed in black tie and tails. Hendricks wore a sign around his neck reading TRUSTEE, while Toche's hair was especially coifed to look like Met modern art curator Henry Geldzahler's hairdo and the sign he wore said DIRECTOR. Immediately the two shouted out that they could not stand having Black and Puerto Rican artists in their museum and began to unroll a large section of wire fence to build a barricade in front of the museum.

"They also placed a large bomb outside the entrance along with a quantity of cap pistols and toy machine guns as well as two live chickens. After they had built part of their barricade, the Black and Puerto Rican artists rallied behind a large Puerto Rican flag, unrolled by Adrian Garcia, and launched an attack on the newcomers. Everyone seized the weapons provided, and the uproar grew to an unbelievable pitch amidst the "shooting." A large crowd gathered on both sides of Fifty-Third Street, a smoke bomb went off, and three police cars drew up in front of the Museum.

"But the Coalition now has the Modern so well tamed, at least in this respect, that a museum spokesman told the police that it was all a piece of theatre and not to interfere. Toche and Hendricks ran back into their limousine, Toche lacking most of his clothing, and were driven off down Fifty-Third Street, pursued on foot by some of their attackers. Some Coalition members were disappointed that nothing more genuinely explosive happened, but most of those who remembered the Museum's reactionary stance of last year were pleased with the contrast."

Although the Coalition was to endure after a fashion for another year, this was in a sense its last major demonstration as a united group. It was also the last of the big demonstrations where any sense of real joviality could still be felt. I remember picking up a toy pistol myself, and we all shot at each other in great delight at our daring mock violence before the Museum. This was on Saturday, May 2. Two days later guns started being used in earnest.